Have you ever wondered the differences between the extremely similar Harrison Bergeron and Anthem? Well here you have it. Harrison Bergeron is a short story that was published in October 1961 and was written by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Anthem is a book that was published in 1938 and was written by Ayn Rand. In Harrison Bergeron and Anthem it’s different how society controls people and their relationships with other people. The way the societies control people is different from one another. In Harrison Bergeron they control people by making them wear handicaps. When the narrator describes Harrison he states: “Nobody had ever born heavier handicaps. Instead of a little ear radio for a mental handicap, he wore a tremendous pair of earphones, and spectacles with thick wavy lenses” (Vonnegut Jr. 3). This shows that the societies try to make every equal by giving them handicaps to hold them back. However in Anthem they brainwash all of the people. “One of the portals of the palace of the world council, there are words cut in the…show more content… In Harrison Bergeron the do have relationships. “And it was in that clammy month that the HG men took George and Hazel Bergeron’s fourteen-year-old son, Harrison, away.” This proves that they had some sort of family. Anthem on the other hand doesn’t have any sort of relationships. “We remember the home of the infants till we were five years old together with the children of the city who had been born in the same year.” I think that this is something really important to see when reading these two pieces. The way societies control people and the relationships they have in Harrison Bergeron and Anthem are different. There was Harrison Bergeron where they controlled people with Handicaps. Then there was Anthem that brainwashed their society. Harrison Bergeron did have families while Anthem didn’t. Those are the most important differences in Harrison Bergeron and
