Harrison Bergeron, Welcome To The Monkey House, And Report On The Barnhouse Effect

Perhaps the most coveted privilege in modern day society is the freedom of speech, which has been a pillar for democratic societies throughout the ages. These societies have outlasted, and oftentimes replaced, ones in which the general population was silenced, or were not free to speak their wills. In his stories “Harrison Bergeron”, “Welcome to the Monkey House”, and “Report on the Barnhouse Effect”, Kurt Vonnegut encapsulated a world without the freedom of speech, where dissidents were silenced and sameness was enacted upon everyone. Consequently, these stories highlighted a bleak society which was no longer progressing along the linear cycle of progress, and through the use of his trademarked “black humor”, they were compared to modern society. The societies Vonnegut conjured up were

Overall, they were a prolific warning from Vonnegut: society must never decay to such a state, or else the vivid colors of life will be rescinded to grayscale. In “Harrison Bergeron”, Vonnegut places the reader in a society that has already achieved sameness (due to the intense handicaps placed on citizens to prevent them from taking unfair advantage of their natural born talents). For example, the smarter people have to wear noise machines in their ears to distract them from thinking too hard: in essence preventing them from realizing the hindrances of sameness, and, in turn, criticizing the government. However, the most outright critic of the government is Harrison Bergeron himself. Harrison was born with many gifts, like unhuman-like strength, and immense intelligence. For the government set up in this story,