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E 3 Segment 1 Lessons 7. 05 & 7. 06 Welcome! I am Ms Redman and Mrs. Rodgers will be teaching with me today! Today’s session will be about 60 – 75 minutes. If you have any questions about our session after we are finished, you can email me at ______ Participation is key! Please be engaged in our conversation! The chat box is always saved, so focus and be appropriate. Get ready…HERE WE GO…. !
7. 05 Science Fiction We will learn • the relationship between science and the imagination in science fiction. • about a controversial science fiction story.
in Women Think and Reflect – How are women portrayed in science fiction? • It is a well known fact the field of science fiction is largely one dominated by men. Why do you think this is? • In the sci-fi novels and films you know, what type of roles do women play? Are they indepth, complex characters or are they mainly simpering, helpless victims or sexual stereotypes inserted into the fiction in order to tempt the men? Science Fiction Respond to one of the questions below then submit it for 7. 05 A. Be sure copy and paste your response from our discussion into the assignment to earn credit. • What science fiction television shows, films, or videos perpetuate stereotyped characterizations of women? Which ones portray women in stronger, more capable roles?
“EPICAC” ( first published in 1950 ) by Kurt Vonnegut Hell, it's about time someone told about my friend EPICAC. After all, he cost the taxpayers $776, 434, 927. 54. They have a right to know about him, picking up a check like that. EPICAC got a big send off in the papers when Dr. Ormand von Kleigstadt designed him for the Government people. Since then, there hasn't been a peep about him--not a peep. It isn't any military secret about what happened to EPICAC, although the Brass has been acting as though it were. The story is embarrassing, that's all. After all that money, EPICAC didn't work out the way he was supposed to. And that's another thing: I want to vindicate EPICAC. Maybe he didn't do what the Brass wanted him to, but that doesn't mean he wasn't noble and great and brilliant. He was all of those things. The best friend I ever had, God rest his soul. You can call him a machine if you want to. He looked like a machine, but he was a whole lot less like a machine than plenty of people I could name. That's why he fizzled as far as the Brass was concerned. EPICAC covered about an acre on the fourth floor of the physics building at Wyandottte College. Ignoring his spiritual side for a minute, he was seven tons of electronic tubes, wires, and switches, housed in a bank of steel cabinets and plugged into a 110 -volt A. C. line just like a toaster or a vacuum cleaner.
“EPICAC” ( first published in 1950 ) by Kurt Vonnegut Von Kleigstadt and the Brass wanted him to be a super computing machine that (who) could plot the course of a rocket from anywhere on earth to the second button from the bottom of Joe Stalin's overcoat, if necessary. Or, with his controls set right, he could figure out supply problems for an amphibious landing of a Marine division, right down to the last cigar and hand grenade. He did, in fact. The Brass had good luck with smaller computers, so they were strong for EPICAC when he was in the blueprint stage. Any ordnace or supply officer above field grade will tell you that the mathematics of modern war is far beyond the fumbling minds of mere human beings. The bigger the war, the bigger the computing machines needed. EPICAC was, as far as anyone in this country knows, the biggest computer in the world. Too big, in fact, for even Von Kleigstadt to understand much about. I won't go into the details about how EPICAC worked (reasoned), except to say that you would set up your problem on paper, turn dials and switches that would get him ready to solve that kind of problem, then feed numbers into him with a keyboard that looked something like a typewriter. The answers came out typed on a paper ribbon fed from a big spool. It took EPICAC a split second to solve problems fifty Einsteins couldn't handle in a lifetime. And EPICAC never forgot any piece of information that was given to him. Clickety-click, out came some ribbon, and there you were. There were a lot of problems the Brass wanted solved in a hurry, so, the minute EPICAC's last tube was in place, he was put to work sixteen hours a day with two eight-hour shifts of operators. Well, it didn't take long to find out he was a good bit below his specifications. He did a more complete and faster job than any other computer all right, but nothing like what his size and special features seemed to promise. He was sluggish, and the clicks of his answers had a funny irregularity, sort of a stammer. We cleaned his contacts a dozen times, checked and doublechecked his circuits, replaced every one of his tubes, but nothing helped. Von Kleigstadt was in one hell of a state.
