When we hear that we often think of the ways we would want the world to be different like equality for everyone, a flourishing environment, and peace. When reading different utopian short stories in class it became evident that in order to have some form of equality it would come with a major price for everyone. In this paper I will show how in the short stories Harrison Bergeron, Country of the Blind, and The New Utopia, the society was all brought to the same level playing field by making everyone virtually the same to enforce the idea of equality.
The first story that was a prime example of having to give up something for equality is Harrison Bergeron. In Kurt Vonnegut’s short story “Harrison Bergeron” it is set in the future, when the government has supposedly made everyone “equal.” The people of this society are forced to be equal by the technology and masks called handicaps. These people are denied individuality of every aspect, the government has taken all their freedom by enforcing these restrictions to their bodies. In this society they are so concerned with hurting other people’s feelings that they end up hurting everyone more as a result. In the story it says “everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law.
They were equal in every which way.” this shows how by “finally being equal” they seem to believe they have done something great for society and that everyone should be happier living the way they do now. The people that are more than average intelligence must wear ear pieces to keep them from thinking and the talented have to use things as well to make them average at what they thrive in. This hurts the society as a whole because it is causing them not to be able to progress in things like technology and medicine. Since no one is smarter than the rest they cannot break free of the laws being enforced and are to scared to try for fear of being taken away mysteriously or shot.
