PEOPLE RESTRICTED FROM INDEPENDENT THOUGHT / ACTION

GOVERNMENT IS OPPRESSIVE

SETTING IS FUTURISTIC, OR IN A FICTIONAL UNIVERSE

ELEMENTS OF CONFORMITY, OR EXTREME EQUALITY

GOVERNMENT PORTRAYS SOCIETY AS A UTOPIA

PROTAGONIST WISHES TO RESTORE PEOPLE TO A CONVENTIONAL LIFE

“He tried to think a little about the ballerinas… 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.”

“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 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.”

“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.”

“‘ 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?’”

While Harrison is not the protagonist, he attempts to buck the system by breaking out of prison, declaring himself better than others by making himself an “Emperor”, forcing the musicians to play improved music, and showing the viewers how to dance unencumbered by governmental handicaps. “Not only were the laws of the land abandoned, but the law of gravity and the laws of motion as well.”