When the ballerina spoke, everyone judged her “She must have been extraordinarily beautiful, because the mask she wore was hideous.” This is depressing at worst and comical at best. A society like may be faux equal, but it will not even function. He cannot even do his job, never mind do it well! The beautiful, strong, ugly-ed, and weakened ballerina had to do it for him. When the news bulletin came on, “For about half a minute, and in a state of high excitement, the announcer tried to say, ‘Ladies and gentlemen-‘ He finally gave up, handed the bulletin to a ballerina to read.” To say that an announcer is equal to everyone because he cannot even speak is preposterous. In addition, there are two prime examples of why Vonnegut’s dystopian 2081 society is not equal. There is quite a jump from equal rights to complete physical equality. The iconic American phrase “All men are created equal” is twisted in the first sentence into, “Everybody was finally equal.” What began as a statement that people are born equal was transformed into saying, “Everyone is not born equal, but we can make them equal.” The equality mentioned in the Declaration of Independence is equality of rights, duties, obligations, and treatment by others. This is also during the Cold War, so Vonnegut could be satirizing how Americans thought of Communism and Socialism. It written in 1961, near the time of the civil rights movement, so perhaps it is specifically referencing the changes in the government to “provide” equal rights. satirizes equal rights as given by the government. In the dystopian short story “Harrison Bergeron”, author Kurt Vonnegut Jr. This paper intends to analyze the story from the angle of the use of irony in the story, to get clear description of the types of irony find in this story and implied the meaning of each irony in Kurt Vonnegut's story “Harrison Bergeron”.The people of a truly equal society, by the United States Handicapper General’s definition of equal, are stupid, weak, and ugly.

The types of irony that found in this research are verbal irony and situational irony. The technique of qualitative method are used to find and indetify the data. Descriptive qualitative research method was used in conducting the research. Overall the story, many of the sentences and events have meaning that he strongly opposes the government which adheres to a system of equality or egalitarianism. According to Gibbs (2008) in The Cambridge Handbook of Metaphor and Thought, “irony emphasize the difference between two states of affairs, making plain which is true” (p.458). Kurt vonnegut.JR is an American writer, in that story he is willing to surprise the reader by providing many scenes of oppression carried out through equality and he likes to use ironic pictures to insinuate his criticisms.

This paper concerns the analysis of Irony in Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut.JR.

Harrison bergeron by kurt vonnegut jr