Why Was Harrison Bergeron Written

Still image of handicapped ballet dancers from 2081, an ... more

Harrison Bergeron's Equitable Tyranny

It's time to "level the playing field then that anybody tin play." We hear this phrase over and over from politicians, social justice advocates, and educators, all clamoring for programs that redress "inequalities" by, ironically, treating people unequally. As education specialist Adam Bauserman explains, "fairness" requires an "equitable lens." Sometimes educators agree students to equal standards, and sometimes they requite certain students advantages to help them compete.

Bauserman is not lone in these ideals, though his article is peculiarly compelling due to its visual cues: an image of children laughing equally they race together across a field. Merely we run into a very different picture in Kurt Vonnegut'southward "Harrison Bergeron" (1961), a dystopian story in which government regulations and agents accept finally forced individuals into "equality." No one is grinning, much less laughing.

In fact, the protagonist, fourteen-year-erstwhile Harrison, is grossly handicapped to return him "equal" to his young man citizens: earphones distract him with auditory assaults, black caps disguise his perfect teeth, and massive weights slow him down. "In the race of life," the narrator explains, "Harrison carried 3 hundred pounds."

Vonnegut's tale remains a classic because, as others take observed, it illustrates the consequences of totalitarian attempts to impose "equality": they limit individual rights, impose unfair rules, and undermine productivity, which leads to greater poverty and even death. Defy the rules, like Harrison, and risk execution by the Handicapper General.

But the urgent question is not whether nosotros want government officials with double-barreled shotguns hunting downwardly teenagers. It's why people in Vonnegut's tale ceded non just their own rights but those of everyone else, including their children. Where did George and Hazel Bergeron go wrong? And how tin can we avert the same mistakes?

The Politics of Envy

The first step is understanding the current use of "equity" and how it differs from "equality." The latter term refers to treating individuals every bit, even if applying the aforementioned rules to everyone leads to unequal outcomes. "Disinterestedness," as used in a contempo executive order, refers to correcting this imbalance, striving toward equal outcomes by treating people differently. For the political and educational elite, unequal handling of individuals is therefore the only way to be "off-white."

Vonnegut's tale explores the same government imperative toward "fairness," though in this dystopia, it physically tries to brand individuals "equal" in order to achieve disinterestedness. He begins,

The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal before God and the law, they were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than everyone else; nobody was better looking than anybody else; nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.

Of course, the existence of a Handicapper General proves that such equality cannot be legislated. Only the semblance of it can exist achieved by hamstringing people.

So the goal is non really equal treatment but equal outcomes. In this dystopia, such outcomes protect feelings. Ballerinas, for case, perform on a television set program while masked and weighed downwardly with numberless of birdshot, "so that no one, seeing a costless and svelte gesture or a pretty face, would feel like something the cat dragged in."

George Bergeron is required to wear a radio in his ear that emits distracting noises so that he cannot take "unfair advantage" of his brain or remember of his "abnormal son," who has been taken by the Handicapper General's men. His average wife, Hazel, "couldn't think virtually anything except in curt bursts," and then she has no handicap.

Even so this lack just reminds her of George'due south superior intelligence. Hazel, "a little envious," says she thinks hearing the sounds in his ear radio would be "existent interesting." No laws or handicaps can eliminate green-eyed, which Vonnegut assembly with sadistic impulses.

In fact, Hazel fantasizes nearly existence the Handicapper Full general then that she could select torturous sounds, such as chimes on Sunday. When George says that he could actually think if he merely heard chimes, she replies, "Well—maybe make 'em real loud." Hazel, the narrator notes, resembles the real Handicapper General, Diana Moon Glampers.

The Sanction of the Victim

George agrees that Hazel would fulfill that role "good as anybody." Such equality is the norm, though George'due south credence seems slightly masochistic. While he is non being literally shot for his strength, he wears a reminder of violence in his handicap: "twoscore-vii pounds of birdshot in a sail bag, which was padlocked around George's neck."

Hazel encourages him to "rest the pocketbook for a niggling while," generously adding, "I don't intendance if you lot're non equal to me for a while." But George resists: "I don't notice information technology any more. Information technology's but a part of me." At some betoken, Vonnegut suggests, individuals come to have the penalization for their gifts and talents. And in ceasing to use those gifts, they lose what makes them unique.

But why do individuals agree to a system that punishes them for their strengths? In improver to the violence, there are financial penalties. If George attempted to lighten his load by removing the birdshot, the cost would be $2000 per ball. But the existent issue is more philosophical:

"If I tried to get abroad with it . . . and then other people'd become away with it—and pretty soon we'd be right back to the dark ages again, with everybody competing against everyone else. Yous wouldn't like that, would you lot?"

"I'd hate information technology," said Hazel.

"There you lot are," said George. "The minute people start adulterous on laws, what do yous think happens to society?"

George has internalized this principle of "equality" every bit surely every bit he has accepted the weight of the birdshot. He believes that to compete against others is an immoral regression to the "dark ages."

