Imagine living in a square world with a bunch of squares, everyone exactly the same. Well in the story "Harrison Bergeron", that's how life is. How boring?! Every human on the face of the earth is exactly equal except for the government. The government rules the world with an equality overload. The satire of this story exposes and exaggerates this future fiction. The story revolves around the government, which acts as a king to the world, changing each "dangerous" thing in a human. That's the whole irony of the story.
The beginning of the story starts out at George and Hazel Bergeron's home. Their son, Harrison, is taken away by the H-G men. The Bergerons are saddened but because of their mental handicaps that the government has put on the world, after a few minutes of watching television, they can't remember why. Here the reader is introduced to the two characters and discovers just how plain the world is. "Nobody was smarter than everybody else. Nobody was better looking than everybody else. Nobody was stronger and quicker than everybody else" (201). In this story it's a threat to the government to be different or to stand out at all. It's ironic how each human was born as an individual and with it's own mind and body but they need to be made equal by a controlling government. It's ridiculous that a man born with a brilliant mind is handicapped and punished when thoughts and emotions appear. "A buzzer sounded in George's head. His thoughts fled .
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in panic, like bandits from a burglar alarm" (202). In our world today, it would be an advantage to practice your skills and talents and when you achieve, you"re congratulated. It's opposite for George, "Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains" (201). .
Watching TV is just about the only safe place for a mind to be in this story because the government is inserting information into your brain.
