Research Report: "Uniformity and Deformity in "Harrison Bergeron""

By Diane Phan, Harrison Bergeron Team

Abstract

An essay that examines the representation of equality in Kurt Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron,” Marik Vit’s essay, “Uniformity and Deformity in “Harrison Bergeron”” argues that making everyone equal is akin to making everyone become the same. In addition, he elaborates that it is the incompetent government that handicaps everyone in an attempt to maintain power.

Description

“Uniformity and Deformity in “Harrison Bergeron”” is an analytical essay that provides additional insight into the reasoning and psychology behind why an equal society looks the way it does when depicted in “Harrison Bergeron.” The essay discusses how the quality in the story isn’t really an attempt at making everyone equal, but making everyone the same. He argues that this kind of equality strips away any sense of individuality, and that in and of itself leads to “the absolute deformity of humanness.” The very concept of humanness relies heavily on the idea that each person is an individual, unique in their own way, and it is those differences among individuals that define the very essence of humanness. In making everyone equal in every way, people essential lose their humanness. He also proposes that an equal society may be imposed when the government falls into the hands of those that are to incompetent to govern the country, and in that case, those people in power are forced to find a way to protect their power and position. In “Harrison Bergeron,” the government implements handicaps on those who were considered above-average. In doing so, these handicaps bring those that might be considered a threat to the authority of the government down to a below-average level, thus eliminating any threats to the government. Vit also parallels the situation in “Harrison Bergeron” to modern communist governments that discourage original thoughts and personal opinions. In general, he stresses that forced equality allows for people to be more easily manipulated.

Commentary

When reading “Harrison Bergeron,” the theme of an equal society is readily apparent, but the article raises the idea that by every aspect of society being equal, everything is essentially the same. In our minds, we saw the setting and environment as being a bit barren, perhaps industrial and bleak, but when reflecting on the idea of sameness, we altered our views a bit to show that everything really was as equal as it could get. In the world of “Harrison Bergeron,” houses look like tract homes, each of which are the same style and color, with the same garden out front. We also saw everyone wearing the same set of clothes and driving the same cars. In order to characterize this sameness, we got the idea of photojournalist’s collection and archive of pictures throughout the years leading towards equality. In his photo sets, pictures of a city start out the way we think of them now, but as time progresses, Buildings, people and objects gradually become more similar. 

It was our initial idea to make a pseudo-documentary that presented the history and evolution of an equal society, but our thoughts were that equality was promoted and sought after because in the future, they would have already settled race, gender, religion, and sexual orientation equality issues and have seen the positive effects, so politicians continued to champion equality, but it just got out of control. The article provides a different angle on the possible reasoning behind why equality was wanted. When considering that forced equality was potentially because of an unfit government wanting to maintain its power, it challenges our previous idea on the motivation and angle behind the documentary. In considering this aspect, we thought of an idea to show the government suffering from poor public ratings, and then in an attempt to raise those ratings and simultaneously silence those against the government, they proposed an aggressive campaign towards an idealized equality, which eventually evolves into the conditions portrayed in “Harrison Bergeron.”

One problem that the essay reveals is that many of the ideas and themes that we are trying to emphasize are too complex and abstract to be represented by a photograph or a blog post. Vit’s idea of “the absolute deformity of humanness” is not easily translatable into the pseudo-documentary, a set of pictures or encapsulated on a website. In order to properly document the concepts in the mediums that we have chosen, we have to be very precise and nuanced with our language. In addition, with any visual images or video clips, there needs to be a distinct implicit meaning that comes forth from the collection of multimedia items that we cobble together. The article really made us analyze what themes we wanted to put forth, the motivations and reasoning behind why equality was enforced, and the details and subtleties behind translating an abstract thought into a visual representation.

Resources for Future Study

Hattenhauer, Darryl. “The Politics of Kurt Vonnegut’s ‘Harrison Bergeron.’” Studies in

Short Fiction 35, no. 4 (fall 1998): 387-92.

Stuckey, Lexi.  “Teaching Conformity in Kurt Vonnegut's ‘Harrison Bergeron.’” Eureka

Studies in Teaching Short Fiction 7.1 (Fall 2006): 85-90.

Vit, Marik. “Uniformity and Deformity in “Harrison Bergeron.”” Article Alley. 09 Feb.

2009 <http://www.articlealley.com/article_78132_22.html>