Harrison Bergeron

No or Yes? Which is the better word? The world will never know, but when you look at all the “no” reasons in life and all the “yes” reasons in life the truth is you can’t live without either one of them. Just like you can’t live without “yes” or “no”, you can’t live without being absolutely different than everyone else because there’s always something that you were born to do and be amazing when you do it. How would the world be if no one was allowed to have a special talent? There would be no sports, no T.V. cooking shows, no doctors; or maybe there could be all that. Maybe instead the whole world could just have an ear piece so that every time they think an intelligent thought, a loud disturbing sound would ring through their head and their thought would be lost in the wind. In the mysterious year of 2081 this is exactly what happened in the story Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

In this story every person is staring in the face of their independence's extinction. Their personality is practically gone; all their courage to stand up for themselves is gone. These people have given up hope of making it through the hard times. That is all but one. Harrison Bergeron is the Einstein that makes all the people in the world look as dumb as the Three Stooges, but that has never been the 14 year old boy’s perspective at all. Harrison is a young Martin Luther King; he knows he has the power to rule the world and be their “leader” and in the story at one time Harrison has that power, he shows the people that they can be good at something and not be punished for having that talent.

Just like some of the leaders in history Harrison is trying so hard to make a change and no one is there to support him. Harrison relives the life of a young Martin and fights until death for his rights. At a point in the story he seemed like he had control but then things turned sour and he had too much power, demanding the people to play music for him. When he does that it relates to parents when they always say “I only do it because I love you.” Harrison wants to see the people have their freedom and that’s why he gets so angry that he grabs the musicians and tells them exactly how he wants them to play.

Every person in that community is so brainwashed that the reader starts to wonder how did this happen and how can someone not be struck with sorrow, when seeing their own child be shot and killed on television? Who would have thought that someone could forget so quickly that their own kid is dead, but what makes it even worse is that when Harrison’s parents see him on T.V. being tortured they just sit back and watch. To cry as you watch your own son being killed is normal but to forget why you were crying two seconds later is the craziest thing ever! When someone notices that you’ve been crying and they ask why, all you can’t say is “I forget.” All you can say is that it was just “something real sad on T.V.” What would you expect that person to say? Well maybe they would say “oh I see” then try to comfort you but instead they’ll just tell you to “forget the sad things.” And your only reply is “I always do.”

In the end Harrison didn’t make a difference because he didn’t have enough time. People were so obnoxiously rude to have everyone in the WHOLE ENTIRE world wear sand bags around their necks, arms, and legs. Who did they think they were to try and make a whole nation equal? No one is or ever will be perfect, when you think about it when it comes down to humans, using the word perfect to describe them is like saying that a dog will always be a cat. The author of this story did a phenomenal job at making the reader see that you have to try and see past people's outer appearance and look more towards the inside or else you can be easily fooled just like the whole world was fooled by one person that thought the world could all be his perfect nation that he created. Though when he sees the truth he will know that it was him who changed the world into a living hell.