LITR 4632: Literature of the Future

Student Future-Visions Presentation 2009

Faron Samford

LITR 4632 2009

Is Equality the Future?

Harrison Bergeron, by Kurt Vonnegut. First published in the 1961 October issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

•      Is Equality the Future?

•      A vision of the future as presented By Kurt Vonnegut in the short story Harrison Bergeron

•      Intro

•      Originally published in 1961 in the October issue of the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

•      The civil rights and women’s rights movements were in progress, demanding equality. (this story is not to satirize those movements, rather a thought process on equality pushed to its extreme)

•      Is a world where everyone is completely equal desirable?

•      2081

            “THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.”

•      Handicapping Methods

            George’s Parents

      “Hazel had a perfectly average intelligence, which meant she couldn’t think about anything except in short bursts. And George, while his intelligence was way above normal, 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. 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.”

Ballerinas

“They weren’t really very good – no better than anybody else would have been, anyway. They were burdened with sashweights and bags of birdshot, and their faces were masked, so that no one, seeing a free and graceful gesture or a pretty face, would feel like something the cat drug in. George was toying with the vague notion that maybe dancers shouldn’t be handicapped. But he didn’t get very far with it before another noise in his ear radio scattered his thoughts.”

•      Harrison Bergeron

“The rest of Harrison’s appearance was Halloween and hardware. Nobody had ever worn heavier handicaps. He had outgrown hindrances faster than the H–G men could think them up. Instead of a little ear radio for a mental handicap, he wore a tremendous pair of earphones, and spectacles with thick wavy lenses. The spectacles were intended to make him not only half blind, but to give him whanging headaches besides.

 Scrap metal was hung all over him. Ordinarily, there was a certain symmetry, a military neatness to the handicaps issued to strong people, but Harrison looked like a walking junkyard. In the race of life, Harrison carried three hundred pounds.

 And 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 snaggle–tooth random.”

•      What Happens

Harrison breaks free of his bonds and breaks into the TV studio, removes all of his handicaps and has a ballerina and some of the musicians do the same. They dance and in walks the handicapper general, executes them both with a shotgun and informs the band members they have 10 seconds to replace their’s or meet the same fate.

•      Conclusion of the Story

“It was then that the Bergerons’ television tube burned out.

 Hazel turned to comment about the blackout to George.

 But George had gone out into the kitchen for a can of beer.

 George came back in with the beer, paused while a handicap signal shook him up. And then he sat down again. ‘You been crying?’ he said to Hazel.

 ’Yup,’ she said,

 ’What about?’ he said.

 ’I forget,’ she said. ‘Something real sad on television.’

 ’What was it?’ he said.

 ’It’s all kind of mixed up in my mind,’ said Hazel.

 ’Forget sad things,’ said George.

 ’I always do,’ said Hazel.”

•      Wrap-Up

Would you consider this utopia / dystopia / ecotopia?

Does Harrison’s publicly broadcast moment without his bonds represent a triumph of humanity or that resistance is futile?