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Equality In The Giver And Harrison Bergeron

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Could you imagine if you lived in a community where everyone was equal? Sounds great doesn’t it? Equality isn’t as good as it sounds. In “The Giver” by Lois Lowry everyone in the community was completely the same. They couldn 't see colors and they didn’t have feelings. In “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut the community was forced to be the same. The government put them down to the same level of sight,speech,and intelligence. Samuel Johnson once said “It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.” Samuel Johnson’s quote about equality is most related to The Giver and Harrison Bergeron because the quote illustrates a central idea that people don’t …show more content…

In the community, they had a Handicapper General which was the person who was in charge of the handicaps. Handicaps are basically restrictions. If you were strong you would wear weights, if you were pretty you would wear a mask, and if you were smart they would put a buzzer in your ear to scatter away all of your thoughts. Everyone was brought down to the same level and had no freedom to be themselves all because the Handicapper General wanted to make a utopia but in reality, she was making a dystopia. "Two years in prison and two thousand dollars fine for every ball I took out," said George. (Vonnegut 2). This could cause unhappiness because the people in the community can’t relax or be themselves because they get fined for it. George was also smart so he had a buzzer in his ear that rings different really loud sounds every about 20 seconds. Harrison Bergeron is George’s son and he broke the rules and took off his handicaps then got taken away, from then on he was very dangerous because he was strong and without his handicaps, he was the strongest of all. After he took off his handicaps he was put in prison, but then broke out. The Handicapper General ended up shooting and killing him in the end, but she shot him on live t.v. So equality can cause unhappiness because you can’t be yourself and you are just like everyone else, and you can’t be

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