Examples Of What Does It Mean To Be Equal In Harrison Bergeron

What does it mean to be equal? What level is considered to be the level equality that humans should be ok with and who decides this? Well in the short story “Harrison Bergeron” there is plenty examples of what levels of knowledge and talent are considered to be equal and the level of equality is determined by the Handicapper General.

First lets undestand the deffination of the word equal. According to the Webster dictionary the meaning of equal is free from extremes as in a) tranquil in mind or mood b) not showing variation in appearance, structure, or proportion. So being equal should show charators free from extreme greatness or extreme handicaps both physical and mental. The next question would be how to make the charators equal because

the handicapper general sentances the poor person to a little mental handcapper radio that brodcasts loud noise and aother sounds to disrupt thoughts of humans with an above normal intelgiants levels. These little radios are supposed to basically dumb down the intelgiant people so everyone can be on the same level of intellagents which means the whole comunity is operation in their daily lives on the level of stupidity. Also, these humans are not even alowed to have complete thoughts with these little radios brodcasting these sounds every twenty seconds. What a way to live not because other humans are at a lower mental

They are placed in jail! This is what happend to Hazel and George’s son Harrison. Harrison is only fourteen years old and is a genuse and a great athleet and no matter what the handicapper general did still had not found enough handicaps that would limit his greatness. Instead of the small radio most wore to limit thier thinking ablities he has to wear huge headsets so he could not think clearly. He also had to wear glasses that basicaly made him blind. Still with all these handicaps he was not equal to the other people and the hanicappers could not come up with things to handicap him fast enough, thus why he was placed in jail only being fourteen years