Kurt Vou..egut .Ir. 215214 Chapter 6 . Tile.....

Till it came to me one day there were women doing this with their lives, allover. There were women just waiting and waiting by mailboxes for one letter or an-other. I imagined me making this journey day after day and year after year, and myhair starting to get gray, and I thought, I was never made to go on like that. So Istopped meeting the mail. If there were women all through life waiting, andwomen busy and not waiting, I knew which I had to be. Even though there mightbe things the second kind of women have to pass up and never know about, it stillis better.

I was surprised when the mailman phoned the Peebleses' place in the eveningand asked for me. He said he missed me. He asked if I would like to go to Goderich,where some well-known movie was on, I forget now what. So I said yes, and I wentout with him for two years and he asked me to marry him, and we were engaged ayear more while I got my things together, and then we did marry. He always tells thechildren the story of how I went after him by sitting by the mailbox every day, andnaturally I laugh and let him, because I like for people to think'what pleases themand makes them happy.

Questions

1. What is your attitude toward Edie, the narrator-sympathy, condescension, disapproval,or something more complicated? Explain.

2. What aspects of Mrs. Peebles and her life does Edie admire or envy? What things aboutMrs. Peebles does she find off-putting?

3. Why does Edie dislike Loretta Bird so much?4. Reread the description of Alice Kelling in paragraph 94. What details does Edie notice

about her, and why are these qualities important to Edie?5. It is interesting that the story contains no description of Chris Watters's personal appear-

ance. Why not, do you think? What are the things about him that really matter to Edie?6. The twist at the end of the story may remind you of "The Gift of the Magi." Is there here,

as there is in O. Henry's tale, more to the conclusion than just a clever surprise?7. How would you state the theme of this story?Explain.

thy son. But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put it onhim; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet: And bring hither the fattedcalf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry: For this my son was dead, and is aliveagain; he was lost, and is found. And they began to be merry. Now his elder son wasin the field: and he came and drew nigh to the house, he heard music and dancing.And he called one of the servants, and asked what these things meant. And he saidunto him, Thy brother is come; and thy father hath killed the fatted calf, because hehath received him safe and sound. And he was angry, and would not go in: thereforecame his father out, and entreated him. And he answering said to his father, Lo,these many years do I serve thee, neither transgressed I at any time thy command-ment; and yet thou never gavest me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends:But as soon as this thy son was come, which hath devoured thy living with harlots,thou hast killed for him the fatted calf. And he said unto him, Son thou art ever withme, and all that I have is thine. It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad:for this thy brother wasdead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found.

Questions1. This story has traditionally been called "The Parable of the Prodigal Son." What does

prodigalmean?Whichofthe twobrothersisprodigal?2. What position does the younger son expect when he returns to his father's house? What

does the father give him?3. When the older brother seesthe celebration for his younger brother's return, he growsan-

gry. He makes a very reasonable set of complaints to his father. He has indeed been aloyal and moral son, but what virtue does the older brother lack?

4. Is the father fair to the elder son? Explain your answer.5. Theologians have discussed this parable's religious significance for two thousand years.

What, in your own words, is the human theme of the story?

Luke 15:11-32

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.Harrison Bergeron 1961

Kurt Vonnegut]r. (1922-2007) was born in Indianapolis. During the Depression his father,a well-to-do architect, had virtually no work, and the family lived in reduced circumstances.

Vonnegut attended Camell University, where he majored in chemistry and was also manag-ing editor of the daily student newspaper. In 1943 he enlisted in the U.S. Army. During theBattle of the Bulge he was captured by German troops and interned as a prisoner of war inDresden, where he survived the massive Allied firebombing, which killed tens of thousands of

people, mostly civilians. (The firebombingof Dresden became the central incident in Vonnegut' sbest-selling 1969 novel, Slaughterhouse-Five.) After the war, Vonnegut worked as areporter and later as a public relations man for General Electric in Schenectady, New York.He quit his job in 1951 to write full-time after publishingseveral science fiction stories in na-tional magazines. His first novel, Player Piano, appeared in 1952, followed by Sirens ofTitan (1959) and his first bestseller, Cat's Cradle (1963 )-all now considered classics of

literary science fiction. Among his many other books are Mother Night (1961), Jailbird(1979), and a book of biographicalessays, A Man Without a Country (2005). His shortfiction is collected in Welcome to the Monkey House (1968) and Bagombo Snuff Box(1999). Vonnegut is a singular figure in modem American fiction. An ingenious comicwriter, he combined the popular genre of science fiction with the literary tradition of darksatire-a combination splendidlyrealized in "Harrison Bergeron."

