Reminder All Classes: Your Typed 2500
word short story will be due Monday, Dec. 9.
Monday- All
Classes will practice memorizing and reciting their poem for the first ten
minutes of class.
Seniors
Students will watch the YouTube
video, Rapping Text Structures at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jw5TEueoa90.
Then the teacher will pass out the Packet “Text Structures Evaluation” and
begin working on it in class. *See attached packet below*
Juniors
Students will watch the Youtube
video, “How to Write a Satire at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuvjDK3mpA0,
and then write a 200 word satire of their own in class. Students will share
their satirical works out loud.
Tuesday- All
Classes will practice memorizing and reciting their poem for the first ten
minutes of class.
Seniors
Continue
working on “Text Structures Evaluation” Packet in cooperative pairs.
Juniors
Begin
reading the short story, Harrison Bergerson.
During the reading, students will chart all irony, contradictions, and
satirical humor. *Story and Analysis Questions Posted Below*
Wednesday- All
Classes will practice memorizing and reciting their poem for the first ten
minutes of class.
Seniors
Finish “Text
Structures Evaluation” Packet in cooperative pairs.
Juniors
Finish
reading the short story, Harrison
Bergerson, and answer all analytical questions with textual evidence.
Thursday- Poetry Out Loud Class Competitions!!!!
Senior Attachment:
In your own words,
briefly define each text structure and provide a 3 sentence example.
Cause and Effect-
Problem and Solution-
Sequencing-
Spatial-
Description-
Chronological-
1.
Annotate each article looking for the text structure
utilized. Highlight, underline, circle,
and note the words/phrases that clue you into what the text structure is.
2.
Also, write down at least 2 analysis questions
regarding the article in the margins. For example, because the author says
____________, does that mean ____________ is also true? Analyzing
is all about making connections!
3.
Write an 8-10 sentence paragraph with CITED textual evidence explaining what the text
structure is, and how you knew. Do not forget to include the article title and
author.
Example of textual
evidence with analysis: According
to Blythe, “There are certain steps one must take to ensure academic
excellence,” which firmly suggests a text structure of chronological order
(Blythe, 2013). Because
Blythe believes Facebook is the best way to achieve relationship fulfillment,
one can also believe that social networking has changed how we view
relationships. Can one really be in a
relationship and never have in-person contact?
4.
Remember, there can be more than one structure
implemented in each article. If this is
the case, note the paragraph # when discussing the different structure in your
analysis.
This Packet is due Thursday, December 5
AT THE BEGINNING OF YOUR CLASS PERIOD!!!!! 250 Points!
50-
Annotation and analysis questions written on articles
200-
for all four analytical paragraphs. They must contain textual evidence and
analysis connections. If you do not do
them all, or they do not follow the guidelines, you will get a 0. It is all or nothing.
The solution to gun violence is
clear
By Fareed Zakaria,December 19, 2012
Announcing Wednesday that he would
send
proposals on reducing gun violence in America to Congress, President
Obama mentioned a number of sensible gun-control measures. But he also paid
homage to the Washington
conventional wisdom about the many and varied causes of this calamity — from
mental health issues to school safety. His spokesman, Jay Carney, had said
earlier that this is “a complex problem that will require a complex solution.”
Gun control, Carney added, is far from the only answer.
In fact, the problem is not complex, and the solution is blindingly obvious.
People point to three sets of causes when talking about events such as the Newtown, Conn.,
shootings. First, the psychology of the killer; second, the environment of
violence in our popular culture; and, third, easy access to guns. Any one of
these might explain a single shooting. What we should be trying to understand
is not one single event but why we have so many of them. The number of deaths
by firearms in the United
States was
32,000
last year. Around 11,000 were gun homicides.
To understand how staggeringly high this number is, compare it to the rate
in other rich countries. England
and Wales
have about 50 gun homicides a year — 3 percent of our rate per 100,000 people.
Many people believe that America
is simply a more violent, individualistic society. But again, the data clarify.
