HARRISON BERGERON
by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only
equal befo re God and the law. They were equal every which
way. Nobody was smarter than any body else. Nobody was better looking
than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or q uicker than anybody
else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213 th
Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of
agents of t he United States Handicapper General. Some things about
living still weren't qui te right, though. April for instance, still
drove people crazy by not being spri ngtime. And it was in that
clammy month that the H-G men took George and Hazel B ergeron's
fourteenyear-old son, Harrison, away. It was tragic, all right, but
G eorge and Hazel couldn't think about it very hard. Hazel had a
perfectly average intelligence, which meant she couldn't think about
anything except in short bur sts. And George, while his intelligence
was way above normal, had a little menta l handicap radio in his
ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to
a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter
would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George f rom
taking unfair advantage of their brains. George and Hazel were
watching tele vision. There were tears on Hazel's cheeks, but she'd
forgotten for the moment w hat they were about. On the television
screen were ballerinas. A buzzer sounded in George's head. His
thoughts fled in panic, like bandits from a burglar alarm .
"That was a real pretty dance, that dance they just did," said Hazel.
"Huh" said George.
"That dance-it was nice," said Hazel.
"Yup," said George. He tried to think a little about the ballerinas.
They weren 't really very good-no better than anybody else would have
been, anyway. They we re burdened with sashweights and bags of
birdshot, and their faces were masked, so that no one, seeing a free
and graceful gesture or a pretty face, would feel like something the
cat drug in. George was toying with the vague notion that may be
dancers shouldn't be handicapped. But he didn't get very far with it
before a nother noise in his ear radio scattered his thoughts. George
winced. So did two out of the eight ballerinas. Hazel saw him wince.
Having no mental handicap her self, she had to ask George what the
latest sound had been.
"Sounded like somebody hitting a milk bottle with a ball peen
hammer," said Geor ge.
"I'd think it would be real interesting, hearing all the different
sounds," said Hazel a little envious.
"All the things they think up."
"Um," said George.
"Only, if I was Handicapper General, you know what I would do?" said
Hazel. Haze l, as a matter of fact, bore a strong resemblance to the
Handicapper General, a woman named Diana Moon Glampers.
"If I was Diana Moon Glampers," said Hazel, "I'd have chimes on
Sunday-just chim es. Kind of in honor of religion."
"I could think, if it was just chimes," said George.
"Well-maybe make 'em real loud," said Hazel.
"I think I'd make a good Handicapper General."
"Good as anybody else," said George.
"Who knows better then I do what normal is?" said Hazel.
"Right," said George. He began to think glimmeringly about his
abnormal son who was now in jail, about Harrison, but a
twenty-one-gun salute in his head stopped that. "Boy!" said Hazel,
"that was a doozy, wasn't it?" It was such a doozy tha t George was
white and trembling, and tears stood on the rims of his red eyes. T
wo of of the eight ballerinas had collapsed to the studio floor, were
holding th eir temples.
"All of a sudden you look so tired," said Hazel.
"Why don't you stretch out on the sofa, so's you can rest your
handicap bag on t he pillows, honeybunch." She was referring to the
forty-seven pounds of birdshot in a canvas bag, which was padlocked
around George's neck.
"Go on and rest the bag for a little while," she said.
"I don't care if you're not equal to me for a while." George weighed
the bag wit h his hands.
"I don't mind it," he said.
"I don't notice it any more. It's just a part of me."
"You been so tired lately-kind of wore out," said Hazel.
"If there was just some way we could make a little hole in the bottom
of the bag , and just take out a few of them lead balls. Just a few."
"Two years in prison and two thousand dollars fine for every ball I
took out," s aid George. "I don't call that a bargain."
"If you could just take a few out when you came home from work," said
Hazel.
"I mean-you don't compete with anybody around here. You just set
around."
"If I tried to get away with it," said George, "then other people'd
get away wit h it-and pretty soon we'd be right back to the dark ages
again, with everybody c ompeting against everybody else. You wouldn't
like that, would you?" "I'd hate i t," said Hazel.
"There you are," said George. The minute people start cheating on
laws, what do you think happens to society?" If Hazel hadn't been
able to come up with an answ er to this question, George couldn't
have supplied one. A siren was going off in his head. "Reckon it'd
fall all apart," said Hazel.
"What would?" said George blankly.
"Society," said Hazel uncertainly.
"Wasn't that what you just said?
"Who knows?" said George. 2 The television program was suddenly
interrupted for a news bulletin. It wasn't clear at first as to what
the bulletin was about, sin ce the announcer, like all announcers,
had a serious speech impediment. For abou t half a minute, and in a
state of high excitement, the announcer tried to say, "Ladies and
Gentlemen." He finally gave up, handed the bulletin to a ballerina t
o read.
"That's all right-" Hazel said of the announcer, "he tried. That's
the big thing . He tried to do the best he could with what God gave
him. He should get a nice raise for trying so hard."
"Ladies and Gentlemen," said the ballerina, reading the bulletin. She
must have been extraordinarily beautiful, because the mask she wore
was hideous. And it wa s easy to see that she was the strongest and
most graceful of all the dancers, f or her handicap bags were as big
as those worn by two-hundred pound men. And she had to apologize at
once for her voice, which was a very unfair voice for a wom an to
use. Her voice was a warm, luminous, timeless melody.
"Excuse me-" she said, and she began again, making her voice
absolutely uncompet itive.
