Equality and the Dyeing Race |
A Window of Kurt Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron” |
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Professor Rita RiceEnglish 250Summer 2012 |
6/28/2012 |
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Some dream of being the stand out individual while others dream of ways to blend themselves into the everyday routine of life. But that’s what makes America’s proverbial clock keep ticking. The personal drive of the individual is what makes us develop in all ways as a society. America has always prided itself in being that stand out kid on the block; the one who strives for the better in mankind and all that it entails. In Kurt Vonnegut’s, Harrison Bergeron, equality is produced through an imposed power by amending constitutional documentation reducing a nation into an “equal state.” However, forming equalization in such a manner would only lead to a drain in societal and economic growth through the lack of personal motivation.
Vonnegut describes an America of absolute equality and explains that everyone is equal due to a total censorship from a malevolent dictator that rears her head as the Handicapper General. He [Vonnegut] describes individual handy capping in such a manner that it would rival any tyrant or oppressor that we have learned about from the earliest times human existance. All individual desire, forms of self-motivation, and individual thought were controlled strictly by a form of government without any discretion. All that apposed or even questioned the Handicapper General were met with strict and severe punishment. Now, I ask you, what good could this bring into any situation, being science advancement, medicine, or even education? Without motivation or the very essence of competition - would we not be led into extinction without the need to strive for more in our professional, individual, and family lives?
Furthermore, the characters George and Hazel are so blinded by the thought of equality, which they had been led to believe as the truth, beauty, and goodness of society by an...