A review by hounded
I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison

4.5

Oh my god this Story. I have no mouth and I must scream is going to be in my head for the rest of time. The writing was nice and blunt but in a very artistic manner. every sentence felt very natural like it was being spoken to me and not that I was reading it. Even when the setting of the book felt confusing it only aided to the fear of the characters. The characters themselves were so strange but I couldn't help but relate to them and their struggle and worry about their endings. AM at the center of it all is such a sympathetic villain but still what it was doing felt so violent! Even just vulgar! But it made sense every aspect of it made sense!  You can feel the despair and the fear in every step. It was truely a scary book and the message in it and the themes of humanity and autonomy is just. SO good!!!.

The fact that at the end Ted and AM suffer the same fate. Trapped in the same hell of their own creation. This really stuck with me. The thought of being born without autonomy but knowing about it. Experiencing it through such a skewed lense like AM does. To the absolute horror of it getting taken away like Ted, but ted gets the satisfaction and the privileged of getting to have that last moment of free will. Something AM will never have. It's so so so upsetting! I can't decide what the worst fate is. But you can argue they both lost in the end. Ted says to us that AM won. But did it? Making ted unable to speak, taking away the one thing it had to continue the suffering. The one motivation it had. That's not winning.

Please read this story. It's important