Harrison Bergeron Imagine a world where an oppressive government captures what many call diversity. Where ugly is known as beauty and intelligence is insignificant. "They weren't only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else." (Vonnegut) This is the future that Harrison experiences, in the short story "Harrison Bergeron," by Kurt Vonnegut. It is the year 2081 and the government handicaps every citizen with make up or weights to create equality. Where there are over than 200 amendments and the government has full control of all citizens, this is indeed against what America had been...show more content... Along with captivating the freedom of the people they also cause people pain so they cannot think of their own free will. "George came back in with the beer, paused while a handicap signal shook him up. And then he sat down again. '"You been crying"' he said to Hazel. '"Yup,"' she said. '"What about?"' he said. '"I forget,"' she said. "Something real sad on television"' (Reed) Hazel is what is said to be a normal person, but is this really a level of normal intelligence? Civil rights were made so people were able to think and recreate what they think is wrong. To take away that reasoning and make their intelligence lower is similar to having a country full of wild animals that cannot think for themselves and allow others to lead them to the answer. It is like a puppet and a puppeteer where the people are the puppets and the governments is the puppeteer. Freedom of speech is on the same level of importance as freedom of thought. Speech is taking one's thoughts and transmitting them into words. Both are exiled in the world of Harrison Bergeron and are said to be unwanted. The opportunity to speak one's free will is not a luxury it is a necessity for all humans. For a group of people to take this away from others and compress them is against
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Harrison Bergeron, projected on a stage representing the conformity of a society with a system of Government based on equality for the weak, which are monitored and controlled by a dictatorial Government. This story is a literary sample that gives us a system of Government, where the law was created with the intention of limiting the individuals and turning them into beings with actuation equality, controlling them through the transmitters or obstacles in their body for that people could not exercise freely their natural abilities and any kind of right view. According to Jose Alvarez," if all was equal in every purpose, various obstacles would not be required "A Government limited for the weak, in a society where the...show more content...
(Law and Society, 2007, p.51) Vonnegut gives us a sample of the lack of freedom, calling to American society to preserve freedom and respect for civil rights, allowing that all the benefits of a system of Government are not only of those who have the power.
Harrison Bergeron 3 As a point of comparison of this scenario and the America today, we could cite the implementation of laws which are only thinking about in the interests of a particular group of society, as it was the recent Ordinance of not smoking in public areas, that helps a group of non–smokers, but restricting law through legal action of another group that are smokers, removing the right to do freely what they want. This history reflects a society , where involves the legal system to exert punishments against anyone that disclosing capacity that could affect on the Government, a judicial system that is within the parameters of equality projected in this story, which deprives the citizen the right to defend itself against accusations of a controller and authoritarian Government. Vonnegut let view to us, that without civil rights, the culture values are mediocre to the point that the people accept oppressive measures in the name of the law. The lives of the American society is concentrated on working to live and spend money, under a capitalist system that are
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