The Parable of the Prodigal Son (Authorized or Kiug .lames Version, 1611)

And he said, A certain man had two sons: And the younger of them said to hisfather, Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth to me. And he divided untothem his living. And not many days after the younger son gathered all together, andtook his journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous liv-ing. And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that land; and he be-gan to be in want. And he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country; and hesent him into his fields to feed swine. And he would fain have filled his belly with thehusks that the swine did eat: and no man gave unto him. And when he came to him-self, he said, How many hired servants of my father's have bread enough and to spare,and I perish with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him,Father I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, and am no more worthy to.becalled thy son; make me as one of thy hired servants. And he arose, and came to hisfather. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion,and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him. And the son said unto him, Father Ihave sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called

:.!1() t.,hapter () . 1heme

The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal be-fore God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter thananybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger orquicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213thAmendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of theUnited 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 monththat the H-G men took George and Hazel Bergeron's fourteen-year-old son, Harrison,away.

It was tragic, all right, but George and Hazel couldn't think about it very hard.Hazel had a perfectly average intelligence, which meant she couldn't think aboutanything except in short bursts. And George, while his intelligence was way abovenormal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wearit 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 fromtaking unfair advantage of their brains.

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 froma 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'treally very good-no better than anybody else would have been, anyway. They wereburdened with sashweights and bags of birdshot, and their faces were masked, so thatno one, seeing a free and graceful gesture or a pretty face, would feel like something thecat drug in. George was toying with the vague notion that maybe dancers shouldn't behandicapped. But he didn't get very far with it before another noise in his ear radioscattered his thoughts.

George winced. So did two out of the eight ballerinas.Hazel saw him wince. Having no mental handicap herself, she had to ask George

what the latest sound had been.

"Sounded like somebody hitting a milk bottle with a ball peen hammer," saidGeorge.

"I'd think it would be real interesting, hearing all the different sounds," saidHazel, a little envious. "All the things they think up."

"Urn," said George."Only, if I was Handicapper General, you know what I would do?" said Hazel.

Hazel, as a matter of fact, bore a strong resemblance to the Handicapper General, awoman named Diana Moon Glampers. "If I was Diana Moon Glampers," said Hazel,"I'd have chimes on Sunday-just chimes. 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 Handi-.

capper General.""Good as anybody else," said George."Who knows better'n I do what normal is?" said Hazel.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. :.!1 i

10

"Right," said George. He began to think glimmeringly about his abnormal son whowas 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 that George was white and trembling, and tears stood on the

rims of his red eyes. Two of the eight ballerinas had collapsed to the studio floor, wereholding their temples.

"All of a sudden you look so tired," said Hazel. "Why don't you stretch out onthe sofa, so's you can rest your handicap bag on the pillows, honeybunch." She wasreferring to the forty-seven pounds of birdshot in a canvas bag, which was padlockedaround George's neck. "Go on and rest the bag for a little while," she said. "I don'tcare if you're not equal to me for a while."

George weighed the bag with his hands. "I don't mind it," he said. "I don't noticeit any more. It's just a part of me."

"You been so tired lately-kind of wore out," said Hazel. "If there was just someway we could make a little hole in the bottom of the bag, and just take out a few ofthem lead balls. Just a few."

"Two years in prison and two thousand dollars fine for every ball I took out," saidGeorge. "I don't call that a bargain."

