"Harrison Bergeron" Essay

An essay on some of the themes of the short story "Harrison Bergeron"

Brian Pearl

The Power of Government Propaganda

“Harrison Bergeron” is a short story that demonstrates the ways in which totalitarian governments use propaganda to maintain power over their citizens. Some people believe this story is about one citizen and his attempt to overthrow his government. Others believe it is about one family and how it is torn apart by its government

I will integrate the opinions of other authors to show a few ways that tyrannical governments ruin families. Harrison fighting his way onto television, Harrison’s mom being disillusioned to the violence on television, and Harrison’s dad refusing to break the law demonstrate reactions that people have to living in totalitarian regimes.

           The narrator in “Harrison Bergeron” started off by explaining that in this society, all people were completely equal. The people who were the best looking and the smartest were forced to wear handicaps to bring their abilities down to ensure equality among everyone. The forced equality was imposed by the Handicapper general and her agents. Two characters, Hazel and George, were introduced early in the story. George was forced to wear a mental handicap radio in his ear because he was very intelligent. Hazel did not wear a handicap because she had average intelligence and was not a threat to the handicapper general. Harrison Bergeron, their fourteen-year-old son, was taken away by the government for being too physically and mentally gifted. Harrison escaped from confinement and battled his way onto television and attempted to take over the government. Harrison appointed himself emperor of society on television and selected an empress for himself. But the Handicapper General, feeling threatened, killed Harrison and his empress with a ten-gauge shotgun. Harrison’s mom watched the murder unfold on her television, but had no emotional reaction to it. By the end of the story, Harrison’s parents are shown moving on with their day to day life without feeling any sorrow about their son’s death.  

The mental and physical handicaps in this story are a representation for the restrictions that modern-day governments place on their citizens. In “Harrison Bergeron”, George and Harrison are both forced to wear mental handicap radios in their ears. If they get a thought in their head that their government does not approve of, an extremely irritating sound comes blasting into their ears. The mental handicap radio is a representation of how totalitarian governments can control the media. Totalitarian governments use the media to misinform their citizens about what is going on. George also wears a forty-seven-pound handicap around his neck and Harrison is forced to have scrap metal hang all over him. The physical handicaps in this story are a representation of how authoritative governments do not allow their citizens to leave the state. Incredibly, Harrison is made stronger by his physical handicaps and eventually breaks out of them. One of the lessons of this story is that no matter what restrictions are placed on humans they will eventually overcome them because of the will of the human spirit.  

Inequality is impossible to end in society even when every citizen is technically equal. On page 193, when talking about the society in “Harrison Bergeron”, the narrator said, “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.” This society suffers from immense inequality so this is an ironic statement by the narrator. It is relevant that these are the first few sentences of the story because it shows that this government uses propaganda to control their citizens. Equality is a myth in this story because the Handicapper General and her agents both don’t wear handicaps, so even in this society the government has all the power. In this dystopia, all the citizens are technically equal, but they are also all slaves to the government. Joseph Stalin, who ruled Russia from 1928 to 1953, created the same kind of society as the one in “Harrison Bergeron.” He promised equality to his citizens but ended up being a vicious dictator who killed millions of people. Stalin used propaganda to keep his citizens ignorant and to maintain power over them. So, this short story shows that the need for power is in our human nature. No matter how hard we try to ensure equality amongst everyone, there will always be someone who wants to take over control of society.

When a government can control and manipulate the media they can also control and manipulate their citizens. One way in which the government in “Harrison Bergeron” split apart the Bergeron family was by ruining the attention span of George and Hazel. On page 193, the narrator said, “George and Hazel were watching television. There were tears on Hazel’s cheeks, but she’d forgotten for the moment what they were about.” It is noteworthy that in this short story George and Hazel are glued to the television during the entire plot. Watching a substantial amount of television is known to ruin a person’s attention span. In modern times, television is used by governments to make their citizens unable to pay attention to one story. The creation of the twenty-four-hour news cycle has made the viewer unable to focus on any one news event because there is breaking news every minute of the day. The media also reports on so much inconsequential news stories that the important news stories aren’t mentioned because they don’t help increase viewership. Hazel was in such a constant state of distraction by her television that when the government took her son away she didn’t even put up a fight for him.

When humans get to a point where the violence and murder that they see on their television does not incite emotion out of them, society is doomed to fail. “Harrison Bergeron” demonstrated that totalitarian regimes use the media to make their citizens accustomed to human cruelty and violence. At the end of the story, George, Harrison’s dad, came into the living room to see his wife crying and asked her why she was crying. On page 197 she said, “I forget, something real sad on television.” Even though Harrison’s mom saw her own son get killed on television her mind was so distracted by violence that she had no emotional reaction to it. Robert W. Uphaus had an interesting take on this scene in the story. In a 1975 journal article entitled “Expected meanings in Vonnegut’s dead-end fiction”, he said “The history of mankind, Vonnegut implies in the story, is a history of progressive desensitization partly spurred on by the advent of television” (Uphaus, 1975). The word “desensitization” is important in this quote because the definition of it means to make indifferent or unaware. The story of “Harrison Bergeron” uses Hazel to show how people in the modern age of television get so numb to violence and murder because that’s all they see on their screens. So, Hazel is a symbol for the condition of modern man.