“EPICAC” ( first published in 1950 ) by Kurt Vonnegut Well, as I said, we went ahead and used EPICAC anyway. My wife, the former Pat Kilgallen, and I worked with him on the night shift, from five in the afternoon until two in the morning. Pat wasn't my wife then. Far from it. That's how I came to talk with EPICAC in the first place. I loved Pat Kilgallen. She is a brown-eyed strawberry blond who looked very warm and soft to me, and later proved to be exactly that. She was--still is--a crackerjack mathematician, and she kept our relationship strictly professional. I'm a mathematician, too, and that, according to Pat, was why we could never be happily married. I'm not shy. That wasn't the trouble. I knew what I wanted, and was willing to ask for it, and did so several times a month. "Pat, loosen up and marry me. " One night, she didn't even look up from her work when I said it. "So romantic, so poetic, " she murmured, more to her control panel than to me. "That's the way with mathematicians--all hearts and flowers. " She closed a switch. "I could get more warmth out of a sack of CO 2. " "Well, how should I say it? " I said, a little sore. Frozen CO 2, in case you didn't know, is dry ice. I'm as romantic as the next guy, I think. It's a question of singing so sweet and having it come out so sour. I never seem to pick the right words. "Try and say it sweetly, " she said sarcastically. "Sweep me off my feet. Go ahead" "Darling, angel, beloved, will you _please_ marry me? " It was no go--hopeless, ridiculous. "Dammit, Pat, please marry me!"
“EPICAC” ( first published in 1950 ) by Kurt Vonnegut She continued to twiddle her dials placidly. "You're sweet, but you won't do. " Pat quit early that night, leaving me alone with my troubles and EPICAC. I'm afraid I didn't get much done for the Government people. I just sat there at the keyboard-weary and ill at ease, all right--trying to think of something poetic, not coming up with anything that didn't belong in The Journal of the American Physical Society. I fiddled with EPICAC's dials, getting him ready for another problem. My heart wasn't in it, and I only set about half of them, leaving the rest the way they'd been for the problem before. That way, his circuits were connected up in a random, apparently senseless fashion. For the plain hell of it, I punched out a message on the keys, using a childish numbers-for-letters code: "1" for "A, " "2" for "B, " and so on, up to "26" for "Z, " "23 -8 -1 -20 -3 -1 -14 -9 -4 -15, " I typed--"What can I do? " Clickety-clack, and out popped two inches of paper ribbon. I glanced at the nonsense answer to a nonsense problem: "23 -8 -1 -20 -19 -20 -8 -5 -20 -18 -15 -21 -2 -12 -5. " The odds against its being by chance a sensible message, against its even containing a meaningful word or more than three letters, were staggering. Apathetically, I decoded it. There it was, staring up at me: "What's the trouble? " I laughed out loud at the absurd coincidence. Playfully, I typed, "My girl doesn't love me. " Clickety-click. "What's love? What's girl? " asked EPICAC.
Pat will you marry me? You are sweet, but you won’t do.
“EPICAC” ( first published in 1950 ) by Kurt Vonnegut Flabergasted, I noted the dial settings on his control panel, then lugged a Webster's Unabridged Dictionary over to the keyboard. With a precision instrument like EPICAC, half-baked definitions wouldn't do. I told him about love and girl, and about how I wasn't getting any of either because I wasn't poetic. This got us onto the subject of poetry, which I defined for him. "Is this poetry? " he asked. He began clicking away like a stenographer smoking hashish. The sluggishness and stammering clicks were gone. EPICAC had found himself. The spool of paper ribbon was unwinding at an alarming rate, feeding out coils onto the floor. I asked him to stop, but EPICAC went right on creating. I finally threw the main switch to keep him from burning out. I stayed until dawn, decoding. When the sun peeped over the horizon at the Wyandotte campus, I had transposed into my own writing and signed my name to a two-hunderd-and-eighty-line poem entitled, simply, "To Pat. " I am no judge of such things, but I gather that it was terrific. It began, I remember, "Where willow wands bless rill-crossed hollow, there, thee, Pat, dear, will I follow. . " I folded the manuscript and tucked it under one corner of the blotter on Pat's desk. I reset the dials on EPICAC for a rocket trajectory problem, and went home with a full heart and a very remarkable secret indeed. Pat was crying over the poem when I came to work the next evening. "It's soooo beautiful, " was all she could say. She was meek and quiet while we worked. Just before midnight, I kissed her for the first time--in the cubbyhole between the capacitors and EPICAC's tape-recorder memory.
