Symbolism In Harrison Bergeron
The punishment for having rebellious thoughts was immediate, plus it is one of the many reminders of the government’s watch and control of a person’s thoughts and feelings. It seems like every time George thinks something critiquing the government that a sound will go off in his ear piece, happening a little too often for comfort.
Even though “Harrison Bergeron” seems like a bare essentials story with little description or scene setup, there are a few symbols present in the story that are significant. Two symbols that the significant to the text are the rings in George’s ear and the act of Harrison Bergeron and the ballerina floating in the air and kissing the ceiling. The ringing in George’s ear from his government-assigned handicap symbolizes the omnipresence and omnipotence of the society’s government. The rings, even though they …show more content…
are programmed to go off about “[e]very twenty seconds or so” (Vonnegut 227), the timing of the noises seem hardly random. It seems like every time George has an anti-government thought, the earpiece will go off. For example, when he recognized it was his son storming into the news station, “[t]he realization was blasted from his mind instantly by the sound of an automobile collision in his head” (Vonnegut 229). The timing of the noises show how much control the government holds over the citizens, how tightly the surveillance was. The types of noises can also serve as symbols. To use the previous example, the audio of the car collision foreshadows Harrison Bergeron’s death and symbolizes the clash between totalitarianism and individualism. During his takeover of the news station, Harrison Bergeron and the ballerina “leaped like deer on the moon” (Vonnegut 230), eventually reaching the ceiling and defying the laws of gravity. Both of them kissed the ceiling and then kissed each other before Handicapper General Diana Moon Glampers shot both of them down. The kiss on the ceiling represents Harrison and the ballerina reaching their potential, their ultimate barrier on their talent and intellect, the limit that the government prevents everyone from reaching. Harrison and the ballerina themselves can serve as symbols for beauty, grace and wisdom, so the death of them is also the death of those three qualities (Mowery). The death of them is the death of an opportunity to overthrow the government that regulates beauty, grace, and wisdom. The ballerina represents the beauty and grace, since she is “blindingly beautiful” (Vonnegut 229) and she obviously is “the strongest and most graceful of all the dancers, for her handicap bags were as big as those worn by two-hundred-pound men” (Vonnegut 228). Harrison does possess beauty—the H-G requires him to wear a red nose and keep his eyebrows shaved off (Vonnegut 229)—but he possesses the wisdom, rising up against the government and posing as a major threat to its power. The title character of “Harrison Bergeron” reminds me of Winston Smith from 1984 by George Orwell. Both characters live in extremely oppressive societies—Harrison Bergeron’s society controlled by people like Diana Moon Glampers while Winston Smith is constantly watched by Big Brother—and oppose their government’s rules and ideals. Both of them ultimately die, which Harrison Bergeron being shot down while Winston Smith was captured, tortured, and brainwashed by the government to love Big Brother, destroying his individualism. Both societies aim to squelch all individuality, with Harrison Bergeron’s world doing so by implementing handicaps, the “211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and. . .the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General” (Vonnegut 226). Winston Smith’s society did this by constant surveillance and government spies. Obviously, as I read “Harrison Bergeron” I remembered all the dystopian stories I read; however, 1984 to me shares more similarities than the other books and stories I thought about. Fahrenheit 451 has a controlling society, but it seems to crack down more on having books than being different than others; plus, Guy Montag did not die for going against the society, but he retreated into the woods with a group of likeminded individuals. I thought of Brave New World, another dystopian novel, when reading “Harrison Bergeron”, but the Huxley book has a social hierarchy (Alphas, Betas, etcetera) while Vonnegut’s story has strongly enforced equality. The protagonists—Bernard Marx and John the Savage—are strikingly different than Harrison Bergeron. Bernard Marx, though he expressed distaste for the society he lived in at the beginning of the book, ultimately wants to fit in with everyone and gain social popularity. John the Savage, unlike Harrison Bergeron, is an outsider to the World State, coming from the Reservation while Harrison Bergeron was a rebel to the society he grew up in; however, both of the characters did die, but Harrison Bergeron got killed for standing up for individualism while John the Savage committed suicide because he succumbed to everything he was against. I think “Harrison Bergeron” is more like 1984 because both worlds repress individuality and have strict control and watch over their citizens. Vonnegut’s story may seem more light-hearted by its use of satire, but I thought it was scarier than 1984 since Big Brother can control what you do by pressure and threat of punishment while in Bergeron’s world you are forced to wear impediments that can make you forget the horrors of the government. “Harrison Bergeron” is a darkly satirical story about the restrictiveness of having everyone truly be equal. Equal rights is one thing but equal people is another. Many schools implement the belief of “everyone is a winner”, not wanting