Thursday, February 7, 2008

"'Repent, Harlequin!' said the Ticktockman"


We read Harlan Ellison's story "'Repent, Harlequin!' said the Ticktockman" in class on February 8. If you have further comments about the story, please post them here. This is another extrapolation story, so comments about the author's attitude toward future trends would be great.

4 comments:

jeremey b said...

The authors extrapolations seemed a little far fetched to me if only for the fact that he placed every man's life in the hands of one man known as the Ticktock man. Something else i kind of saw a connection between was the Harlequin and the Joker. In this story he was seen as a sort of hero but in Batman he was the archnemesis.

Stefan Popp said...

Why is the ticktock man in control of every person’s lives why does he get to decide how long that person lives and why is he able to decide to shorten their life if they do something bad? Who puts him in charge? also the harlequin in this story seemed to be more of a hero but the definition a of a harlequin in my understanding is a person or character that is often a comic character usually masked, dressed in multicolored, diamond-patterned tights, and carrying a wooden sword or magic wand. And somewhat of a buffoon. So how does the definition fit into the definition of a hero?

Jake? said...

to me the story is a physical embodiment of todays social rules; do not be late, be polite, if you don't have a job you do not exist, and so on. the story was quite imaginative but a little hard to grasp.

P_lanning69 said...

i wasn't here so please don't grade me down. Thank You