Harrison Bergeron story

·1extravagant
satire by a
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hero
ot~J\4~"
I1111erlcan 1·"rterature
he 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,
2l2th, 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 LOok George and Hazel Bergeron's fourteenyear-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.
ILLUSTRATION
III•••
SEPTEMBER
1998 "" 'Ui
George and Hazel were watching television, There
were tears on Hazel's cheeks, but she'd forgotten tor 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 sashweights 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
ve!"'}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.
BY TACK UNRUH
.»
"I'd think it would be real interesting, hearing all the different sounds,"
sai.d IH~zel, ~ little envious. "All the
things they dunk up:'
-':'Um;' said George.
"Only, if I was Ha.,.ldicapper Genera!,
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 Glarnpers;' said
Hazel, "I'd have chimes on Sundayjust chimes. Kind of in honor of religion:'
"1 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'n I do what
normal is?" said Hazel.
"Right~' said george. He began to
think glimrneringly 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
the eight ballerinas had collapsed to the
studio floor, were holding their temples.
"Ali of a sudden YOll look so tired;'
said Hazel. "Whv don't vou stretch out
on the sofa, so's you can ;est 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. "1 don't
notice it anymore. It's just a paJ.~(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 any~ " , • SEPTEM13£R
1998 •. 'P..©
body around
here.
'YOU jusr
set 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,
ora
face,
d£eal
what do you think happens to society?"
If Hazel hadn't been able to COlTlC 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.
"VVasn't that what you just said?"
"Who knows;' said George.
The television progran1 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
b aillerina, 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-hundredpound rnen.
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,
mailing 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 clown, then sideways, upside
down again, then right side up. The
picture showed rile 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 borne 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 allover him.
Ordinarily, there was a certain synuuetry, 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 carne from the television set. The
photograph of Harrison Bergeron on the
screen jumped again and again as though
danci.ng to the t1.U1eof 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 sa..mecrashing
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.
"1 am the Emperor!" cried Harrison.
"Do you hear? I am me Emperor! Every-
people.
"Lei: the first woman who dares
•
I
rise to her feet claim her mate and her
throne!"
f!. 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-s-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
araDceW'aB
and
1W&rem
body 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 Cim 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
Hi'"
SEPTEMBER
1998-·· ~©
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
girl's 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, neutralizing graviiy with
love and pure will, they remained suspended in air inches below me ceiling,
and they kissed each oilier for a long,
longtime.
It was then that Diana Moon Glampefs, 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 Glarnpers loaded the
gUfl again. She aimed it at the musicians
and told them they had ten seconds to
get their handicaps back on. It was men
that the Bergerons' television tube
burned out.
Hazel turned to comment about the
blackout to George. But George had
gone out into me 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.
"Its all kind of mixed up i..11
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- I could tell that one was a
doozy;' said Hazel.
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ll.,I~~k
Why does Harrison break into the
studio? What does he want]
Note where Vonnegut mentions
. the sounds George has to endure.
Why does he mention so many? What
do these details add to the story?
"
3
\ftlhat is this story saying about
Ii.. conformity? Satiric works involve
1:..1,.e
use of humor to point out human
vices or foibles. Is this story satiric?
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~JL
t
uring the late 1960s and
early 1970s, you almost
could not visit an American
household without finding
a well-thumbed Kurt VOl1negut novel lying on the
coffee table. Vonnegut was
talked about, laughed over,
read aloud, and nearly deified as few writers have
been in recent decades.
His caustic and comic
work took the side of the
individual agai.nst the state,
against technology, against
ideologies of any kind. In
the era of Vietnam and
Watergate, people related
to the Vonnegut message.
Then, suddenly this writer who had
always been far too independent to be
a standard-bearer
for any cause,
became a fad. He pays the price now for
this onetime elevation to cult status:
perhaps overestimated during the period
of his immense popularity, he is sometimes underestimated now. Regardless
of the moods of critics, Vonnegut's
work of five decades remains wonderfiilly readable, funny, bitter, and tender.
Born in 1922 in Indianapolis, Vonnegut seemed destined for a science
career. But the Great Depression of the
1930s intervened, and Vonnegut's architect father went 10 years without receiving any work. Vonnegut survived those
bleak years listening to the great radio
comedians of the day. Later, while
expressing gratitude to James Joyce and
Mark Twain, Vonnegut admitted owing
more to Laurel and Hardy, Jack Benny,
and Charley Chaplin than to literature's
giants. "They made me hilarious during
the Great Depression:' Vonnegut wrote
"and all the depressions after that:'
Following in the footsteps of his
older brother Bernard, Vonnegut went
to college to study science. (An important physicist, Bernard discovered the
process of seeding douds to start rain.)
ll]
~~~,'-
But Vonnegut's college life ended when
he joined the Army. World War II was in
full force, and, without realizing it, Vonnegut was headed toward one of those
strange collisions of time and place that
can define a life.
In December of 1944, Vonnegut
found himself Ln the Battle of the Bulge
against the German army. His unit was
shattered, and Vo.nnegut was captured.
He was sent to the city of Dresden in
Germany, where he was put to work
with other prisoners producing vitaminenriched malt syrup for pregnant
women.
So it was that on the night of FebfUalY 13, 1945, Vonnegut was present
in Dresden when Allied bombers rained
2,690 tons of bombs on the city. The
bombs created a thermal column of
wind with temperatures
of 1,400
degrees that sucked oxygen from the air,
killing by asphyxiation those who were
not incinerated. Between 35,000 and
130,000 civilians died.
Vonnegut survived the bombing
because he was imprisoned several stories below ground in a meat locker with
t,
other prisoners. Afterwards he spent
days pulling burned bodies from the
rubble and stacking them in pyres
throughout the city.
After
the
war,
Vonnegut
returned to the States still intent on
becoming a scientist. He went to the
University of Chicago to study
anthropology, but his thesis proposal was rejected. (Years later, the university awarded the degree, substimung his fiction writing for the
required thesis.)
With few options, Vonnegut
took a job as a public-relations copywriter for General Electric. During
this period, he also wrote his first
novel and began selling stories to
magazines. For the next decade he
supported his family with his writing, though his work never broke
through to a larger audience.
Meanwhile, his desire to write
about tile Dresden bombing grew. It
was during a stint teaching writing at
the University of Iowa in the mid19608, when Vonnegut realized that the
bizarre experience
of surviving
the
bombing could not be told in any conventional narrative. The resulting book,
SlaughterhO'use-Five, uses a science-fiction
character and the idea of time travel to
recall the World War II events. The
book was a huge success, catapulting its
author to immense fame.
Vonnegut's short-story collection,
TiVelcome to the Monkey House, remains all
excellent introduction to his work. But
don't stop there, or you will miss some
of Vonnegut's finest characters: Kilgore
Trout, a failed science-fiction writer; Billy Pilgrim, a time traveler; or Eliot
Rosewater, an altruistic millionaire. .A.B
for the caustic comedy of his novels, little has been lost in the passage of time.
After two decades of technological and
geopolitical transformation, Vonnegut's
eye for the darkly absurd seems more
keen than ever. =Pete Vilbig
U;
!.fi ••. SEPTEMBER 1998·· . H