"Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman

Voice is the unique personality or point of view of the narrator or author, usually communicated through diction. “‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman” uses a third-person subjective point of view, in which the unnamed narrator has access to some facts and internal thoughts of characters, but not all of them. For instance, the narrator knows that Georgette Delahanty secretly wished for the death warrant to be for her husband but does not know how or where the Harlequin got the jelly beans. The narrator also knows about the state of Vermont and the novel 1984 although no one in the world of the story does. This sets the narrator squarely outside the story and allows them to comment on the action and meaning of the story, which they do through suggestive asides, such as when they say, “The schedules had to be met. After all, there was a war on. But, wasn’t there always?” (151).

At the end of the story, the narration slips seamlessly from a description of what the crowd is thinking—“well, you see, he was just a nut after all, and if that’s the way the system is run, then let’s do it that way” (155)—to the narrator’s commentary: “[I]n every revolution a few die who shouldn’t, but they have to, because that’s the way it happens, and if you only make a little change, then it seems to be worthwhile” (155). This last statement provides the narrator’s context for the final vignette of the story, which shows the Ticktockman himself running three minutes late.

Humor intends to make the audience laugh and is often used as a literary tool to relieve narrative tension. The Harlequin uses humor to subvert the power and dignity of the authorities, as when he sings “a little song about moonlight” (149) and disappears. The narrator also inserts humor into their narration. When wondering about the jelly beans, the narrator says, “Now wait a second—second accounted for […]” (149)—a quick, ironic nod to the time-obsessed society they are discussing. Later, when the Harlequin leaves his argument with Pretty Alice, he attempts to slam the door, but the door “sigh[s] shut softly, and lock[s] itself” (152), as though even inanimate objects in this society refuse to do anything passionately or hastily. The lightness of the story’s humor underscores the grimness of its reality and shows that effective social commentary can still produce innocent laughter.

A vignette is a brief descriptive scene that depicts a single moment, object, setting, or character. Ellison uses vignettes in lieu of exposition to illustrate the values of the society around time and people’s lives. He presents several vignettes about various consequences of lateness for school, work, business, and personal lives. These short scenes reveal how the society evolved into its present form. A later vignette about the Delahanty family depicts a man’s family receiving his turn-off notice and his state execution later the next day. This scene illustrates how terrifying and cold the society’s current treatment of human life is. Vignettes can quickly show different times, places, and points of view, allowing the text to build context without slowing the narrative’s pace.

Polysyndeton is a series of words or clauses linked with conjunctions (e.g., and, but, or, nor, so). Ellison’s jelly bean paragraph describes the motion, color, and sound of the jelly beans falling onto the factory workers in one long run-on sentence that links adjectives and clauses with the word “and.” This technique lends a sense of rhythm and excessiveness to the scene; the audience may expect the sentence to stop, but it keeps going, layering on more and more information in a breathless torrent. The narration feels urgent and immediate, as if building to a climax.

Ellison uses the same strategy to describe the society “where the single driving force was order and unity and equality and promptness and clocklike precision and attention to the clock” (149), where the narration seems hurried and overly eager to explain. It also creates a hammering rhythm that underscores the regularity by which people in the society are forced to live.