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Equality In Kurt Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron

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The story “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut takes place in the United States of America in the year 2081. At this time, everyone is professed to be equal in every way: intelligence, strength, beauty, and talent. Everyone is made to be the same by using handicaps such as mental radios, weights, and masks to inhibit natural characteristics. Vonnegut conveys the message that equality is not the same as conformity, and that oppression can be masked under the pretenses of something good. First, the government is using the premise of “equality” to essentially dumb down the entire population of America. In order to make everyone equal, the government handicaps and disables the physical capabilities, intelligence, and talents of people above what is considered to be normal. Fundamentally, this way of equalizing the citizens of America brings the entire society to its weakest links and will destroy any hope of progression and innovation in the future. If nobody can be better at things than other people, than everyone must be equal to the worst person …show more content…

Although with the handicaps everyone is equal, it is still possible to discern who is naturally better than others at certain things. For example, George has a mental handicap while Hazel doesn’t. While this makes them equal in the end, it is still possible to tell that George is originally smarter than Hazel is. Another aspect of this unequal equality is that it puts the naturally talented people at a disadvantage. While Hazel is intellectually behind George, she is still free of any handicaps because she is average. However, people like George and Harrison are at a disadvantage because they are handicapped with radios and weights that are painful and make life more difficult for them than regular life is for Hazel. In a way, this twisted sense of equality is its own version of

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