Abstract
This paper eyes deciphering multidimensional elements that take part in shaping Kurt Vonnegut’s Harrison Bergeron countenances. It explores how the author could draw a detailed painting of his reality and the experiences he went through by shedding light on the literary, cultural, and psychosocial approaches he relied on. Tellingly, the whole process of analysis in this paper is based on the thesis that any literary work is not only the producer of criticism but is also the product of criticism.
Keywords: Textual analysis, Harrison Bergeron, psychosocial aspects in literary work, equality, power centralisation, dystopia.
Introduction
Harrison Bergeron is a short story written in 1961 by the famous second-half of twentieth-century novelist Kurt Vonnegut as an elucidated reaction to his complicated, tough reality. Analysing each point of this short story is like standing on a portal that holds all impulses that had a hand in generating his work the way it was presented to us. Nevertheless, before digging into the story, it is noteworthy that his biography holds a significant share in the construction of his story.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was born on November 11, 1922, in Indianapolis, Indiana, and raised in a family that suffered the woos of the economic depression. His father, Kurt Sr., a once-prominent architect, had his business falling apart, which caused a significant decline in the family’s material stability. These early hardships did not go mentally unfelt by Vonnegut; they rather catalysed a salient part of the pessimistic tone of his later works.
In his life as a teenager, Vonnegut gained interest in journalism, writing for his high school and university newspapers. Constructing the turning point in his life, World War II would profoundly influence Kurt’s life. He was not influenced remotely as most people in the USA were but was involved directly and was even Captured as a soldier during the Battle of the Bulge. Witnessing the firebombing of Dresden, he later was inspired to write his renowned novel ‘’Slaughterhouse-Five’’. World War II’s end was yet to put an end to his chain of tragedies, as his mother's suicide deeply affected his vision and writing style, intertwining dark humour with social critique.
With war coming to an end and the blur fading in his life, no sooner than Vonnegut struggling to finance his family, he eventually found success with his debut novel “Player Piano” and the subsequent release of “Slaughterhouse-Five,” which cemented his place among America’s leading postwar authors. Most of his works sought to paint a broad picture of human folly, social injustice, and the fragility of life. This was based on his special concoction of satire and science fiction.
Kurt’s short story under analysis was no less interesting than his proper biography, and probably when finalising this paper’s reading, their relation would seem echoic. The short story takes place in 2081, considering a society wherein completely perfect equality has been established. To make sure this is happening, any people with special abilities have been burdened, being rendered to the level of all public in terms of physique, intelligence, or beauty. This story will take a new direction with a very intelligent 14-year-old boy revolutionising against the system by taking off his handicappers. The boy’s rebellion, however, would be nothing but a failure, as he was shot dead at the end by the General Handicapper.
This paper is based on a perception that a story or a novel does not only prompt critique but is also built on one as well. There is this circle that is to be drawn on one’s mind before or during reading a story. It must consist of two elements: novel and critique; one leads to the other in a never-ending causal relationship.
Methodology
This paper uses the method of textual analysis to decipher all the components lying within this short story. This method offers, through intense and close reading and literary device inspection, a tangible and objective critique and deconstruction of novels and short stories (Barry, 2009). The method also revolutionises the way we envision short stories, measuring that compactness and shift of tone. It also engages the reader with each literary work’s form and function to suggest facades of how the author toys with narrative elements to generate specific themes.
Analysis and Discussion
Reading Harrison and Bergeron leaves one in fascination with decoding its interlinked patterns and well-established fabric. As devoted before, when exposing Kurt’s biography, there is no doubt that the author would allocate a big portion of his short story, if not all, to reflect on what he has been through. The American novelist has used a wide variety of literary, syntactic, semantic, semiotic, morphologic, psychological, and sociological devices to illustrate his intentions as he deemed fit.
Characterisation
Tellingly, Harrison Bergeron is the catchiest character in this short story. He is a fourteen-year-old boy whose fate is to rebel against the government and be shot dead. Harrison was an extremely intelligent, strong, handsome boy whose abilities were lowered to normal by the government’s mandatory handicaps, which, apparently, were not successful enough to stop him from realising that there was a mistake with the whole system. This leads us to think of a possible reason for which the author has opted for the name ‘Harrison’’. The name was held by the United States’ 9th President, William Henry Harrison, who was known for his short-lived presidency. That is, indeed, not far from Harrison Bergeron’s short term as an Emperor and revolutionary in the short story. On the other hand, the character’s last name is a very common normal name that holds no aristocratic roots. Potentially, this blending was intended to show Harrison’s high potential in contract with the government that burdens him with handicaps as a means of restriction.
