Harrison Bergeron Response

Critic Roland Barthes has said, “Literature is the question minus the answer.” Many works of literature expose hypothetical questions that, in turn, raise awareness for a civil issue. The author’s treatment of these questions can give a deeper understanding of the work as a whole. Kurt Vonnegut’s classic short story, “Harrison Bergeron”, contains the perfect example of such questions. “Harrison Bergeron” takes place in a futuristic society that emphasizes the right of equality. Each member of society is shackled down with handicapping tools to become the same as everyone else, whether that be intelligence, athleticism, or overall appearance. In “Harrison Bergeron”, Vonnegut analyzes the question of whether equality is worth losing one’s individuality
At the young age of fourteen, he is taken away from his family and his life as he knew it. Harrison is seven feet tall, a superb athlete, and a strikingly beautiful gentleman who has outgrown hindrances before new ones could be created. One afternoon, Harrison breaks free from the barrier that hold him back, and he was shot and killed on live television – simply for being “better” than everyone else. Because of the time period in which Harrison lived, he was forced to lose his own identity to become equal to the rest of society. There was no way that Harrison could ever be himself.
In addition to Harrison, his parents, George and Hazel, also suffered from the standards that society had placed upon them. George was more intellectually advanced than Hazel, and he had to constantly deal with the disruption of thought by the government. He was stripped of his human right to think and ponder in order to be “fair” to the rest of the world. Hazel, on the other hand, lived handicap free due to her ditsy personality. The difference between equality as the Bergeron’s knew it and the equality of human dignity greatly differed because of the limitations that each citizen had to