Thematic Comparison Between Harrison Bergeron and Gracie

Kurt Vonnegut’s short story, Harrison Bergeron, and Picture House film, Gracie, both demonstrate how societies suppress individuals due to their fear of change. In both of these stories the individuals are discouraged from revealing there true self’s due to beliefs that it would have a negative impact on society. The soccer community in Gracie believes that because she is a girl she is incapable of playing on the boy’s team. Including her father, they believe that she is neither tough enough nor talented to be on a field full of highly skilled and trained boys. When Gracie proves she is talented on tryout day the coaches still doubt her because she is merely just a girl and through their eyes, though she is skilled she isn’t capable to take on the Kingston team, which is their rivalry team. The people in the Harrison Bergeron society are highly suppressed by their leaders. The more handicaps they wear the more special abilities they have. Harrison Bergeron has to wear a huge pair of earphones, glasses with thick wavy lenses, and a red rubber ball on his nose, keep his eyebrows shaved, and put black caps on his white teeth. The society undergoes these procedures because they fear that the past will repeat its self. They are trying to avoid a repeat in time when people competed against each other due to the superiority of certain individual abilities. In both scenarios societies limit themselves because they feel uneasy to give in to change. When individuals are suppressed of their special abilities to a certain extent it could lead to a rebellion. When the coaches of the soccer team, father, and even friends discourage Gracie from joining the boys team she begins to fight back. She trains harder increases her skill and in the process she persists in changing everyone’s beliefs that she is capable of playing soccer with boys. She fights to give women the opportunity to play competitive soccer and throughout her battle she also discovers new strength within her she never knew she had. Harrison Bergeron is a strong and talented character with a variety of special abilities. The society he lives in gave him a bunch of handicaps on account of his abilities and they suppressed him from revealing his talents. Angry and frustrated he manages to escape from jail and barge into the local studio where he removes all of his handicaps and influences one of the ballerinas including the musicians to follow his lead. He rebels against the oppressors to prove that society is better off with people being themselves than having to limit there abilities.