"If you could just take a few out when you came home from work," said Hazel. "Imean-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 awaywith it-and pretty soon we'd be right back to the dark ages again, with everybodycompeting against 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 allannouncers, had a serious speech impediment. For about half a minute, and in a stateof high excitement, the announcer tried to say, "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 raisefor trying so hard."

"Ladies and gentlemen-" said the ballerina, reading the bulletin. She must havebeen extraordinarily beautiful, because the mask she wore was hideous. And it waseasy to see that she was the strongest and most graceful of all the dancers, for herhandicap 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 fora woman 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 justescaped from jail, where he was held on suspicion of plotting to overthrow the

40

25

30

35

15

20

218 Chapter 6 . Theme

government. He is a genius and an athlete, is under-handicapped, and should beregarded as extremely dangerous."

A police photograph of Harrison Bergeron was flashed on the screen upsidedown, then sideways, upside down again, then right side up. The picture showed thefull length of Harrison against a background calibrated in feet and inches. He wasexactly seven feet tall.

The rest of Harrison's appearance was Halloween and hardware. Nobody hadever borne heavier handicaps. He had outgrown hindrances faster than the H-G mencould think them up. Instead of a little ear radio for a mental handicap, he wore atremendous pair of earphones, and spectacles with thick wavy lenses. The spectacleswere intended to make him not only half blind, but to give him whanging headachesbesides.

Scrap metal was hung all over him. Ordinarily, there was a certain symmetry, amilitary neatness to the handicaps issued to strong people, but Harrison looked like awalking junkyard. In the race of life, Harrison carried three hundre~ pounds.

And to offset his good looks, the H-G men required that he wear at all times ared rubber ball for a nose, keep his eyebrows shaved off, and cover his even whiteteeth with black caps at snaggle-tooth random.

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

There was the shriek of a door being tom 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 thoughdancing to the tune of an earthquake.

George Bergeron correctly identified the earthquake, and well he might have-for many was the time his own home had danced to the same crashing tune. "MyGod-" said George, "that must be Harrison!"

The realization was blasted from his mind instantly by the sound of an automo-bile collision in his head.

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

Clanking, clownish, and huge, Harrison stood in the center of the studio. Theknob of the uprooted studio door was still in his hand. Ballerinas, technicians, musi-cians, and announcers cowered on their knees before him, expecting to die.

"I am the Emperor!" cried Harrison. "Do you hear? I am the Emperor! Everybodymust do what I say at once!" He stamped his foot and the studio shook.

"Even as I stand here-" he bellowed, "crippled, hobbled, sickened-I am a greaterruler 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 strapsguaranteed to support five thousand pounds.

Harrison's scrap-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 specta-cles 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 coweringpeople. "Let the first woman who dares rise to her feet claim her mate and herthrone!"

A moment passed, and then a ballerina arose, swaying like a willow.

T

I

45

50

55

60

Kurt Vonneglll Jr. ~ j ~

Harrison plucked the mental handicap from her ear, snapped off her physicalhandicaps with marvelous 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 chairs, and Harrison stripped them of 65

their handicaps, too. "Play your best," he told them, "and I'll make you barons anddukes and earls."

The music began. It was normal at first-cheap, silly, false. But Harrisonsnatched two musicians from their chairs, waved them like batons as he sang themusic 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 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 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 motion as 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 it.And then, neutralizing gravity with love and pure will, they remained suspended

in air inches below the ceiling, and they kissed 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 shotgun. She fired twice, and the Emperorand the Empress were dead before they hit the floor.

Diana Moon Glampers loaded the gun again. She aimed it at the musicians andtold them they had ten seconds to get their handicaps back on.

It was then 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 beer.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, "1 could tell that one was a doozy."

70

75

80

85

90

220 Chapter (, . Theme

Questions

1. What tendencies in present-day American society is Vonnegut satirizing?Does the storyargue for anything? How would you sum up its theme?

2. Is Diana Moon Glampers a "flat" or a "round" character? (If you need to review theseterms, see the discussion of character in Chapter 3.) Would you call Vonnegut's charac-terization of her "realistic"?If not, why doesn't it need to be?

