In "Harrison Bergeron," what is the significance of the dance that Harrison performs with the ballerina? How does the style in which the story is...

Harrison Bergeron's dance with the ballerina is performed without their artificial "handicaps". Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.'s short story "Harrison Bergeron" is set in the year 2081, when everyone was "finally equal". What this means is that everyone is brought down to a level of general incompetence so that no one has to worry about anyone being better than they are at anything. If they are intelligent, they have earpieces that interrupt their thoughts with loud, random...

Harrison Bergeron's dance with the ballerina is performed without their artificial "handicaps". Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.'s short story "Harrison Bergeron" is set in the year 2081, when everyone was "finally equal". What this means is that everyone is brought down to a level of general incompetence so that no one has to worry about anyone being better than they are at anything. If they are intelligent, they have earpieces that interrupt their thoughts with loud, random noise. If strong, they have heavy weights attached to their bodies. The beautiful must wear masks.  Harrison is the son of the two people watching television. He is fourteen years old, seven feet tall, and "a man that would have awed Thor, the god of thunder". When he manages to get in front of the TV cameras, he tears off all his handicaps and convinces one of the ballerinas to do the same. The amazing dance they then perform on live TV is a rejection of everything the government stands for, and "Handicapper General" Diana Moon Glampers soon appears to shoot and kill them both. The style of the story changes during the dance. Instead of short, clipped, banal sentences spoken by George and Hazel Bergeron, the words themselves change to reflect the amazing dance. For example, "They reeled, whirled, swiveled, flounced, capered, gamboled, and spun. They leaped like deer on the moon." After the two are shot to death, the words spoken by George and Hazel are again used, and those words are trite and very simple, even though they have just watched their son be shot to death on live TV.