Equal and Perfect Society in The Harrison Bergeron Story

There are many lessons that can be learned from the Harrison Bergeron story. The biggest lesson by far is that society can not be held to an equal standard. No matter what you do, life will take its course and everyone will be different in some form or another. As seen in this story everyone was different, but the government tried to make them all equal with “handicaps”. 

For instance, in the story, George’s brain functions higher than that of his wife so he had an earpiece that interrupted his thinking every 20 seconds to make it equal. He also had to wear bags full of bird shot to weigh him down and take away his strength. Now as we see in the story his son Harrison was an absolute giant of a man standing nearly seven feet tall. His handicaps were enormous pieces of scrap metal dangling from him like stars in the sky. He also had extremely good vision to account for that the government made a set of spectacles that took his vision to that of a blur. He was seen as a threat to everyone around him, especially by the government. 

As seen in the story he thought he was meant to be king and as described in the story he ripped his handicaps off like there were little pieces of paper and smashed the spectacles. He was extraordinarily strong and he said that a king must have a queen so he asked one of the nearby ballerinas to be his queen. As one of the ballerinas stepped forward he stripped her of all her handicaps she was described as very beautiful and strong step. As Harrison was describing to the crowd and the television crews he was now their leader and he was going to free every one of there handicaps and make the world the way it was meant to be. Somewhere around this time, the handicapper general walked into the room she was the person in the government that was in charge of deciding what people need which handicaps and how many they needed. She walked into the room carrying a double-barreled ten-gauge shotgun. 

As Harrison turned around and saw her she shot and his enormous body came trembling to the ground she then shot the ballerina dead as well. Next she threatened that the ballerinas and the band members to put the mask and any of their handicaps that they had taken off back on or they'd be the next to hit the ground. Next, she had every source of tv shut down to raise as little questions as possible. As seen in this story having everything equal is not the answer to a perfect society. Nature will always take its course and change things and people will rise against things just like Harrison did. No matter what we try or how much we try things will always be different I will never be the same as anyone else no matter what we try.