Comparing Segregation In Harrison Bergeron And Animal Farm

Wouldn’t it be great to live in a world where there's no segregation, in a world where you aren’t judged and everyone's equal? Unfortunately, that’s a world that will never exist. In our world, segregation and inequality are practically impossible to escape. It will always be present today and into the future. Many literatures, such as 1984, “Harrison Bergeron,” and Animal Farm as well as films such as Gattaca have been written and produced to address this. All these allegorical and satirical literatures and films have told us that even in the most controlling and equal societies, segregation will always be present. You can try to run from it but it will follow you.

There are countless different forms of segregation. In George Orwell’s 1984,

Even in a society that claims complete equality, small segregation and discrimination will seep through the cracks. In Kurt Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron,” this exact thing is happening. In the book, the government claims that “they [are] equal in every which way” (Vonnegut 1). However, this is a lie because they are segregating by how they choose who gets handicapped and who doesn’t. It’s a grouping of the strong separated from the weak. Those who were of higher intelligence have handicaps in their ears that send sharp noise to keep them from thinking. Those who had stranger athletic abilities wore weights, and because these are things that are visible on the person who carries them, one can still judge who is stronger, prettier or smarter. Orwell describes how as George watches the ballet, he can tell that one of the ballerinas “must have been extraordinarily beautiful, because the mask she wore was hideous. And it was easy to see that she was the strongest and most graceful of the dancers, for her handicap bags were as big as those worn by two-pound men.” (Vonnegut 4) In conclusion, Kurt Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron” shows how even though a society may seem “equal in every which way,” (Vonnegut 1) things are not always what they appear and in reality the whole society is runs on

George Orwell’s Animal Farm is a great example of this. In Animal Farm, the commandment of equality begins as “All animals are equal.” (Orwell 43) However, later into the book the pigs start to take control and put themselves higher than the other animals. They thought they were better than everyone else and knew they were smarter so they took advantage of that. Just like in Orwell’s 1984, class segregation formed, the pigs and dogs were put into the upper class and the rest of the animals in the lower, working class. All of this progression towards the segregation went unnoticed by the lower class animals except for some slight questioning by Clover. Why did the animals not notice? Well, due to the low education of the lower animals and the higher education of the pigs, it was easy for the pigs to manipulate the animals into believing that all animals were still equal and there was no segregation. They would tell them that “We pigs are the brainworkers” and that the pigs got more privileges because “the whole management and organization of the farm depends on [them].” (Orwell 52) The animals, being the naive creatures they were, believed this. Later the commandment for equality changed to “all animals are equal but some are more equal than others,” (Orwell 133) This still went through one ear and out the other for them. Even the humans noticed the segregation as proven when