Figurative language adds to the mood and meaning of a piece of literature and helps differentiate literary texts from informative or scientific works.
In this short story, Vonnegut uses alliteration. Alliteration occurs when words beginning with the same consonant are placed close to one another. An example of this is the repeated "h" sounds in:
Harrison's appearance was Halloween and hardware.
The alliteration puts extra emphasis on the words beginning with h.
Another example of alliteration, this time using "b," is when the thoughts of George, Harrison's father, flee him like "bandits from a burglar alarm."
Vonnegut also uses dialogue. When Harrison's parents, George and Hazel, converse, this illustrates how the handicapping devices have made it difficult for them to have anything but the most inane kind of conversation:
"That was a real pretty dance, that dance they just did," said Hazel.
"Huh," said George.
"That dance—it was nice," said Hazel.
Imagery is description that uses any of the fives senses of sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell. In the example below, Vonnegut employs visual imagery (and alliteration) to show the ballerina's as masked and weighted down, saying they are:
burdened with sashweights and bags of birdshot, and their faces were masked ...
At the end of that sentence, Vonnegut uses a cliche—an overused phrase—that echoes the unoriginal way George has begun think in this dystopic society. The naturally intelligent George, reflects that the handicapping of the ballerinas insures that nobody:
would feel like something the cat drug in.
Vonnegut also uses sound imagery so that his readers have a strong sense of what the alarms that interrupt George's thoughts are like:
"Sounded like somebody hitting a milk bottle with a ball peen hammer," said George.
In Kurt Vonnegut's satire, "Harrison Bergeron," there are, among others, the following elements of figurative language:
SATIRE
The entire first paragraph is satiric as Vonnegut writes that in the year 2081 "everybody was finally equal." People are "equal" in intelligence, physical appearance, and athletic abilty:
All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.
This satire continues into the next paragraph in which the author writes that "it was tragic."
Of course, the satiric language and tone continues throughout the story.
VERBAL IRONY
It is clear in the first paragraph of the story that Vonnegut is using the words equal and equality ironically.
In describing the metaphor, the narrator states,
Her voice was a warm, luminous, timeless melody.
But, after apologizing [satire], she made her voice "uncompetitive": "Harrison Bergeron, age fourteen," she said in a grackle squawk....
In the race of life, Harrison carried three hundred pounds.
Screams and barking cries of consternation came from the television set.
but Harrison looked like a walking junkyard.
Harrison tore the straps of his handicap harness like wet tissue paper,...
The bar snapped like celery
They leaped like deer on the moon.
Within the example above on metaphor, there is understatement, as well:
...and she began again, making her voice absolutely uncompetitive.
The photograph of Harrison Bergeron on the screen jumped again and again,....
...for many was the time his own home had danced to the same crashing tune [figurative language]
He flung away his rubber-ball nose, revealed a man that would have awed Thor, the god of thunder.
He flung away his rubber-ball nose, reavealed a man that would have awed Thor..... [obvious exaggeration=hyperbole]
They leaped like deer on the moon.
Provide an example of a figurative element in "Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut.
Kurt Vonnegut's futuristic short story "Harrison Bergeron" is replete with figurative language of many kinds. You asked for one, so I chose simile because they are vivid and effective in making Vonnegut's point about the ridiculousness of equality (rather than equal opportunity) for all. I have italicized all the similes in the passages below.
He uses this simile to impress upon his readers how badly people will feel (in 2081, anyway) if they are not as beautiful as someone else.
[T]heir faces were masked, so that no one, seeing a free and graceful gesture or a pretty face, would feel like something the cat drug in.
Another handicap people are given is earpieces which distract the more intelligent citizens so they will not be able to think as clearly and therefore be more intelligent than anyone else.
"Sounded like somebody hitting a milk bottle with a ball peen hammer," said George.
The title character, Harrison Bergeron, is only fourteen years old, but he is an extraordinary young man in every way, In fact, he weighs three hundred pounds with all the handicaps he carries.
Harrison looked like a walking junkyard.
Harrison is wearing a contraption on his head, and when he begins to take off this handicap, "the bar snapped like celery."
Just before he is shot down by the Handicapper General, Harrison and a beautiful ballerina display beauty and grace, something which certainly makes them unequal to everyone else. First, though,
Harrison snatched two musicians from their chairs, waved them like batons.
Then, "a ballerina arose, swaying like a willow," and she and Harrison "leaped like deer on the moon."
All of these similes serve to depict the world of both oppressive equality and ecstatic and beautiful inequality.
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