Like I’m pretty sure the conclusion I had was “oh haha I see your point mr. Vonnegut, too much equality can indeed be a bad thing!”
And I definitely don’t remember my teacher suggesting anything about it being viewable as satire of red scare paranoia either
Whatever his intentions, Vonnegut made a masterwork of anticommunist propaganda.
I was literally thinking about this earlier today, it’s the epitome of “if you treat everyone equally, everything will suck” propaganda. Could just as easily been an episode of South Park.
where in the hell did you go to high school where they were obsessed with existentialism?
the furthest my high school ever got into philosophy was “The enlightenment happened and there was some science stuff. Also America is the greatest nation ever to exist ever.”
this is one of the more surreal things I’ve ever heard and I can’t express how envious I am
I also took AP English but we read stuff like George W. Bush speeches, evangelical propaganda, and all the puritan lit (Nathaniel Hawthorne, the Crucible, etc) but it was always framed in a way where Puritans were rational and good and cool
My lit class taught it, and I went to a public school in [dox]. I figured it was kinda standard.
I remember someone on reddit talking about how interesting and important of a movie it was, so I watched it. I thought it was one of the dumbest things I’d ever seen. People are dumb so they need other people to think for them wow what a cool concept bud definetly never heard that before. I took it as incredibly self indulgent libertarian nonsense
I had a college class examine Harrison Bergeron and I was the only one who mentioned Vonnegut was a socialist. I love the guy but it’s a dog shit story and a terrible satire. Unless you have the context of Vonnegut’s personal beliefs it will be taken literally.
