Kurt Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron

In the short story “Harrison Bergeron” Kurt Vonnegut creates a future dystopic world where all people are equal in every way. The story introduces a married couple who recently had their 14-year-old son taken away. The wife, Hazel, is described as a person with average intellect, while her husband, George, is above average intellect. Their son, Harrison, is against the misleading nature of the government, which is why he was taken away. In the short story “Harrison Bergeron” Vonnegut uses the themes of equality, loss, and desensitization to purvey insight into a dystopic society.

Kurt Vonnegut sets the story in a dystopic world in the year 2081 where everyone is equal. “and everybody was finally equal…Nobody was smarter than anybody else.

The different types of loss are loss of individuality, loss of memory, and loss of life. With the newfound “equality” the characters lose vast amounts of themselves; they are not allowed to express their thoughts or themselves. The characters are faced with extreme limitations due to the flawed equal society they live in. Vonnegut provides insight into loss in a dystopic world by describing what charters lose in order to maintain their version of equality. In the story, the Bergeron’s are watching ballerinas on television; they all are restrained from dancing at their full potential. The ballerinas stop dancing to broadcast breaking news. One of the ballerinas begins to speak, and she accidentally speaks with her natural voice “And she had to apologize at once for her voice, which was a very unfair voice for a woman to use.” (Vonnegut 2). The author describes the ballerina’s voice as “unfair” because her voice is more appealing than the average voice. The ballerina had to apologize for her natural tone, which shows the reader that the characters in the story lose individualism. Another instance where individualism is vacant is when Harrison demands the musicians to play at their best “The music began. It was normal at first – cheap, silly, false.” (Vonnegut 3). The use of the word “normal” shows that the musicians are so conditioned into being equal that they fear surpassing one another. Both the dancers and musicians lose their individual talent and creative flow when they are restrained by handicap devices. The musicians play at their best once Harrison shakes them up, the music improves once they are convinced to play without limitations. Another form of loss in “Harrison Bergeron” is when handicapper general walks in on the creative “outburst” and puts an end to it by killing both Harrison and a ballerina that joined him in an unfair dance. “She fired twice, and the Emperor and the Empress were dead before