handicapped by their differences or inadequacies. Instead, those who are gifted with superior intellect, physical beauty, or strength are penalized.

Those who are beautiful must wear hideous masks, intelligent people must wear headsets that jangle their brains and nerves with a series of loud, annoying sounds, and those with physical agility or strength must carry sacks of birdshot to weigh them down. Thus, in the race of life, all Americans are handicapped so that no one must ever feel ugly, stupid, or “like something the cat dragged in.”

Diana Moon Glampers is the Handicapper General, whose job is to track down violators of the law and rid society of those who menace the average, the inadequate, and the mediocre. If a man wants to rest from the drudgery of carting around fifty pounds of birdshot by removing some pellets, he can be killed. Those, such as Harrison Bergeron, who learn to overcome their handicaps, are forced to shoulder ever larger burdens, or noisier apparatus, or face incarceration

Harrison’s parents witness the entire affair on their television, but when George goes to the kitchen for something and Hazel gets sidetracked, neither can remember why they are crying—something sad on television, no doubt.

It might appear optimistic that, despite the almost pathological efforts to destroy all that is beautiful, brilliant, or talented here, Vonnegut implies that a champion will defend these values. His pessimistic view, however, is revealed when Harrison Bergeron throws off his shackles and weights and mask and those of the dancers and musicians, but his only revolutionary act is to dance. That is Vonnegut’s point—that society needs rebels to risk everything in order to make life better. The ironic reality that in order to be fair to one group, society must be unfair or unjust to others, is the basis of “Harrison Bergeron” and much of Vonnegut’s fiction. The ignorance and hatefulness of humankind are attacked again and again. Here, as elsewhere, Vonnegut asks what are people for? If there is a grand design to life, a true purpose for suffering, why can it not be discovered?

Kurt Vonnegut’s purpose in “Harrison Bergeron” is clear and unequivocal. He wants to show that a society that exalts the lowest common denominator (the homely, the stupid, and the mediocre) by handicapping all those with talent, intellect, and beauty, can never help those with natural disabilities. For Vonnegut, fundamental human decency demands that society give such people more assistance in reaching up, aspiring to be more than the mere appendages of society. It is the exceptional people who improve society—the nonconformists, the dreamers, the different. Failure to inspire all people will lead inevitably to the destruction of such a society. It is appropriate to legislate equality before the law in the areas of education, employment, and justice, the author suggests. Too often, he warns, people assume that equality means being the same. This is simply not realist

Some topics in this essay:
Harrison Bergeron, Vonnegut Harrison, Kurt Vonnegut’s, George Hazel, , Adventures Wonderland, Kurt Vonnegut, Poles Czechs, Style Technique, Glampers Handicapper, “harrison bergeron”, science fiction, harrison bergeron, inadequacies instead, example harrison,