"Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman

“‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman,” one of Harlan Ellison’s most famous short stories, was published in Galaxy in 1965 and went on to win both the Hugo and the Nebula Awards. Ellison (1934-2018) was an American speculative fiction and screenwriter whose works were influential in the development of New Wave science fiction. “‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman” uses nonlinear storytelling to depict a short-lived one-man rebellion against a dystopian future society. The story explores themes of authority, class, and the human struggle for and against order. Other works by Ellison include “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” and “Shattered Like a Glass Goblin”

This study guide refers to the edition collected in Masterpieces: The Best Science Fiction of the 20th Century, edited by Orson Scott Card and published by Ace Books in 2001.

The unnamed narrator quotes from Henry David Thoreau’s essay “Civil Disobedience” (1849), about the majority of people who live and work for the state without judgment or conscience, whom Thoreau compares to “wooden men.” Those who do follow their consciences resist the state and are “treated as enemies by it” (146). The narrator suggests that this quote is central to understanding what life is about and then tells the reader that the story will start in the middle.