Examples Of Evil In Harrison Bergeron

We as human beings both create and endure evil of many different varieties and levels of severity on a daily basis. Evil, both moral and natural, is recognized and spoken of constantly. Whether in sermons declaring the ultimate result of sin and evil from the perspective of the church, the daily news reports updating us on the War in Iraq or informing us of a local murder, or the knowledge of the ongoing struggle to rebuild a community which was destroyed during a catastrophic storm, earthquake, or wildfire, we without a doubt live amidst evil. Many of us have very differing philosophies on the proper way to define evil, for example, whether evil is intentional or a natural balancing force, whether evil is universal, or if one's particular

Harrison Bergeron, a young man who was initially an exceptional being before being given his handicaps (“...He is a genius and an athlete, is under-handicapped, and should be regarded as highly dangerous...”) escapes prison, breaks into a television station after removing his government-issued handicaps, declares himself Emperor, and is shortly thereafter shot dead (Vonnegut, Jr., K. 1961). One who tends to take what they read at face value and comes from a particularly conservative background and views deviance as a form of evil may view the breaking and entering, and other law-breaking acts as being morally evil. However, the reader most likely will view the violence of the shooting by government officials as the evil in this scenario, and once again may be regarded as a moral evil at

There are also some less obvious aspects that indicate moral evil. For instance, the entire dynamic of the family that is being written about leads to us ideas about personal evils. These include selfishness and manipulation (for instance, the grandmother relaying information about an escaped Florida convict in an attempt to persuade her family to vacation in Tennessee, her personal preference), and verbal cruelty. Both John Wesley and June Star, the children of the family are extremely rude and constantly dehumanize their family