How Does Vonnegut Create Sympathy For Ordinary People

-The author highlighted the qualities of speed/ strength, beauty, and knowledge as a few things to describe some individuals who are more advanced than others. The U.S. Handicapper General made those who had more knowledge to wear an earpiece/ head set to send off harsh sounds whenever that individual was thinking to advanced. “George was toying with the vague notion that maybe dancers shouldn't be handicapped. But he did not get very far with it before another noise in his ear radio scattered his thoughts” (Page 1). For speed, that particular person would have to wear weighted items on themselves so that it would allow them to become slower/ weaker. The same goes for beauty. If a person was considered beautiful, they would have to wear a mask so that others around them would not think that they looked better than themselves. “They were burdened with sashweights and bags of birdshot, and 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” (Page 1). Each of these changes made to an individual was so that every individual was equal.
Vonnegut uses indirect characterization to create sympathy for George and Hazel by …show more content…
On the television, Hazel and George were watching ballerinas, who were handicapped as well, on the television. With the television being the main focus, is the television what the General believed made the individuals more intelligent, so they had to handicap them? It also shows that Hazel and George are both unconnected from reality by not allowing them to remember what they truly cared about. "I forget, she said. Something real sad on television…Forget sad things, said George. I always do, said Hazel” (Page 6). With them being distant from society and what was happening, both Hazel and George are able to move on in a way from Harrison’s death since they are forbidden to remember what happened besides an even that was