"Harrison Bergeron"

Hi! I'm Marina, and this is my blog. 

It took me a while to come up with a moderately interesting blog title, but with the help of my classmates I finally settled on "Metaphorical Marina". After all, this will be a literature blog. 

My classmates and I were assigned an assortment of poems and short stories to read over the summer. Out of all the texts I read this summer, I enjoyed "Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut Jr the most. The first sentence had me hooked, "The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal." Dystopian is one of my favorite genres, so anything set in the future gets me excited. As I read further into the story, I was amused to see how far the government went to keep every aspect of the community equal. It's intriguing, but also unsettling, because currently we live in a world that strongly advocates equality. What if someday our world turns out like the one in "Harrison Bergeron"? Do we believe so much in equality that we'd go so far as to monitor one's thoughts and feelings? 

My favorite scene of the story is when Harrison Bergeron and the beautiful-but-masked ballerina dance together on the stage, "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,"(Vonnegut). I love the vivid language Vonnegut used to portray to the reader the feeling of freedom. I can visualize the two dancing gracefully and enjoying their last moments of happiness, before being shot down by the Handicapper General. In a way, it is better to die than to continue to live shielded lives. Truthfully, I would rather die then live in a place where I couldn't think or feel on my own. 

Until next time!