Equality In Nightmares

Looking upon the world, his world; a world in which everyone was equal. No one person who walked upon the streets was any prettier or any more athletic than anyone else. All the inhabitants of this land were fine with this, even with the pain they had to endure to be equal, the same in every which way. Everyone, that is, except one. The one who fought against this equality, the one with an individual spirit. As Harrison Bergeron broke out from their restraints on his talents, he set off to announce his formal rebellion. Little did he know that in another world, Tally Youngblood, a 16 year old rebel had just set out to do the same. "Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. and The Uglies series by Scott Westerfield have very similar story lines.

Harrison Bergeron and Tally Youngblood's worlds are very similar. Tally is a teen that has just turned 16, the age everyone undergoes massive surgery to make them perfect, but little does she know that the surgery doesn’t just involve looks, but also involves altering her brain to make her happy and ignorant forever. A few years later, she gets help from an unexpected source, becomes aware of what has been happening to her friends and family around her, so she escapes and starts a rebellion that changes her world forever. The government systems in both of the stories were not given this brain - dulling treatment so that they could think and use their brains to help keep their citizens in line. Both Harrison and Tally started rebellions against their horrible, discriminating government. Their worlds look the same, but underneath the candy coated shell of their strong similarities, they are both really quite different.

Throughout the worlds of the two main characters, some differences sprung up from the soil of their similarities. Harrison was shot before he was really able to do any damage to his strict governments procedures, while Tally lived on and was able to tear it all apart from the inside - out. Also, Tally was actually physically changed, not just with a mask or little buzzer in her ear, but changed throughout forceful and painful surgery. The main character in "Harrison Bergeron" just had random objects meant to subdue him attached with straps to his body that he could easily remove, except with the consequence of getting thrown into jail. Both of the stories maybe just weren't so similar after all.

Tally looked out upon the perfect city below her, everything all shiny and beautiful. But to look at it for what it really was, she knew that the people down there were all really trapped in a nightmare, they just didn't know it yet. Grimacing slightly, she grabbed her hover board out from her pack and gave the city one last furtive glance as she strapped herself to the board and when out to start up a rebellion that would change all those people’s lives forever. As Harrison gazed out among the assembled people at the announcement of his rebellion, he would never know how similar his story was to Tally Youngblood’s, yet how different their worlds really were.