For
most
crimes — theft, burglary, robbery, assault — the United States is within the range
of other advanced countries. The category in which the U.S. rate is magnitudes higher is
gun homicides.
The U.S. gun homicide
rate is
30 times that of France
or Australia,
according to the
U.N.
Office on Drugs and Crime, and 12 times higher than the average for other
developed countries.
So what explains this difference? If psychology is the main cause, we should
have 12 times as many psychologically disturbed people. But we don’t. The United States
could do better, but we take mental disorders seriously and invest more in this
area than do many peer countries.
Is America’s
popular culture the cause? This is highly unlikely, as largely the same culture
exists in other rich countries. Youth in England
and Wales, for example, are
exposed to virtually identical cultural influences as in the United States. Yet the rate of gun
homicide there is a tiny fraction of ours. The Japanese are at the cutting edge
of the world of video games. Yet their gun homicide rate is close to zero! Why?
Britain
has tough gun laws. Japan
has perhaps the tightest regulation of guns in the industrialized world.
The data in social science are rarely this clear. They strongly suggest that
we have so much more gun violence than other countries because we have far more
permissive laws than others regarding the sale and possession of guns. With 5
percent of the world’s population, the United States has 50 percent of the
guns.
There is clear evidence that tightening laws
— even in highly individualistic countries with long traditions of gun
ownership — can reduce gun violence. In Australia, after a 1996 ban on all
automatic and semiautomatic weapons — a real ban, not like the
one
we enacted in 1994 with
600-plus
exceptions — gun-related homicides dropped
59
percent over the next decade. The rate of suicide by firearm plummeted
65 percent. (Almost
20,000 Americans die each year using guns to commit suicide — a method that is
much more successful than other forms of suicide.)
There will always be evil or disturbed people. And they might be influenced
by popular culture. But how is government going to identify the darkest
thoughts in people’s minds before they have taken any action? Certainly those
who urge that government be modest in its reach would not want government to
monitor thoughts, curb free expression, and ban the sale of information and
entertainment.
Instead, why not have government do something much simpler and that has
proven successful: limit access to guns. And not another toothless ban, riddled
with exceptions, which the gun lobby would use to “prove” that such bans don’t
reduce violence.
A few hours before the Newtown murders last
week, a
man
entered a school in China’s Henan province. Obviously mentally disturbed,
he tried to kill children. But the only weapon he was able to get was a knife.
Although
23
children were injured, not one child died.
The problems that produced the Newtown
massacre are not complex, nor are the solutions. We do not lack for answers.
What we lack in America
today is courage.
comments@fareedzakaria.com
Special Feature: Exploring the Relationship Between Media and Adolescent
Health
Adolescents live in a media-rich environment, with unprecedented exposure to
content—including television, movies, music, games, advertising, and Internet
websites—that fits in a pocket. Through a series of innovative studies, RAND
Health is helping parents, practitioners, and policymakers better understand
the positive and negative effects of traditional media on adolescent health and
well-being and the evolving role that new media play in adolescents’ daily
lives.
Research Findings
Television—Bad Example or Good Role Model?
The average American teenager watches three hours of television a day.
Typical teen fare contains heavy doses of sexual content, from touching,
kissing, jokes, and innuendo to conversations about sexual activity and
portrayals of intercourse. RAND studies found
that watching sex on television influences teens’ sexual behavior.
Teens who watch a lot of television with sexual content are more likely to
have sexual intercourse in the following year. Shows in which characters just
talk about sex affect teens just as much as shows that actually depict sexual
activity. Among teens having sex, the proportion likely to become pregnant or
be responsible for a pregnancy in their teen years is higher for those
frequently exposed to sexual content on TV. In contrast, shows with content
about contraception and pregnancy can demonstrate the risks and consequences of
sex—and can also foster beneficial dialogue between teens and parents.
Adverse Effects of Degrading Sexual Lyrics
Music also holds powerful sway over adolescents. Teens who most often
listened to artists whose lyrics include portrayals of sex that are degrading
to men and women were more likely to have sex at a young age. Lyrics including
content that was sexual but not degrading weren’t associated with earlier sex.