George Bergeron is another pillar of the short story. He is Harrison’s father, who is also very intelligent and is forced to lower his capabilities through a mental handicap on his head. The name herein, ‘George’, represents a public normal American one, and it was probably utilised by the author to show how ‘George’ by his intelligence is nuanced, yet the handicaps and his adherence to the laws render him into a very typical man.
A salient puzzle in the story is also embodied in Hazel Bergeron, who is Harrison’s mother. She was deployed to represent the complacent masses with her normal capabilities and her tendency to easily forget everything. The author has used her as George’s wife to show the relationship between the masses and the educated elite, which was shown to be blurry and filled with misunderstandings, as it was particularly during World War II and the Cold War.
On the other hand, Diana Moon Glampers was the personification of bureaucracy as the Handicapper General, who was scripted as the top of the government. She was the one ensuring that everybody was completely equal by ensuring the maintenance of their handicaps. The juxtaposition of her name poses a paradox in the short story. Diana is the name of the Roman goddess of nature, hunting, and the moon, which came as her middle name in the story. In contrast, her last name ‘Glampers’ is satire and was designed possibly to echo how Kurt mocks certain forms of authoritarian governmental entities.
Themes
The short story ‘Harrison Bergeron’ by Kurt exposes several themes, most of which are concerned with power and its distribution. The author has sought seriously to attach a couple of ideas to his readers, criticising the power centralisation and how severe equality as a solution for oppression turns into bigger and more excessive oppression. Indeed, any reader of this short story may observe the following themes.
Total Equality as a Danger
What happens when the idea of equality is taken to the extreme is the salient theme of Harrison Bergeron. The government in this story enforces absolute equality, handicapping individuals who possess outstanding intelligence, beauty, or physique. Vonnegut critiques the notion of equality being achieved through suppression instead of uplifting people. This forced equality does not result in fairness but in mediocrity, stagnation, and the extermination of individuality and creativity. The main idea is that when everyone is given the same fingerprint forcefully, society suffers as talents, ambitions, and personal freedoms are eroded.
Hegemony
Hegemony, as coined by Gramsci, is an exercise of power characterised by the combination of force and consent (Gramsci, 1971). Vonnegut, in this concern, examines how government power can be abused in the name of equality, which has to do with the component of consent in ‘hegemony.’ The government, through the Handicapper General (Diana Moon Glampers), mandates rigid control over its citizens, as it dictates every regard of their lives to maintain this artificial equality. The totalitarian regime allocates fear, violence, and technology as a hand of iron to control its citizens. This control stifles personal freedom and creates a society that favours conformity to creativity.
Technology as a Means of Oppression
In Harrison Bergeron, technology is used as a tool for oppression. Mental handicap radios, which play havoc with thought or the weights that physically burden people, are symbols of how technological advancements can be used to control and limit human potential rather than to enhance it. Vonnegut warns of the neglecting of the potential of technology when in the hands of a repressive government.
Rebellion
The major event in this short story is Harrison breaking free from his handicaps and declaring himself an emperor. His short yet dramatic act of defiance catalyses the desire to break the chains of oppressive conformity. Nevertheless, this rebellion is swiftly crushed, symbolising the futility of individual resistance when compared to a Brobdingnagian system of control, reflecting a blurry view of the possibility of variation and movement in an authoritarian society.
Decoding the Underlying Messages
Vonnegut stresses in his short story that the notion of equality for all is oppression. Everything was summarised as a symbol in the author’s following sentence in the introductory paragraph, ‘’They were not only equal before God and law.’’. This sentence intends to send a message that the author defends the maximum equality between people, but in front of God and the law, meaning based on their deeds and their capabilities. Yet, he criticises that reinforced equality, which, if it was up to him, would not be classified as fairness in the first place. This is given that it does not, in fact, treat people on equal footing, but rather than educating them and raising the level of their capabilities and finding their secret ones, it works on hindering apparent outstanding capabilities for those who have got them ready.
Psychological and Sociological Approaches in Relation
Besides the cultural studies and literary approaches used in the short story to foster the author’s ideas, psychological and sociological perspectives seem to have their footprints as well. Kurt has consciously or unconsciously relied on some pillars to establish the rules of his stimulated society, such as conditioning, social influence, and crowd psychology. In trying to decode every aspect of his work, it is necessary to closely observe the psychosocial theories orbiting around.
Behaviourism
This approach belongs to Skinner, who points out that both positive and negative reinforcement play a central role in constructing people’s behaviour (Skinner, 1938). The approach is relevant to this short story, as the handicaps were used as negative reinforcement, conditioning people with superior abilities to act as everybody else. In this case, society enforces mediocrity through negatively coping with excellence.