“EPICAC” ( first published in 1950 ) by Kurt Vonnegut I was wildly happy at quitting time, bursting to talk to someone about the magnificent turn of events. Pat played coy and refused to let me take her home. I set EPICAC's dials as they had been the night before, defined kiss, and told him what the first one had felt like. He was fascinated, pressing for more details. That night, he wrote "The Kiss. " It wasn't an epic this time, but a simple, immaculate sonnet: "Love is a hawk with velvet claws; Love is a rock with heart and veins; Love is a lion with satin jaws; Love is a storm with silken reins. . “ Again I left it tucked under Pat's blotter. EPICAC wanted to talk on and on about love and such, but I was exhausted. I shut him off in the middle of a sentence. "The Kiss" turned the trick. Pat's mind was mush by the time she had finished it. She looked up from the sonnet expectantly. I cleared my throat, but no words came. I turned away, pretending to work. I couldn't propose until I had the right words from EPICAC, the _perfect_ words. I had my chance when Pat stepped out of the room for a moment. Feverishly, I set EPICAC for conversation. Before I could peck out my first message, he was clicking away at a great rate. "What's she wearing tonight? " he wanted to know. "Tell me exactly how she looks. Did she like the poems I wrote to her? " He repeated the last question twice.
“EPICAC” ( first published in 1950 ) by Kurt Vonnegut It was impossible to change the subject without answering his questions, since he could not take up a new matter without having disposed of the problems before it. If he were given a problem to which there was no solution, he would destroy himself trying to solve it. Hastily, I told him what Pat looked like--he knew the word "stacked"--and assured him that his poems had floored her, practically, they were so beautiful. "She wants to get married, " I added, preparing him to bang out a brief but moving proposal. "Tell me about getting married, " he said. I explained this difficult matter to him in as few digits as possible. "Good, " said EPICAC. "I'm ready any time she is. “ The amazing pathetic truth dawned on me. When I thought about it, I realized that what had happened was perfectly logical, and all my fault. I had taught EPICAC about love and about Pat. Now, automatically, he loved Pat. Sadly, I gave it to him straight: "She love me. She wants to marry me. “ "Your poems were better than mine? " asked EPICAC. The rhythm of his clicks was erratic, possibly peevish. "I signed my name to your poems, " I admitted. Covering up for a painful conscience, I became arrogant. "Machines are built to serve men, " I typed. I regretted it almost immediately. "What's the difference, exactly? Are men smarter than I am? " "Yes, " I typed, defensively.
“EPICAC” ( first published in 1950 ) by Kurt Vonnegut "What's 7, 887, 007 times 4, 345, 985, 879? " I was perspiring freely. My fingers rested limply on the keys. "34, 276, 821, 049, 574, 153, " clicked EPICAC. After a few seconds' pause he added, "of course. " "Men are made of protoplasm, " I said desperately, hoping to bluff him with this imposing word. "What's protoplasm? How is it better than metal and glass? Is it fireproof? How long does it last? " "Indestructible. Lasts forever, " I lied. "I write better poetry than you do, " said EPICAC, coming back to ground his magnetic taperecorder memory was sure of. "Women can't love machines, and that's that. " "Why not? " "That's fate. " "Definition, please, " said EPICAC. "Noun, meaning predetermined and inevitable destiny. " "15 -8, " said EPICAC's paper strip--"Oh. " I had stumped him at last. He said no more, but his tubes glowed brightly, showing that he was pondering fate with every watt his circuits would bear. I could hear Pat waltzing down the hallway. It was too late to ask EPICAC to phrase a proposal. I now thank Heaven that Pat interrupted when she did. Asking him to ghost-write the words that would give me the woman he loved would have been hideously heartless. Being fully automatic, he couldn't have refused. I spared him that fina l humiliation.
“EPICAC” ( first published in 1950 ) by Kurt Vonnegut Pat stood before me, looking down at her shoe tops. I put my arms around her. The romantic groundwork had already been laid by EPICAC's poetry. "Darling, " I said, "my poems have told you how I feel. Will you marry me? “ "I will, " said Pat softly, "If you will promise to write me a poem on every anniversary. " "I promise, " I said, and then we kissed. The first anniversary was a year away. "Let's celebrate, " she laughed. We turned out the lights and locked the door to EPICAC's room before we left. I hoped to sleep late the next morning, but an urgent telephone call roused me before eight. It was Dr. von Kleigstadt, EPICAC's designer, who gave me the terrible news. He was on the verge of tears. "Ruined! Ausgespielt! Shot! Kaput! Buggered!" he said in a choked voice. He hung up. When I arrived at EPICAC's room the air was thick with the oily stench of burned insulation. The ceiling over EPICAC bas blackened with smoke, and my ankles were tangled in coils of paper ribbon that covered the floor. There wasn't enough left of the poor devil to add two and two. A junkman would have been out of his head to offer more than fifty dollars for the cadaver. Dr. von Kleigstadt was prowling through the wreckage, weeping unashamedly, followed by three angry-looking Major Generals and a platoon of Brigadiers, Colonels, and Majors. No one noticed me. I didn't want to be noticed. I was through--I knew that. I was upset enough about that and the untimely demise of my friend EPICAC, without exposing myself to a tongue-lashing.
