Reader Response

Hi, I’m Harrison Bergeron: Subjective Reader Response to “Harrison Bergeron”

By Ashlee Vanliew

Certainly when one reads Kurt Vonnegut’s short story “Harrison Bergeron,” it is not the nameless ballerinas or the powerful Handicapper General that one identifies with, but rather the titular character himself—the talented martyr who is punished for existing outside of society’s narrow definition of “average.” For most readers, though, the similarities extend no further than the end of the page; “handicaps” in today’s world are usually assigned based on political favoritism rather than the much shakier concept of equally distributed talent. Unfortunately, other readers—namely, artistic individuals like painters, musicians, and dancers—do not have the freedom to simply close the book on this concept. As a novelist myself, my reading of “Harrison Bergeron” revealed an eerie resemblance to the academic, professional, and personal “handicaps” faced by creative individuals—not in the futuristic, satirized world of 2081, but right here in 2018.

“Harrison Bergeron,” in summary, is the story of a world where equality is enforced by handicaps that limit beauty, physical ability, mental capacity, and other natural gifts so that no individual may excel above a government-mandated definition of “average.” Multiple art forms, from dancing to playing instruments, are afforded a fair amount of narrative focus, allowing Vonnegut to flesh out the rules of his world without relying too heavily on exposition. However, much like in modern reality, one occupation is significantly overlooked: the writer. For evidence of this, one need look no further than the story itself—which makes room in its comparatively short word-count for descriptions of how a news-anchor actor is “handicapped” (“The television program 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” [Vonnegut, 3]), but does not spare even a sentence to explain how that news story was written or what its author’s handicaps looked like. The point of this argument is not to critique Vonnegut’s literary choices, but to illustrate that many artists are routinely “left out” of a society that, in my experience, unabashedly favors scientific, mathematic, and technological minds.

This may seem, at first, to be a bold statement—but the politics of the academic world lend credibility to the position. From first grade to twelfth, I was taught—both directly and indirectly—to believe that individuals with aptitude in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) were the most useful, respectable, and promising members of the classroom. They were consistently given more opportunities to apply and hone their specialties in general education assignments, while skills like creative writing were often exercised only in elective classes. Regardless of the merits behind the multiple intelligence theory, STEM kids were considered “intelligent” while writers, painters, singers, dancers, and other artists were considered “creative”—as though the things were entirely separate, or even mutually exclusive. Even before I read “Harrison Bergeron,” I felt as though the mathematicians and scientists got their “handicaps” taken off because their work was considered important, while the rest of us were given extra handicaps in school settings because our talent was enviable but not teachable, appropriate for casual pastimes but not serious academic pursuits—essentially, an obstacle to “ideal equality,” and we were being punished for it.

To summarize this point, the academic definition of “average” is often based on the way STEM students think, and since they are treated as though their default is appropriate, they have no cause to question it—like “perfectly average” Hazel Bergeron says, “‘Who knows better than I do what normal is?’” (Vonnegut, 1, 2); however, artistic students do not fit that mold and are effectively left behind—because, unlike Hazel, we cannot understand or operate within those narrow parameters of “normal.” Educational psychologist Tracy L. Cross describes the situation as follows: “For many, equity means equal—it has been interpreted to mean ‘the same as.’ It is easy to trace this understanding to the concept of equality in the eyes of the law, typically meaning the same for everyone—everyone being held to the same (single) standard” (Cross, 2). The “single standard,” in this case, is value based on aptitude in science or math—a standard that not all artistic students can live up to, even while excelling in other areas. In this way, creative kids are the Harrison Bergerons of the academic landscape, excessively weighed down by the demands of a world designed with someone else in mind.

Although one might hope that these challenges disappear after graduation, entering the workforce only adds to the handicaps placed upon artistic individuals. The favoritism shown to STEM students manifests in the professional world as higher-paying, less-competitive, and more numerous job opportunities. In truth, there is more room in our modern world for accountants, computer scientists, nurses, and engineers than for novelists. That is not to say that, for example, a writer can never make a fair wage; the point is simply that frequent opportunities for formal STEM education translate into comparatively frequent opportunities for employment, while traditionally publishing a novel remains near-impossible, perhaps because there are fewer chances to learn and practice necessary publication skills. Essentially, STEM employees are treated like Harrison Bergeron’s mother Hazel—who is described as being “perfectly average” by her society’s standards [Vonnegut, 1]; they enjoy the lack of handicaps afforded to them by society’s decision that they are the definition of “normal” and “right.” Meanwhile, creative individuals struggle with as many obstacles as Harrison himself (“Instead of a little ear radio for a mental handicap, he wore a tremendous pair of earphones, and spectacles with thick wavy lenses” [Vonnegut, 4]); we are punished for trying to see and fit differently in the world and for attempting to find work outside the four favored industries.

