Reading: Harrison Bergeron

Objectives

• Read and reflect on short form writing.
• Storyboard with an eye towards mood and camera work
• Program a short scene from an existing story

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About This Assignment

This is an assignment in three pieces. It has three deadlines. This is to force you to have a bit of time to "breathe" between each piece... time for the ideas to work, in the back of your mind, without being rushed.

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Context

It is important, when reading a short story, to understand the context it was written in. For Vonnegut, we have two pieces of context.

1. What he thinks about writing.

2. When he wrote it.

What Vonnegut thinks about writing helps us understand how and why he writes the way he does. It aids us in thinking about the story he tells.

When Vonnegut wrote the story is critical. In the case of this story (which is, essentially, about the question of how far we are willing to go as a society when it comes to equality), was written in 1961. What was going on in 1961?

• JFK was elected president.
• The USA launches its first ICBM (Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile).
• Monash University (Australia) is founded.
• The trial of Adolf Eichmann begins, and he is found guilty of war crimes.
• Sierra Leone gains independence from the UK.
• The first US astronaut (Alan Shepard) enters space.
• A Freedom Riders bus is firebombed in Alabama, and protestors are beaten senseless by the mob. (Alabama Govenor John Patterson later declares martial law in an attempt to restore order in his state.)
• Amnesty International is, for all intents and purposes, founded.
• The death penalty is abolished in New Zealand.
• Catch-22 published (Joseph Heller)
• US involvement in the Vietnam War officially begins.
• Barak Obama born.

You can Google more about any of these events if you want to get a better sense for what the world was like from Vonnegut's perspective when he was writing this story. Of course, his perspective was influenced also by his years of life before 1961. Vonnegut served in WWII, and was a prisoner of war (POW).

Understanding Vonnegut's Writing

The short story is a particular style of writing. Sometimes, they span decades or centuries, painting a picture over long periods of time. Sometimes, they capture a single moment in time. Because the story is short, there is very little time to acclimate the reader and get them into the universe the author is creating.

Our first short story reading is by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Vonnegut has eight basics of what one might call "creative writing":

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

It is interesting to know this about Vonnegut's writing, but it isn't strictly necessary when it comes to understanding the story Harrison Bergeron.

Reading: Harrison Bergeron

Our first short story of the term is Harrison Bergeron. You'll probably need to read it twice to get the story in your head. That is, read it once so you "see" the whole thing, and then read it a second time for a bit more nuance.

Reflecting on HB

Once you've read the story, write a short essay (~500 words) exploring the major literary aspects of the piece. Plot, character, setting, and theme are all the kinds of things we should look for in a piece of writing.

What follows are some of the kinds of questions you should ask yourself about this piece. As you write your piece, please be clear that I'm not asking you to simply answer all of the questions I have noted below. Instead, those are questions to get you thinking. Your goal is to reflect on what this story is trying to say, and the plot, character, setting, and themes you identify might help you better understand the story as a whole.

Plot

What is the plot of this story? Vonnegut is pretty true to his own 8 guidelines, so it should be easy to spot. Is there a conflict and climax to this piece?

Character

Who are the main characters of this piece? How do they drive the story forward? What do they want, and what do we learn about them? Are the characters literal, symbolic, satyrical, or realistic?

Setting

Is the setting critical to the story? Would the story change if the setting were changed?

Theme

Is this a story that explores a moralistic theme? Is it funny and just plain fun, or does it explore a particular event that impacts one or more characters? What is it that makes this story "tick?"

MY EXPECTATIONS

I am not expecting an essay free of grammatical errors and perfectly written.

I am expecting you to spend time reflecting on this work and thinking about the message it contains, and your reactions to it.

In other words: I am interested in the quality of your thought at this point, not the technical quality of your writing.

Submission

As you think about the story, remember this: Vonnegut is not writing about a fantasy land for the sake of writing about a fantasy land: he's trying to get us to think about ourselves and the world we live in. Is Vonnegut's message still relevant today?

As always, written work should be submitted as a Word document (.docx), an Open Office document (.odt), or a PDF (.pdf). Your work from Alice should be zipped up (tutorial).

Assignment: Harrison Bergeron Reflection

Naming Convention: username-hb-reflection

Moodle Link: http://moodle2.berea.edu/course/view.php?id=2239

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