Harrison Bergeron Questions

1. In “Harrison Bergeron”, the present day “equality” is portrayed but in an extreme sense. In order for all people to be “equal”, citizens in the story are forced to be “handicapped” to be lowered in their potential skills (i.e. control thinking process by using a device to cut thinking processes, covering face with mask to not show beauty, etc). The story tries to argue if this “equality” is really what we desire. In most case, people want to keep their characteristics, which is represented by Harrison Bergeron, who rebel against this “equality” law. The theme is the destination and destiny of pure “equality”, though since there is the Handicapper General that acts more like a dictator; it is hard to call it pure equality. (To be honest, when I read the first paragraph, I thought the story is going to talk about world full of cloned beings.)

2. To me, the Handicapper General, Diana Moon Glampers was a flat character. When Hazel talked about how if she was the Handicapper General, she would make the “rings” like a chime, which explains Diana is a very merciless person, since she use a very violent sound track. Also, when Harrison went on a rebel run, she came in the room and shot, not only, Harrison but the ballerina as well, because she chose to side with the rebellion. I feel like Diana is rather realistic in such situation of pure “equality”. Since there is someone that needs to enforce the law, Diana had to be a merciless dictator, since everyone else is “equal” but her, which puts her in a more powerful position.

3. The story is told by Harrison Bergeron’s parents, Hazel and George Bergeron. It is important for the author to write this story in Harrison’s parent’s point of view because the tragedy of this story is that even their son’s death can be easily forgotten under this pure “equality”.

4. I think this is best described at the end of the story, when Harrison gets shot and Hazel is in tears even though the next moment she forgets why she is crying. I think, more specifically, the critics are talking about the nature of wife, husband, and child (ren) relationship.

5. Lem’s opinion talks about how natural events should be the core of these stories but I believe humans are natural and what a human produce, even though the products are artificial, is natural since a natural human made it. Therefore, I do not think this negates the story at all.