Animal Farm and Harrison Bergeron Essay

The Completely Equal Societies; Proving They do not Work Many societies strive to make every person as equal as possible to the next, believing that this makes everything fair for everyone. In all truth though, society cannot function in this way; no matter what, there will always be someone or some group that has more power than everyone else. Equality should only concern the important issues, such as equal rights for all races and each gender. Both the novel Animal Farm by George Orwell and the short story “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. are the quintessence of inequality and prove this point; all equal societies do not work. There are many similarities the book Animal Farm shares with the short story “Harrison Bergeron”, one being that no one is truly equal in either society, the second being that there is a group with supreme power that dictates what every person does and manipulates them, lastly the characters in each society look the other way when something terrible happens, no one wants to challenge the government for fear of serious punishment. In both of the dysfunctional societies, the characters believe they are equal but in reality they are not equal with others at all. Once Jones is overthrown from the farm In Animal Farm the pigs assume the position of leaders and “So it was agreed without further agreement that the milk and the windfall apples (and also the main crop of apples when they ripened should be reserved for the pigs alone” (Orwell 52-53). Never starting of as equal, pigs have special privileges that others do not have; they start off making a majority of the decisions without the rest of the animals agreeing to it. Being the only ones who eat the apples and drink the milk the pigs also come up with the Seven Commandments and put them into place without having the other animals help decide what they should be. Intelligent or strong people have a handicap in “Harrison Bergeron” and George Bergeron happens to have both. These

Cited: Orwell, George. Animal Farm. New York City: Penguin Group, 1956. Print. Vonnegut, Kurt, Jr. “Harrison Bergeron”. Ebookbrowse, 10 Sept. 2010