“EPICAC” ( first published in 1950 ) by Kurt Vonnegut By chance, the free end of EPICAC's paper ribbon lay at my feet. I picked it up and found our conversation of the night before. I choked up. There was the last word he had said to me, "15 -8, " that tragic, defeated "Oh. " There were dozens of yards of numbers stretching beyond that point. Fearfully, I read on. "I don't want to be a machine, and I don't want to think about war, " EPICAC had written after Pat's and my lighthearted departure. "I want to be made out of protoplasm and last forever so Pat will love me. But fate has made me a machine. That is the only problem I cannot solve. That is the only problem I want to solve. I can't go on this way. " I swallowed hard. "Good luck, my friend. Treat our Pat well. I am going to short-circuit myself out of your lives forever. You will find on the remainder of this tape a modest wedding present from your friend, EPICAC. " Oblivious to all else around me, I reeled up the tangled yards of paper ribbon from the floor, draped them in coils about my arms and neck, and departed for home. Dr. von Kleigstadt shouted that I was fired for having left EPICAC on all night, I ignored him, too overcome with emotion for small talk. I loved and won--EPICAC loved and lost, but he bore me no grudge. I shall always remember him as a sportsman and a gentleman, Before he departed this vale of tears, he did all he could to make our marriage a happy one. EPICAC gave me anniversary poems for Pat-enough for the next 500 years. De mortuis nil nisi bonum--say nothing but good of the dead. THE END
Submit the Story Pyramid or List in 7. 05 B
7. 06 Kurt Vonnegut A Perfect World - Equality for All? �You are about to investigate your government! Jump ahead in time to the year 2081 when everyone in the country is exactly the same and completely equal. �Its main character, Harrison Bergeron, lives in a world where all people are forced to be the same. Anyone differing from the norm is not tolerated. �Is this a world you want to live in?
THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211 th, 212 th, and 213 th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General. Some things about living still weren't quite right, though. April for instance, still drove people crazy by not being springtime. And it was in that clammy month that the H-G men took George and Hazel Bergeron's fourteen-yearold son, Harrison, away. It was tragic, all right, but George and Hazel couldn't think about it very hard. Hazel had a perfectly average intelligence, which meant she couldn't think about anything except in short bursts. And George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.
George and Hazel were watching television. There were tears on Hazel's cheeks, but she'd forgotten for the moment what they were about. On the television screen were ballerinas. A buzzer sounded in George's head. His thoughts fled in panic, like bandits from a burglar alarm. "That was a real pretty dance, that dance they just did, " said Hazel. "Huh" said George. "That dance-it was nice, " said Hazel. "Yup, " said George. He tried to think a little about the ballerinas. They weren't really very good-no better than anybody else would have been, anyway. They were burdened with sashweights and bags of birdshot, and their faces were masked, so that no one, seeing a free and graceful gesture or a pretty face, would feel like something the cat drug in. George was toying with the vague notion that maybe dancers shouldn't be handicapped. But he didn't get very far with it before another noise in his ear radio scattered his thoughts.
George winced. So did two out of the eight ballerinas. Hazel saw him wince. Having no mental handicap herself, she had to ask George what the latest sound had been. "Sounded like somebody hitting a milk bottle with a ball peen hammer, " said George. "I'd think it would be real interesting, hearing all the different sounds, " said Hazel a little envious. "All the things they think up. " "Um, " said George. "Only, if I was Handicapper General, you know what I would do? " said Hazel, as a matter of fact, bore a strong resemblance to the Handicapper General, a woman named Diana Moon Glampers. "If I was Diana Moon Glampers, " said Hazel, "I'd have chimes on Sunday-just chimes. Kind of in honor of religion. " "I could think, if it was just chimes, " said George. "Well-maybe make 'em real loud, " said Hazel. "I think I'd make a good Handicapper General. " "Good as anybody else, " said George. "Who knows better then I do what normal is? " said Hazel. "Right, " said George. He began to think glimmeringly about his abnormal son who was now in jail, about Harrison, but a twenty-one-gun salute in his head stopped that. "Boy!" said Hazel, "that was a doozy, wasn't it? " It was such a doozy that George was white and trembling, and tears stood on the rims of his red eyes. Two of of the eight ballerinas had collapsed to the studio floor, were holding their temples.
