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Harrison Bergeron · . by Kurt Vonnegut ( 1 96 1)

T HE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal

before God and the law, They were equal every which way. Nol!:lody was smarter

than anybody else, Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was

stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211 th, 212th,

and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents

of the United StQtes Handicapper General. /

Some things about IMng still weren't quite right, though. April, for instance, still drove

people craz:y by not being springtime, And it was in that clammy month that the H-G

men took George and Hazel Bergeron's fourteen-year-old son, Harrison, away.

It was tragic, oll right, but George and Hazel couldn't think about it very hard. Hazel hod a ·

perfectly average intelligence, wtiich meant she couldn't .think about anything except in short

bursts. And George, while his intelligence was woy above normal. hod a little mental handicap

radio in his ear. He was required by law to w~ar 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 from taking unfair advantage of their brains.

I

George and Hazel were watching television. there were tears on Hazel's cheeks, but-she'd

forgotten for the moment what 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 HazE:_I.

"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 ~nybody else would have been, anyvvay. They were burdened with sashweights

a_nd 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 maybe dancers shouldn't be handicapped. But he didn't get very far with it

before another noise in his ear radio scattered his thoughts.

George winced. So did two out of the eight ballerinas.

' Hazel saw him wince. Hoving no mental handicap h·erself she had to ask George what the latest sound-hod been.

"Sounded like somebody hitting a _milk bottle with a ball pe~n hammer," said George.

"I'd think it would be real interesting. hearing all the different sounds " ·d H . "All the things they think up." · · soi azel, a rittle envious.

"Um," said George.

"Only, if I was Handicapper General. you ~ow what I would do?" said Hazel. Hazel. as a matter

of fact. bore a strong resemblanc~ to the Handicapper General. a woman named Diana Moon

Glampers. "If I was Diana Moon Glampers," said Hazel. "I'd have chimes-0nSUnday-just

chimes. Kind of in honor of reHgion."

"I could think. if it was just chimes," said George.

"We~I- maybe make 'em real loud," said Hazel. "l think I'd make a good Handicapper

General."

"Good as anybody else," said George. I ,

"Who knows better'n 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-gul"'\ solute in his head stopped that.

"Boy!" said Hazel, "that was a doozy, wasn't it?"

It was such a doozy that George was w~ite and trembling and tears stood on the rims of his red

eyes. Two of the eight ballerinas had collapsed to .the studio floor. were holding their 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 the pillows, honeybunch." She was referring to the forty-seven

pounds of birdshot in canv_as bog, which was padlocked around George's neck. ''Go on and

rest the bag for a little while," she said. "I don't core if you're not equal to me for a while."

George weighed the bog with 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 toke out a few of them lead bolls. Just -a

few."

"_Two years in prison and two thousand dollars fine for every ball I took out," said George. "I don't coll thot a bargain."

so "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 OVvay with it and pretty _

soon we'd be right bock to the dark ages again, with everybody competing againsf everybody

else. You wouldn't like that, would you?"

"I'd hate it," 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 answer 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·.

The television program was suddenly interrupted for a news bulletin. It wasn't clear at first as to

what the bulletin was about, since the announcer, like all announcers, had a serious speech

impediment. Fpr about half a minute, and in a state of high excitement, the announcer tried to

soy, "Ladies and gentlemen - "

He finally gave up, handed the bulletin to a ballerina to 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 wa~ hideous. And it was easy to see that

she was the strongest and most graceful of all the dancers, for her handicap bags were as big

as those worn by two-hundred-pound men.

51 And shE: had to apologize at once for her voice. which was a very unfair voice for a w-0man to

use. Her voice was a warm, luminous, timeless melody. "Excuse me - "she said, -and she began

again. making her voice absolutely uncompetitive ..

"Harrison Bergeron, age fourteen~" she said in a grackle squawk, "has just escaped fr-0m jail.

where he was held on suspicion of plotting to overthrow the government. He is a genius and an

athlete. is under-handicapped, and should be regarded as exfremelyoongerous."

