Harrison Bergeron
Harrison Bergeron [1961]
Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007)
VOCABULARY
Ammendments: (n) changes made to the United State Constitution
bellow: (v) shout in a deep, angry voice
birdshot: (n) small lead pellets for shotgun shells
calibrated: (adj) marked with or divided into degrees
caper: (v) jump about playfully
clammy: (adj) unpleasantly cool and humid
consternation: (n) a shocked or worried feeling, often caused when something unexpected happens
cowered: (adj) showing submission or fear
doozy: (n) something that is extremely unusual or special
flounce: (v) walk with large noticeable movements
gambol: (v) run, jump, and play like a young child
glimmering: (adv) shining faintly or unsteadily
grackle: (n) a type of American blackbird
hindrance: (n) something that delays or prevents progress
hobbled: (adj) walking in an awkward way
luminous: (adj) softly bright or radiant
riveting gun: (n) a type of tool used to drive rivets, metal pins used to fasten flat pieces of metal
sash-weight: (n) a long and slender casting of some cheap metal hung by a sash-cord in the casing of a window-frame and used to counterbalance the weight of the sash
snaggle-tooth: (n) a tooth growing out irregularly from the others
something the cat drug in: something dead and chewed up
speech impediment: (n) a difficulty in speaking caused by nervousness or by a physical problem
vigilance: (n) watchfulness
whirl (v): turn around in circles
LITERARY TERMS AND ELEMENTS
dystopia: a work of fiction describing an imaginary place where people live dehumanized lives because of deprivation, oppression, or terror
satire: a form of writing that attacks and ridicules some social evil or human weakness
simile: a figure of speech comparing two unlike things using the words like or as
Pre-Reading Questions for Discussion
1. What does it mean to be equal?
2. Is competition good, bad, or a little of both?
3. What is the difference between freedom and equality?
4. Is it possible to have a society in which people are both “free” and “equal”?
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.
It was tragic, all right, but George and Hazel couldn’t think about it very hard. Hazel had a perfectly average intelligence, which meant she couldn’t think about anything except in short bursts. And George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.
George and Hazel were watching television. There were tears on Hazel’s cheeks, but she’d forgotten for the moment what they were about.
On the television screen were ballerinas.
A buzzer sounded in George’s head. His thoughts fled in panic, like bandits from a burglar alarm.
“That was a real pretty dance, that dance they just did,” said Hazel.
“Huh” said George.
“That dance--it was nice,” said Hazel.
“Yup,” said George. He tried to think a little about the ballerinas. They weren’t really very good--no better than anybody else would have been, anyway. They were burdened with sash-weights and bags of birdshot, and their faces were masked, so that no one, seeing a free and graceful gesture or a pretty face, would feel like something the cat drug in. George was toying with the vague notion that maybe dancers shouldn’t be handicapped. But he didn’t get very far with it before another noise in his ear radio scattered his thoughts.
George winced. So did two out of the eight ballerinas.
Hazel saw him wince. Having no mental handicap herself, she had to ask George what the latest sound had been.
“Sounded like somebody hitting a milk bottle with a ball peen hammer,” said George.
“I’d think it would be real interesting, hearing all the different sounds,” said Hazel a little envious. “All the things they think up.”
“Um,” said George.
“Only, if I was Handicapper General, you know what I would do?” said Hazel. Hazel, as a matter of fact, bore a strong resemblance to the Handicapper General, a woman named Diana Moon Glampers. “If I was Diana Moon Glampers,” said Hazel, “I’d have chimes on Sunday--just chimes. Kind of in honor of religion.”
“I could think, if it was just chimes,” said George.
“Well--maybe make ‘em real loud,” said Hazel. “I think I’d make a good Handicapper General.”
“Good as anybody else,” said George.
“Who knows better than I do what normal is?” said Hazel.
“Right,” said George. He began to think glimmeringly about his abnormal son who was now in jail, about Harrison, but a twenty-one-gun salute in his head stopped that.
“Boy!” said Hazel, “that was a doozy, wasn’t it?”
It was such a doozy that George was white and trembling, and tears stood on the rims of his red eyes. Two of of the eight ballerinas had collapsed to the studio floor, were holding their temples.
“All of a sudden you look so tired,” said Hazel. “Why don’t you stretch out on the sofa, so’s you can rest your handicap bag on the pillows, honeybunch.” She was referring to the forty-seven pounds of birdshot in a canvas bag, which was padlocked around George’s neck. “Go on and rest the bag for a little while,” she said. “I don’t care if you’re not equal to me for a while.”
George weighed the bag with his hands. “I don’t mind it,” he said. “I don’t notice it any more. It’s just a part of me.”
