God, Humans, and Free Will Theme Analysis

In Harlan Ellison’s “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream,” a sentient supercomputer called AM has all but eliminated the human race. Seemingly omnipotent, AM is simultaneously described as being similar to a god and distinctively not a god—it performs various “miracles,” but malevolent ones that torment the five people it saved from death. There exists a constant tension between the group’s free will and the control AM asserts over them. With twisted immortality forced upon them so they can endure AM’s eternal torture, all the group has left is their soft, destructible bodies. Ultimately, Ted makes the difficult choice to kill his companions to end their suffering, thereby ensuring his own damnation alone inside AM’s mechanical lattice of hatred and revenge. While many aspects of AM resemble an all-powerful and vengeful god, Ted asserts his free will in committing the murders, proving AM is only a machine—albeit an incredibly terrifying and powerful one. Ultimately, Ellison argues that what sets intelligent machines apart from deities is the fact that they are created by humans rather than vice-versa—although AM can sustain and manipulate life, it cannot create it.

Through vivid imagery, AM is depicted as a vengeful god, sending Old Testament plagues, treacherous terrain, and catastrophic weather for the group to endure. Ted oscillates between personifying AM by using “he” and “him” pronouns to referring to “AM as it, without a soul.” He reveals that, for the most part, he thinks of AM “as him, in the masculine…the paternal…the patriarchal…as he is a jealous people. Him. It. God as Daddy the Deranged.” By depicting AM as “God the Father,” Ted positions AM as having absolute power over him and the rest of the group. Although this isn’t actually the case, God’s omnipotence is the closest comparison Ted can make for how it feels to be controlled within the circuits of AM. Ted comes to the realization that “If there was a sweet Jesus and if there was a God, then God was AM.” He and the group aren’t citizens of Earth anymore, governed by the rules set in place by a Judeo-Christian God; they are prisoners inside a sadistic supercomputer. Different rules apply. In addition, after generating an enormous bird capable of causing a hurricane, AM appears to the group as a burning bush, which is how God appears to Moses in the Old Testament telling Moses to bring the Israelites out of Egypt. AM tells them that if they want to eat, they must embark on a journey to kill the bird. AM offers the twisted hope for salvation, once again acting like a god figure.

By presenting AM like God, the story raises the question of whether or not the group has any free will. Typically free will is contrasted with predestination or God’s will, but AM doesn’t seem to have a grand plan it’s adhering to. Thus, the group’s free will is in constant tension with AM’s seemingly all-encompassing control. The group is kept alive “immortal, trapped, subject to any torment [AM] could devise for us from the limitless miracles at his command.” Forced to endure this for over 100 years, a couple of the group members have even attempted suicide. But AM always manages to intervene—it wants them alive, but there might be a workaround because the group is “immortal, yes, but not indestructible.” Every decision that the group members make is guided by the horrific trials AM puts them through. With nearly every aspect of their surroundings devised by AM, the group’s agency is painfully limited.

While AM has nearly unbridled power and can sustain life, there is one main thing that sets it apart from being a true god figure: it cannot create life. Interestingly, the otherwise weak and defenseless humans in the story do have this ingrained ability to procreate, epitomizing the constant struggle for power in the story between AM and its human victims. By the time a starving Benny eats Gorrister’s face in the ice cavern, Ted knows AM’s sadistic plan: “Gorrister would not die, but Benny would fill his stomach.” With only an instant to decide, Ted chooses to stab Benny and Gorrister with an ice spear and Ellen follows suit, killing Nimdok. It is in this moment that Ted realizes the truth: “He could keep us alive, by strength and talent, but he was not God. He could not bring them back.” While the human victims in the story don’t procreate, the very fact that they have the ability to choose to create or end life, and AM doesn’t, establishes a sharp distinction between human and machine, thus showing that AM is not a god—it has limits, just like the humans inside the computer.

While Ted isn’t the master of his own fate in this story, when presented with an opportunity, he chooses to save his companions from sharing this eternal agony inside AM. With this, Ted proves that AM isn’t an all-powerful god—but even if AM is only a machine, it is still a formidable force that is able to strip Ted of his human form in retribution for killing his other playthings.