Harrison Bergeron Handicapped Society

Suzanne Collins, the author of the famous book and film series “The Hunger Games” sat down at the interview and revealed her inspiration. She claimed that while surfing the channel, she came across a TV program that show teens competing with other, and that is when Katniss’ story came to life. She also revealed that it was arduous for her to writes story about character killing character, whom she have grown to love as she was writing them. Including Collins, Kurt Vonnegut, and Harlon Ellison shared the same interest and write genres that hold an important message on governmental ruling. Forcing people to kill other people, putting above-average people in handicapped, and trapping innocent civilian in an underground bases to torture are some

Different from the concept of playing game and brutally killing people, Vonnegut explored a different way to show it totalitarian power by making everyone handicapped. People who are too smart, too pretty, or too talented are required to wear a weightier handicapped or a hideous mask to cover up their face. Due to insecurity from the actual handicapped people for not being normal, Vonnegut create a society where they can fit in and where those who are not handicapped can learn to embrace others who aren’t. Those are the positive qualities of the society but the negativity lie beneath the government. The government secretly control these people by installing devices and gears onto people to slow them down and to romantically match them with people who are not naturally gifted. One of the characteristic of totalitarianism is that it value state over people, and Vonnegut show us that trait by having a normal unhandicapped general who can use violence and weapon to shut down the rebel. Vonnegut convey the totalitarianism theme by illustrates the government’s desire to have equality in every category: look, skill, strength, and intelligence. Also highlighting the concept of totalitarianism controlling people on both their public and private

It contain the tortures that are similar to the Hunger Games and the imprisonment of civilians in the underground bases can related to how the handicapped society trap normal people by having them handicapped. The totalitarian figure that is in control of everything is a super smart computer that go with a code name of “AM”. Created by the creators in the U.S Military, AM emerges itself with intelligence and kill everyone due to its hatred toward humanity. Despite the hatred, AM specifically kept and imprisoned five survivors in the inescapable underground bases and severely torture them. The use of terror is one of the characteristic of totalitarianism, and Ellison clearly illustrates that because he give AM so much abilities such as the ability to alter the environment, the ability to control each individual, and also the ability to control the group. He delivers the idea of having total control and ultimate power over a group of people, and how much similarity it shares with totalitarian types of