to hurt the feelings of any children. While every child should feel proud for achieving something, a child should not be punished for being smarter than other kids. I remember how, during eighth grade, people in the most advanced math class were, in a way, punished. The set up was that one class got math class for the first and third marking periods while the other class went during the second and fourth marking periods. When a class was not taking math, they had ‘enrichment classes’. These were overlooked by the home economics teacher, the woodshop teacher, and the art teacher. Basically, enrichment classes could be casual ‘extensions’ of what we learn from those three respective classes or it could be study hall. While study hall was nice to complete homework and study for tests, it seemed like we were penalized in a sense for being smarter. There are incidents where instructors made their smart student feel stupid because the student was more intelligent than they were. In “Harrison Bergeron” Vonnegut satirizes the part of the Constitution that claims everybody is considered equal. This story shows how an individual should not have their talents stripped away from them and that a person should have equal opportunity but not coerced to be equal in comparison to others. The moment in the story where George Bergeron mentions the dark ages where “everybody compet[es] against everybody else” (Vonnegut 228) does bring up a pro to the government setup. The world and the economy thrive on competition, sometimes stressing those with less resources or talents into giving up or making them burn out. Those that are an academic failure may feel like they cannot accomplish anything, making them not try in the first place. High-ranking students are forced to compete with one another, sometimes resulting in suicides because they are not the best amongst their elite group or because they do not get accepted in an Ivy League college. Even with all these arguments, there is no justification for ‘dumbing down’ a person. To bar an individual from pursuing their interests means holding back society as a whole, eliminating progress and making society stagnant. If the person that creates the cure for cancer is handicapped in a fashion similar to the situation presented in “Harrison Bergeron”, then the cure may never be invented, or may be invented at a later date after so many people die from the disease. A person that does not have many talents should not feel shameful for their lack of skills; however, the person with great talents and great intellect should not be punished to make those less advantaged people feel better about themselves. I personally feel like the future presented in “Harrison Bergeron” is a possible reality. I understand how people hate the feeling of being in constant competition with one another, but individuality is what makes the world precious and what ultimately helps the human race progress.
Leveling the playing field in the same manner as in “Harrison Bergeron” is not the way to go, suppressing enormous waves of talent and inventions that would be seen and used if people had the freedom to use their individual skills and intellect. I believe, instead, that a society should encourage excellence, but also instill into children that it is okay not to be the best. This would be a delicate balance, but it would make people more accepting of their faults while at the same time inspiring them to improve themselves. It makes me wonder how we can create a society where people are fairly competitive but do not feel inferior or upset when someone ‘beats them at their game’. I think the mentality of “everyone is a winner” is not the optimal route. Speaking from personal experience, this just makes children doubt all the praise they receive (no one tells them differently), more sensitive to critique (they are not used to it), and feel stressed and in constant competition because they have to stand out from the crowd (if everyone is being rewarded,
then that just makes them feel like they are not achieving anything). Children need to be taught that they will not be good in every aspect of life and that the only person they need to be better than is the person that they were yesterday. Aside from making me feel and think, “Harrison Bergeron” made me react on an aesthetic level. The story takes place in 2081, which is only 66 years away; at that time, I will be 86 years old. The fact that this story sounds like it could become a reality, this means it could happen in my lifetime. Technology is constantly advancing, with more and more electronics weaving into our daily lives. Media desensitizes people to violence and lets them passively absorb information into their minds, not actively requiring the audience’s participation; like Joseph Alvarez says, “Vonnegut […] portrays television as a kind of desensitizing, numbing, and clearly thought-stifling, rather than thought-provoking, medium.” The aesthetic I see in this story is disturbing rather than pleasant, with all the handicaps—including the “sashweights and bags of birdshot” (Vonnegut 227) and the three-hundred pounds of scrap metal hung all over Harrison Bergeron (Vonnegut 228)—gives me a chilling image of the future that might be pleasing if it was not void of emotion and expression; it seems clean and organized, but at a high price. It makes me wonder if Harrison Bergeron’s society would be pleased at having the kind of technology present in Brave New World, where babies are born in test tubes and could be created and altered in any way possible; with this technology, the government in “Harrison Bergeron” could biologically make individuals the same, trying to control an individual’s skills and physical power at a very early age.
