Hopelessness of Inequality In the short story “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut, in the future of 2081, everyone is completely equal. The government tries their very best to enforce and does whatever it takes to get equality. The Government have an Handicap general that uses handicaps to make everyone who is over average, average. Harrison Bergeron, son of George and Hazel, doesn't agree with equality, and do whatever it takes to exceed inequality. Bergeron escapes from jail and ends up on National Television. Bergeron starts to make a scene and yells on national television, “I AM THE EMPEROR!” After all of that he pulls off all of his many handicaps and ask for an Empress, since he interrupted a ballet show he had many to choose from. When he started dancing with his empress, he finds him and his empress getting shot in the head and killed by The handicapper General, Diana Moon Glampers. Vonnegut has Bergeron killed at the end of the story because he wanted to show the hopelessness of inequality. To start off with how achieving inequality is hopeless is how the government have handicaps. George has to wear a little metal radio handicap in his ear because he has above average intelligence. About every time he …show more content…
The government killed a 14 year old boy who was probably just needed help of was mentally insane! That right there shows that the government would go to the extreme measures of killing two people to just have equality. In the text it says,”It was then that Diana Moon Glampers, the Handicapper General, came into the studio with a double-barreled ten-gauge shotgun. She fired twice, and the Emperor and the Empress were dead before they hit the floor.” The government shot and killed a fourteen year old for just challenging