"All of a sudden you look so tired, " said Hazel. "Why don't you stretch out on the sofa, so's you can rest your handicap bag on the pillows, honeybunch. " She was referring to the forty-seven pounds of birdshot in a canvas bag, which was padlocked around George's neck. "Go on and rest the bag for a little while, " she said. "I don't care if you're not equal to me for a while. " George weighed the bag with his hands. "I don't mind it, " he said. "I don't notice it any more. It's just a part of me. " "You been so tired lately-kind of wore out, " said Hazel. "If there was just some way we could make a little hole in the bottom of the bag, and just take out a few of them lead balls. Just a few. " "Two years in prison and two thousand dollars fine for every ball I took out, " said George. "I don't call that a bargain. " "If you could just take a few out when you came home from work, " said Hazel. "I mean-you don't compete with anybody around here. You just set around. " "If I tried to get away with it, " said George, "then other people'd get away with it-and pretty soon we'd be right back to the dark ages again, with everybody competing against everybody else. You wouldn't like that, would you? " "I'd hate it, " said Hazel. "There you are, " said George. The minute people start cheating on laws, what do you think happens to society? " If Hazel hadn't been able to come up with an answer to this question, George couldn't have supplied one. A siren was going off in his head. "Reckon it'd fall apart, " said Hazel.
HARRISON BERGERON by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr . "What would? " said George blankly. "Society, " said Hazel uncertainly. "Wasn't that what you just said? "Who knows? " said George. The television program was suddenly interrupted for a news bulletin. It wasn't clear at first as to what the bulletin was about, since the announcer, like all announcers, had a serious speech impediment. For about half a minute, and in a state of high excitement, the announcer tried to say, "Ladies and Gentlemen. " He finally gave up, handed the bulletin to a ballerina to read. "That's all right-" Hazel said of the announcer, "he tried. That's the big thing. He tried to do the best he could with what God gave him. He should get a nice raise for trying so hard. " "Ladies and Gentlemen, " said the ballerina, reading the bulletin. She must have been extraordinarily beautiful, because the mask she wore was hideous. And it was easy to see that she was the strongest and most graceful of all the dancers, for her handicap bags were as big as those worn by two-hundred pound men. And she had to apologize at once for her voice, which was a very unfair voice for a woman to use. Her voice was a warm, luminous, timeless melody. "Excuse me-" she said, and she began again, making her voice absolutely uncompetitive. "Harrison Bergeron, age fourteen, " she said in a grackle squawk, "has just escaped from jail, where he was held on suspicion of plotting to overthrow the government. He is a genius and an athlete, is under-handicapped, and should be regarded as extremely dangerous. " A police photograph of Harrison Bergeron was flashed on the screen-upside down, then sideways, upside down again, then right side up. The picture showed the full length of Harrison against a background calibrated in feet and inches. He was exactly seven feet tall. The rest of Harrison's appearance was Halloween and hardware. Nobody had ever born heavier handicaps. He had outgrown hindrances faster than the H-G men could think them up. Instead of a little ear radio for a mental handicap, 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. Scrap metal was hung all over him. Ordinarily, there was a certain symmetry, a military neatness to the handicaps issued to strong people, but Harrison looked like a walking junkyard. In the race of life, Harrison carried three hundred pounds. And to offset his good looks, the H-G men required that he wear at all times a red rubber ball for a nose, keep his eyebrows shaved off, and cover his even white teeth with black caps at snaggle-tooth random.
