Thematic Comparison

Harrison Bergeron vs. Matilda

Kurt Vonnegut’s Harrison Bergeron and the novel Matilda by Roald Dahl both demonstrate that society has neutralized people’s advantages.  These texts show how Matilda’s and Harrison’s talents have been restricted and how these characters stand up to it to reveal their talents.

Both texts depict the characters talents are restricted.  In Matilda, Matilda is a four-year old genius but has grown up in a family that hates reading for enjoyment and demands that the family eat their dinner in front of the television every night.  Matilda really wants to go to school and the public library, but her parents say no.  Therefore, Matilda teaches herself to read, do double-digit mathematic problems and make things move with her mind.  As Roald Dahl points out they are parents who were “so wrapped up in their silly lives that they failed to notice anything unusual about their daughter.”  Her abilities are wasting away in a home that values TV more than literature, and Matilda does not discover that until she meets the librarian Ms.Phelps.  Similarly, in Harrison Bergeron, Harrison is a genius and an athlete who is handicapped, and is known as “extremely dangerous.”  Harrison has a talent, so he was put into jail.  The Handicapper General punished him with the following consequences, “He wore a tremendous pair of earphones, and spectacles with thick wavy lenses, the spectacles were intended to make him not only half blind, but to give him whanging headaches besides.”   Therefore, in Matilda and Harrison Bergeron both demonstrate powers of the characters are limited. 

Both texts also demonstrate that the characters stand up for their talents in the society.  Matilda had finally decided that every time her father or her mother was restricting her from reading, she would get them back in some way or another, and Matilda says “her father was first on the list.”  Matilda plays her first prank on her father by squeezing superglue inside the rim of the hat her father wears.  As a result, his hat becomes glued to his head and he is unable to move it, but when he does he loses part of the hair.  Matilda thought, “This was too much to hope that it had taught her father a permanent lesson.”  Matilda plays the second prank on her family, using a friend’s parrot she manages to convince her parents that there is a ghost in the house.  However, after all this Matilda’s father accuses her of being “cheat and a liar” instead of being impressed by her cleverness.   Similarly, in Harrison Bergeron, Harrison stood up for his talents.  As Vonnegut points out, “Harrison thrust his thumbs under the bar of the padlocks that secured his head harness.  Harrison smashed his headphones and spectacles against the wall.  He flung away his rubber-ball nose, revealed a man that would have awed.”  Therefore, Matilda with her clever pranks and Harrison taking off his handicaps prove that both of these characters stood up for their talents.

In conclusion, Matilda and Harrison have been restricted but in the meantime they also stand up for their talents.