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Samuel Powell

Mrs. Field

LNG322

2/15/11

Society

Has society ever set a limit on you? Vonnegut, Rand and Niccol all

create societies that strive for perfection and the characters have set limits.

In The short story “Harrison Bergeron” everyone is supposed to be equal in

every way and you are given handicaps if you exceed someone in anything.

In the book Anthem there is no individual. In the movie Gattaca your life is to

be determined at birth by your DNA. Rather than allowing someone else set

limits to your potential, each individual should choose for himself and work

to reach his greatest potential. People can exceed what society expects

from them. In “Harrison Bergeron” Harrison exceeds everyone in everything;

he was stronger than everyone, “Nobody had ever worn heavier handicaps”

(4). He was better looking than everyone, “the H-G men required him to

wear a red rubber ball for his nose, keep his eyebrows shaved off and cover

his even white teeth with black caps at snaggle-tooth random” (4). The

handicapper general gave Harrison handicaps to try to bring him down to the

“average” in his society.

Society can create obstacles for people to overcome. In Anthem,

Equality is given the life mandate street sweeper, but he wants to be a

scholar and live at the home of the scholars. The council gives him this
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mandate because he is more intelligent than everyone else in the society

and considered a threat, so they gave him a job that required no thinking.

Equality invents an electrical light and tries to show it to the home of

scholars thinking he might be able to get in. However they don’t allow him to

because he invented alone and what’s done alone can’t be good.