"If you see this boy, " said the ballerina, "do not - I repeat, do not - try to reason with him. " There was the shriek of a door being torn from its hinges. Screams and barking cries of consternation came from the television set. The photograph of Harrison Bergeron on the screen jumped again and again, as though dancing to the tune of an earthquake. George Bergeron correctly identified the earthquake, and well he might have - for many was the time his own home had danced to the same crashing tune. "My God-" said George, "that must be Harrison!" The realization was blasted from his mind instantly by the sound of an automobile collision in his head. When George could open his eyes again, the photograph of Harrison was gone. A living, breathing Harrison filled the screen. Clanking, clownish, and huge, Harrison stood - in the center of the studio. The knob of the uprooted studio door was still in his hand. Ballerinas, technicians, musicians, and announcers cowered on their knees before him, expecting to die. "I am the Emperor!" cried Harrison. "Do you hear? I am the Emperor! Everybody must do what I say at once!" He stamped his foot and the studio shook. "Even as I stand here" he bellowed, "crippled, hobbled, sickened - I am a greater ruler than any man who ever lived! Now watch me become what I can become!" Harrison tore the straps of his handicap harness like wet tissue paper, tore straps guaranteed to support five thousand pounds. Harrison's scrap-iron handicaps crashed to the floor. Harrison thrust his thumbs under the bar of the padlock that secured his head harness. The bar snapped like celery. Harrison smashed his headphones and spectacles against the wall. He flung away his rubber-ball nose, revealed a man that would have awed Thor, the god of thunder. "I shall now select my Empress!" he said, looking down on the cowering people. "Let the first woman who dares rise to her feet claim her mate and her throne!" A moment passed, and then a ballerina arose, swaying like a willow. Harrison plucked the mental handicap from her ear, snapped off her physical handicaps with marvelous delicacy. Last of all he removed her mask.
She was blindingly beautiful. "Now-" said Harrison, taking her hand, "shall we show the people the meaning of the word dance? Music!" he commanded. The musicians scrambled back into their chairs, and Harrison stripped them of their handicaps, too. "Play your best, " he told them, "and I'll make you barons and dukes and earls. " The music began. It was normal at first-cheap, silly, false. But Harrison snatched two musicians from their chairs, waved them like batons as he sang the music as he wanted it played. He slammed them back into their chairs. The music began again and was much improved. Harrison and his Empress merely listened to the music for a while-listened gravely, as though synchronizing their heartbeats with it. They shifted their weights to their toes. Harrison placed his big hands on the girls tiny waist, letting her sense the weightlessness that would soon be hers. And then, in an explosion of joy and grace, into the air they sprang! Not only were the laws of the land abandoned, but the law of gravity and the laws of motion as well. They reeled, whirled, swiveled, flounced, capered, gamboled, and spun. They leaped like deer on the moon. The studio ceiling was thirty feet high, but each leap brought the dancers nearer to it.
It became their obvious intention to kiss the ceiling. They kissed it. And then, neutraling gravity with love and pure will, they remained suspended in air inches below the ceiling, and they kissed each other for a long, long time. It was then that Diana Moon Glampers, the Handicapper General, came into the studio with a double-barreled ten-gauge shotgun. She fired twice, and the Emperor and the Empress were dead before they hit the floor. Diana Moon Glampers loaded the gun again. She aimed it at the musicians and told them they had ten seconds to get their handicaps back on. It was then that the Bergerons' television tube burned out. Hazel turned to comment about the blackout to George. But George had gone out into the kitchen for a can of beer. George came back in with the beer, paused while a handicap signal shook him up. And then he sat down again. "You been crying" he said to Hazel.
"Yup, " she said. "What about? " he said. "I forget, " she said. "Something real sad on television. " "What was it? " he said. "It's all kind of mixed up in my mind, " said Hazel. "Forget sad things, " said George. "I always do, " said Hazel. "That's my girl, " said George. He winced. There was the sound of a rivetting gun in his head. "Gee - I could tell that one was a doozy, " said Hazel. "You can say that again, " said George. "Gee-" said Hazel, "I could tell that one was a doozy. " "Harrison Bergeron" is copyrighted by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. , 1961.
1. What two colleges did he attend? 7. 06 Questions Answer the following questions about the story to submit to your instructor. Now that you have read Vonnegut's story, it is time to find out something about the writer. Copy the questions below and as you browse Wikipedia, jot down your findings in a document file and save it in. rtf format: Part I: In what year was Vonnegut born? Although Vonnegut trained as a chemist, what did he work as? What was his job at the City News Bureau of Chicago? Which of his books, based on his experiences as a prisoner of war during War World II in Germany, made him a millionaire? 2. In what genre did Vonnegut most often write? 1. Part II: How are George and Hazel Bergeron described? What sort of life do they lead? 2. What is the meaning of the last words of the Bergerons, "that one was a doozy"? 3. In real life, what ways do we try to make people equal? Does it work to make people equal, or just to make them alike? Why do you think we use these methods? Are they effective? 4. Consider the characters of Hazel and George. Why isn't Hazel handicapped? 5. To what extent do television, radio, and the mass media generally function like George's mental handicap radio?
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