"Harrison Bergeron"

In his short story, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. makes fun of the goal of equality. He creates a society where people are born with different abilities but are deliberately handicapped by the government to make them the same and prevent competition. Cover your ears while you learn this list, because you might get hurt if you get too smart.

Here are all the word lists to support the reading of Grade 8 Unit 2's texts from SpringBoard's Common Core ELA series: Grant and Lee, Harrison Bergeron, The Giver, Banned Books Week, Fatal Text Message, Distracted Driving, How the Brain Reacts, Cellphones and driving
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. vigilance
    the process of paying close and continuous attention
    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.
  2. advantage
    the quality of having a superior or more favorable position
    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.
  3. vague
    not clearly understood or expressed
    George was toying with the vague notion that maybe dancers shouldn't be handicapped.
  4. glimmer
    a slight suggestion or vague understanding
    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.
  5. impediment
    something immaterial that interferes with action or progress
    It wasn't clear at first as to what the bulletin was about, since the announcer, like all announcers, had a serious speech impediment.
  6. hideous
    so extremely ugly as to be terrifying
    She must have been extraordinarily beautiful, because the mask she wore was hideous.
  7. handicap
    put at a disadvantage
    He is a genius and an athlete, is under-handicapped, and should be regarded as extremely dangerous.
  8. hindrance
    any obstruction that impedes or is burdensome
    He had outgrown hindrances faster than the H-G men could think them up.
  9. spectacles
    eyeglasses
    The spectacles were intended to make him not only half blind, but to give him whanging headaches besides.
  10. symmetry
    balance among the parts of something
    Ordinarily, there was a certain symmetry, a military neatness to the handicaps issued to strong people, but Harrison looked like a walking junkyard.
  11. offset
    compensate for or counterbalance
    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.
  12. consternation
    sudden shock or dismay that causes confusion
    Screams and barking cries of consternation came from the television set.
  13. harness
    an arrangement of straps for holding something to the body
    Harrison tore the straps of his handicap harness like wet tissue paper, tore straps guaranteed to support five thousand pounds.
  14. delicacy
    lightness in movement or manner
    Harrison plucked the mental handicap from her ear, snapped off her physical handicaps with marvelous delicacy.
  15. wince
    draw back, as with fear or pain
    He winced. There was the sound of a riveting gun in his head.
Created on Mon Dec 15 10:10:35 EST 2014 (updated Mon Dec 15 14:28:59 EST 2014)

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