Harrison Bergeron

THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody 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 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.

Some things about living still weren’t quite right, though. April, for instance, still drove people crazy 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.

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I recently stumbled across this remarkable short story by Kurt Vonnegut online… all I can say is, if you (also) tend to side with underdogs and/or if you’ve ever pondered the ultimate implications of egalitarianism, I think you’ll enjoy his compellingly dystopian story (written in 1961) here. 

Photo by Jill Krementz (Kurt’s wife)