“You been so tired lately--kind of wore out,” said Hazel. “If there was just some way we could make a little hole in the bottom of the bag, and just take out a few of them lead balls. Just a few.”
“Two years in prison and two thousand dollars fine for every ball I took out,” said George. “I don’t call that a bargain.”
“If you could just take a few out when you came home from work,” said Hazel. “I mean--you don’t compete with anybody around here. You just sit around.”
“If I tried to get away with it,” said George, “then other people’d get away with it-and pretty soon we’d be right back to the Dark Ages again, with everybody competing against everybody else. You wouldn’t like that, would you?”
“I’d hate it,” said Hazel.
“There you are,” said George. The minute people start cheating on laws, what do you think happens to society?”
If Hazel hadn’t been able to come up with an answer to this question, George couldn’t have supplied one. A siren was going off in his head.
“Reckon it’d fall all apart,” said Hazel.
“What would?” said George blankly.
“Society,” said Hazel uncertainly. “Wasn’t that what you just said?
“Who knows?” said George.
The television program was suddenly interrupted for a news bulletin. It wasn’t clear at first as to what the bulletin was about, since the announcer, like all announcers, had a serious speech impediment. For about half a minute, and in a state of high excitement, the announcer tried to say, “Ladies and Gentlemen.”
He finally gave up, handed the bulletin to a ballerina to read.
“That’s all right--” Hazel said of the announcer, “he tried. That’s the big thing. He tried to do the best he could with what God gave him. He should get a nice raise for trying so hard.”
“Ladies and Gentlemen,” said the ballerina, reading the bulletin. She must have been extraordinarily beautiful, because the mask she wore was hideous. And it was easy to see that she was the strongest and most graceful of all the dancers, for her handicap bags were as big as those worn by two-hundred pound men.
And she had to apologize at once for her voice, which was a very unfair voice for a woman to use. Her voice was a warm, luminous, timeless melody. “Excuse me--” she said, and she began again, making her voice absolutely uncompetitive.
“Harrison Bergeron, age fourteen,” she said in a grackle squawk, “has just escaped from jail, where he was held on suspicion of plotting to overthrow the government. He is a genius and an athlete, is under-handicapped, and should be regarded as extremely dangerous.”
A police photograph of Harrison Bergeron was flashed on the screen-upside down, then sideways, upside down again, then right side up. The picture showed the full length of Harrison against a background calibrated in feet and inches. He was exactly seven feet tall.
The rest of Harrison’s appearance was Halloween and hardware. Nobody had ever born heavier handicaps. He had outgrown hindrances faster than the H-G men could think them up. Instead of a little ear radio for a mental handicap, he wore a tremendous pair of earphones, and spectacles with thick wavy lenses. The spectacles were intended to make him not only half-blind, but to give him whanging headaches besides.
Scrap metal was hung all over him. Ordinarily, there was a certain symmetry, a military neatness to the handicaps issued to strong people, but Harrison looked like a walking junkyard. In the race of life, Harrison carried three hundred pounds.
And to offset his good looks, the H-G men required that he wear at all times a red rubber ball for a nose, keep his eyebrows shaved off, and cover his even white teeth with black caps at snaggle-tooth random.
“If you see this boy,” said the ballerina, “do not--I repeat, do not--try to reason with him.”
There was the shriek of a door being torn from its hinges.
Screams and barking cries of consternation came from the television set. The photograph of Harrison Bergeron on the screen jumped again and again, as though dancing to the tune of an earthquake.
George Bergeron correctly identified the earthquake, and well he might have--for many was the time his own home had danced to the same crashing tune. “My God--” said George, “that must be Harrison!”
The realization was blasted from his mind instantly by the sound of an automobile collision in his head.
When George could open his eyes again, the photograph of Harrison was gone. A living, breathing Harrison filled the screen.
Clanking, clownish, and huge, Harrison stood in the center of the studio. The knob of the uprooted studio door was still in his hand. Ballerinas, technicians, musicians, and announcers cowered on their knees before him, expecting to die.
“I am the Emperor!” cried Harrison. “Do you hear? I am the Emperor! Everybody must do what I say at once!” He stamped his foot and the studio shook.
“Even as I stand here” he bellowed, “crippled, hobbled, sickened--I am a greater ruler than any man who ever lived! Now watch me become what I can become!”
Harrison tore the straps of his handicap harness like wet tissue paper, tore straps guaranteed to support five thousand pounds.
Harrison’s scrap-iron handicaps crashed to the floor.
Harrison thrust his thumbs under the bar of the padlock that secured his head harness. The bar snapped like celery. Harrison smashed his headphones and spectacles against the wall.
