Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut, 1961
The magic trick:
A dystopian future that takes what many people would assume was a good thing and extends it into the horrific
Oh, Harrison Bergeron, you giant, doomed hero.
I’d heard about this story for about 25 years before I finally sat down to read it. Everyone was right. It is very good.
Of course it’s been on a concept that in the future our society has taken on fascist bent. This particular dystopian vision is especially interesting though. Here, the crucial problem is that everyone is equal in every way.
So instead of taking aim at what could be seen as an obvious target, like so many mid-20th century science fiction pieces, “Bergeron” takes an idea that almost anyone would agree is a positive thing (equality) and shows how anything extended out to extreme can be dangerous.
And that’s quite a trick on Vonnegut’s part.
The selection:
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 anybody 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.
Some things about living still weren’t quite right, though. April for instance, still drove people crazy by not being springtime. And it was in that clammy month that the H-G men took George and Hazel Bergeron’s fourteen-year-old son, Harrison, away.
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