Imagine yourself in America in the 1700’s under strict and unfair british rule. As a citizen, wouldn’t you want to free yourself and change your life forever. Although rebellion and defiance in society was necessary then, it is often looked down upon in society today. In the stories Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut and The Hunger Artist by Franz Kafka, they analyze the lives of two different rebels who are forgotten by their own society. In Harrison Bergeron, Vonnegut writes about the life of George and Hazel, whose son, Harrison had gone to prison. Harrison is able to escape from prison and tries to free himself from the strict government that controls him. Despite his efforts to escape the society, Harrison is shot and killed for his role …show more content…
Despite the fact, that both Harrison Bergeron and the Hunger Artist fit the criteria they do so in completely different ways. Harrison relies on his strength and violence to rebel against society while the Hunger Artist uses forms of vocal rebellion to refuse the help of society and to isolate himself. If both characters use different forms of rebellion, what makes them so similar in the end? For starters, both characters fail rather quickly in their rebellion attempts but they are so similar because of their selfish motives they use to rebel. Although, we are able to see the Hunger Artist’s motives through his many vocal outbursts and his isolation from society, do we ever truly find out Harrison’s true motives. The short answer is no, but we are able to assume that he is only working for his own self gain because of his statement that he is the “Emperor” (Vonnegut 4). Due to this quote we can easily infer that his is working for his own self gain, although some people believe he is trying to work for the betterment of society. Even if Harrison was working to benefit the rest of society, his attempt to rebel still would be unsuccessful due to the strict government and society that he presides in. Throughout the course of history, the rebellions that were successful were started to benefit the society around them, however they had to be started by someone who had the similar self interests like Harrison and the Hunger Artist. Although their own self interests led them to failure, it was also caused by the society's failure to recognize and support their impacts. (I don’t know, edit this