By The Waters Of Babylon Kurt Vonnegut Analysis

The “Rap-Back” Of Tech In the two stories, “Harrison Bergeron”, and “By The Waters Of Babylon”, the world is “destroyed”, or “remade”, after a technological “break-down”. Tech can very easily lead us to our own imminent demise, none the less it’s own, but usually, it may only do so with our allowing it.

By the Waters of Babylon Vs. World War Z  "By the Waters of Babylon" by Stephen Vincent Benet, and "World War Z" by Max Brooks are both different depictions of the future, but when you look closely they do share some similarities. Both are about a hero surviving in what has plagued their world, and going on a journey of self-discovery. They both have enemies to overcome and secrets to find.   "By the Waters of Babylon" and "World War Z" Both take place in different eras of civilization.

In Harrison Bergeron they try to make it to where everyone is equal. Something that our society strives for today. You have women that want to be equal to men and African Americans and Muslims that want to be treated like every other American. Everyone being 100% equal would never work because like in Harrison Bergeron when the son rebels and tries to become the ruler people start to follow. While in the story he and his girl get shot in real life even with them getting shot more people will start to up rise.

In his short story Harrison Bergeron, Kurt Vonnegut uses an astounding amount of powerful imagery and diction to create the perfect scenes of the dystopian reality he creates. Throughout his use of imagery, Vonnegut creates scenes palpably imagined by readers. He uses underlying humor to lighten scenes of the morbid and macabre nature of the future where being different can be a death sentence. The future that is created in totality by Vonnegut is a dire scene created to be filled with a pastiche of people strung with handicaps to make them to be exactly the same as the “perfectly average citizen.” Vonnegut’s tone throughout is both dreary towards the bizarre and twisted dystopia that makes everyone equal, but is also somewhat insulting to those who do not bear handicaps due to being lacking both mentally and physically.

“Every daring attempt to make great change in existing conditions, every loftly vision of new possibilities for the human race, has been labeled Utopian” In order to have a perfect society, changes for the greater good need to be made. Unfortunately, instead of a Utopian society, it becomes a dystopian society. The reason that Utopian societies are bad is because everyone has to be equal for no one is better, there is no outside communication with other societies, and the whole family is penalized for breaking rules against the government. In “Harrison Bergeron”, all citizens had to be equal.

Harrison Bergeron is a novel where the author is expressing what he thinks society is leading to and what the problems are. Harrison Bergeron is the main character and his points of view and thinking matters are interesting to investigate. This author made everyone the same. Societies are pressuring people to become the same and making people think that if they don 't look or act some sort of way, they don 't matter or serve to our world, causing many people to go to certain limits and even causing suicide as a solution. In the story, everyone thinks the same, everyone walks the same, hears the same.

Harrison Bergeron was a book written in 1961 that portrayed an abnormal child defying the dystopian government; in 2009 a movie was made, based off of it called 2081 that changed the character both physically and morally. The differences in how Harrison Bergeron, the main character, appears in each story changes how the audience perceives his morality. These changes are easily highlighted in Harrison’s age, dialogue, and appearance. The tone of the story is also changed, resulting in similar changes to what the audience interprets. As both stories continue these differences become more and more apparent and by the end, there is a clear split in what the audience ‘takes away’.

Comparing and contrasting 2081 to Harrison Bergeron Admit it, one time you were bored or sat down with nothing to do and couldn’t help but imagine how life would be if everyone was equal, don’t even try denying it, you’ve thought of that at least once in your life, but as any good writer would do, they’d write their thoughts down and turn it into a story, that’s exactly what Kurt Vonnegut did. Just imagine living a life where no one gets compared to others in any way. We all wish for a society like that, but Kurt showed us how equality can negatively affect our society. But that’s not the our main idea in this essay, our main idea is to highlight the comparisons and contrasts between the story “Harrison Bergeron” and the movie version “2081”. To begin with, Both the story and the movie had the same introduction/ Opening; “Everybody was finally equal.

“By the Waters of Babylon” Paper In the short story, “By the Waters of Babylon” by Stephen Vincent Benet, the setting is post-apocalyptic and is about what Benet thought the world would be after the events of WWII. In this story, the world was destroyed and people forgot the important knowledge that was known during that time period. The simple knowledge they know now is how to hunt, and that there is a place where the gods live. When the main character, John, went to the Place of the Gods, which was forbidden, he discovered the truth of what happened during the Great Burning.

The two stories, “Harrison Bergeron” and Fahrenheit 451, both have common themes. The common themes of the stories may include; our reliance on technology can spiral out of control if we let it, knowledge is joyful and painful, and that we can be confined by our own self-censorship. All of these themes are exhibited throughout both stories frequently. Whether it is as Montag has conflict with his wife over books or as Harrison’s parents forget right from wrong in their society. In Fahrenheit 451, their technology definitely gets out of control.

Humanity is extremely intelligent, but is painfully unaware of the thin ground it treads on. If we are able to create our own disasters we must be willing to prevent them, or at least be able to stomach the consequences. Speculative fiction is often used by authors to aid in the creation of a futuristic setting in which a warning message can conveyed. In Aikens’ post-apocalyptic “Searching for Summer” some suspended disbelief is required to accept the fact that Mrs.Hatching’s house is the only place with sunlight. This allows readers to imagine a world where sunlight is limited and the contrast between the Hatching’s warm residence and the dark world outside provoke contemplation about a dismal future.

“Why don’t you write an anti-glacier book instead? What he meant, of course, was that there would always be wars, that they were as easy to stop as glaciers. I believe that too.” (Vonnegut 3). Kurt Vonnegut ironically wrote this in his book Slaughterhouse-Five, which is an admired antiwar book.

The future of humans is unpredictable and mysterious. Because of this, writers can expand their imaginations on stories of the future. "There Will Come Soft Rains” by Ray Bradbury and “By The Waters of Babylon” by Stephen Vincent Benet are both fictional short stories that portray the future world when humans no longer reign. Both authors of these two stories convey that the of misuse of technology may lead to disappointment and pain, but nature is everlasting.

Kurt Vonnegut uses characterization to describe how the characters act in this society. Vonnegut also uses style to show how he uses science fiction and dystopia in “Harrison Bergeron”. The theme demonstrated in “Harrison Bergeron” is equality is not meant to make one person better than another. Kurt Vonnegut in “Harrison Bergeron”, demonstrates that equality based on characteristics is not a good thing for society. Harrison Bergeron is a short story based on the year 2081, where everybody is equal.

Sapp John Sapp Hensley English 11/ Fourth Period 05 February 2018 Part 12: Rough Draft “Babylon Revisited” is a very detailed and well written story that has many ups and downs bound to leave the reader on the edge of their seat. F. Scott Fitzgerald uses many different types of writing techniques in “Babylon Revisited” to make this story grab the reader’s attention even more so than some of his previous works. Fitzgerald’s style portrays one of the most important aspects of this book by far, setting the tone for this story giving you more details throughout.