“Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Author's Note: This essay was originally published on Medium.

In “Harrison Bergeron”, the author Kurt Vonnegut Jr. combined science-fiction and satire to tell the story of a future where people are equal at the expense of having to wear handicaps that are enforced by the government. Told from the perspective of the Bergeron family, the reader learns about the methods that the government, or the H-G men, use to maintain equality among the people and what they have to give up as individuals in the process.

The government present in the future of “Harrison Bergeron” enforces a variety of handicaps to ensure that the people are not different from each other and remain equal. For example, the government enforces a law that requires people with above-average intelligence like George to wear a mental handicap.

This handicap is said to be a radio that receives government transmissions and aims to prevent people from “taking unfair advantage of their brains” (Vonnegut Jr. 232). This handicap is implied to be painful and is experienced by George several times throughout the story to prevent him from remembering his own son, Harrison Bergeron.

Harrison’s mother Hazel doesn’t wear a handicap but can’t remember him either because she “[has] a perfectly average intelligence, which meant [that] she couldn’t think about anything except in short bursts” (Vonnegut Jr. 232).

By making people wear mental handicaps, the government has the ability to control people’s thoughts and prevents them from ever challenging their authority. They can tamper with their memories and ensure that the people won’t remember anything that would come off as an inconvenience to them.

This in turn also prevents the people from being capable of self-thought and forces them to obey the laws of the government, no matter how unjust they might be. With the mental handicaps, Kurt Vonnegut Jr. might have been commenting on the dangers of letting the government rule over the people in a totalitarian manner, along with people’s increasing dependence on technology.

Another method that the government uses to make everybody equal is handicaps that conceal their appearance, such as masks. By making people wear masks, the government ensures that “nobody [is] better looking than anybody else” (Vonnegut Jr. 232).

The main example of a character who is subjected to wearing these handicaps would be the titular character, Harrison Bergeron. Harrison wears so many handicaps that his appearance is described as being “Halloween and hardware” (Vonnegut Jr.).

Rather than wear a mask, the H-G men have Harrison wear a “red rubber ball for a nose, keep his eyebrows shaved off, and cover his even white teeth with black caps at snaggle-tooth random” (Vonnegut Jr. 234). He also has to wear large earphones and glasses with thick lenses with the intention “to make him not only half blind but to give him whanging headaches” (Vonnegut Jr. 234).

Kurt Vonnegut’s portrayal of the government making people wear masks or other handicaps to conceal their appearance could be interpreted as a commentary on the dangers of conformity. By forcing everybody to wear handicaps that cover their appearance, people are stripped away of a part of their identity that makes them unique as individuals. While the government in “Harrison Bergeron” may have found a way to make everyone equal, it came at the expense of sacrificing a part of what makes every human being unique, which would be their identity.

One final method that the H-G men use is physical handicaps to ensure that “nobody [is] stronger or quicker than anybody else” (Vonnegut Jr. 232). For example, a ballerina that George and Hazel were watching on television had to wear a mask to hide her beauty and is also speculated to be the strongest of the ballerinas because “her handicap bags were as big as those worn by two-hundred-pound men” (Vonnegut Jr. 233). It is also shown that the ballerina can’t speak in her natural voice and has to make her voice sound “absolutely uncompetitive” (Vonnegut Jr. 234).

Harrison Bergeron also had to wear handicaps that limited his physical strength. His physical strength was so high that his handicaps often had to be replaced. Eventually, Harrison had so many handicaps that he looked “like a walking junkyard” (Vonnegut Jr. 234).

The fact that the H-G men enforce handicaps that limit the physical abilities of the people wearing them is further evidence that supports the idea that the government is oppressing its people while claiming that they are doing it for the sake of equality so that they can continue their rule without opposition from the people.

To ensure that the people are wearing handicaps, the H-G men are not above using punishment on those who disregard the law. When Hazel encourages George to reduce the weight of his handicap to get some rest, George is quick to remind her that if he gets caught by the H-G men, he could get punished with “two years in prison and two thousand dollars fine for every ball” (Vonnegut Jr. 233) that he takes out.

George is also quick to point out, before he forgets, that if he started disregarding the laws, then everybody else will, causing society to fall apart. The H-G men use their handicaps to tamper with people’s memories and are capable of making people forget about those who were close to them, as we see with George and Hazel who can’t remember their own son Harrison Bergeron.

In Harrison’s case, he had been taken away because he had been suspected of wanting to overthrow the government, which later turns out to be true. When Harrison escapes from jail, not only does he remove all of his handicaps on live television, but he proclaims his intention to overthrow the government as the new Emperor.

Harrison’s attempted takeover comes to an abrupt end, along with a ballerina that he had chosen as his Empress when they are shot down by Diana Moon Glampers, the Handicapper General. While Harrison Bergeron’s attempt to overthrow the government was unsuccessful, it does highlight how oppressive the H-G men are and the measures they are willing to take in order to ensure that the government remains in power without people’s opposition.

These handicaps that are imposed on the people highlight some of the freedom that is lost to make everybody equal.

People who are required to wear masks do so to avoid being better looking than anyone else, but at the cost of losing their sense of individuality.

People that are required to wear mental handicaps do so to avoid being “smarter than anybody else” (Vonnegut Jr. 232), but at the cost of being unable to think for themselves, thus making them susceptible to being controlled by the H-G men.

People are required to wear hardware that limits their physical abilities to stop everyone from “competing against everybody else” (Vonnegut Jr. 233) but at the cost of restricting their unique, physical potential.

Since the author uses satire to tell the story, “Harrison Bergeron” comes off as entertaining and any of the darker moments that happen in the story, such as Harrison and the ballerina getting shot to death, don’t get in the way of letting the reader enjoy the story (unless they stop to really think about it). Nevertheless, looking past the sci-fi setting and satire of “Harrison Bergeron” reveals what could be seen as a commentary by the author on the increasing presence of the government and technology in the lives of everyday people, a topic that is still relevant even today.

Works Cited

1. Vonnegut Jr., Kurt. “Harrison Bergeron.” Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. Ed. X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. 12th ed. New York: Pearson, 2013. 232- 236. Print.