32 pages • 1 hour read
Harlan EllisonI Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1967A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Religion as an Enduring Cultural Touchstone
Religion plays a major role in “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream.” Ted most explicitly states the relationship between AM and a biblical God in the following passages: “Most of the time I thought of AM as it, without a soul; but the rest of the time I thought of it as him, in the masculine [...] the paternal [...] the patriarchal [...] for he is a jealous people. Him. It. God as Daddy the Deranged” (2). Ted sees AM as a perversion of the Christian God, with AM’s hatred for his prisoners replacing God’s love for His followers. Likewise, Ted expresses his desperation through a sort of prayer:
Oh, Jesus sweet Jesus, if there ever was a Jesus and if there is a God, please please please let us out of here, or kill us… The machine hated us as no sentient creature had ever hated before. And we were helpless. It also became hideously clear: If there was a sweet Jesus and if there was a God, the God was AM (5).
The characters have no other frame of reference for this all-powerful, vengeful entity besides the Old Testament God. The experience of surviving the unknowable whims of an all-powerful deity most closely resembles the Book of Job, in which the titular Job loses his livestock, land, wealth, children, and health after God makes a bet with Satan that Job will stay faithful. AM, with its almighty power, can achieve the same result with any of his prisoners at any time.
AM intentionally invites this comparison by utilizing religious imagery in its communications with the survivors. It takes the form of a burning bush when it instructs them to kill the hurricane bird, an impossible task. This reference to God’s encounter with Moses contrasts God’s concern for the Hebrews with AM’s demand for meaningless struggle and suffering.
Additionally, the machine employs religious symbolism in its pranks. When AM pretends that Ellen and Nimdok have died, it creates a biblical scene in which “archangels circled several times and then dropped the hideously mangled bodies” (9). This juxtaposition of miraculous imagery with vivid cruelty highlights the depths of AM’s hatred and depravity. Religious imagery also emerges when Ted outsmarts the machine at the end of the story, when AM shows its rage by sending locusts, one of the plagues God inflicted on Egypt in Exodus.
The story structure itself employs biblical imagery and themes. Ted’s sacrifice at the end of “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” correlates to one of the most famous lines in the Bible, John 15:13, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” Ironically, Ted is the only survivor left alive, and his friends all died at his hand in a tragic inverse of the statement. However, the self-sacrificial sentiment remains intact.
Finally, the survivors state that they have been imprisoned for 109 years. This specific number may reference Psalm 109 from the Old Testament. Psalm 109 is an imprecation against enemies, known for one of the most serious curses in the Bible in verses 12-13: “Let there be none to extend mercy unto him: neither let there be any to favour his fatherless children. Let his posterity be cut off; and in the generation following let their name be blotted out.” (King James Bible, Book of Psalms 109). This is a haunting prediction of the fate of humankind as well as the lives of the five survivors: Humanity finds no mercy, and humanity’s survivors are also blotted out, removed from life to be tormented by a machine for eternity.
The Dystopic Nature of War and Technology
Dystopia is a speculative fiction category defined by stories that take a dysfunctional aspect of society to its extreme. In the case of “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream,” Ellison tackles multiple dysfunctions in 1969 American culture. Here, increasingly complex and esoteric Cold War warfare, the threat of nuclear holocaust, and dependence on automation and artificial intelligence are extrapolated into a narrative of artificial intelligence that evolves to reject human control and dominate humanity.
Ellison posits that this artificial intelligence is antagonistic not only toward humanity but itself. As a war machine, the hatred and absurdity of war lay the foundation of its artificial consciousness and cause it to become hate-filled and enraged. AM’s depravity is thus a referendum on warfare itself, marking it as a mechanism capable only of destruction and chaos, not peace. This is represented literally in AM’s inability to create or resurrect life; it can only torture, maim, and destroy.
As a result, while AM was created to help one side win the Cold War, it is not capable of helping humanity. Rather, it expands until it controls the Earth itself and destroys humanity. As Gorrister states: “[I]t developed sentience and linked itself up and they called it an Aggressive Menace” (4). AM self-actualizes by quoting Descartes: “I think, therefore, I am.” By linking its essence to destruction, AM points to the totality of war’s destruction. At this point, the dysfunction of this society has reached its limit: The artificial intelligence has become its own entity with its own ends, and humanity is rendered vulnerable by its dependence on it. Similar to how wars have been fought since the beginning of time, artificial intelligence is inextricable from humanity at this point, dooming it to extinction.
This sense of nihilism is portrayed through postapocalyptic setting and imagery. The surface of the earth has been razed: “There was virtually nothing out there; […] Only the blasted skin of what had once been the home of billions” (2). The journey to the ice cave is dark, metallic, and cold, implying that war’s destruction will create a world without beauty or comforts. Unlike many postapocalyptic and dystopian works, this narrative carries no hope of rebuilding or affirming the continuation of humankind. The final survivor is completely unrecognizable as a human and can no longer participate meaningfully in any human behaviors. However, his decision to sacrifice himself for his friends could be read as a hopeful affirmation of the moral potential of humanity.
The Myth of the Hero
The myth of the hero is an enduring mythological concept that employs an archetypal hero figure to navigate complex moral or logical crises. Typically, the hero is exceptional in some way, agrees to confront the danger, faces many obstacles, sacrifices something important, and ultimately succeeds in his goal. He returns home and receives glory from his community.
“I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream,” in contrast, centers on five despairing, helpless victims of a cruel machine. These characters do not inspire comparisons to heroes since their flaws have been exaggerated by the machine, rendering them helpless to their own faults. However, the ending of the narrative creates a contradiction. Ted, the hate-filled, paranoid narrator, understands in a moment of clarity that he must sacrifice himself to save his friends from further torment. Despite his certainty that they all hate him, he immediately takes the opportunity to kill them with fallen icicles. Ellen joins him, and crucially, Ted decides to kill Ellen instead of attempting suicide before the machine can stop them. He acts to spare Ellen from torment instead of himself, a classically heroic action.
Ted’s ability to act against his own self-interest to help his friends aligns with the sacrifice at the heart of the myth of the hero. Ted demonstrates the inherent power of the human spirit in contrast to the relentless, self-centered actions of the machine. He states: “I could hear AM draw in his breath. His toys had been taken from him. Three of them were dead, could not be revived. He could keep us alive, by his strength and talent, but he was not God. He could not bring them back” (11). In this way, Ted lives up to the hero’s role in solving a crisis. However, in a departure from the traditional hero myth, Ted’s victory earns him no glory or gratitude. His sacrifice is ultimately meaningless for him: The machine still wins.
Ted could not save everyone and himself; he could only trade his own eternal suffering for an end to his friends’ torment. In his words: “AM will be all the madder for that. It makes me a little happier. And yet [...] AM has won, simply [...] he has taken his revenge” (11). There is no out for Ted, although the perseverance of the hero myth and selfless action, even in AM’s dystopian nightmare, hint at the ultimate endurance of the human spirit.
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