Annotated Bibliography

Akst, Daniel. “The Harm of Middle-Class Inequality.” Newsday, (Melville, NY), 12 Sept. 2011. EBSCOhost, cwi.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=n5h&AN=2W61363692530&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

In this short article by Daniel Akst, he focuses on our societies economy. His main idea to come out of this is, “Highly unequal societies aren't very stable or pleasant, but thankfully, hanging weights and noisemakers on the gifted aren't in the cards. The focus instead must be on improving K-12 education, including a much stronger trade-skills curriculum. College simply isn't the answer for everybody and isn't the place for learning that should have occurred in high school. But first, our elites have to recognize that the country's future is bleak unless a way can be found for blue-collar Americans to earn a reliable middle-class living. It's tempting to give all of them dubious sheepskins and call it a day.” His main reason to bring this thought in mind is that he makes mention that inequality has been growing in the economic and political culture.

-“Chronology of Kurt Vonnegut’s Life.” Critical Insights: Slaughterhouse-Five, Oct. 2010, pp. 337–340. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lfh&AN=57353661&site=lrc-live.

This source is very straightforward-- it is simply a chronology of Kurt Vonnegut’s life, starting from when he was born, until the day he died. What is interesting to note here, is the recalling of parts of Vonnegut’s past that are unrelated to his written works but may shed light on how his writing style and outlook came to be. He enlisted in the army, and his mother committed suicide right before he was sent for deployment. He witnessed family tragedies as they occurred, one after the other, and he even adopted the children of his late sister. After Vonnegut found initial success, he published more and more works, only disrupted by other tragedies that would also occur.

Cordle, Daniel. “Changing of the Old Guard: Time Travel and Literary Technique in the Work of

Kurt Vonnegut.” Vol. 30. Time and Narrative. 2000.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/3509250?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents

In the article by Daniel Cordle he talks about the style Vonnegut writes in to make his short stories different from other text. In this he mentions Vonnegut’s stories have a form of realism within them, even “Vonnegut would surely claim that his works are realistic in terms of fidelity to lived experience (although it is a very different sort of fidelity from that common in the works of the 'old-fashioned' storytellers from whom he distances himself) (167).” Along with this Daniel uses Vonnegut’s text as a compare and contrast of other authors and sees what the authors.

Cross, Tracy L. “Disrupting Social Contracts That Affect Gifted Students: An Homage to Harrison Bergeron.” Gifted Child Today, vol. 32, no. 4, Fall 2009, pp. 14–15. EBSCOhost, cwi.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=44971212&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

“Disrupting Social Contracts That Affect Gifted Students: An Homage to Harrison Bergeron,” written by educational psychologist Tracy L. Cross, is an exploration of Kurt Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron” through the lens of academic challenges surrounding gifted students. Cross uses social contract theory to persuade his audience that society’s narrow definition of “equality”--the same narrow definition that is satirically exaggerated in Vonnegut’s short story--is “handicapping” gifted students in much the same way as the Handicapper General. He uses several main points to support this thesis, including an interpretation of the No Child Left Behind Act, a look at how gifted students are unchallenged by the “minimum competencies” used by traditional schools, and how most attempts to “narrow the achievement gap” are hurting gifted students.The language is heightened, but descriptions are provided for psychological and educational jargon; the information and even the political sources are organized with clarity that lends itself to a general audience. Although Cross admits that he is involved in the education of gifted students, thus implying an implicit bias, his professional perspective enhances rather than interrupts the “reader-response” connection he seeks to make.

Drummond, Mark A. “Is Technology Changing Our Brains? Jurors Go Cold Turkey on Cell Phones.” Litigation News, vol. 40, no. 3, Spring 2015, pp. 18–19. EBSCOhost, cwi.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=102538059&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

In this article Mark Drummond opens up with a horrifying statistic to make his point, “people check their cell phones 150 times per day. That average goes up dramatically the younger you are. The average cell phone owner uses their phone 3 hours and 16 minutes every day. These statistics are just for cell phone use alone. They do not include those people who sit at a computer all day receiving emails and instant messaging.” Seeing this it opens the reader's mind to focus into what he has to mention. He tested to see how people would react if they lost their phone for a day and he was able to notice a disorder occur most of the time through his research this disorder being: information deprivation disorder. Making the point from a researcher, “‘The problem is that just because a student's technology is 'out of sight' it is not 'out of mind.'”

Fugate, Clare. “Vonnegut Warned Us.” The Phi Delta Kappan, vol. 89, no. 1, 2007, pp. 71–72. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/20442413.

This article, written by Clare Fugate, a middle school teacher that teaches students with learning disabilities, briefly summarizes Harrison Bergeron to exemplify why trying to hold society to all the exact same standards is an understandable idea in an already perfect world, but that creating equality does not exist by holding everyone accountable for meeting the same standards. Fugate explains how the No Child Left Behind Act, or NCLB, has plans to ensure that all children are able to exceed in passing the same standardized test, rather than accounting for the very real strengths and weaknesses that different people possess. By connecting Harrison Bergeron to the schooling system, it helps readers understand how the pained utopian image of society in Harrison Bergeron is not a fair example of equality, and how NCLB is dangerously close to following that model.

