Style
Here, Vonnegut is influenced by his early work as a journalist. His sentences are short and easily understood so as to be largely accessible. A dystopian setting enhances his social and political critique by imagining a future world founded on absolute equality through handicaps assigned to various "over average" people as punishment for being a little better than the boy next door.
Yet Vonnegut also punctuates his dystopia with humor. Even the most horrifying scenes are underlined by jokes or absurdity. When the news announcer is supposed to read a news bulletin he has to hand it to a nearby ballerina because of his speech impediment, and the ballerina then alters her voice to a "grackle squawk" because it would be "unfair" to use her natural voice, described as a "warm, luminous, timeless melody". This absurdity highlights the madness of the world of "Harrison Bergeron".
Read more about this topic: Harrison Bergeron
Famous quotes containing the word style:
“New is a word for fools in towns who think
Style upon style in dress and thought at last
Must get somewhere.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“No change in musical style will survive unless it is accompanied by a change in clothing style. Rock is to dress up to.”
—Frank Zappa (1940–1994)
“A style does not go out of style as long as it adapts itself to its period. When there is an incompatibility between the style and a certain state of mind, it is never the style that triumphs.”
—Coco Chanel (1883–1971)