Similarities Between V For Vendetta And Harrison Bergeron

When George Orwell published his now famous novel 1984 in the year 1949 after drawing inspiration from the totalitarian reigns of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, he inadvertently caused the dystopian genre to explode in popularity. Even though 1984 was not the first dystopian novel to be published, it did create many themes that can now be seen in a variety of works of the same genre. Two particular example of these dystopian works include Kurt Vonnegut’s satirical short story “Harrison Bergeron” and the graphic novel V for Vendetta and its later film adaptation. One theme that spans the entire genre is the idea of a government that controls all aspects of its citizens lives, and both aforementioned examples contain such ruling parties. The

This is the first sentence of “Harrison Bergeron”, and it accurately summarizes the issues with the Handicapper General and her force. Not only is everyone equal in this story; everyone is exactly the same, and has the exact same abilities. Everybody has the same level of intelligence, athleticism, and even beauty (Vonnegut, Web). While this is more extreme than other examples, both 1984 and V for Vendetta include similar concepts. The Party encourages conformity by employing constant surveillance. Various quotes in 1984 mention the citizens of Oceania being constantly watched by a variety of means, including people trained to recognized to traitorous thoughts (Orwell, 69). Although less prevalent and obvious, the government in V for Vendetta does keep the population in check with the use of police forces and security cameras (McTeigue, V for Vendetta). The reason for the use of surveillance and conformity is obvious. With the government only having to cater to one type of person, propaganda is easily distributed and the threat of rebellion is severely diminished. Surveillance can ensure that conformity is upheld, and if there are any problems at all, they can be detected much faster. Without this forced obedience, it is unlikely the governments in any of the stories would have succeeded for very

As the major Party slogan goes, “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past” (Orwell, 39). The Party dedicates an entire division of the Ministry of Truth to just reviewing old publications and rewriting them to make the Party and Big Brother be always correct (Orwell, 45). This makes the government seem omniscient and capable of predicting the future, which are traits that only further the nationalism the Party inspires. After all, who would not want a government that knows exactly what will happen? In V for Vendetta, Chancellor Sutler outright bans films and literature from the past, effectively eliminating a part of history (McTeigue, V for Vendetta). While this may not seem as severe as the Party’s method of controlling history, taking away media from the past removes the value, opinions, and beliefs from the time they were written; therefore, it is still expunging history. “Harrison Bergeron” simply manipulates the past into being an awful time, referred to as “... the dark ages… with everybody competing against everybody else” (Vonnegut, Web). This method can remove any complaints about the present, as it will always seem more desirable than the past. Taking control over the past ensures that governments have control over their citizen’s lives, both present and