Hattenhauer, Darryl. “The Politics of Kurt Vonnegut’s ‘Harrison Bergeron.’” Studies in Short Fiction, vol. 35, no. 4, Fall 1998, p. 387. EBSCOhost, cwi.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=f5h&AN=7239232&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

“The Politics of Kurt Vonnegut’s ‘Harrison Bergeron,’” written by American literature and cultural studies professor Darryl Hattenhauer, is a piece exploring what “Harrison Bergeron” might “mean” based on Vonnegut’s other writings, both in fiction and nonfiction, as well as his personal comments and letters. Hattenhauer speaks to a decidedly political audience, albeit appropriately, with terms like Left and Right rather than the more specific breakdown of Democrat and Republican; his purpose is to persuade readers that “Harrison Bergeron” is more about socialism and communism than literal American equality. This thesis is supported by main points including a look at the politics of Vonnegut’s other writings, the author’s intent in writing “Harrison Bergeron,” and a line-by-line analysis of the story based on political concepts like wealth distribution. If the piece has any bias, it shows only in slight favoritism of Leftist discourse and ideology. Otherwise, the piece is well-organized, if a little linguistically dense for a casual audience, and appropriately and successfully draws connections between Vonnegut’s writing style and the political, historical landscape in which “Harrison Bergeron” was written.

Hume, Kathryn. “Kurt Vonnegut and the Myths and Symbols of Meaning.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language, vol. 24, no. 4, 1982, pp. 429–447. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40754697.

Kathryn Hume sums up a common opinion regarding Vonnegut’s work: it is too pointlessly pessimistic for its own good, and tends to have bad/overused usage of symbolism and metaphor. She breaks down various different works of Vonnegut to find the conclusion as to why most critics tend to dislike the pessimistic themes of Vonnegut’s works. She then goes on to discuss the usage of metaphor and symbols in Vonnegut’s work, and how they tend to not mesh in a conventional way that most readers are comfortable with. However, the way Vonnegut constructs his works with such symbols, is found to be intentional and carry a deeper meaning, and that maybe like Picasso, his works will be appreciated with a later form of understanding than the present.

Morse, Donald. “Review: Repetition and Generalities.” Vol. 25. No. 2. Science Fiction Studies. July 1998. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4240707?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents

In “Review: Repetition and Generalities,” American literature professor Donald Morse reviews The Short Fiction of Kurt Vonnegut by Peter J. Reed, and, by illustrating where Reed’s analysis falls short, identifies some important and intriguing facets of Vonnegut’s own writing. By exploring what Reed failed to do in his own book, Morse’s review helps readers understand how Vonnegut’s fiction and nonfiction intersect, how his personal history influenced his writing, and what types of analysis are most helpful (and least helpful, in Reed’s case) in exploring the works. He uses The Short Fiction of Kurt Vonnegut as well as stories and comments by Vonnegut himself to help make these points, and although the tone is casual enough for a general audience, the tone is slightly more critical and complaint-ridden than would befit a studious academic source. The review does, however, vehemently oppose any misinterpretations of Vonnegut’s work and champion the careful, thorough analysis that this writer’s stories deserve.

Reed, Benjamin. Technologies of Instant Amnesia: Teaching Kurt Vonnegut's "Harrison Bergeron" to the Millennial Generation. Vol. 8. No.1. Teaching American Literature, vol. 8, no. 1, Spring 2015, pp. 45–69. EBSCOhost, cwi.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=108544629&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

In the article created by Benjamin Reed, he looks at Harrison Bergeron's society to compare it with ours leaving a few mystifying connections with both societies. At the beginning of the article he mentions, “My students generally prefer more competitive media—television and film, typically in the form of streaming video. Yet ‘Harrison Bergeron’ always resonates. Even those who dislike it are moved to express why (46).” This trigger lets us know that even students of this generation nowadays can relate with the text’s intensity of just how fragile or thinking is with how we rely on technology to do most of our work now. Along with this, he points out in another portion of his essay to drive his point of the human reliance on technology,

The third question: "Why doesn't Hazel need a mental handicap?"

"Because she's stupid?"

[Laughter]

"But that's circular. 'Hazel doesn't need a mental handicap because she doesn't need a mental handicap.'"

The answer is that Hazel doesn't need a device to arrest or interrupt her thoughts because she already has one: the TV set. It's the focal point of the story's physical environment, one we only "cut away from," as it were, to see the inside of a television studio. We never actually drop our focus from the TV until its tube burns out, and fully half the story is the action on screen (58).

Seeing this information we know that with our eyes glued to a screen makes us forget the tasks at hand that we need to understand.

Stuckey, Lexi. “Teaching Conformity in Kurt Vonnegut’s ‘Harrison Bergeron.’” Eureka Studies in Teaching Short Fiction, vol. 7, no. 1, Fall 2006, pp. 85–90. EBSCOhost, cwi.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=23474525&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

In “Teaching Conformity in Kurt Vonnegut’s ‘Harrison Bergeron,’” English professor Lexi Stuckey seeks to persuade her audience that there is a different interpretation of “Harrison Bergeron” than the anti-equality message usually taught: that mediocrity is not just acceptable, but should be celebrated. To support this thesis, she relies on main points including Vonnegut’s own thoughts on the story, character analyses, and an analysis of the climax. The language is clear, simple, and empty of jargon, endearing this piece to a casual but literary audience. Stuckey appropriately provides her unique interpretation of “Harrison Bergeron” by bringing in the voices of other prominent scholars to comment on Vonnegut’s writing, political background, and literary choices, and she briefly but relevantly makes a comparison to the way students are taught to be what she suggests is overly individualistic. Overall, she successfully makes her “reader-response” point without necessarily refuting the validity of other interpretations.

Vonnegut, Kurt. “How to Write With Style.” http://cmitacademy.org/highschool/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/How-to-Write-with-Style.pdf

Within this article Kurt Vonnegut gives helpful advice of how to write a good essay, and it show what truly makes a good essay stand out from the bad ones. Within some of these tips Kurt shows us that we need to care about the subject, to not ramble, keep it simple, have the guts to say the honest truth, be yourself, say what you mean, pity the reader, and have really detailed advice.