Even though “Harrison Bergeron” seems like a bare essentials story with little description or scene setup, there are a few symbols present in the story that are significant. Two symbols that the significant to the text are the rings in George’s ear and the act of Harrison Bergeron and the ballerina floating in the air and kissing the ceiling. The ringing in George’s ear from his government-assigned handicap symbolizes the omnipresence and omnipotence of the society’s government. The rings, even though they …show more content…
are programmed to go off about “[e]very twenty seconds or so” (Vonnegut 227), the timing of the noises seem hardly random. It seems like every time George has an anti-government thought, the earpiece will go off. For example, when he recognized it was his son storming into the news station, “[t]he realization was blasted from his mind instantly by the sound of an automobile collision in his head” (Vonnegut 229). The timing of the noises show how much control the government holds over the citizens, how tightly the surveillance was. The types of noises can also serve as symbols. To use the previous example, the audio of the car collision foreshadows Harrison Bergeron’s death and symbolizes the clash between totalitarianism and individualism. During his takeover of the news station, Harrison Bergeron and the ballerina “leaped like deer on the moon” (Vonnegut 230), eventually reaching the ceiling and defying the laws of gravity. Both of them kissed the ceiling and then kissed each other before Handicapper General Diana Moon Glampers shot both of them down. The kiss on the ceiling represents Harrison and the ballerina reaching their potential, their ultimate barrier on their talent and intellect, the limit that the government prevents everyone from reaching. Harrison and the ballerina themselves can serve as symbols for beauty, grace and wisdom, so the death of them is also the death of those three qualities (Mowery). The death of them is the death of an opportunity to overthrow the government that regulates beauty, grace, and wisdom. The ballerina represents the beauty and grace, since she is “blindingly beautiful” (Vonnegut 229) and she obviously is “the strongest and most graceful of all the dancers, for her handicap bags were as big as those worn by two-hundred-pound men” (Vonnegut 228). Harrison does possess beauty—the H-G requires him to wear a red nose and keep his eyebrows shaved off (Vonnegut 229)—but he possesses the wisdom, rising up against the government and posing as a major threat to its power. The title character of “Harrison Bergeron” reminds me of Winston Smith from 1984 by George Orwell. Both characters live in extremely oppressive societies—Harrison Bergeron’s society controlled by people like Diana Moon Glampers while Winston Smith is constantly watched by Big Brother—and oppose their government’s rules and ideals. Both of them ultimately die, which Harrison Bergeron being shot down while Winston Smith was captured, tortured, and brainwashed by the government to love Big Brother, destroying his individualism. Both societies aim to squelch all individuality, with Harrison Bergeron’s world doing so by implementing handicaps, the “211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and. . .the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General” (Vonnegut 226). Winston Smith’s society did this by constant surveillance and government spies. Obviously, as I read “Harrison Bergeron” I remembered all the dystopian stories I read; however, 1984 to me shares more similarities than the other books and stories I thought about. Fahrenheit 451 has a controlling society, but it seems to crack down more on having books than being different than others; plus, Guy Montag did not die for going against the society, but he retreated into the woods with a group of likeminded individuals. I thought of Brave New World, another dystopian novel, when reading “Harrison Bergeron”, but the Huxley book has a social hierarchy (Alphas, Betas, etcetera) while Vonnegut’s story has strongly enforced equality. The protagonists—Bernard Marx and John the Savage—are strikingly different than Harrison Bergeron. Bernard Marx, though he expressed distaste for the society he lived in at the beginning of the book, ultimately wants to fit in with everyone and gain social popularity. John the Savage, unlike Harrison Bergeron, is an outsider to the World State, coming from the Reservation while Harrison Bergeron was a rebel to the society he grew up in; however, both of the characters did die, but Harrison Bergeron got killed for standing up for individualism while John the Savage committed suicide because he succumbed to everything he was against. I think “Harrison Bergeron” is more like 1984 because both worlds repress individuality and have strict control and watch over their citizens. Vonnegut’s story may seem more light-hearted by its use of satire, but I thought it was scarier than 1984 since Big Brother can control what you do by pressure and threat of punishment while in Bergeron’s world you are forced to wear impediments that can make you forget the horrors of the government. “Harrison Bergeron” is a darkly satirical story about the restrictiveness of having everyone truly be equal. Equal rights is one thing but equal people is another. Many schools implement the belief of “everyone is a winner”, not wanting to hurt the feelings of any children. While every child should feel proud for achieving something, a child should not be punished for being smarter than other kids. I remember