Harrison Bergeron

2 Pages 486 Words

Satire is the use of irony or sarcasm to attack some form of human behavior. Most satire appears in literature, but satire also plays a part in most other art forms. Most satirists claim they want to expose and reform such human failings as greed or vanity. But some satirists simply seem to enjoy ridiculing human conduct.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr's "Harrison Bergeron" is making fun of uniformity in general. The satire is the fact that uniformity (of any kind) leads to the loss of individuality, and therefore to absolute deformity of humanness.

"The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal," the story begins. "They weren't only equal before God and the law.
They were equal in every which way." In this haunting story, Vonnegut probably wanted to warn our society of similar kind of equality, equality that can be fatal for human
race.

In "Harrison Bergeron", Kurt Vonnegut presented a scary view
of a future society, where everyone was equal. "Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody
else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else." It was the job of the agents of the United States Handicapper General to keep it this way. Beautiful people had to wear ugly masks. People not heavy enough had to wear handicap bags full of lead. Clever people had to wear a radio in their ear tuned to the government transmitter, which sent out sharp noises to keep people from taking advantage of their brains. It was a world where competition was the greatest of sins.

I think that this view can be very easily related to modern society. People are striving for equality of some kind--equality
of races, sexes, etc. The society in "Harrison Bergeron" succeeded in eliminating these prejudices--everybody got the same opportunity to do anything--and the result was fatal.

When the power got into the hands of stupid people, unfit for
governing the country, they had to find a way to protect their
position. So t...