Page 140 - SpringBoard_ELA_Grade8_Flipbook

36 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.”
37 He finally gave up, handed the bulletin to a ballerina to read.
38 “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.”
39 “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.
40 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.
41 “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.”
42 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.
43 The rest of Harrison’s appearance was Halloween and hardware. Nobody had ever borne 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.
44 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.
45 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.”
46 There was the shriek of a door being torn from its hinges.
47 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.
48 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!”
49 The realization was blasted from his mind instantly by the sound of an automobile collision in his head.
impediment: a hindrance; a physical defect that prevents normal speech
grackle: any of several blackbirds smaller than a crow
hindrances: obstacles; deterrents; impediments
aCTIvITy 2.3
continued
symmetry: balance; arrangement
consternation: alarm; bewilderment
Unit 2 • The Challenge of Utopia 113
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