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Harlan Ellison is a writer who has a straightforward mind and will say what he believes without caring what other people think. When he was a child, parents told their children that Jewish people are bad people. Considering that Harlan Ellison is Jewish, many of the children from his third grade class would tease him and beat him up. He could never bring himself to tell his mother the real reason why he was beat up, and just kept making her think it was because he was a smart aleck. At the age of thirteen, Ellison ran away from home and joined a carnival. Growing up, Ellison had a very corrupted childhood, and everyone told him that everything was his fault. Now, as a writer, he is saying that just because everyone will say something is true, it doesn’t mean that it is true. Many of his stories are about how people should think for themselves and not let the government or media program “what’s really going on” into your head. He thinks that people should stand up for what they think is right, not what other people say is right.

One story by Ellison that shows this point is ‘Repent Harlequin,’ said the Tick-Tock Man. In this story, the main character, Harlequin doesn’t want to be like everyone else. In his society, everyone is run by time. Time controls their lives and for every second a person is late, a second is removed from their life. The Tick-Tock man enforces this rule. Harlequin doesn’t agree with the rule and he doesn’t care what the other people think or do about it. Instead, he doesn’t let the Tick-Tock man scare him and is late for everything that he does whether anyone likes it or not. He is willing to give up his life for something he believes in.

Another example is in the story Reaping the Whirlwind. In this story, Ellison shows how people are disillusioned by the world. For example, a person faithful to their religion can be disillusioned from their beliefs because of what other people...