Short Story Project One: Harrison Bergeron

For my first short story project I read Kurt Vonnegut’s short story Harrison
Bergeron. The story takes place in the year two-thousand-eighty-one. In the story, every person is made completely equal. Not a single person is allowed to superior in any aspect. The way that the government keeps everyone equal is by handicapping those are superior in certain ways. For instance, people who are stronger than others have to wear weight bags on there bodies to make them weaker. Smarter people have to wear earpiece that will produce a random and startling sound to make them lose their train of thought. Good looking people had to wear cosmetics that make them look ugly.

At the beginning of the story the agents of the woman who enforces the handicaps, known as the Handicapper General, arrests Harrison, the son of George and Hazel Bergeron. Hazel and George were very sad, but weren’t able to be so for long. Hazel was a person of “perfectly average intelligence”, who could only think for a very short amount of time. George on the other hand was very intelligent was handicapped with one of the earpieces.

I thought that this story was very interesting. What I thought it showed was
what complete socialism would be like. What it would be like if a government tried to make everyone equal in every aspect of life. What it would be like if we were denied the natural gifts God gave us, simply because there were others who didn’t have them. Those who were gifted were forced to be burdened.

I thought it was interesting how being disabled was glorified, while being
able was discouraged. Being skilled was also discouraged. Ballerinas who were more graceful than the others, had to wear extra weights to make them less graceful. People who were gifted speakers were not allowed to be public speakers. Instead people with speech impediments were public speakers.

I thought that the events that took place after Harrison’s escape was
interesting. When he escaped, he first proclaimed himself Emperor, and then took his handicaps of himself. He then chose an Empress, who he freed from her handicaps. After being tormented by the handicaps for four years, he hadn’t any interest to free anyone but himself and his empress. After living under complete control of someone else, he demanded that everyone do as he says, instead of freeing them as well

I think that the character Harrison, was made to be exactly the opposite of
what the government in the story wants people to be. They say that, “he is a genius, and an athlete, is under-handicapped, and should be regarded as extremely dangerous”. It is also stated that “he is exactly seven feet tall”, and good looking. He could not be restrained by handicaps, and the one he had were more extreme than the ones worn by anyone else. Other people’s handicaps were orderly, while his were hanging all over him.

The author tells us some of the aspects of Harrison, while his actions tell the
others. The author states that “he is exactly seven feet tall” and that, “to offset his good looks, the H-G men required that he wear at all times a red rubber-ball for a nose, keep his eyebrows shaved off, and cover his even white teeth with black caps at snaggletooth random”. One thing that his actions tell are his athleticism, where it says that, “Harrison snatched two musicians from their chairs, waved them like batons as he sang the music as he wanted it played”. Also his being under-handicapped is demonstrated when, “Harrison tore the straps of his handicap harness like wet tissue paper”.

One allusion that I saw was when Harrison was stripping himself of his
handicaps. It says that, “He flung away his rubber-ball nose, revealed a man that would have awed Thor, the god of thunder”. Thor is god from Norse mythology. I also saw a metaphor. When referring to one of the ballerinas it reads: “Harrison Bergeron, age fourteen” she said in a grackle squawk.




Simile: Figure of speech that makes a comparison between things, using a words such as like, as, resemble, or than.

Metaphor: Figure of speech that makes a comparison between things, in which ne thing becomes another thing without the use of words such as like, as, than, or resembles.

Personification: Special kind of metaphor where something nonhuman is talked about as if it was human.

Allusion: A reference made to another piece of literature, or to pop culture.

Hyperbole: An exaggeration made to give emphasis.

Irony: Something that is oxymoronic, something that is the opposite of what is expected.