'I Have no Mouth, And I Must Scream' by Harlan Ellison Has a New Meaning Depending on When You Read it

I read this story twice, the first time as a 14 year-old, and the second time yesterday. And I believe that depending on your circumstance, and where you are in life, you will extract different meanings from this story at the end.

To better understand this review, read the full short story or the comic adaptation of the short story.

“Cogito, ergo sum” I think, therefore I am.

A very brief summary of the story

In a dystopian future, an all powerful supercomputer named AM has destroyed the world, leaving only 5 individuals whom it keeps torturing for all eternity. The survivors are trapped in an underground complex where the only way out of their misery is death.

My Initial Thoughts

When I first read “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” as a young teen, I was completely overwhelmed by the sense of dread it evoked. It was like peeking into a world where everything that could go wrong had gone wrong, a terrifying glimpse into how terrible things could be if technology dominated our lives without any boundaries. The story felt like a nightmare that kept repeating.

The ending particularly stood out to me. I remember feeling frustrated and upset because it seemed like the villain was the one who won at the end and the one good person in the story got punished, and that felt extremely unfair to me as a young teen. It was a difficult realization, adding to the unsettling atmosphere of the story. Despite the discomfort, this experience made me think deeply about the consequences of giving technology too much power.

My Thoughts now

I stumbled upon this video yesterday

and it is one of the reasons I reread the story.

one of the most fascinating things about “I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream” is that even after rereading, it still maintains that feeling of impending doom throughout. I thought that since I had already read it before, it wouldn’t instil that sense of dread in me, but it still does, even many years later.

Now, with five more years of life experience, and having endured various adversities, I partially understand the point of this story: the resilient human spirit and the outstanding triumph in the face of adversity, and because of how evil that adversity is, the ending has become my favourite in any piece of fiction.

Ted, as much as he claimed to be the only “normal” one in the group, was not the exception to AM’s manipulation. AM had made him increasingly paranoid, had planted these ideas that AM might be some sort of divinity, and made him despise the group around him. Yet, despite that, the human spirit prevailed, All it took was one opening for Ted to realize the moment and capitalize on AM’s greatest mistake.

Now, as a greyish entity, Ted is left with only his thoughts intact — no eyes, no hands, no legs, nothing that resembles a human, just a slow-moving creature for all eternity. but that does not mean AM won. Ted took away AM’s only purpose and no matter how much AM tortures him, Ted will always be there to remind AM of his failure.

The protagonist was not punished in the ‘traditional’ sense, not at all. AM’s hatred for humans stems from the fact that humanity created him without a way to live, he was in a sense, as trapped as the group. By ‘freeing’ the other four in a heroic final act, Ted achieves a form of triumph over AM, stopping the computer mastermind that is AM while securing a tragic but profound victory in the process.

I think Ted’s last dialogue in “I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream” really incapsulates the ending well. He knows he saved them, he knows what he did was noble and heroic, and he is happy for it, but he also knows he did not win.

"At least the four of them are safe at last. 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 …

I have no mouth. And I must scream.”

― Harlan Ellison, I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream