"Harrison Bergeron" questions (:

1. Life in Vietnam would be perfect if everyone were totally equal. Do you agree or disagree? Explain your answer in complete sentences.

- I totally disagree with this statement. People with high intelligence had to be handicapped and people with even higher intelligence would be heavily handicapped. Pretty people had to wear ugly masks to cover their amazingly beauty. There would be no competitions happening in the community. Overall, justice, fairness, and equity would not be synchronizing throughout the country. That could be a huge disaster and Vietnam would be the most terrible place to live in.

2. You are designing a society in which everyone is equal. What are the laws?

• People should have the same intelligence; no one is smarter than anyone
• No one can beautiful than others
  
• Have the same amount of money
• Have to live in a normal house; not big yet not small
• You cannot always be happy nor sad
• Use the same amount of water every day
• Same style, color, length of hair
• All shall study in a public school
• Same fabric of clothing
• Not allowed to spend more than $25/day
• Not allowed to take off handicap devices- end up in prison for 9 years and 9,999 dollars fine
  

3. What would you do to help people who were less capable mentally, physically, or socially to "catch up"?

- I would tell smart people to take off their handicap devices for a moment to get a solution, although I know it was against the law. This was an important issue in which it was a must. Maybe I could tell people were less capable mentally a bunch of stories, ask them questions, or show them pictures and try to see if they could get their memories back. If these things would not work, then I have to discover some inventions to do with it. The world today, have a lot of artificial limbs that help handicapped people to have a normal life. I would compliment people who were less capable socially first then encourage them to start talking to people and finally make friends with them.

4. What problems can you foresee that might come in a society with laws that force "equality for all"? How would you handle those problems?

- People with an average-everything would be living a life in joy but people with a high-everything would feel bad for themselves that they were not treated differently. Smart people would give up anything to get their freedom, the fairness and the right to be abnormal back. There might be competitions between the high and average people to get whatever they want back. The solution to solve this problem could be making laws and whoever went against the law should end up as a prisoner with no money.

5. Do you believe that total equality is possible, or would human nature make sure that some people would eventually dominate others?

- I never think totally equality is possible because there are geniuses, dull people, the rich and the poor. What makes more sense that this is not possible is the government. Everything is ruled and under control of the government. In brief, it depends on human nature to make up its mind.

6. In what situations have you felt similarly to any of the characters? What persons, places, or ideas from your own experience came to mind while you were reading this story? Try to list as least two examples.

- In the middle of reading the story, I immediately thought of one of my friends who likes to command people. She tells them to do things for her, even small, easy things that a kid can do. This is unfair but it is not a bad thing because that's just her personality.
- I also thought that it must be very painful, annoying and really unfair to wear those handicap devices if you are better than others. It's not your fault that you were born to be talented. It's just unfair for a talented person to become an untalented one.