Summary of Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut It is the year 2081, and as a consequence of a number of constitutional changes, every person who lives in the United States is treated with the same level of respect and dignity as the next. To make sure everyone is treated the same, people with special gifts and skills must wear mental and physical handicap devices that limit them, and people with special looks must wear makeup and accessories that make them look less beautiful. Diana Moon Glampers is the U.S. Handicapper General.
She is in charge of making sure that everyone is treated equally. The parents of Harrison Bergeron, George and Hazel Bergeron, are watching a dance on TV. George, who is stronger and smarter than average, must always wear mental and physical handicaps.
Hazel, on the other hand, is normal by nature and doesn't need to wear handicaps. Even though George and Hazel don't talk about their 14-year-old son, Harrison, the readers find out that he was recently taken by agents of the Handicapper General. While George and Hazel watch TV, George's mental handicap device, which is a radio emitter that sends out a number of loud, annoying noises, often interrupts his train of thought.
At one point, George starts to wonder if the dance program would be better if the ballerinas weren't disabled. However, His mental disability keeps him from following this train of thought. At one point, Hazel sees that her husband looks tired, so she tells him to take a break from his physical disability, which is a cloth bag full of heavy lead balls that is padlocked around his neck. George turns down this offer and tells his wife that if he goes against the handicapper general, he will get fines and a jail sentence. He asks Hazel rhetorically what she thinks would happen if people didn't follow the HG's rules.
and she says, I think it would fall apart. A news report interrupts a dance show on TV to say that Harrison Bergeron just got out of jail. Harrison's picture comes up on the screen.
He is seven feet tall, and his body is covered with horrible devices that are meant to limit his amazing strength, intelligence, and natural beauty. Harrison is portrayed in the news story as a dangerous criminal who is wanted on suspicion of plotting to overthrow the government. The news report is cut off by the sound of Harrison Bergeron kicking down the door to the TV studio.
Harrison calls himself Emperor, and in front of the TV cameras, he gets rid of all of his mental and physical problems. He chooses a dancer to be his Empress and also gets rid of all of her flaws. Harrison takes the aides off the players in the studio and tells them to play music while he and his Empress dance.
The two dancers sway to the music, and Harrison and the ballerina eventually jump into the air and float to the ceiling. As they float in thin air, they kiss the ceiling and then each other. The handicapper general, Diana Moon Glampers, shows up with a shotgun.
She shoots Harrison and the dancer, killing them both, and tells the players to put their handicaps back on or else they will die the same way. When the Bergeron's TV goes out, the scene comes to an end. George left the living room to get a beer. When he came back, Hazel was crying, but she couldn't remember why.
George tells Hazel to forget sad things, and Hazel says, I always do. The conversation is broken up by George's mental disability device, which makes the sound of a riveting gun. The last line of the story is a remark made by Hazel on the most recent Soundwave.
She says, gee, I could tell that one was a doozy. About the author. Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was born in Indianapolis.
He went to Cornell and other universities to study chemistry and engineering, and he joined the U.S. Army as a private during the Second World War. During the Battle of the Bulge, the Germans took him prisoner.
Some of Slaughterhouse-Five is based on what he saw and did in Dresden during and after the firebombing of that city. After the war, he went to the University of Chicago to study anthropology and worked as a reporter for the Chicago City News Bureau. He then moved to New York State to work as a public relations writer for General Electric.
Vonnegut was married more than once and had seven children. Three of them were his own, and the other four were adopted. He taught at places like the Iowa Writers'Workshop and other schools.
His work is known for its dark humor, and the anti-war ideas he wrote about are still important today. During his career, Vonnegut wrote popular works in many different types of writing, such as books, short stories, plays, and essays. Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse Five, two of Vonnegut's best-known books, made him well-known across the country and gave him a large audience that continued after his death in 2007. Hope we summarized it fully and you liked it. Please hit the like button and subscribe to our channel so that we are motivated to create more videos.