Imagine living in a square world with a bunch of squares, everyone exactly the same. Well in the story “Harrison Bergeron”, that’s how life is. How boring?! Every human on the face of the earth is exactly equal except for the government. The government rules the world with an equality overload. The satire of this story exposes and exaggerates this future fiction. The story revolves around the government, which acts as a king to the world, changing each “dangerous” thing in a human. That’s the whole irony of the story.
The beginning of the story starts out at George and Hazel Bergeron’s home. Their son, Harrison, is taken away by the H-G men. The Bergerons are saddened but because of their mental handicaps that the government has put on the world, after a few minutes of watching television, they can’t remember why. Here the reader is introduced to the two characters and discovers just how plain the world is. “Nobody was smarter than everybody else. Nobody was better looking than everybody else. Nobody was stronger and quicker than everybody else” (201). In this story it’s a threat to the government to be different or to stand out at all. It’s ironic how each human was born as an individual
in panic, like bandits from a burglar alarm” (202). In our world today, it would be an advantage to practice your skills and talents and when you achieve, you’re congratulated. It’s opposite for George, “Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains” (201).
The story “Harrison Bergeron” is full of Irony and it follows throughout the entire story. Even the ending is ironic because the Bergerons don’t learn from what they just saw on the television. By reading this story, you can understand that no matter how much you try to change a person or put handicaps on them, a strong minded person can overpower anything. Everyone was born a certain way and with their own personality and no one can change who you want to be or what you want to do besides yourself. All you have to do is believe you can and do it. Nothing can stop you, not even handicaps.
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