Ross Schonberg
Ms. Gubanich
English
March 3, 2016
Social Stability
In the short story Harrison Bergeron, by Kurt Vonnegut, there are many themes that are shown very clearly throughout the passage. The three main themes of this passage are equality, social stability, and entertainment. Within Kurt's story, everyone and everything is equal, so there is social stability, and the government keeps this control by using waves of entertainment to distract the people. This story, and the themes it presents are very similar to the novel Brave New World, but the one theme that is the most obvious throughout both stories is social stability.
First, one way that these are similar is that in both societies, everyone is kept happy, or at least they are meant to stay happy. In Harrison Bergeron, the people are kept happy because they believe that everything is kept equal and that the are constantly watching entertainment. An example from H.B. is when George and Hazel are watching Ballerinas on the television and the dancing wasn’t even that good, but they were totally enthralled, but more like hypnotized. The parallels to this in B.N.W. are the feelies, which makes them entertained by feeling like they are doing something else, other than just sitting and it’s all fake. Another big way the people are kept happy are by having constant sex, which is a big distraction from questioning the way their society works, a couple of the slogans of the society is “everyone belongs to everyone” and “Community, stability, stability”. Lastly, the people in B.N.W. take a lot of pills called Soma, which is meant to keep people calm, this is somewhat similar to the ear transmitter, in H.B., that is put into the more intelligent peoples ear to keep them from thinking more.
Also, in both stories, another way that there is social stability kept in the world is that if there is someone who does not follow the normal social standards, they are to casted out of society, because the government feels that they pose a threat to society’s way of life. In Harrison Bergeron, when someone is too smart then they are sent to a prison, so that they can not tamper with society. Brave New world has a similar idea, and it’s when people who are not as smart live in a savage reservation, or if someone doesn’t follow the normal way of life, like how Bernard acts, they would either send him to another location, like Iceland, or make him go take a psych evaluation. So both cultures make it a priority to keep everything in control. Although, there is one contrast between the two societies. The difference is that in B.N.W. there are people who are smarter and are apart of a higher society, whereas in Harrison Bergeron everyone must stay at the same level of living standards.
In conclusion, both of these stories certainly use the dystopian novel traits, which is why they are so similar, but it works so well that they make people think about their own society. Keeping a social stability within these stories is imperative and it makes sense, otherwise they would have chaos and there would be no normal. In my opinion, the way they are written is so clever and displays so many underlying themes, which really makes me think, even in our society we try to keep social stability, obviously not the these extremes, but we certainly like it when everything in order.