3. From what point of view is the story told?Why is it more effectivethan ifHarrison Bergeronhad told his own story in the first person?

4. Two sympathetic critics of Vonnegut's work, Karen and Charles Wood, have said of hisstories: "Vonnegut proves repeatedly. . . that men and women remain fundamentally thesame, no matter what technology surrounds them." Try applying this comment to "HarrisonBergeron." Do you agree?

5. Stanislaw Lem, Polish author of Safarisand other novels, once made this thoughtful criti-cism of many of his contemporaries among science fiction writers:

The revolt against the machine and against civilization, the praise of the "aesthetic"nature of catastrophe, the dead-end course of human civikzation-these are theirforemost problems, the intellectual content of their works. Such SF is as it were apriorivitiated by pessimism, in the sense that anything that may happen will be forthe worse. ("The Time-Travel Story and Related Matters of SF Structuring," ScienceFictionStudies1 [1974J, 143-54.)

How might Lem's objection be raised against "Harrison Bergeron"?In your opinion, doesit negate the value ofVonnegut's story?

WRITINGeffective(yKurt VonnegutJr. on WritingThe Themes of Science Fiction

Interviewer: Youtalked a lot about the diffi-culties you had when you first began. For in-stance, I think you gave one of the reasonsfor using the science fiction form as the factthat you were a professional writer and hadto do something which was popular.

Vonnegut: In the beginning I was writingabout what concerned me, and what was allaround me was machinery. I myself had hadsome training in engineering and chemistryrather than in the arts and I was workingfor General Electric in a big factory city,Schenectady. So the first book I wrote wasabout Schenectady, which is full of ma-chinery and engineers. And I was classifiedas a science fiction writer. Well, in the past,science fiction writers have been beneaththe attention of any seriouscritic. That is, far

1971, 1973

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

-'--

Writing EIT..('tively :l:l

above you are the people dealing with the really important, beautiful issues and usinggreat skills and so forth. It used to be that if you were a science fiction writer you reallydidn't belong in the arts at all, and other artists wouldn't talk to you. You just had thisscruffy little gang of your own. . ..Interviewer: What attracted you to using the form [ofscience fiction] yourself?

Vonnegut: . . . I saw a milling machine for cutting the rotors on jet engines, gas tur-bines. This was a very expensive thing for a machinist to do, to cut what is essen-tially one of those Brancusi forms. So they had a computer-operated millingmachine built to cut the blades, and I was fascinated by that. This was in 1949 andthe guys who were working on it were foreseeing all sorts of machines being run bylittle boxesand punchedcards.Player Pianowas my response to the implications ofhaving everything run by little boxes. The idea of doing that, you know, madesense, perfect sense. To have a little clicking box make all the decisions wasn't avicious thing to do. But it was too bad for the human beings who got their dignityfrom their jobs.

Interviewer: So science fiction seemed like the best way to write about your thoughtson the subject.

Vonnegut: There was no avoiding it, since General Electric Company was sciencefiction.

From interviews with Laurie Clancy and David Standish

THINKING ABOUTTHEME

A clear, precise statement about a story's theme can serve as a promising thesis for awriting assignment. After you read a short story, you will probably have some vaguesense of its theme-the central unifying idea, or the point of the story. How do youhone that vague sense of theme into a sharp and intriguing thesis?

. Start by making a list of all the story's possible themes. If you arediscussing Stephen Crane's "The Open Boat," your list might look like this:

Man versus nature

Life-and-death struggle

Camaraderie of people in crisisBlindness of fate

Courage in face of dangerBravery not enough

. Determine which points seem most important; then formulate a single

sentence in which you combine them. For Crane, you might have circled"man versus nature," "blindness of fate," and "bravery not enough," andyour summary might be: "The central theme of 'The Open Boat' is nature'sindifference to the fate of even the most courageous individuals."

· Try to capture the story's essence in a single sentence. Remember, yourgoal is to transcend a mere one-sentence plot summary. How can you clearlyexpress the central theme in a few words?