“Repent, Harlequin! Said the Ticktockman,”
When developing a story, writers have to agree with or resist or question the dominant beliefs, narratives, ideologies, or discourses that they wish to address in their work. When writing, it is impossible to be neutral because this way, a story will not develop. Many writers, therefore, use different characters that have opposing ideas to show resistance, and in the end, the writers show the winning side to show what ideas they support in their books. Different books show how characters differ, go into a conflict that brings the story into a peak, and eventually, the actual confrontation occurs, which decides the winning side helping the readers to know the idea that the writer supports. Some writers use resistance to explain their preferred political ideologies. In the books Children of Men, blab la, the writers use resistance among their characters to develop their stories.
In “Repent, Harlequin! Said the Ticktockman,” the society emphasizes on keeping time and being orderly, making people unable to acknowledge individualism. The Ticktockman renders one dead without considering a person’s other attributes when you continuously arrive late, reducing the number of hours one has to live. Gerold, for instance, a bright student, is suspended from school because “his constant flouting of the schedules of this school makes it impractical to maintain him in a system where the other children seem capable of getting where they are supposed to be on time, and so it goes.” Harlequin is, however, used to resist this conformity. He is naturally late, and therefore acknowledging the difference in abilities, he makes people divert from their schedules.
In the story Children of Men, P.D James uses resistance to give hope to the reader that people should not give in when things get too hard, but they should have hope for better days. The novel is centered on human infertility that has troubled the UK for some time until people have believed that humankind is bound to go extinct. Therefore, people are living a reckless life without minding the coming generation. However, a group of people, the five fish, live a different life. The group wants the ways of living to change to favor the next generation; therefore, they wage a resistance against the existing leadership. At first, the group of people uses diplomatic means of sending Theo, the cousin of the ruler of England, to tell him to reform his way of ruling to be more democratic. People don’t see the need to lead a good life since the human race was going to be extinct in a few years. Xan, therefore, uses force against the Five Fish killing the members of the group. At last, Theo shoots Xan and takes over leadership, bringing reforms, and the birth of a newborn gives people hope of a future generation.
In the short story Harrison Bergeron, Kurt explores the idea of how absurd it is for the society to interpret equality as a way of limiting those who are naturally intelligent, talented, and intelligent. The story explains how society is failing by making everyone be on the same level as those who are slow, lazy, disabled. The government, to make everyone equal, has opted to suppress the abilities of those who are capable. George, a highly intelligent individual, who has a wife who had perfectly average intelligence, was lowered to his wife’s mental capability. He had to wear a device that “would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.” However, the son showed resistance by breaking out of his handicaps and out of jail to interrupt a live show where he set the musicians and one ballerina free. The performance was at its best without the handicaps. The dancers “reeled, whirled, swiveled, flounced, capered, gamboled, and spun. They leaped like deer on the moon. The studio ceiling was thirty feet high, but each leap brought the dancers nearer to it.” The government, however, noticed this freedom and shot Harrison dead and ordered everyone to put their handicaps back on.
The authors of all these three authors show resistance using their characters, and in so doing, readers get to know the side or the ideologies that they support. The authors also show why they do not endorse specific ideas by showing the adverse consequences of the common beliefs and opinions. Among these novels, the story of Children of men shows resistance the best. Resistance shown in Children of men finally won because Theo took over leadership, and people ended up seeing the need for the reforms. The birth of the baby boy gave people a reason to lead a better life to preserve the future generation.