Hope for Freedom A dystopia is a futuristic society or community that is undesirable or frightening. Kurt Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron” and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 are two hopeless societies that both are based on having equal people, while the big difference is that “Harrison Bergeron” disables many things to equalize the people while Ray Bradbury burns books without forcing handicaps onto the people, which makes “Harrison Bergeron” a more hopeless environment. “Harrison Bergeron” is a story that sets handicaps on people to make them equal to each other, and to make no person better. In “Harrison Bergeron,” George and Hazel sit on their couch and have handicaps such as one that does not make them remember things for long periods of time. An example of this would be, “It was tragic, all right, but George and Hazel couldn't think about it very hard.”(3) George and Hazel witness their own son on live TV, and a few minutes later barely remember anything about it. Harrison Bergeron, who is a very large man, is…show more content… Harrison Bergeron who was a seven foot tall man was described like this, “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.”(3) Everyone in this story is hopeless because Harrison Bergeron escaped and tried to prove a point by taking his handicaps off, but was shot a few moments later nobody knew that he had just been killed. Instead of burning books, they made it virtually impossible to read books. With the handicaps there, nobody ever even thought about or had the time to resist them. The reason “Harrison Bergeron” is more hopeless than Fahrenheit 451 is because there is nothing that can be done because they will always forget
