I read Kurt Vonnegut’s short story named Harrison Bergeron. It was confusing story about society’s future. The story sets in 2081. It tells about mankind, where everybody is finally equal and everything is in order. No one is smarter, stronger, better-looking or faster than anyone else. Equality is the thing number one. If you are more beautiful than anybody else, you have to use mask in front of your face. If you are little bit smarter than anybody else, you have to use headphones which you hear some irritating sounds that you can’t to focus anything. You even have to use heavy weights to slow down, if you are too strong or too fast. The government calls these instruments ”handicaps”.
In the story there is a couple named George and Hazel who have a boy Harrison. The boy is too much everything. He is very good looking, smart and strong and quick too. Harrison’s mother Hazel Bergeron cannot think deeply about anything, but boy’s father George is little bit smarter so he has to use headphones. There is at least one person, who has more authority than other people. Her name is Diana Moon Glamber. She is ”Hadicapper General”.
Harrison is the fourteen-year-old. The Handicapper General forces him to wear the most extreme handicaps. Harrison has to carry three hundred pounds of additional weight to impede his strength and he must wear a red rubber nose and black caps for his teeth to make him less handsome. That’s not enough. That’s why he has jailed by the Handicapper General’s office. Harrison escapes from jail and go straight to the TV studio. There is going on ballerinas dance show. When he arrives to studio he undress all his handicaps and start to talk about society’s madness. He call himself an emperor and choose a ballerina to empress for him. They dance in television like lovebirds and be happy. Then Harrison killed by Diana Moon Glampers when she shoots a ten gauge shotgun into him.
Hazel and George are watching ballerinas dance on TV. George, who has left the room to get a beer, returns and asks Hazel why she has been crying. She says that something sad happened on TV. She has just seen that her son killed on TV, but she cannot remember it after few seconds after happening. George urges her not to remember sad things. A noise sounds in George’s head, and Hazel says it sounded like a doozy. He says she can say that again, and she repeats that it sounded like a doozy.
Vonneguts sentences are short and easily understood. His story includes social and political critique. The story includes an anti-communism message. Vonnegut tells his story with humor. Even the most horrifying scenes are underlined by jokes or absurdity.