New Criticism

The Unrealistic Fantasy Mode

By Myckol Rodriguez

Kurt Vonnegut was an American writer born and raised in Indianapolis. He was a writer of the short story “Harrison Bergeron” which appeared in the magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1961. The main theme of the short story is that equality in America is not good and actually is not beneficial for the country. The story takes place in the future, the year of 2081, where technology helps to impel the stronger, the smart ones, and the better looking to be equal to those who are the opposite. The number of events that happen are really unrealistic and leads readers to believe that it is a satirical short story. The exaggerations in the short story help to identify the short story as unreal. Therefore, “Harrison Bergeron” is a satirical short story in a fantasy mode.

Besides referring to the year set there are many unrealistic and really extreme ideals in the short story. In the first paragraph it explains in detail how everyone is literally equal and unreal because of three Amendments of the Constitution. “Nobody was smarter than anyone else. Nobody was better than anyone else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anyone else. All this was due to the 211^th, 212^th, and 213^th Amendments to the Constitution” (1). As a short story is setting them to be unreal and out of the ordinary, it also demonstrates the type of tone that the short story is going to have. The first paragraph sets the scenario, the plot of the story, the point and the theme as well. The other clue is who is in charge of making this happen “The United States Handicapper General" (1) With this, the story sets the place.

The scholar article “The Politics of Kurt Vonnegut’s 'Harrison Bergeron'" by Darryl Hattenhauer” states that “the theme of this satire is the attempts to archive equality are absurd" (1). Because the short story is to have readers think what could really happen in an equal really expectations would be. In the same article she states “The object of his satire is the popular misunderstanding of what leveling and equality entails. More specifically, this text satirizes America’s Cold War misunderstanding of not just communism but also socialism” (1) As this Article not only helps me to resolve the story it also shows what it’s trying to say as to the tensions in the story.

The satire story involves in the Bergeron family, George and Hazel had a son which his name is Harrison. These characters develop in the story, George who is more than average has to have a handicap in his ear. “He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was turned to the government transmitter” (1) making him not smart or use his actual potential to think and react. Hazel in the other hand was the regular citizen that did not required any handicap since she was categorized as normal. However, in the story her personality tends to be really stupid and way below average. Her first “great idea” was “I’d have chimes on Sunday-just chimes. Kind of in honor of religion.” (1) The idea is so unrealistic is almost to be humorous to just to realize how she doesn’t have a bright way of thinking. Yet this in the story the normal equal way of thinking.

The story tells the living situation and who Harrison is and what happened to him. Harrison is the protagonist of the story, as the story develops readers learned how unreal he is. First, he is seven feet tall, something very unusual for a fourteen-year-old boy. He also was super human as in the story he had to wear more handicaps than anyone else. “Instead of a little ear radio for a mental handicap, he wore a tremendous pair of earphones, and spectacles with thick wavy lenses” (3). That was one of the many handicaps he was given to make him equal. He also had metal all over him, “in the race of life Harrison carried three hundred pounds” (3). This teenager had to be lifting weights at very young age to been able to carry such of unrealistic waged. The story also comments in his appeal and how the handicap covers his 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” (3). Realistically, no government would do such an inhumane act to make everyone equal, or at least the country the story takes place, United States of America.

In the scholar article, Hattenhauer points out and even greater satire idea, That the story shows Harrison as “a would-be dictator” (5) the reason why I believe is because he shows that he cares about him only, by proving he is better than anyone else rather than helping people be themselves he does not becomes a model of a hero like. He is clearly thinking only in his freedom and dominate everyone else as a dictator. “I am the Emperor!” cried Harrison. “Do you hear” “I am the Emperor! Everyone must do what I say at once! “He stamped his foot and the studio shook.” Clear evidence the story is showing him as a dictator. Even with handicaps he was able to take them off like it was nothing and, in the story, he is compared to Thor, the God of thunder, the teenager is four-years-old, the is no way he and be that strong or that good looking after being in jail with that many handicaps on him.

The antagonist of the story comes in play for the life of the protagonist that’s so unrealistic, defying the laws of logic, and was floating with his Empress at that time she enters the story. Her name is Dianna Moon Glampers, the handicapper General. “It was then that Dianna 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.” Hazel Bergeron mentions her in the beginning of the story but she becomes more aggressive in the end. The teenager that was compared by the narrator to Thor was dead along with his empress.

Another great point Hattenhauer points is how critics missed the irony of the narrator. “They do not recognize the narration as unreliable.” (page 5 line 6) It became clear to me and why it helps the idea of irony in the story until the end. As she describes in the article “Part of the reason they miss the narration’s unreliability is that the plot hides the undeniability of the irony until the end,” Which it makes complete sense and why this scholar article supports me with my thesis.

Hattenhauer close the article by “So this story satirizes not just mistaken notions of equality. It also satirizes the American definition of freedom as the greatest good to the smallest number. The American myth is that only in a class society can everyone have an equal chance for achieving the greatest economic inequality.” As I come to agree as well, the satire story has a fantastic mode to create unusual ideals, scenarios and how bad it would be if that type of equality would really happened in the country.

The Unrealistic Fantasy Mode by Kurt Vonnegut in “Harrison Bergeron” is very unrealistic and very satirical. The family suffers even though according to the government they are “equal to their eyes.” However, is clear is not the case. The government is in charge and in this short story the antagonist kills the protagonist, a protagonist that is incredible strong that dies from a shot as soon as he reveals to the government. the scholar article “The Politics of Kurt Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron” by Darryl Hattenhauer” has clear points why is satire and how unreliable the story is. Darryl also mentions the time was written and why it was written as a satire at that time. The story defines logic and laws of gravity to it shows clear evidence is a unrealistic short story.