The Power of Advertising
RAND surveys of youth found that, as early
as 4th grade, children were well versed in alcohol brands and ads. TV
advertising of alcohol reaches large numbers of youth, and presages their
behavior: For example, viewing of TV alcohol ads by 6th graders was linked to a
higher risk of drinking by grade 7. The combined influence of multiple forms of
marketing (e.g., in-store promotions, owning promotional items) also predicted
an increased risk of subsequent drinking.
How
to give the perfect kiss
The kiss. That moment when the violins start to play,
when stars swirl in the heavens and a golden glow falls over the land -
immortalised by playwrights, painters, poets, songwriters, sculptors, singers,
on stage and silver screen. But how do you give the perfect kiss? And what
should you do if you end up in a clinch with someone who's hopeless at it? What
is the etiquette for 'kissing' by text and email? And how can you avoid
unwanted kisses? Just follow my advice and you'll be smooching with confidence
by Valentine's Day.
HOW TO GIVE THE PERFECT KISS
Making a move on the object of your affection mid-way through their
grandmother's funeral is probably ill-advised. But, then again, the thing about
a 'perfect' kiss is that there really are no rules.
It just has to be with the right person, and feel right for both parties, for
it to be fantastic. In my rigorous scientific studies and exhaustive research,
I have discovered that being bold, decisive and providing an element of surprise
are some of the key elements of a truly great kiss.
This is tricky because you don't want to shock your lover into submission. Or
perhaps you do. But if you do, you shouldn' t. A perfect kiss, basically,
should be confident and come as a welcome surprise - like finding a fiver in
the back of an old pair of jeans.
The perfect kiss should be like dancing a tango in Argentina - you know the steps, but
there is no particular order to them. Your moves must complement your
partner's. Sometimes the kisser will lead, sometimes the kissee, creating an
exciting improvisational mix of form and chaos.
Cheeks will touch, shoulders be caressed, lips will brush, tongues will tease
and mouths will mingle. (Obviously, don't try this with a red rose in your
teeth.)
You'll know how successful your kiss is if you feel the kissee losing
themselves in it. Or if they pass out through pure pleasure.
Once the lips have joined, the perfect kiss should involve tender bites, gentle
sucking, the tongues should be entwined and move sensuously against each other.
The tempo of movements should vary, too - a little like the percussion section
of the Grimsdyke Brass Band: at one moment fast and furious, and the next soft
and languid.
A kiss should give you pleasure - but you must never forget you have to give it
back.
10 Steps to Create a Facebook Page that Gets "Likes"
In October 2012,
Facebook
surpassed a big milestone when it recorded over 1 billion active monthly users.
With 2.7 billion “likes” recorded on Facebook each day in 2012 (according to
statistics released by
Royal Pingdom), Facebook has become an essential place for
businesses, brands, celebrities, musicians, public figures, non-profit
organizations, schools, and more to interact with consumers and the wider
audience of online users.
Anyone with a Facebook account can create a Facebook Page within minutes.
It’s free and easy. However, creating a Facebook Page and creating a
great
Facebook Page are two very different things. Fortunately, you don’t have to be
a web designer, programmer, marketing expert, or technology guru to create an
irresistible Facebook Page.
Following are 10 simple steps that you can take to create a great Facebook
Page that motivates people to click the “like” button.
1. Choose a great username. The
username you choose for your Facebook Page will also appear in the URL for your
page. There are already a lot of Facebook Pages, so your first choice might not
be available. That’s why it’s critical that you create a Facebook Page and get
your username as soon as possible. Even if you don’t plan to aggressively use
Facebook today, you might want to in the future. Get your username now, so
you’ll have it when you need it.
2. Give the key details in the About
section. Your Facebook Page includes a small About section
where you can include a couple of sentences about your business or
organization. Make sure you include the most important information about what
you offer to your audience, so they instantly understand why your page should
matter to them.
