Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was alive during a time in which he saw his parents being greatly affected by the Depression. His father lost his business and his mother would later overdose on prescription pills. Kurt was also drafted and served in World War Two. During this time he was also taken as a prisoner of war. He and his fellow inmates narrowly escaped an attack on the camp. When the camp was bombed the prisoners of war were being kept in a meat locker of a slaughterhouse that was sixty feet underground. However he along with the others had to clear the bodies of the dead away for weeks. The sad and unfortunate events of his life translate into his writings quite often. I believe after serving and having such a close call with death that Vonnegut had some distrust of governments or people in power and this is clearly evident in “Harrison Bergeron”. He uses multiple literary elements to show his distrust or simply his dislike of the government through out this …show more content…
His mother, Hazel is just too blissfully dumb to comprehend the scene, and his father is thrown off by the government issued radio that the law requires him to wear twenty-four hours a day. These events make the reader wonder what kind of a government would do such a thing and begins to plant a seed of distrust within us as well. These radios that the government issued broadcast noise to interrupt the thoughts of intelligent people such as Harrison’s father, George. He also introduces the Handicapper General and describes her as having a team of agents to ensure that the laws of equality are enforced. By giving a government official the name of an army general might be Vonnegut referring back to his time in the war and possibly his resentment towards his capturers during this
Kurt Vonnegut places his experiences and his views in the text. He begins the book by stating, “All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true...I’ve changed all of the names.” Viewing war as a sen...
Kurt Vonnegut was born in Indianapolis, India and as a child he went through the Great Depression which hit Vonnegut's family very hard. Author William Rodney Allen in A Brief Biography of Kurt Vonnegut states, "When World War II broke out, Vonnegut was 16; at 20, he entered the army and was shipped off to Europe, where he almost immediately was captured by the Germans in the Battle of the Bulge," which tells us that he was a prisoner of war early on in his deployment. Vonnegut is moved to Dresden and survives the bombing accidently because the pris...
Hattenhauer, Darryl. “The Politics of Kurt Vonnegut’s ‘Harrison Bergeron’.” Studies in Short Fiction. 35-4. (1998): 387. EBSCOhost. Web. 12 Mar. 2014.
Imagine a society where not a single person competes with another. It has been like this for years, yet nothing has changed since the start of this new world. No new technology, no new occupations, no new discoveries. Absolutely nothing is different. Without competition no one will push themselves to be better or to achieve any goals, and without new achievements society cannot survive, let alone thrive. The short story “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. discusses this topic. Set in a society where anyone above average in any way is handicapped, therefore everyone is completely and totally equal. One handicapped man, George’s, son is taken away by the government at the mere age of fourteen under suspicion of rebellious intentions. Another
Harrison Bergeron’s mother, Hazel Bergeron, is the definition of the Handicapper General’s “normal” and model for enforced equality. Everyone must be leveled and thereby oppressed to her standards. Hazel’s husband, George Bergeron, is no exception. “‘I’d think it would be real interesting, hearing all the different sounds,’ said Hazel, a little envious. ‘All the things they think up.’” (Vonnegut 910). George suffers from his own comically ludicrous mental handicap. The fact that this incites jealousy in Hazel reaffirms the artificial equality Vonnegut ridicules. The author satirizes oppression in American society through his depictions of misery and restraint exhibited in his characters’ ordeals. “The different times that George is interrupted from thinking, and his inner monologue is cut, we have a sort of stopping his having dialogue with himself. So he can’t have a unique personality, which itself involves his worldviews” (Joodaki 71). Not being able to know oneself epitomizes
The Idealism of Kurt Vonnegut Kurt Vonnegut was greatly influenced by his involvement in World War II. His entanglement with the Dresden bombing had an unequivocal effect upon his mentality, and the horrid experience propelled the liberal anti-war assertions that dominate many of his novels. Throughout his life, his idealistic nature has perceptibly undulated, and five representative novels illustrate the forceful progression and gradual declivity of his liberal views. The first thirty years of his life outwardly coincided with the average American man. He was born in Indianapolis on November 11, 1922, and lived a happy childhood with a stable family.
Kurt Vonnegut wrote novels and short stories with a darker tone. Vonnegut was a prisoner of war during World War II. He witnessed the firebombing of Dresden, Germany, which according to him changed his life forever. While a prisoner, he spent a few years working for Nazis in an old meat house where animals were slaughtered. That is where the basis of his novel Slaughterhouse Five came from. Due to the horrible things he took part in during World War II, many of his novels are related to wrong-doings or dysfunctional societies (Smith par 8-9). His short story “Harrison Bergeron” is about a society in the future who is more than controlled by the government. The government wants to make everyone equal and attempts to do so through changing a person’s intelligence level and other minor qualities such as strength or social class. What was interesting was that fact that rather than making the weak stronger, the stronger were made weak. It is clear this is a satirical piece of literature for the reason that when reading this, it is obvious the future was embellished and it was not going to be how the story portrayed it.