In reality, Vonnegut shows that forced "equality" leads to the very cultural and economic decline George fears. In "Harrison Bergeron," the lack of competition has not only leveled the playing field merely flattened the entire society.

Now all are "equal," so anyone tin can pursue whatsoever occupation. Witness Vonnegut's television announcer, whose speech impediment prevents him from articulating even 3 words. He finally passes his announcement to a ballerina with "a very unfair vox": the prisoner Harrison Bergeron has escaped.

The Endgame of Equity

Fortuitously, this fourteen-twelvemonth-former prodigy then enters the television studio, his grotesque handicaps making visible the consequences of "leveling the playing field." If Vonnegut'southward characters are stunned, readers might reflect on how this scene illustrates the consequences of "disinterestedness" in didactics or employment or authorities funding. How exercise some colleges practice similar crimes in handicapping Asian-American students, insisting on higher admissions standards for them? Why should Chinese-Americans, like Harrison Bergeron, comport a heavier burden than others?

Or consider how some loftier schools are eliminating regular classes in favor of honors for anybody, regardless of academic level. Educators tout this approach as necessary to correct group imbalances in honors classes, and students cover it because it creates "a more even playing field." Many parents are unpersuaded: "That'due south like saying our unabridged population is gifted."

Fortunately, nosotros have no Usa Handicapper General to compel citizens into disinterestedness. We do have advocates for giving greater power in businesses and schools to Variety, Equity, Inclusion, and Anti-Racist (DEIA) Committees.

It is a prevarication, just every bit "equality" is a lie in "Harrison Bergeron." Such lies advance the careers of educators and politicians; they may fifty-fifty soothe the envy of the world'southward Hazel Bergerons, or pacify the qualms of those like George who have "unfair" advantages. But they do incalculable damage to students at all levels seeking to achieve their best as individuals.

Harrison is unconvinced that his own handicaps benefit him or anyone else, and his actions—escaping prison and rushing to a tv set studio—are desperate moves toward freedom. While the regime tries to control everyone, shifting them around the chessboard of equity, Vonnegut's story suggests that is not ever possible. People are non simply playing pieces. Every bit Adam Smith warned, sometimes they move of their own accordance, generating chaos.

What motivates Harrison is a teenager's sense of possibility. He casts aside his handicaps and bellows, "At present scout me go what I can become!" Talented yet immature, he forces the orchestra to play and invites a ballerina to join him in his dance.

This is the merely moment of beauty in the story. The two whirl, leap, float to the ceiling, and buss each other. Fantastically, "not simply were the laws of the land abandoned, but the police of gravity and the laws of motion besides." Rather than hiding their individual abilities, they cultivate and enjoy them.

Vonnegut invites united states to imagine the magic of releasing that potential. Freed from society's unjust regulations, what might Harrison exist able to accomplish? And how might his brilliance benefit society as surely as the dance mesmerizes his audience?

Perhaps it is that potential that motivates Diana Moon Glampers, Handicapper General, to execute Harrison and his partner. Maybe she, like Hazel, envies the brilliant. Or perhaps she fears the chaos they correspond. What if others imitated Harrison? In any case, she arrives with a loaded gun and fires without warning, determined to enforce equality in the only mode truly possible: death.

Fortunately, we have no U.s.a. Handicapper General to compel citizens into equity. We practice have advocates for giving greater power in businesses and schools to Variety, Disinterestedness, Inclusion, and Anti-Racist (DEIA) Committees. Such committees, writes i advocate in a contempo Newsweek essay, can "require changes in daily behavior." But to reach these goals, "DEIA must be effectively implemented. It is non possible for DEIA to take also much power" (emphasis original).

Diana Moon Glampers would hold: pursuing equal outcomes requires unlimited power, whether of one'due south local DEIA ambassador or the federal authorities. Do we really desire our authorities officials—unelected equally well equally elected—to wield such ability?

The Quick and the Woke

In Vonnegut's dystopia, citizens similar Harrison'southward parents have ceded power over their own lives likewise as their children'south. George does not even know that Harrison died. Distracted past noises in his ear radio, he wanders into the kitchen for a beer. When he returns, Hazel is still on the couch, having witnessed the execution and now crying without knowing why: "Information technology's all kind of mixed up in my mind."

This is the second tragedy of Vonnegut's tale. The Bergerons are "woke" in their commitment to equality, fifty-fifty if it entails handicaps like George'due south. Only having embraced such conformity, they remain unable to think or protect the son dependent on them.

Conversely, Harrison shows what information technology ways to reach for joy and possibility. Nonetheless briefly, he lived.

If Vonnegut'south tale teaches us anything, information technology is to protect our hereafter Harrison Bergerons by rejecting government attempts to engineer equity, fifty-fifty when our leaders insist it is what "religion and morality call us to do." Betraying the next generation into mediocrity while limiting their freedom can never be "moral." Like Harrison, they deserve a chance to become what they tin can go.