He flung away his rubber-ball nose, revealed a man that would have awed Thor, the god of thunder.
“I shall now select my Empress!” he said, looking down on the cowering people. “Let the first woman who dares rise to her feet claim her mate and her throne!”
A moment passed, and then a ballerina arose, swaying like a willow.
Harrison plucked the mental handicap from her ear, snapped off her physical handicaps with marvelous delicacy. Last of all he removed her mask.
She was blindingly beautiful.
“Now--” said Harrison, taking her hand, “shall we show the people the meaning of the word dance? Music!” he commanded.
The musicians scrambled back into their chairs, and Harrison stripped them of their handicaps, too. “Play your best,” he told them, “and I’ll make you barons and dukes and earls.”
The music began. It was normal at first--cheap, silly, false. But Harrison snatched two musicians from their chairs, waved them like batons as he sang the music as he wanted it played. He slammed them back into their chairs.
The music began again and was much improved.
Harrison and his Empress merely listened to the music for a while--listened gravely, as though synchronizing their heartbeats with it.
They shifted their weights to their toes.
Harrison placed his big hands on the girls tiny waist, letting her sense the weightlessness that would soon be hers.
And then, in an explosion of joy and grace, into the air they sprang!
Not only were the laws of the land abandoned, but the law of gravity and the laws of motion as well.
They reeled, whirled, swiveled, flounced, capered, gamboled, and spun.
They leaped like deer on the moon.
The studio ceiling was thirty feet high, but each leap brought the dancers nearer to it.
It became their obvious intention to kiss the ceiling. They kissed it.
And then, neutraling gravity with love and pure will, they remained suspended in air inches below the ceiling, and they kissed each other for a long, long time.
It was then that Diana Moon Glampers, the Handicapper General, came into the studio with a double-barreled ten-gauge shotgun. She fired twice, and the Emperor and the Empress were dead before they hit the floor.
Diana Moon Glampers loaded the gun again. She aimed it at the musicians and told them they had ten seconds to get their handicaps back on.
It was then that the Bergerons’ television tube burned out.
Hazel turned to comment about the blackout to George. But George had gone out into the kitchen for a can of beer.
George came back in with the beer, paused while a handicap signal shook him up. And then he sat down again. “You been crying” he said to Hazel.
“Yup,” she said.
“What about?” he said.
“I forget,” she said. “Something real sad on television.”
“What was it?” he said.
“It’s all kind of mixed up in my mind,” said Hazel.
“Forget sad things,” said George.
“I always do,” said Hazel.
“That’s my girl,” said George. He winced. There was the sound of a riveting gun in his head.
“Gee--I could tell that one was a doozy,” said Hazel.
“You can say that again,” said George.
“Gee--” said Hazel, “I could tell that one was a doozy.”
Questions for Discussion
1. When is the story “Harrison Bergeron” set?
A) In the future
B) In the past
C) Right now
D) The story doesn’t say
2. What are the names of Harrison Bergeron's parents?
A) Fred and Veronica
B) Taylor and Tanya
C) Bill and Teresa
D) George and Hazel
3. What stops Harrison Bergeron's father from using his above-average intelligence?
A) A brace on his thigh
B) A shock collar on his neck
C) A mental handicap radio in his ear
D) A clamp on his tongue
4. What are Harrison Bergeron's parents watching on television?
A) Penguins huddling together during a snowstorm
B) A documentary on the Ardennes Offensive
C) An infomercial about a cleaning product
D) Ballerinas dancing
5. What is unique about all announcers on television?
A) They are naked.
B) They have speech impediments.
C) They are not reading from a script.
D) They all talk at the same time telling different stories.
6. What is the name of the United States Handicapper General?
A) Gordon Calbert Thompson
B) Samuel Griffith White
C) Diana Moon Glampers
D) Patricia Radicia Bauers
7. Which of the following is not true regarding Harrison Bergeron?
A) He is 14 years old.
B) He is seven feet tall.
C) He is a prominent member of the military.
D) He was put in jail because he was suspected of plotting to overthrow the government.
8. Which of the following was not something that the H-G force Harrison Bergeron to do?
A) Cover his teeth with black caps at snaggle-tooth random
B) Wear a red rubber ball as a nose
C) Dress in a leather bustier
D) Keep his eyebrows shaved off
9. What does Harrison Bergeron proclaim to the people at the television studio?
A) Sic semper tyrannis!
B) I am the Emperor!
C) The messiah has arrived!
D) I will save you from this confinement!
10. Where do Harrison Bergeron and his "Empress" kiss?
A) The top story of the Empire State Building
B) In the middle of Boston Common
C) On a boat at sea
D) Thirty feet in the air near the ceiling
11. What happened to Harrison Bergeron and his "Empress" at the end of the story?
A) They eloped to Italy.