how, during eighth grade, people in the most advanced math class were, in a way, punished. The set up was that one class got math class for the first and third marking periods while the other class went during the second and fourth marking periods. When a class was not taking math, they had ‘enrichment classes’. These were overlooked by the home economics teacher, the woodshop teacher, and the art teacher. Basically, enrichment classes could be casual ‘extensions’ of what we learn from those three respective classes or it could be study hall. While study hall was nice to complete homework and study for tests, it seemed like we were penalized in a sense for being smarter. There are incidents where instructors made their smart student feel stupid because the student was more intelligent than they were. In “Harrison Bergeron” Vonnegut satirizes the part of the Constitution that claims everybody is considered equal. This story shows how an individual should not have their talents stripped away from them and that a person should have equal opportunity but not coerced to be equal in comparison to others. The moment in the story where George Bergeron mentions the dark ages where “everybody compet[es] against everybody else” (Vonnegut 228) does bring up a pro to the government setup. The world and the economy thrive on competition, sometimes stressing those with less resources or talents into giving up or making them burn out. Those that are an academic failure may feel like they cannot accomplish anything, making them not try in the first place. High-ranking students are forced to compete with one another, sometimes resulting in suicides because they are not the best amongst their elite group or because they do not get accepted in an Ivy League college. Even with all these arguments, there is no justification for ‘dumbing down’ a person. To bar an individual from pursuing their interests means holding back society as a whole, eliminating progress and making society stagnant. If the person that creates the cure for cancer is handicapped in a fashion similar to the situation presented in “Harrison Bergeron”, then the cure may never be invented, or may be invented at a later date after so many people die from the disease. A person that does not have many talents should not feel shameful for their lack of skills; however, the person with great talents and great intellect should not be punished to make those less advantaged people feel better about themselves. I personally feel like the future presented in “Harrison Bergeron” is a possible reality. I understand how people hate the feeling of being in constant competition with one another, but individuality is what makes the world precious and what ultimately helps the human race progress.
Leveling the playing field in the same manner as in “Harrison Bergeron” is not the way to go, suppressing enormous waves of talent and inventions that would be seen and used if people had the freedom to use their individual skills and intellect. I believe, instead, that a society should encourage excellence, but also instill into children that it is okay not to be the best. This would be a delicate balance, but it would make people more accepting of their faults while at the same time inspiring them to improve themselves. It makes me wonder how we can create a society where people are fairly competitive but do not feel inferior or upset when someone ‘beats them at their game’. I think the mentality of “everyone is a winner” is not the optimal route. Speaking from personal experience, this just makes children doubt all the praise they receive (no one tells them differently), more sensitive to critique (they are not used to it), and feel stressed and in constant competition because they have to stand out from the crowd (if everyone is being rewarded,
then that just makes them feel like they are not achieving anything). Children need to be taught that they will not be good in every aspect of life and that the only person they need to be better than is the person that they were yesterday. Aside from making me feel and think, “Harrison Bergeron” made me react on an aesthetic level. The story takes place in 2081, which is only 66 years away; at that time, I will be 86 years old. The fact that this story sounds like it could become a reality, this means it could happen in my lifetime. Technology is constantly advancing, with more and more electronics weaving into our daily lives. Media desensitizes people to violence and lets them passively absorb information into their minds, not actively requiring the audience’s participation; like Joseph Alvarez says, “Vonnegut […] portrays television as a kind of desensitizing, numbing, and clearly thought-stifling, rather than thought-provoking, medium.” The aesthetic I see in this story is disturbing rather than pleasant, with all the handicaps—including the “sashweights and bags of birdshot” (Vonnegut 227) and the three-hundred pounds of scrap metal hung all over Harrison Bergeron (Vonnegut 228)—gives me a chilling image of the future that might be pleasing if it was not void of emotion and expression; it seems clean and organized, but at a high price. It makes me wonder if Harrison Bergeron’s society would be pleased at having the kind of technology present in Brave New World, where babies are born in test tubes and could be created and altered in any way possible; with this technology, the government in “Harrison Bergeron” could biologically make individuals the same, trying to control an individual’s skills and physical power at a very early age.