In “Harrison Bergeron”, the society in which the characters live is centered around the seemingly virtuous ideal of equality, opening with the almost macabre line, “The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal.” As the story moves along into the family life of the Bergeron’s, we are shown what this foreboding line means; beautiful people are made to wear masks, thin or strong people made to wear weights, and clever people to wear radio transmitters in their ears to keep

them from “taking unfair advantage of their brains”. Everyone is in one way or another hampered by handicaps, dropped to an arbitrary average decided by an all-powerful Handicapper-General.

The theme of dehumanization is not uncommon for Vonnegut, being commonplace in almost every one of his books, from Player Piano to Sirens of Titan to Slaughterhouse Five. In fact, what led me to include the idea that these absolute narrow-minded values are the result of bad intentions (angry and envious people looking for retribution) is a reference to another book. Diana Moon Glampers, the character who appears towards the end of “Harrison Bergeron” as the Handicapper General, shooting Harrison and the ballerina dead, also appears in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (another novel by Vonnegut). She is described as a “a sixty-year-old virgin who, by almost anybody’s standards, was too dumb to live… No one had ever loved her. There was no reason why anybody should. She was ugly, stupid, and boring.” Th

Some topics in this essay:
Vonnegut Jr, Ms Glampers, Bless Rosewater, Slaughterhouse Five, Bergeron” Handicapper, Bergeron Essay, Moon Glampers, “harrison bergeron”, people wear, result bad, ms glampers, result bad intentions, bad intentions,