Consequences Of Diversity In Harrison Bergeron, By Kurt Vonnegut

As technology becomes more and more advanced in our daily lives, concerns from the past are also tagging along behind. Having advancements in technology in our society is great and all, but there are also some consequences that come with it. An example of this is in the story “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut. Harrison Bergeron is a story where everyone is equal in every which way. Nobody is smarter, prettier, stronger, etc, than anyone else. Diversity isn’t allowed. That’s when Harrison Bergeron comes along and tries to show everyone that diversity is NOT a bad thing. Another example of this is in Ray Bradbury’s “The Pedestrian”, which is about a world that’s overrun by television. Nobody ever leaves their houses because they’re always …show more content…
The main character in “Harrison Bergeron” is a guy named Harrison, who is strong, handsome, smart, and almost everything that he isn’t supposed to be in a completely equal society. He is given hundreds of pounds of handicaps that sicken him and beat him down. He’s given a large earphones instead of regular earpieces, spectacles that half blind him and give him killer headaches, and is forced to shave off his eyebrows and wear a red rubber ball nose to alter his appearance, all for the sake of people being equal. Harrison does not want to be equal to everyone else, however. He wants to show that all around, diversity in people is just as important as equality in society. He was arrested for taking off his handicaps, and in the story, he escapes the prison to overthrow the government and try to free people of their handicaps. In the story, during Harrison’s speech, it says, ““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 can become!,”” (Vonnegut 4). This shows that he is trying to show people how the handicaps are just making people suffer and stopping them from being the better version of what they are. And in the end, him trying to show this lead to fatality, when he was killed near the end of the story for taking off his handicaps. In “The Pedestrian”, however, the characterization is far different. …show more content…
In the story, “Harrison Bergeron”, there was not a lot of figurative language but when it was used, it was mostly similes. For example, the story says, “- 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.” (Vonnegut 1), which was regarding the ballerinas dancing and them having handicaps to keep them from moving too beautifully or looking too pretty. The author added this tidbit of information in to emphasize the point that everyone was equal. But what good is it to make these ballerinas dance and practice dancing if they are not going to express their individuality and diversity and have them look like everyone else dancing? In Ray Bradbury’s, “The Pedestrian”, there was a lot more figurative language. The story regarded the neighborhoods as being scary graveyards with ominous lights flickering upon the graves with the dead sitting inside, because of the TV lights flickering from the windows of the houses and the people mindlessly switching channels like drones. When Ray Bradbury was describing the police car, he said, “The car hesitated, or rather gave a faint whirring click, as if information, somewhere, was dropping card by punch-slotted card under electric eyes.” He was describing the police car with human characteristics mixed in with electronically based characteristics. This puts emphasis on how much