Perfection In Kurt Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron

How far is too far? Throughout the ages, most societies have strived for their interpretation of perfection. With perfection being a very difficult thing to obtain, lots of societies have gone to the extremes in order to reach their goal. Even with the best intentions, these societies can go too far and often end up doing more harm than help. Like Adolf Hitler and his concentration camps. He felt as if he was doing the right thing and bettering Germany’s social environment, but he actually just caused a lot of problems. With believing things like, “If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed” (Adolf Hitler), Hitler convinced his people that he was doing good for Germany. With the past repeating itself,

In order to instill equality, the U.S. forces citizens to wear “handicaps”. The government began to use these handicaps in an attempt to make everyone average and equal in ability. Intelligent people must wear earpieces that emit loud sound in order to make them lose their concentration, athletic people must wear weights to make them less agile, and beautiful people must wear masks to hide their perfect features. The main character, Harrison Bergeron, is affected by far more handicaps than most citizens. His handicaps include extremely heavy weights, blacked out teeth, a red nose, and goggles to make him more average. Unlike all of the other citizens, Harrison is completely against these handicaps. Because Harrison disagrees with this extreme tactic, the government imprisons him in order to keep him from causing a rebellion. Everyone, except for Harrison,is convinced that this is for the better of the society or is afraid of the consequences of rebellion and continues to wear their handicaps. George, Harrison’s father, makes the point that if he lessens or removes his handicaps that everyone else will, which would place them back into the “Dark Ages” or life as we know it in 2017. By stating, “If I tried to get away with it,’ said George, ‘then other people’d get away with it and pretty soon we’d be right back to the dark ages again, with everybody competing against everybody else”, George highlights the personal sacrifices that each citizen takes and the importance of those sacrifices (Vonnegut Page 3). Harrison challenges this point through removing his handicaps on live television, and in turn gets shot by the Handicapper General who keeps the citizens in check. Although these handicaps make their owners less unique, the society has accepted this hardship in order to instill equality and “improve” their