Another obstacle that creative individuals face in the workforce is the rise of the Internet—which, in many ways, acts like the Handicapper General in “Harrison Bergeron,” giving everyone equal opportunity (if not equal talent). Since anyone can write a blog post, film a movie for social media, or put an original song performance on YouTube, employers have easier grounds on which to deny fair pay; although quantity doesn’t equate to quality, artistic individuals suffer the consequences of higher competition, lower professional standards, and lower job value. For example, if a company believes that writing is easy, they are more likely to have internal employees handle marketing material than to hire a writer—or, if they do hire a writer, the pay will be lower since “anyone could do that.” On the other hand, since not everyone can be a STEM expert—and by “not everyone,” I generally mean “creative types”—the job value in these industries is higher. The “starving artist” stereotype exists for a reason.

Even regardless of academic and professional success, artists often get less respect than others due to these societal handicaps. In my personal life, telling others that I study creative writing often elicits exasperated or even pitying responses; people see only the handicaps (how competitive my industry is, how likely it is that I do not have the “talent” I think I have, how little money I will make) rather than what I could contribute to the human experience. That’s not to mention the value system imposed on art in general, which allows society to consume books and movies while still calling them “unnecessary” or “worthless”—a paradox that proves its transparency when one stops to consider that some of the world’s biggest corporations are in the entertainment industry. These people look at me and other artists like George Bergeron, weighed down by “forty-seven pounds of birdshot in a canvas bag”—but, unlike his wife Hazel, they never offer any relief or say, “‘I don't care if you're not equal to me for a while’” (Vonnegut, 2).

Interestingly, this personal criticism ultimately aligns artistic individuals with Harrison Bergeron as a character. Thanks to our inability to be equal to STEM students, we are in some ways the object of envy (as Harrison too must have been, since it was necessary for him to be “‘crippled, hobbled, sickened’” by the Handicapper General [Vonnegut, 5]); however, just as often, our non-STEM and thus non-normal talents make us the object of ridicule (much like Harrison, who was “forced to 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” [Vonnegut, 4], thus drawing attention to the contrast between society’s definition of “normal” and Harrison’s deviance from that standard). Similarly, much like the story’s climax, any attempt to move beyond our handicaps is expected to be a tragedy. As English professor Lexi Stuckey puts it, “[E]volution often eliminates both the very weak and the very strong. …[T]he loss of Harrison, an obvious evolutionary jump forward for humankind, is not necessarily devastatingly detrimental for man.” (Stuckey, 4 – 5). By this logic, any intellectual outlier, whether an artist or an astronaut, can, by society’s current standards, be treated as somewhat of an acceptable loss. We are being punished, pushed out, and academically and professionally eliminated by a narrow definition of “average”—which, from my perspective, seems to favor a very specific type of human being.

I feel that, at this point, it is only fair to acknowledge my obvious bias: I am a writer who has faced these “handicaps,” and thus I am keenly aware of every insult to my autonomy—whereas I have no data on these experiences from a STEM perspective. Perhaps there are scientists and mathematicians out there who feel that they are the unsung Harrison Bergerons of our world, facing handicaps my writer’s brain blinds me to; nonetheless, I never hear accountants wishing for the financial stability of a novelist’s skill-set, though I often wish I was “number-smart” enough to trade my pen for a calculator. Overall, objective talent is more valuable in this world than subjective talent because the former is measurable and the latter is deniable. No one can argue the usefulness of an accountant, but plenty of people can and have claimed that what I bring to the table is borderline worthless.

In summary, “Harrison Bergeron” holds up a mirror to our modern society, not in how it treats everyone, but in how it treats artistic individuals especially. Others may experience the same kind of academic, professional, and personal handicapping that comes with being anything other than “normal,” but for those of us who cannot be considered intelligent by society’s narrow STEM standards because we have been reduced to the “creative” title, the future is grim. Ironically, perhaps a world playing by the equality rules in “Harrison Bergeron” could benefit us outliers. After all, it seems like society would like me better if I found some optically-warping goggles (to get rid of my pesky habit of noticing poetic details) and a mental handicap radio (to stop the creation of any eloquent sentences)—because, according to today’s world, even being barely-passable at math or science might just be better than being what I am: a writer.