“Harrison Bergeron”, written by Kurt Vonnegut, is a short story that tells of the ironic shortcomings of a seemingly perfect man who dies in the hands of his suppressive American government in 2081. Harrison Bergeron, born in a nation that makes equality the main focus of life, defies his suppressive government on live television by tearing off his handicaps that weigh him down and cloud his handsome figure. The suppressive government fights back by making his perfect body equal to everyone else’s by shooting him. Using Harrison Bergeron, Vonnegut toys with our expectations of the story’s end by adding irony to Harrison Bergeron’s actions to comment to those who believe that all civilizations should primarily focus on equality. Vonnegut uses Harrison Bergeron to show his audience how irony can change one’s perception of the future, and how irony can be used to show the hidden truth behind the clouded expectations.
In Harrison Bergeron’s world, equality is treated as the focus of civilization, and through suppression and handicaps, people are forced to be average and equal. As for Harrison Bergeron’s parents, his father, George, has a device in his ear that transmits a noise to make it hard to concentrate and remember, and his mother, Hazel, is an average woman who has little to no handicaps. For Harrison Bergeron, Vonnegut creates a world in which his individuality cannot be expressed by law and are looked down upon to the point in which he cannot contain himself, and he dies trying to become emperor. These handicaps and suppresion show us that in Harrison Bergeron’s world, people are controlled and forced to not be the best that they can be by the government. Vonnegut wants us to see that any revolt against these laws is against the norm and can result in severe punishment.
Vonnegut’s set up of this world, where equality is valued above all else, leads into an ironic end where Harrison Bergeron dies, and his parents, because of their handicaps, can’t remember that their son was shot and killed on live TV. Using the fact that equality is treated above all else, Vonnegut creates many instances of tragic irony that seem harsher than most life in America today . One example of irony would be when Harrison Bergeron declares himself emperor and tears off his disabilities but dies in the end, leaving his parents heart broken until their disabilities make them forget what they just saw and their sorrow. Geroge asks his wife, “‘You been crying?’ he said to Hazel. / ‘Yup,’ she said, / ‘What about?’ he said. / ‘I forget,’ she said” (Vonnegut 6). This excerpt shows that no matter how terrible or how hard people try to remember their handicaps stop them from thinking too deeply into sadness and the flaws of their government. The parents’ forgetfulness of this tragic moment shows that the government, making equality the highest priority, doesn’t make families and neighbors stronger; it hurts and weakens them to the point that people can’t remember that their own child has just died. On a broader scale than just the Bergerons, Americans all wanted equality so badly that they sacrificed everything for it. Ironically, the desire for equality caused the dearth of freedom for all Americans and the suppression of individuality and imagination. Americans were giving up the morals that made them great for the imaginative idea of equality. Vonnegut uses these examples of irony to twist our perception of the ending and show us, in Vonnegut’s opinion, the true path that a government based upon equality will go.
Vonnegut uses the irony within “Harrison Bergeron” as a tool to make a comment to those who believe equality should be the focus of any civilization. Vonnegut uses irony as a tool to show us that our expectations might lead us astray and the truth might be what we least expect. With irony, he tells a story of how a nation, once prosperous with great minds and inventors, can be changed so dramatically for what all thought was the “greater good”. This misperception of the “greater good” is what Vonnegut is trying to tell those who believe pure equality is the key to happiness. Today, we live in a innovative democracy, while Harrison Bergeron lives in a suppressive oligarchy within the same nation and land but within different times and different morals.
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