The structure of communism and its main concepts heavily relate to “Harrison Bergeron”. Communisms main idea is to keep the corporations from having too much power; as well as making everything equal. Communisms structure differs from “Harrison Bergeron”, but they both share a lot of characteristics. In “Harrison Bergeron” the government is given way to much power and forces everyone to become equal. Communism also differs greatly from our U.S. government and acts in many different ways. Communism ensures a lot of power and equality, as well as in “Harrison Bergeron”; however, the acts of both governments differ from each other and from the U.S. government.
Vonnegut's writing style throughout the novel is very flip, light, and sarcastic. The narrator's observations and the events occurring during the novel reflect a dark view of humanity which can only be mocked by humor. At the beginning of the novel the narrator is researching for a book he is writing. The book was to be about the day the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and the lives of the people who created the bomb. The narrator travels through the plot of the story, with characters flying in and out, in almost a daze. He is involved in events which are helplessly beyond his control, but which are inevitably leading to a destination at the end.
……………Most of the numerous and very disparate urban utopias imagined since antiquity, claim more or less a social justice combining equality, fairness, and freedom. However the methods invented to reach this social justice often lead to more binding law, sometimes up to the absurd, that limited the abilities and capacities of the citizens. Thus, behind the mask of an ideal equality, is concealed in fact, a tremendous social injustice. In “Harrison Bergeron”, Kurt Vonnegut’s shows us the consequences of sacrificing freedom for perfect equality by using the story of an excessive utopia to demonstrate that a society in which total equality exists, is not only oppressive, but also static and inefficient. Vonnegut exemplifies the image of fairness
The way the government is controlled in North Korea is a similar system to the Handicapper General in Harrison Bergeron. The government of those of these societies harshly controls everything that goes on. For example, in Harrison Bergeron, citizens are required by law to wear handicaps in attempt to make every equal. "…had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter" (Vonnegut 14). Akin to this, the government control in North Korea is not quite to the extreme of the society in Harrison Bergeron, though it is very strict and people are not given many basic rights. "North Korea has tightened control over the country’s northern border to reduce flight, and has continued systematic interrogation and torture of North Koreans caught and forcibly returned from China “(Human Rights Watch NA). Another similarity is in the dystopian topic of it being the illusion of a utopian world. This meaning the society is meant to be so perfect that it ends up becoming unpleasant. In Harrison Bergeron, Hazel thinks about what it would be like to always hear the sound of chimes in her head through the mental handicap. "I think it would be kind of interesting to hear all the different sounds" (Vonnegut 38). Hazel is oblivious at the time to the fact that the mental handicap is a way of limiting your thoughts. Hazel believing that there is nothing wrong with what
Being unique is a necessary part of life. People are told starting as children that they need to be themselves. They are told to do what they love and love what they do. What if the world didn’t allow this? Kurt Vonnegut ponders the idea of a life in which the government enforces complete equality. “Harrison Bergeron” takes place in a future society that hinders people with skills to make everyone equal. This society makes everyone worse instead of better. Complete equality has too many issues for it to be viable. Equality should be for all in the eyes of the law. However, complete equality should not be pursued because taking away the differences between people is a clear mistake.
When a person or group of people join a distinct opposition towards someone or something, it is discrimination. People are inadequately affected through hate and criticism because of the unique differences we each hold as human beings. In the short story “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut, he presents us with the mental vision of Tall Poppy Syndrome. These circumstances could negatively attribute to our government being detrimental to our future society by indoctrinating equality within the nation.
The story “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut is120 years in the future, which allows us to more easily accept some of the bizarre events that happen in the story such as when the character Harrison Bergeron is dancing with a ballerina and there is no law of gravity and motion, so they can almost touch the studio ceiling which is thirty feet high. The author emphasizes in his work themes such as freedom, mind manipulation, the American dream, and media influence, also the opposition between strength and weakness and knowledge and ignorance. The story illustrates that being equal to one another is not always the best way to live because everyone is different for a reason. Also, this is what makes everyone special in your particular way.
Kurt Vonnegut is not a typical author. Vonnegut is not afraid to talk about subjects that most find socially unacceptable to talk about. Throughout the novel, he speaks his opinion on how he has lost all hope in humanity. How the human race is ignorant and has ruined the earth. Vonnegut states on page one-hundred, “Some people are born deaf, some are born blind or whatever, and this book is about congenitally defective human beings of a sort that is making this whole country and many other parts of the planet go completely haywire nowadays.” In A Man Without A Country by Kurt Vonnegut, he tackles subjects that most find to hard to talk about. He covers topics such as religion, the environment, and the government.