The Indifferent Narrator In Kurt Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron

The Omniscient Indifferent Narrator
Kurt Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron” is a satirical dystopian short story. The story starts by presenting a utopian future that sounds desirable to the reader. At the beginning of the story, everybody is finally “equal”, according to the narrator, due to the amendments of the constitution. As the reader keeps reading, even from the third line of the first paragraph, the reader might start to find faults in the society and begin to feel curious about the story. The second and third paragraph tells how Harrison, George and Hazel’s son, has been imprisoned, and George and Hazel do not think about it because George is handicapped and his wife is allegedly normal though in our present society she might be considered mentally retarded. The reader starts to sense that all is not as …show more content…
George has weights and Hazel does not, Harrison’s handicaps are more than those of others, the handicapper general has no handicaps and is capable of committing murder without any court injunction or legal permission, destroying the perfect picture of equality painted at the beginning of the story. At the end of the story, Harrison Bergeron dies and though Hazel cries, she does not realize after a moment that it is because she is mourning the death of her son. George, Harrison’s father, is unaware of his son’s death, drinks beer and encourages his wife not to think about whatever sad thing that made her cry. The story is narrated in third person by an omniscient narrator. The narrator in “Harrison Bergeron” narrates the story with an indifferent tone, shapes the reader’s point of view and is unreliable. The style of the narration makes the