Taking Humanism In The Giver, Harrison Bergeron And Old Glory

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Dystopianism is taking Humanism
Society is a very uncontrollable thing, but people tend to try to control them anyway. These pieces are all part of dystopian literature because of the fact that they seem like a utopia but have tweaks here and there that make it a dystopia. These stories, The Giver, “Harrison Bergeron” and “Old Glory” all come down to someone- a chosen person to get rid of this dystopianism somehow. All three of these stories show a hero of incredible odds where the government is taking over and is very obscure. A dystopian society has never been a utopia and will never be one, it's just the simple facts that they make it seem like it and all these stories are a proven point by controlling everything, using sameness, and just
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People in that society now cannot think by themselves and are accustomed to everyone (the superior) giving them orders. They have to strictly follow the rules of conduct and if they commit an infraction, now they have to pay the consequence based on how bad the it was. As the story of “Harrison Bergeron” said; “And she had to apologize at once for her voice, which was a very unfair voice for a woman to use” (Vonnegut 43). Now here, the society they live in says women cannot do things like the men can. Women have to control their tone of voice in order for their community to accept them. The author, Kurt Vonnegut, decided to do this because in society now there are rules that only apply to women. In The Giver, Lowry quoted “We don't dare let people make choices of their own” (124). This is something that China did in order to control population growth, also known as the one-child policy. In the government of the story of “Old Glory”, they had serious consequences for not following the rules. “‘...If you don’t break the rules, S.O.S. won’t have any effect on you’” (Coville 206). The little boy in the story was being apprehensive. He knew something was going to go wrong.The S.O.S where their government, and they had just implied a new rule that they were allowed to shoot on sight for any violation. The abnormal thing about sameness is that when you are needed, no one can find you and no one …show more content…
All three of these stories show many disasters of occurrence based on the government because of the dehumanism that they have going on. On The Giver, they are literally just like robots. “Asher Ran through the standard apology phrase rapidly, still catching his breath” (Lowry 4). The author decided to this because she wanted to show that there is control over everything and anything that anyone does. She wanted to show that the government is just controlling themselves and others like a rule book that everyone must follow. On “Harrison Bergeron” the author showed us that there are strict rules to follow and that is just their regular basis routine. “She aimed it at the musicians and told them they had ten seconds to get to their handicaps back on” (Vonnegut >43 last page). For them it wasn't a choice, it was an order. On “Old Glory”, they cannot tell lies. They are prohibited and restrained from doing so. They will be chastised caught doing that. “I wanted to say no. Only that would have been a lie. So I just nodded my head” (Coville 204). So as the dystopian society proclaims to show, they are just plainly brainwashed. They cannot think for themselves and they have to do what is told or

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