3. Provide as many details as
possible in the full About description. Once your Facebook Page is
live, you can log into your account and click the Edit Info button to add
details and content. Fill in as much basic information as you can to tell your
entire story and fully explain what your business or organization does, where
you’re located, how to get in touch with you, and so on.
4. Capture attention with a
fantastic cover photo visual. Choose a cover photo that is
visually dynamic, capture’s people’s attention, and lures them in to take a
closer look at your Page content. Don’t forget that you can include a marketing
message in your cover photo. Just be sure to follow Facebook’s current
guidelines related to cover photos, which you can find in Facebook Page Help.
5. Choose an appropriate profile photo.
Your profile photo is the smaller image that appears on your Facebook
Page and as your avatar on all posts and photos you publish on Facebook. Make
sure the photo you use is one that accurately reflects your brand, because the
more people see it, the more they’ll recognize it and associate it with your
brand.
6. Make sure the most important apps
are visible. Add apps to your Facebook Page to provide more
diverse content and experiences to your audience, and make sure your four most
important apps are listed first. These are the ones that will be automatically
visible in the app thumbnails section of your Facebook Page beneath your cover
photo.
6. Ask your Facebook friends to like
your Facebook Page. Once your Page is setup, use the handy invite
option to invite all of your Facebook friends (or a group of your Facebook
friends) to like your Facebook Page via a Facebook direct message. This is a
great way to get the ball rolling and start building a following.
7. Create some content to make your
Page look useful. Start creating useful, meaningful,
interesting, or entertaining content that your target audience wants to read
and see. This includes photos and posts (be sure to tag people in both). Also,
enter milestones and add content to apps used on your page such as events,
videos, and so on. A Page without content is one that no one will like.
8. Feed your online content to
automatically publish on your Facebook Page. Don’t
have time to publish a lot of content on your Facebook Page? No problem. You
can automate some publishing by feeding your blog posts and Twitter updates to
your Facebook Page. There are external tools that you can use to set this up
such as Twitterfeed as well as some
tools integrated with Facebook such as RSS Graffiti.
9. Promote your Facebook Page. Use Facebook social plugins
to enable people to like your page directly from your website and blog or to
like your website or blog content and share it on their own Facebook profiles
with a single click. There are also social plugins that enable you to show your
Facebook Page updates on your blog or website.
10.
Offer something extra or exclusive on your Facebook Page. There is
little incentive for people to like your Facebook Page or return to it after
their first visit if you don’t offer useful, meaningful, interesting, or
entertaining content and experiences. Not only should your posts be useful, but
you should also create content and experiences that visitors can’t get anywhere
else. For example, offer a discount for your Page fans or hold a contest and
give away a great prize to one of your Page fans. Get creative and find ways to
acknowledge your fans and reward them for their loyalty.
Junior Attachment
1
HARRISON
BERGERON
by
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
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 211th, 212th, and 213th 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-year-old 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.
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.
2
"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 all apart," said Hazel.
"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.
3
"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
snaggletooth
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.
4
"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.
5
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."
6
Harrison
Bergeron: Completely Equal
Answer
the following questions as thoroughly as possible.
1.
Describe the state of the U.S.
society as described in the first paragraph. How has “equality”
been
achieved?
2.
Consider the characters of George and Hazel. Why isn’t Hazel handicapped?
3.
How does George seem to feel about his handicaps?
4.
Consider the character of Harrison in terms of
both his physical qualities and personality traits.
Why
is he considered a threat to society?
5.
In your opinion, what is the shedding of Harrison’s
handicaps symbolic of?
6.
What is the significance of the dance that Harrison
performs with the ballerina? How does the
style
in which the story is written change in this passage?
7.
Why do you think the Vonnegut decides to write dance scene in this way?
8.
How do George and Hazel react to the televised murder of their son? What
connections can you
make
between this scene and Fahrenheit 451?
9.
What do you consider to be the message of Harrison Bergeron
(there are multiple)? What leads
you
to this understanding of the text?
10.
Reread the first column of the story. What revelations occur to you now that
you know the
ending?
