Similarities Between The Giver And Harrison Bergeron

Have you ever thought about being colorblind and not having feelings? In The Giver the community's members actually are colorblind and don’t have feelings because of equality. In the book, “Harrison Bergeron” people are also equal but they must wear weights and ear pieces that they call handicaps. This is supported by the quote by Barry Goldwater “Equality, rightly understood as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences; wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.” The quote by Barry Goldwater shares a central idea about equality and how it is greatly misunderstood an used incorrectly. In The Giver and "Harrison Bergeron," this is shown because they both are equal communities.

In Harrison Bergeron, they take equality way too far and make citizens wear handicaps.

Instead, they required people to wear handicaps to make everybody equal. The text states ”Required by law to wear it at all times”(Vonnegut 1). This describes that when the people take off the Handicaps they are punished. This also shows that they are really strict. For example, taking off an ear piece makes you go to jail. This is very unfair to all the community members. In the people had to wear weights if they were strong so they would be weaker. In the story, the text says, ”They were burdened with sashweights and bags of birdshot”(Vonnegut 2). This reveals that in “Harrison Bergeron” This is how the community thinks equality is like. They think like this because they don’t want to go back to the dark ages. The dark ages are the times when everybody isn’t equal. To conclude this community is terrible but everybody thinks it’s