"Harrison Bergeron, age fourteen," she said in a grackle squawk, "has
just escap ed from jail, where he was held on suspicion of plotting
to overthrow the govern ment. He is a genius and an athlete, is
under-handicapped, and should be regarde d as extremely dangerous." A
police photograph of Harrison Bergeron was flashed on the
screen-upside down, then sideways, upside down again, then right side
up. The picture showed the full length of Harrison against a
background calibrated in feet and inches. He was exactly seven feet
tall. The rest of Harrison's appea rance was Halloween and hardware.
Nobody had ever born heavier handicaps. He ha d outgrown hindrances
faster than the H-G men could think them up. Instead of a little ear
radio for a mental handicap, he wore a tremendous pair of earphones,
and spectacles with thick wavy lenses. The spectacles were intended
to make him not only half blind, but to give him whanging headaches
besides. Scrap metal was hung all over him. Ordinarily, there was a
certain symmetry, a military neatness to the handicaps issued to
strong people, but Harrison looked like a walking junkyard. In the
race of life, Harrison carried three hundred po unds. And to offset
his good looks, the H-G men required that he wear at all tim es a red
rubber ball for a nose, keep his eyebrows shaved off, and cover his
eve n white teeth with black caps at snaggle-tooth random.
"If you see this boy," said the ballerina, "do not - I repeat, do not
- try to r eason with him." There was the shriek of a door being torn
from its hinges. Scre ams and barking cries of consternation came
from the television set. The photogr aph of Harrison Bergeron on the
screen jumped again and again, as though dancing to the tune of an
earthquake. George Bergeron correctly identified the earthqua ke, and
well he might have � 2This story is in the public domain. Free eBook
pro vided by
http://www.TheOrganizedUnschooler.com.
for many was the time his own home had danced to the same crashing
tune.
"My God-" said George, "that must be Harrison!" The realization was
blasted from his mind instantly by the sound of an automobile
collision in his head. When Ge orge could open his eyes again, the
photograph of Harrison was gone. A living, b reathing Harrison
filled the screen. Clanking, clownish, and huge, Harrison stoo d -
in the center of the studio. The knob of the uprooted studio door
was still in his hand. Ballerinas, technicians, musicians, and
announcers cowered on their knees before him, expecting to die.
"I am the Emperor!" cried Harrison.
"Do you hear? I am the Emperor! Everybody must do what I say at
once!" He stampe d his foot and the studio shook. "Even as I stand
here" he bellowed, "crippled, hobbled, sickened - I am a greater
ruler than any man who ever lived! Now watch me become what I can
become!" Harrison tore the straps of his handicap harness l ike wet
tissue paper, tore straps guaranteed to support five thousand
pounds. Ha rrison's scrap-iron handicaps crashed to the
floor. Harrison thrust his thumbs u nder the bar of the padlock that
secured his head harness. The bar snapped like celery. Harrison
smashed his headphones and spectacles against the wall. He flun g
away his rubber-ball nose, revealed a man that would have awed Thor,
the god o f thunder.
"I shall now select my Empress!" he said, looking down on the
cowering people.
"Let the first woman who dares rise to her feet claim her mate and
her throne!" A moment passed, and then a ballerina arose, swaying
like a willow. Harrison plu cked the mental handicap from her ear,
snapped off her physical handicaps with m arvelous delicacy. Last of
all he removed her mask. She was blindingly beautiful .
"Now-" said Harrison, taking her hand, "shall we show the people the
meaning of the word dance? Music!" he commanded. The musicians
scrambled back into their ch airs, and Harrison stripped them of
their handicaps, too.
"Play your best," he told them, "and I'll make you barons and dukes
and earls." The music began. It was normal at first-cheap, silly,
false. But Harrison snatch ed two musicians from their chairs, waved
them like batons as he sang the music as he wanted it played. He
slammed them back into their chairs. The music began again and was
much improved. Harrison and his Empress merely listened to the mus ic
for a while-listened gravely, as though synchronizing their
heartbeats with i t. They shifted their weights to their
toes. Harrison placed his big hands on th e girls tiny waist, letting
her sense the weightlessness that would soon be hers . And then, in
an explosion of joy and grace, into the air they sprang! Not only
were the laws of the land abandoned, but the law of gravity and the
laws of mot ion as well. They reeled, whirled, swiveled, flounced,
capered, gamboled, and s pun.
They leaped like deer on the moon. 3 The studio ceiling was thirty
feet high, bu t each leap brought the dancers nearer to it. It became
their obvious intention to kiss the ceiling. They kissed it. And
then, neutraling gravity with love and pure will, they remained
suspended in air inches below the ceiling, and they kis sed each
other for a long, long time. It was then that Diana Moon Glampers,
the Handicapper General, came into the studio with a double-barreled
ten-gauge shotg un. She fired twice, and the Emperor and the Empress
were dead before they hit t he floor. Diana Moon Glampers loaded the
gun again. She aimed it at the musicia ns and told them they had ten
seconds to get their handicaps back on. It was the n that the
Bergerons' television tube burned out. Hazel turned to comment about
the blackout to George. But George had gone out into the kitchen for
a can of be er. George came back in with the beer, paused while a
handicap signal shook him up. And then he sat down again.
"You been crying" he said to Hazel.
"Yup," she said.
"What about?" he said.
"I forget," she said.
"Something real sad on television."
"What was it?" he said.
"It's all kind of mixed up in my mind," said Hazel.
"Forget sad things," said George.
"I always do," said Hazel.
"That's my girl," said George. He winced. There was the sound of a
rivetting gun in his head.
"Gee - I could tell that one was a doozy," said Hazel. "You can say
that again," said George.
"Gee-" said Hazel, "I could tell that one was a doozy."
"Harrison Bergeron" is copyrighted by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., 1961.
3This story is in the public domain. Free eBook provided by
http://www.TheOrganizedUnschooler.com.
