Harlan Ellison starts out his short story “Repent Harlequin” with an excerpt of the Henry David Thoreau essay titled “Civil Disobedience”. This excerpt talks about how people work for the higher power “not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies” (Ellison 1). This is exactly what Karl Marx talks about, how people begin to be dehumanized to the point of becoming “a cog in a machine” (Warburton 160). Karl Marx is a famous philosopher who believed that everyone should be equal and the proletariat should revolt against the bourgeoisie. In Ellison’s story there was one person who actually did that, he was known as the Harlequin. Therefore, Ellison suggests that people should come together and revolt against the government not only just
