Similarities Between 1984 And Harrison Bergeron

In 1984 by George Orwell and “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut they show how blind faith in a government leads to the psychological manipulation of the mind to make sure there is absolutely no chance of rebellion.

In 1984, the Party and Big Brother are the supreme beings of Oceania and they change the way people think to suit the Party’s needs. The Party has consistently made the citizens feel like they have everything they need and that they are winning all the battles to boost morale. “Returns now completed of the output of all classes of consumption goods show that the standard of living has risen no less than twenty per cent over the past year.” (Orwell 58) In reality, none of this is true. Winston remembers that the day before the

No one is more beautiful than someone else or faster, or stronger, or even smarter. Everyone above average is handicapped down till they are average, so there is no competition between anyone. Since everyone is equal everyone is happy because they don’t have to feel sad that someone is better than they are in anything. People won’t have to compete or fight about anything if they are equal. Thus they will believe in the government for creating a society of peace. “If I tried to get away with it,” said George,”then other people’d get away with and pretty soon we’d be right back to the dark ages again, with everybody competing against everybody else. You wouldn’t like that, would you?” (line 68-70 Vonnegut) The government is trying to make it seem like people not being equal is bad. They want the public to think that being different or special creates problems so if everyone is the same it would be easy to create a method to subdue society if a problem happened to arose. If someone was different or special it would be harder to change someone to make sure no one would follow in their suit. Hazel said that society would fall apart if people would start cheating laws before she forgot what she was talking about. By having these handicaps to drop someone’s intelligence down far enough so that they won’t remember something helps the government stay in control. George and Hazel were having a conversation about taking out the lead balls, but they forgot what they were talking about when George heard a noise in his earpiece. If someone was able to forget things this easily, then anyone thinking of conspiring against the government would forget instantly. Thus the government would stay in power forever because no one could keep their head straight long enough to conspire against the handicapped