Vonnegut’s portrayal of a utopian society in the short story, “Harrison Bergeron” is exceeds anyone’s expectations of how a utopian society would be. In this universe, everyone is beyond equal. Such as everyone must be as average as their peers, no matter what. With the exception of race, of course. Everyone must look average,sound average, have average intelligence and this is achieved through the use of handicaps.
depicts a great example of a world that has similarities and differences when compared to modern day society. The government is a strong and bold force and “2081”. There are little to no individual rights that the citizens possess. They are forced to, “...wear weights to make them weaker, the intelligent wore earpieces that kept them from taking unfair advantage of their brains” (Tupper 1). This is all run by the Handicapper General, who has no restrictions on what she can and can’t do.
The book “Utopia” by Thomas More was originally written in Latin in late 1516(Pg.8 “Utopia”) and is about a perfect society on an island of “Utopia” in the Atlantic Ocean. The utopia has a communist style government (Pg. 10 “Utopia”) where each citizen is granted the right to an education no matter man or woman, free health care, and materialistic items such as gold and silver have no more worth than iron even though the rarity. Religious freedom is introduced which is quite remarkable for the time period. War is only last case scenario for the island of “Utopia” and it is necessary to avoid it with peace completely if all possible.
One example of his use of exaggeration is his description of the character Harrison Bergeron who is described as “…a genius and an athlete, [who] is under-handicapped, and [someone who] should be regarded as extremely dangerous.” (3). There will always be resistance against anything forced upon it’s citizens in any world. Harrison Bergeron is an example of this. With resistance to rules, there will always be someone to impose those rules such as “…the Handicapper General, a women named Diana Glampers.”
“Harrison Bergeron” Kurt Vonnegut’s Dystopian story “Harrison Bergeron” takes place in the year 2081 in the United States. Everyone is forced to wear handicaps to slow down their physical and mental capabilities to be “equal” to everyone else. Harrison Bergeron is an exceptionally strong man that emerges in the middle of the story. He must wear multiple handicaps that deny him his ability to use his strength against the government. One theme that emerges from the story is that true equality is impossible to achieve, no matter how much pain a superior bring to others.
Government involvement in individual rights is a heavily argued topic in current society. While some people insist more regulations are necessary to keep society stable, others argue individual rights should not be decided by the government even though the purpose is to ensure the stability of a society. Individuals do not consider the information that is manipulated and the ability of the media to shape the audience’s viewpoint. Everything anyone watches on television is produced to convince people of something without them being aware. Consider the social class system, it is an arbitrary system that people in higher classes ensure the stability of to feel more important and in control.
In every society there is a large number of rules and laws that people operate under. For example, in Kurt Vonnegut’s short story “Harrison Bergeron”, the idea of equality is understood in a very literal manner. The way the government handles making everyone equal shows that they do not have a valid understanding of equality. They feel as if nobody should be better than the next person and everyone should literally be the exact same. They issue out handicaps to anyone with any understanding attributes to make everyone equal.
People have dreamt of the perfect place, a place which is free of war, conflict, unhappiness and hunger. An ideal place with political perfection and flawless society. Such a world is called – utopia. As it is stated in Cambridge University press’s provided “A Thomas More Source book” the word “utopia” was first coined in 1516 by Sir Thomas More. He created the word from the Greek ou-topos which means “no place” or “nowhere”.
During Trump’s political fame, many journalist and psychologist analyze the content of his character. From the Washington Post, Eugene Robinson discusses whether Trump is just plain crazy, but goes into explaining his reasons why with examples. There has been countless times where Trump “lies the way others breathe, is alarmingly thin skinned, and is the worse kind of bully” (Kivisto 13). He can easy be seen as some of the ugliest parts of society; however, it would be “irresponsible to ignore Trump’s grasps on reality as it is often questionable” (Kivisto 13). The neoconservative Kagan called him “a man with a disordered personality with unnamed psychological pathologies that are self destructive” (Kivisto 14).
Unless you say something unbelievable stupid, preferably to a group of extreme nerds (for instance, that Star Wars: The Phantom Menace is the best SW movie), you will get away with saying a lot of things when you are conveying them through a keyboard. People just ignore it. This means that, if you scroll upward on some of my friends’ group chats, you will find the weirdest conversations and statements, for example ten minutes’ worth of communication made through GIFs. This would not happen in RL (the Internet term for Real Life). If I were to start saying things with obvious grammatic faults, in the shortest manner possible, while someone else were talking about a completely different subject, I would get weird looks.