A poHce photograph of Harrison Bergeron was flashed on the screen - upside down. then

sideways, upside down again. then right side up. The picture showed th~ full length of Harrison

against a background C'71librated in feet and inches. He was exactly seven feet tall.

The, rest of Harrison's appearance was Halloween and hardware. Nobody had ever.worn

heavier handicaps. He had 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 cartjed three hundred pounds.

And to offset his good looks, the H-G men required that he wear at all times a red rubber ball f

a nose, keep his eyebrows shaved off, dnd cover his even white teeth with black caps ot

snaggle-tooth random.

"If you see this boy," said the ballerina. "do not- I repeat, do not-try to reason with him."

There was the shriek of a door being torn from its hinges.

Screams and barking cries of consternation came from the television set. The photograph of

Harrison Bergeron on the screen jumped again and again, as though dancing to the tune of an earthquake. ·

George Bergeron correct!~ identified the earthquake, and well he might have - for many was

the time his own home had danced to the same crashing tune. "My God-" said George, "that mus.t be Harrison!"

SJ The reafization was blasted'from his mind instantly by the sound of an automobile collision in his

head.

When George could open his eyes again, the photograph of Harrison was gone. A living.

breathing Harrison filled the screen.

Clonking, clownish, and huge, Harrison stood in the center of the studio. The knob of the

uprooted studio door was still in "his hand. Ballerin<?s, 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 stamped his foot and the studio shook. .. .

" Even as I stand-here...:." h~ bellowed. "crippled, hobbled, sickened-I om 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 like wet tissue paper. tore straps guaranteed to

support five thousand pounds.

· Harrison's strop-iron handicaps crashed to the floor.

Harrison thrust his thumbs under 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 flung away his rubber-ball nose, revealed a man that would have awed Thor, the god of

thunder.

"I shall now select my Empress!" he said, looking down on the cowering people. "Let the fi~t

woman who dares rise to her feet claim her mate and her throne!"

A moment passed, £ind then a ballerino arose, swaying like a willow.

Harrison plucked the mental handicap from her ear, snapped off her physical handicaps with

marvelous delicacy. Last of all, he removed her m?sk.

She was blindingly beautiful.

53 "Now" said Harrison, taking her hand, "shalt we show the people the meaning-of the word

dance? Music!" he commanded.

Tt:te musicians scrambled back into their chairs, 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 snatched two musicia

from their chairs, waved them like batons as he song the music as he wanted it-ployed. He

slammed them back into their chairs.

The music began again and was much improved.

Harrison and his Empress merely listened to the music for a while-listened gravely, as though

· synchronizing their heartbeats with it. .

They shifted their weights to their toes.

Harrison placed his big hands on the girl's tiny waist, letting her sense ttie weightlessness that

would soon be hers.

And-then, in on 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 moti

well.

They reeled, whirled. swiveled. flounced, capered. gamboled. and spun.

They leaped like deer on the moon.

The studio ceiling was thirty feet high, but each leap brought the dancers nearer to it. It

became their obvious intention to kiss the ceiling.

They kissed if.

And then. neutralizing gravity with love and pure will, they remained suspended in air inches

below the ceiling, and the·y kissed each other for a long. long time.

5'+ It was then that Diana Moon Glampers, the Handicopper General, ca.me into the studio with a

double-barreled ten-90uge shotgun. She fired twice, and the Emperor and the Empre~s were

dead before they hit the floor.

Diano Moon Glampers loaded the gun again. She aimed it at the musicians and told them they

had ten seconds to get their handicaps back on.

It was then that the Berger_ons' 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 beer. . t,

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 ldndof mixed up in my mind," sdd Hazel.

"Forget sad things," said George.

"I always do," said Hazel.

"That's my girl," so.id George. He winced. There was the-sound of a riveting 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."

Got O

problem? Just pick up the phone. It ~olved them oll-and all the same way!