“Repent, Harlequin!” Said the Ticktockman

The story opens with a passage from Henry David Thoreau’s essay Civil Disobedience,” in which Thoreau decries those “good citizens” who mindlessly serve the state without genuine independent thought. Truly great men—often reformers or martyrs—follow their moral consciences even if that means resisting and becoming enemies of the state.

The Harlequin has come to the notice of authorities as a potential deviant. A rebel who is symbolic of disruption and a defiance of order, the Harlequin has become a “personality”—“something they had filtered out of the system many decades ago.” While middle-class individuals find his antics vulgar, those “down below” consider him “a Robin Hood … a Jesus.” The wealthy and powerful at the top, meanwhile, think him a dangerous menace. Now that he has become something of a notorious celebrity, officials have turned the case over to the Ticktockman.

A tall, silent presence behind a mask, the Ticktockman is called only “Master Timekeeper” to his face; no one wants to offend the man with the power to revoke the minutes, days, or even years of one’s life. Upon reviewing the Harlquin’s file and “cardioplate.” The Ticktockman decides that the rebel must be captured and subdued—but to do so, he must learn the Harlequin’s true identity.

Meanwhile, the Harlequin—an auburn-haired man dressed in fully “motley”—is flying his “air-boat” over the city, listening to “the metronomic left-right-left” of workers heading to and from their factory shifts via conveyor-like belts. With an “elfish grin,” he releases “one hundred and fifty thousand dollars’ worth of jelly beans” from his plane. Millions of beans rain down with “a torrent of color and sweetness” that brings the automatic walkways to a screeching halt, causing workers to tumble off in fits off laugher. They pop the “little jelly bean eggs of childish color into their mouths,” feeling as though it’s “a holiday, and a jollity, an absolute insanity, a giggle.” Though lasting only seven minutes, this disruption is a “disaster” that jams up the entire finely-tuned system that the Ticktockman runs. Because of this, he is ordered to appear before the Ticktockman.

An adherence to timeliness at all costs has slowly warped the society in which the Harlequin lives, from examples of students who get good grades but are kicked out of school for tardiness, to the slow criminalization of all forms of lateness and disorder, the punishment of which is, eventually, death. This problem is shown to be pervasive and deeply entrenched, to the point where ordinary citizens can no longer imagine lives where this kind of social control is absent. Only a few—the lower classes, the misfits, the Harlequin himself—are fully aware of the constricting nature of the Ticktockman’s order.

After the stunt with the jelly beans, the Harlequin, whose real name is Everett C. Marm, discusses his wanted status with his girlfriend, Pretty Alice. Pretty Alice is frustrated with his habitual lateness and his mannerisms, and they get into a minor argument. While Pretty Alice is ostensibly in a relationship with the Harlequin and feels affection for him, she is deeply frustrated by his inability to be on time, his affected manner of speaking (he uses “inflection”), and his unpredictable character. It seems that Pretty Alice would prefer it if the Harlequin were slightly more normal, less disruptive and more in harmony with the status quo. She exclaims at him, “Oh for God's sake, Everett, can’t you stay home just one night! Must you always be out in that ghastly clown suit, running around annoying people?” After their argument, the Harlequin leaves to continue running afoul of the authorities.

The Harlequin executes another stunt to disrupt the order of things, broadcasting his intent to attend the International Medical Association Invocation. When police lie in wait for him, expecting him to be characteristically late, he instead shows up early, turns their own traps against them, and delights the attendees of the conference. His unique style of nonviolent protest is illustrated in the way in which he springs the police’s traps, giant spiderwebs: “blowing a large bullhorn, he frightened and unnerved them so, their own moisturized encirclement webs sucked closed, and they were hauled up, kicking and shrieking, high above the amphitheater's floor.” The gathered physicians laugh, and the Harlequin gives exaggerated bows as the policemen hang in the air.

Meanwhile, in another part of the city, a wife receives a death notice for her husband and is secretly glad that it isn’t for her. When she receives the letter, she thinks, “brutally, realistically,” to herself, “Let it be for Marsh … or one of the kids, but not for me, please dear God, not for me.” Upon opening it, she finds that it is indeed for her husband and she is “at one and the same time horrified and relieved.” While Marsh tries to escape the justice of the Ticktockman by fleeing deep into the Canadian forest, his heart is stopped by his cardioplate in the Ticktockman’s possession nevertheless and he is ultimately unable to escape his final punishment. This anecdote, the narrator notes, illustrates what would happen if the Ticktockman ever finds out the Harlequin’s real name. He instructs the reader not to laugh.

The Harlequin’s next act of defiance involves appearing at the top of a shopping complex, distracting shoppers and encouraging them to engage in activities that flout the order of the Ticktockman. He calls out to them, “Why let them order you about? Why let them tell you to hurry and scurry like ants or maggots? Take your time! Saunter a while! Enjoy the sunshine, enjoy the breeze, let life carry you at your own pace! Don't be slaves of time, it's a helluva way to die, slowly, by degrees . . . down with the Ticktockman!” Construction men are dispatched to capture the Harlequin but fail to do so. The Harlequin’s distractions end up causing further delays to the system, resulting in widespread malfunctions in the chain of supply and demand, which only further enrages the Ticktockman

The Ticktockman grows angrier with each of the Harlequin’s continued acts of subversion and renews the intensity of the search for him. He uses every method at his disposal, a litany of innovative and banal methods of control, from “dogs,” to “torture,” to “treachery,” to “applied physics.” When they finally succeed in capturing the Harlequin, it seems inevitable, as one person would have to be exceptional to escape the Ticktockman’s pursuit. The Harlequin, however, is not exceptional, except for what he represents. He is simply a person, one who has trouble conforming to the status quo, but still just a man: “After all, his name was Everett C. Marm, and he wasn't much to begin with, except a man who had no sense of time.”

The Harlequin and the Ticktockman finally confront each other face to face. The Ticktockman urges him to repent, and gives an exact accounting of all the time he has wasted: “You've been late a total of sixty-three years, five months, three weeks, two days, twelve hours, forty-one minutes, fifty-nine seconds, point oh three six one one one microseconds. You've used up everything you can, and more.” The Harlequin remains steadfast in his defiance, insisting that it is better to die resisting the Ticktockman than to live in such a totalitarian world: “Scare someone else. I'd rather be dead than live in a dumb world with a bogeyman like you.” The Ticktockman says that Pretty Alice gave up Marm’s whereabouts, because she—like most, the Ticktockman insists—“wants to belong, wants to conform.” He says, “Repent, Harlequin!” but the latter simply responds, “Get stuffed.”

The Harlequin is sent to a reeducation camp, one that is implied to use similar methods to those used against “Winston Smith in 1984,” as “the techniques are really quite ancient.” After this process, the Harlequin appears in a broadcast during which he renounces his old defiance and praises the society of the Ticktockman. Those who view the broadcast largely view the Harlequin’s repudiation of his former views as genuine, and use it as an excuse to justify their continued inaction and complacency. To them, further resistance seems foolish at best, and dangerous at worst. It’s much easier and safer to continue to maintain the status quo.

While the Harlequin has been vanquished, his effect is nevertheless felt in the ripples in time he has left behind. “Marm was destroyed, which was a loss, because of what Thoreau said earlier, but you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs,” the narrator notes, adding that “in every revolution, a few die who shouldn't, but … if you make only a little change, then it seems to be worthwhile.” Effectively illustrating  the incremental power of this sort of change, a sputtering underling tells the Ticktockman that he is “three minutes late” and that the schedule is now off. The Ticktockman insists that is “ridiculous” before muttering to himself and entering his office.