When a citizen approves of his or her government’s crimes, that is the moment he or she has become brainwashed by his or her government. “Harrison Bergeron” demonstrates how citizens who live in dictatorships sometimes show more loyalty to their government than their family. On page 194, Hazel tries to convince George to break the rules of society and take off his handicap. George is forced to wear a forty-seven-pound bag of birdshot around his neck. Hazel said to him, “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.” George responds to her by saying, “The minute people start cheating on laws, what do you think happens to society?” Tim Akers and Jerry Moore in a 1999 book, Short Stories for Students, comment on this scene by saying, “Here, Vonnegut satirizes the fear of change and of uncertainty: victims of the oppressive law want to enforce it rather than take their chances without it” (Akers, Moore, 1999). The word “satire” is important in this quotation because it means the use of ridicule to expose and criticize people’s stupidity or vices. Instead of George fighting for his son’s freedom, he conformed to the laws of his government. George has internalized the discipline of the oppressed society he is living in and the love for his family is gone. George, like his wife, has been encouraged to forget the history of mankind where there have been governments that haven’t controlled every aspect of their citizen’s lives. Instead, he believes his government’s way of running a society is the only correct way.

Harrison became larger-than-life when he got on to television because of how powerful of a tool television is. On page 196, when Harrison fights his way on to television, he says, “I am the emperor! Do you hear? I am the emperor! Everybody must do what I say at once!” Joseph Alvarez, in his 2017 article, “Harrison Bergeron” explained why Harrison used television to get his voice heard. He said, “Harrison's power to reach the people and make a new reality (declaring himself emperor), stems from controlling television. Clearly, the government, in the form of the Handicapper General, also understands that power” (Alvarez, 2017). Alvarez uses the word “control”, which is important because it means to maintain influence or authority. The medium of television is powerful because it lends people an air of importance. When you watch another human on television speak, part of your brain believes that person is in the same room with you.  Their enormous presence on the screen allows them to incite a wide array of emotions out of the viewer. Television became a useful tool for Harrison because since he was seven-foot-tall, he could easily incite fear out of the audience and force them to conform to his demands.

Even the most powerful man cannot take down a system of injustice. “Harrison Bergeron” shows that fighting for your freedom is not worth it when you live in an authoritative society. Lexi Stuckey, in a 2006 article entitled “Teaching Conformity in Kurt Vonnegut’s Harrison Bergeron” said that “Both society and nature will work to preserve the status quo, and the man who thinks he is smarter or stronger than these bigger forces will find himself rudely surprised when he loses the battle against them. In other words: be content in your mediocrity” (Stuckey, 2006). Stuckey saying the word “mediocrity” is important because it means to be just average. Harrison Bergeron was a big and strong person who would be considered the opposite of average. This short story shows that one person can’t stop the evils of a whole society. Bergeron learns that these “bigger forces” in society will not accept his nonconformity even if he breaks out of the handicaps that they force him to wear. Harrison’s parents moved on with their lives after their son’s death like he never existed. So, “Harrison Bergeron” uses Harrison’s death to show that sacrificing one’s life to try to end an unjust government’s reign isn’t worth it because it takes more than one person to take down a whole government.

“Harrison Bergeron” demonstrated one family’s reaction to living in a totalitarian regime. This family was told by their government to forget about the America of the past where freedoms were cherished and people enjoyed human rights. A citizen who lets their government take away their rights without a fight loses his or her soul in the process. When people start to rely on their government for support rather than the one’s closest to them, they become slaves to the government. This story shows that in a police state, one’s primary loyalty is to the state and not to one’s family. So, the family unit is no longer the foundation of society. When a person chooses loyalty to his or her government over loyalty to his or her family, the government acquires the ability to control that citizen’s life and take away his or her freedoms. How would you react to living in an authoritative regime?

Works Cited

Akers, Tim, and Jerry Moore. “Harrison Bergeron”.

vol. 5, Gale Group,

             Detroit, 1999, pp. 163-180.

Alvarez, Joseph. “Harrison Bergeron”.

, edited by Tim Akers, Jerry Moore,

             vol. 5, Gale Group, 1999, pp. 173-174.

Stuckey, Lexi. “Teaching Conformity in Kurt Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron”.

, vol.7, no. 1, 2006, pp.85-90. EBSCOhost, skynet.ccm.edu:

             2048/

             Site=ehost=live. Accessed 26, April, 2017.

Uphaus, Robert W. “Expected Meaning in Vonnegut's Dead-End Fiction.”

, vol. 8, no. 2, 1975, pp. 164-174. Jstor, doi: 10.2307/1345070. Accessed 23, April, 2017.

Reviews

[Matthew M Murill]

Great essay, thank you very much for sharing it. Indeed, the issue and problem of propaganda even in democratic countries is a very important aspect that is worth discussing. Sometimes it is forgotten in modern society, but it does not cease to be a very topical issue.