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Gorrister
Unlike the others who are trapped inside AM—Ted, Ellen, Benny, and Gorrister—Nimdok’s name isn’t his real one. AM forces him to go by Nimdok because the strange sound of the made-up word amuses the computer. Nimdok has been particularly affected by AM, and despite the macho persona he puts on, he often goes off to be alone for extended periods of time, looking pale and sullen when he returns. At the beginning of the story, Nimdok has a vision of canned food in the ice caverns that lie in the depths of AM. Although neither Nimdok nor the others are sure of this, AM hasn’t fed them in three days, and so they decide to risk journeying into the ice caverns on the off chance that the food really is there. After a months-long trek during which AM starves the group but keeps them alive in agony, the canned food in the caverns turns out to be real—not the hallucination they expected. It is, however, a kind of mirage in the sense that it is just another one of AM’s many psychological tricks: the computer has not given them a can opener with which to access the food. This causes a ravenous Benny to cannibalize Gorrister, which gives Ted the epiphany that he must mercifully kill the others to free them from their eternal misery. Picking up on Ted’s plan, Ellen stabs Nimdok to death before Ted kills her and the others.
Nimdok Quotes in I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream
The I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream quotes below are all either spoken by Nimdok or refer to Nimdok. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream
Quotes
I fled like a cockroach, across the floor and out into the darkness, that something moving inexorably after me. The others were still back there, gathered around the firelight, laughing…their hysterical choir of insane giggles rising up into the darkness […] Nimdok tried to persuade me it had only been a nervous reflect on their part—the laughing.
But I knew it wasn’t the relief a soldier feels when the bullet hits the man next to him. I knew it wasn’t a reflect. They hated me. They were surely against me, and AM could even sense this hatred, and made it worse for me because of the depth of their hatred.
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I was the only one still sane and whole. Really!
AM had not tampered with my mind. Not at all.
I only had to suffer what he visited down on us. All the delusions, all the nightmares, the torments. But those scum, all four of them, they were lined and arrayed against me. If I hadn’t had to stand them off all the time, be on my guard against them all the time, I might have found it easier to combat AM.
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Get the entire I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream LitChart as a printable PDF.
Nimdok Quotes in I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream
The I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream quotes below are all either spoken by Nimdok or refer to Nimdok. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream
Quotes
I fled like a cockroach, across the floor and out into the darkness, that something moving inexorably after me. The others were still back there, gathered around the firelight, laughing…their hysterical choir of insane giggles rising up into the darkness […] Nimdok tried to persuade me it had only been a nervous reflect on their part—the laughing.
But I knew it wasn’t the relief a soldier feels when the bullet hits the man next to him. I knew it wasn’t a reflect. They hated me. They were surely against me, and AM could even sense this hatred, and made it worse for me because of the depth of their hatred.
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Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
I was the only one still sane and whole. Really!
AM had not tampered with my mind. Not at all.
I only had to suffer what he visited down on us. All the delusions, all the nightmares, the torments. But those scum, all four of them, they were lined and arrayed against me. If I hadn’t had to stand them off all the time, be on my guard against them all the time, I might have found it easier to combat AM.
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