“Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. essay

The tendencies of postindustrial society were already obvious in after war period in American society. After economical boost in 1940’s and continuing economical growth, the American nation turned into a nation of consumerism. A nation, which had the strongest internal people’s potential (due to universal prosperity) and great military power, nevertheless was afraid of leftist ideas and danger of communism spread. Understanding that communism with it’s alien ideology to Christian and American virtues and values would completely fail to spread, the government started a “witch hunt” on communists and initiated witch trials in 1950’s. This period is known as senator McCarthy’s era, era of total government domination and control of social life: mass media, culture, cinema and science. Since that time, it became obvious that justifying noble aim of protecting democratic values and preserving national security, government can interfere into social and private life of its citizens only to insure its control and positions in American society. Moreover, it often happens that such overprotection hides financial interests and ambitions of certain corporations. The absurd outcomes of such practices are brightly depicted in the short story of Kurt Voneggut “Harrison Bergeron”.

Kurt Voneggut shows how the society looks when it works blindly on ideals of democracy and equality. It’s a society of zombies, society of people who do not differ from each other and who are persecuted for being smarter or being more beautiful than others, as such practices violate Constitution amendments:

“They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.” (from Harrison Bergeron, 1961)

Today, American society already faces some of the issues derived from constitution amendments, when unskilled employees may dispute their discharge because of “different kind of discrimination from the side of their bosses”. From the other side the supervisory activity of American administration and state security measures continue violating fundamental freedoms and liberties, often even administration can not present arguments in favor of such measures.

In Voneggut’s American society, all those who were smarter than majority had to wear special headphones in order to be reminded that it’s dangerous to reason individually and all their mental activity was “normalized” every 20 seconds. The only thing people could do for entertaining is to enjoy products of mass culture: the ballet watched on TV was “average” and simple. It’s an allegory on products of today’s American popular culture: pop music, soap operas and talk shows. USA mass media promotes consumerism as the priority of the New Capitalism[1] and the new culture of consuming, and thus maintains control of the buying public. It has become the hobby not to go to a theater, read a book or enjoy some other spiritual enrichment, but rather go to a mall or a fast food restaurant.  Many households, especially poor, after some time of trying to be like everyone else and following the consumer trends of owning the latest models of cellular phones or buying weight-loss pills for their pets (as from the TV-screens they are convinced to do so) they find themselves heavily indebted and the biggest trouble is that borrowing more and more to increase the consumption is encouraged strongly by corporations and even the government, which justifies this by the fact that increasing consumption will lead to rises in production and thus the overall economic activities. From this point the life of Bergeron family in the story depicts the life of an average American family, a typical family of consumerism epoch. The model of television and mass media shown in the story explains the tragedy of society her everyone is equal: people are deprived of a chance to reason individually as the state does this “work” and gives them finished products.

The tragedy of Harrison Bergeron only witnesses about a tragedy of such type of society as it’s not able to resist the system. Harrison Bergeron, a genius young man tried to resist the system. He was intelligent, had a brilliant mind, titanic will power and outstanding physical power. He escaped from government jail, released from heavy handicaps and tried to overthrow system by means of appeal on TV. He nearly achieved his goal, but was shot by Handicapper General. This moment also depicts the attitude of American society to heroes and stars: people are ready to follow them when they are in the fame of glory, when they are on TV; but once they fail they are automatically erased from mind and are forgotten. It’s brightly demonstrated on the example of Harrison’s parents who even didn’t react on the death of their only son:

“ You been crying?” he said to Hazel.

“Yup,” she said,

“What about?” he said.

“I forget,” she said. “Something real sad on television.” (from Harrison Bergeron, 1961)

Making a conclusion I would like to say that a number of Voneggut’s predicts were true. Today the spread of mass culture in America is a real danger to individuality and lose of identity, which breaks the main principle of democracy an humanism: the protection of individual’s rights. Such voluntarily practices lead to the destruction of society from the inside and crash of its ideals.