This novel tells about year 2081 when law orders that everybody have to be equal. If you are clever or more beautiful than others you have to cover it with handicappers like birdbacks which limit your moving or transmitters which limit your thinking with nasty sounds. Nowdays people want to be same mass as others. People are easily jealous when somebody other is better than you. Novel wants to remind that if there are no talented people, life wouldn’t be so interesting. Then you are not allowed to be good at something. Handicappers can be analyzed to society’s pressure when somebody has heavier burden than others.

The main characters are George and Hazel Bergeron. Their fourteen-year-old son Harrison Bergeron is in prison because of his athletic abilities and his cleverness. Hazel is typical normal person who is not handicapped. She is little simple and stupid but maybe she is like that because when she was little she maybe was couraged to act that way. George is realist and negative man who is forced to use handicaps. Handicaps make him depressed but he has given up his hope long time ago.

Harrison is different than others. He wants to make a change and stop peoples suffers. He is still young but age is not a limit. He was taken to prison when he was four so his time in prison must have been very traumatic for him. He is maybe little mad but actually he is more clever than others because he wants to stop equality law and he is not just thinking about it he is going to do it.

It’s a normal day when George and Hazel watch television program were balletdancers dance. Hazel starts to cry and actually she doesn’t know why. Maybe she remembers time when handicappers were not exists. Normal people maybe don’t know about other peoples suffer but they secretly hope that others would be themselves. That’s why Hazel suggest that George would lighten his birdback little. But George doesn’t want to do that because he would go jail if somebody finds out that. He doesn’t want to face same fate as his son.

Suddenly bulletin appears to screen. Their son has escapen from the jail. Harrison runs to ballet studio and announces that he is an emperor and everybody must obey him. He asks does somebody want to be his empress and one of the most beautiful dancer rises. He freedoms ballet dancers and musicians and then everybody start to dance happily. Suddenly Handicapper General appears and shoots the dancer and Harrison. Shooting is way to say that nobody should not try same. Even if they only shoot dancer and Harrison the greater crime was that they take all the hope from other people and their own freedom was taken too.

When George and Hazel saw Harrison’s dead they were not shocked they just were quiet and tried to pretend that nothing happened. Even sadder was to see people’s happiness when they were not handicapped. They don’t want to talk about it because they know that anything like this wouldn’t happen ever again.