Self-Actualisation Theory
Self-actualisation is a term coined by Abraham Maslow that tops his so-called hierarchy of needs, and it denotes one’s power to realise his probable full potential and gifts (Maslow, 1943). In the short story, Harrison seems to be the one realising his full potential through self-actualisation. And, just as elucidated by Maslow, this action has been aborted by society and, in particular, the totalitarian government topped by Diana.
Cognitive Dissonance Theory
Citizens in Kurt’s speculated society seem to be suffering from disharmony. This appears through the nuance between the imposed nature of the forced equality and the innate potential, the talents they possess. To reduce their discomfort, citizens like George justify the handicaps and say that they are necessary to underkeep balance in society. This very exact case is what was tackled by Leon Festinger while discussing the notion of cognitive dissonance, which he defines as the discomfort caused by the lack of harmony in one’s mentality (Festinger, 1957).
Critiques
Kurt Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron has sparked a wide variety of critiques for its satirical exploration of forced equality and its implications on individuality and freedom. The author may also be accused of criticising oppression for the promotion of another, especially for his stand with the Western model, which is far from perfect, just to wage war on the Eastern model, the Soviet socialist one in particular.
Exaggerated Dystopia and uncalled-for satire
Critiques have loomed on the landscape for the author’s portrayal of an exaggerated dystopian society where the government enforces equality by limiting individual strengths. Stanley Schatt (1976) argues that Vonnegut’s work critiques the overreach of governmental power and questions the cost of achieving societal equality through artificial means.
Philip Stevick (1983) notes that Vonnegut’s use of satire renders the concept of equality to absurd stages, highlighting the potential dangers of extreme egalitarianism. The story has been analysed for its dark humour and, after so, is believed to trivialise complex issues, mainly social justice and personal freedom.
Underestimation of Individual Roles
Charles B. Harris (1989) interprets Harrison Bergeron as an alert against the enchainment of individual talents and identities. He argues that Vonnegut underscores the importance of diversity, individuality, and the human spirit's resilience against oppressive systems that seek to enforce conformity.
Indeed, most critiques backed the goals drawn through writing by Harrison and Bergeron. The short story set a series of concepts and notions that must be applied throughout the world, like accepting differences and working on improving other individuals for the sake of equality rather than killing the improved ones.
Conclusion
Vonnegut has based his work on several pillars that helped construct a clear painting filled with elucidated messages. The author could successfully foster his detest of forced equality, which he envisions as an unfair element, depriving society of big talents that could move the cycle of history forward. The message seems to further appeal to developing our society by putting more effort into discovering hidden talents and even creating new ones rather than depriving people of unveiled qualities from their innate gifts. It is easy to handicap people’s special capabilities, yet it is never feasible, but the harder feasible action is constructing equality through hard work and searching for the unveiled gifts and talents that do differ from one person to another.
The author’s biography was seemingly the driving factor behind the way he managed and networked his ideas throughout the short story. The Cold War has opened the door for two choices: totalitarian equality or libertarian inequality. The first choice has been characterised by various stereotypes in the West, driving authors like Kurt Vonnegut and George Orwell to consider Soviet Socialism as an enforced unfair equality. Another aspect that conditioned the tone in the analysed short story is the author’s participation in World War II and his mother’s death. The impact of those two events was clear the most in Kurt’s pessimistic view about the impossibility of individuals leading change alone, which was fostered through Harrison’s instant death after naming himself an emperor.
Evidently, under the light of my previous analysis, the story’s countenances may seem brighter. The underlined messages about equality and their relation to the author’s biography move the story from a mere pre-sleep story into a couple of textual signs used to tackle various social issues in the 20th century, most of which are still prevalent today. Additionally, the story is proven through this analysis to be completely related to reality. This was by the concise link between social life highlighted in the story and other psychosociological theories deciphering the way society functions.
References
Barry, P. (2009). Beginning theory: An introduction to literary and cultural theory (3rd ed.). Manchester University Press.
Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford University Press.
Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the prison notebooks. International Publishers.
Harris, C. B. (1989). Kurt Vonnegut, Harrison Bergeron, and the limits of the human imagination. Dalkey Archive Press.
Maslow, A. H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50(4), 370-396.
Schatt, S. (1976). Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Boston: Twayne Publishers.
Skinner, B. F. (1938). The behavior of organisms: An experimental analysis. Appleton-Century.
Stevick, P. (1983). Kurt Vonnegut and satire in the twentieth century. University of Illinois Press.
