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symmetry: balance; arrangement consternation: alarm; bewilderment
aCTiViTY 1.3
continued
My Notes
interpret the Text Using Close Reading
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.
50 When George could open his eyes again, the photograph of Harrison was gone. A living, breathing Harrison filled the screen.
51 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.
52 “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.
53 “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!”
54 Harrison tore the straps of his handicap harness like wet tissue paper, tore straps guaranteed to support five thousand pounds.
55 Harrison’s scrap-iron handicaps crashed to the floor.
56 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.
57 He flung away his rubber-ball nose, revealed a man that would have awed Thor, the god of thunder.
58 “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!”
59 A moment passed, and then a ballerina arose, swaying like a willow.
60 Harrison plucked the mental handicap from her ear, snapped off her physical
handicaps with marvelous delicacy. Last of all he removed her mask.
61 She was blindingly beautiful.
62 “Now—” said Harrison, taking her hand, “shall we show the people the meaning of
the word dance? Music!” he commanded.
63 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.”
54 SpringBoard® English Language Development Grade 8
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