Harrison Bergeron and By the Waters of the Babylon Do you ever imagine the future? If so what does it look like bright, and shiny? Unfortunately the way the world is headed it will probably look the opposite of what you imagined, gloomy, and desolate. The stories of “Harrison Bergeron” by, Kurt Vonnegut and “By the waters of Babylon” by, Stephen Vincent Benet are two short stories that represent dark versions of the near future. Will our world ever end up like this, hurt by inequalities or destroyed by technology? The worlds of these two short stories are quite similar. “Harrison Bergeron” takes place in the year 2081, and all people have been made equal by the use of, heavy metal handicaps.
The people were to where them at all times. The handicaps were controlled by the Handicapper General, Diana Moon Glampers. In “By The Waters of Babylon” the narrator John travels to the city of the gods, (which is forbidden) because he had seen the gods in his dreams. When he gets there he discovers a dull and abandoned town of New York. He then realizes that the gods were just men.
…show more content…
In the beginning of Harrison Bergeron it explains that, “Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else (lines 1-3).” With these handicaps the freedom of an individual is lost. In “By the Waters of Babylon” Benet explains our world as dark, and broken, then the narrator comes across a god which later he discovered different, “I knew then that they had been men, neither gods nor demons. (lines 361-362).” The message that is sent though this story is, that all of us has savagery within us that could lead us to destroy our whole civilization. These short stories share a similar message, that sometimes equality in knowledge and truth can be