B) They freed Harrison's parents from their stupor.
C) They were arrested and sentenced to death after a new amendment was added to the Constitution.
D) They were shot dead by the Handicapper General.
12. Why is Harrison forced to wear a clown nose?
A) to entertain his parents
B) to prevent people from fearing him
C) to bring joy to children everywhere
D) to cover his handsome face
E) to humor the Handicapper General
13. Why did the ballerina have to apologize for her voice?
A) because it was not fair for a woman to have such a beautiful voice
B) because it was so horrible to listen to
C) because she had a cold
D) because it was to screechy
14. In the society described in “Harrison Bergeron,” competition is considered
A) unlawful.
B) old-fashioned.
C) disruptive.
D) mean spirited.
E) All of the above
15. Based on his actions at the ballet, it is likely that Harrison would be a(n) _____________ leader.
A) cruel
B) manipulative
C) inspiring
D) agreeable
E) All of the above
16. The mental handicap radios and the bags of birdshot are intended to
A) punish those who are smart.
B) enforce the government’s control.
C) create equality in the world.
D) bring joy to the underprivileged.
E) detect social deviants.
17. What do the loud sounds heard on the mental handicap radios accomplish?
A) They disrupt the thoughts of citizens who are smarter than average.
B) They provide entertainment for those who do not wear them.
C) They identify the most intelligent people in society.
D) They alert authorities when citizens break the law by thinking too much.
E) They soothe those inflicted with highly-intelligent thoughts.
18. Why aren’t George and Hazel upset about Harrison’s death?
A) They both believe that Harrison was meant to die when he did.
B) They don’t question any decisions the Handicapper General makes.
C) They both feel that Harrison was too radical to be allowed to survive.
D) Neither Hazel nor George truly loved Harrison; he only caused them problems.
E) They don’t understand what happened.
19. Why is Harrison a threat to society?
A) He is a convicted serial killer.
B) He cannot be controlled by handicaps.
C) People think he can be a great ruler.
D) He is a danger to himself and others.
E) He is the leader of a group of rebels.
20. In the society described in “Harrison Bergeron,” competition is considered
A) unlawful.
B) old-fashioned.
C) disruptive.
D) mean spirited.
E) All of the above
21. What kind of short story is “Harrison Bergeron”?
A) romance
B) mystery
C) dystopian science-fiction
D) non-fiction
22. One of the sentences in the story is “They leaped like deer on the moon.” This is an example of which kind of literary element?
A) simile
B) understatement
C) dialogue
D) metaphor
23. When the narrator states that George’s “thoughts fled in panic, like bandits from a burglar alarm,” he is using
A) simile and personification
B) allusion and metaphor
C) irony and symbolism
D) imagery and metaphor
24. This story implies that
A) total equality among humans is impossible.
B) people should try to be content.
C) criminals deserve to be punished.
D) competition is unnecessary.
E) parents do not understand anything.
25. In this story, Harrison Bergeron becomes a symbol for the spirit of:
A) conformity.
B) family values.
C) servitude.
D) independence.
26. Based on his actions at the ballet, it is likely that Harrison would be a(n) _____________ leader.
A) cruel
B) manipulative
C) inspiring
D) agreeable
E) All of the above
27. Consider the humorous exchange between George and Hazel at the end of the selection. What effect does this exchange have on the story?
A) It ends the story on a somber note.
B) It concludes the story with an important moral.
C) It lightens the mood of the story.
D) It reveals their true feelings.
E) It creates a surprise that leaves the reader guessing.
28. Kurt Vonnegut wrote “Harrison Bergeron” as a humorous way of criticizing governments’ attempts to treat everybody “equally.” This type of literature is an example of a(n)
A) drama
B) external conflict
C) satire
D) internal conflict
The narrator's tone can best be described as
A) slightly satirical
B) harshly critical
C) darkly cynical
D) mildly emotional
E) expressively casual
In the first paragraph, the author repeats the phrase "nobody was" most likely to
A) introduce theme
B) underscore a point
C) instill a sense of loneliness
D) refute a commonly held assumption
E) present three contradictory elements
In the first paragraph, the author employs which of the following literary techniques
A) intentional alliteration
B) mimicry of the speech of the lower class
C) general comparison
D) parallel construction
E) repetition of numeration
A
B
D
Questions for Discussion
1. Is Harrison a hero? Why or why not?
2. In what ways are the characters, settings and themes of this story similar to our society today?
3. Does this story change your opinion of equality? Why or why not?
4. Is it possible in America today for all people to be equal? Why or why not?