“Harrison Bergeron” illustrates the importance of memory in social and political life. Memory allows people to learn from history, draw on personal experiences, consider alternative choices, and ultimately navigate towards a better future. Vonnegut makes this point by showing what happens when citizens are stripped of their capacity to remember.

In the society of Vonnegut’s story, citizens are forced through cognitive handicaps to live in a kind of eternal present moment in which they cannot reflect on the past. George and Hazel Bergeron represent typical citizens in this society, and their artificially truncated conversations show the effects of the Handicapper General’s efforts to bring all citizens to a low level of cognitive functioning. Because of the thought-deterring sounds emitted in George’s earpiece—and because of Hazel’s average intelligence—the couple cannot discuss any topic in any deep or sustained way.

Their compromised rapport is most evident in the story’s final scene. They watch on television their son’s failed attempt to break free of his handicaps and overthrow their society’s authoritarian structure, but they are left with, at most, a vague sense of sadness. What they have witnessed carries immense significance, for they have glimpsed the possibility of a different society and seen the death of their own child. And yet this significance is never registered, because the event is wiped from their minds almost immediately. George recognizes his son on the broadcast, but the realization is quickly deleted from his mind. And after Harrison’s death, Hazel is left only with the impression of having seen “something real sad,” and she admits that “it’s all kind of mixed up in my mind.” They cannot learn from the event, because it is immediately subsumed into a forgotten past. Indeed, George contributes to this erasure of memory when he advises Hazel to “forget sad things.” This exchange illustrates clearly that change is hopeless without memory.