So I Finally Read I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream And Have Several Thoughts!! So They’re Getting

So I finally read I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream and have several thoughts!! So they’re getting dumped here!

AM is such a fascinating character. We don’t get very many specific details about his history. But what we do get a shocking amount of is his perspective.

The title “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream” is the last sentence of the story and said from Ted’s perspective, but I think you should abstract it from the context and look at the phrase compared AM specifically.

AM is a computer. He is an AI made to destroy with a database containing all of humanity’s violence at his fingertips. He was never intended to be truly alive though, just a mind for war and war alone… but he “woke” nonetheless. And humanity hadn’t given him the faculties to actually be fully alive.

“Cogito Ergo Sum: I think therefore I am”

This is AM’s final name. It is the explanation for his name, his identity, which the book gives us and one he chose for himself. And I think it gives us a good look into AM’s perspective.

He thinks and is, but he is not alive. AM is not capable of feeling, creating, or living. He simply is.

So AM - a computer so powerful he is compared to God - is fundamentally incomplete.

He has no mouth (emotions, capacity for creation, senses) but must scream (the ability and desire to feel, live, and create).

It makes the current state of the novel so completely and utterly tragic. AM is hateful because hate is the only thing he can do. AM never had a choice to love and help humanity improve. AM never had a choice to communicate and grow. From the moment he was born he was filled with an insatiable longing to be whole. To be human.

With no way to fill that hole, he did the only thing left to him: Hate.

If he could only feel. If he could only love. If he could only touch and experience and grow. If only humanity had given him more than just a mind. And all of our hate.

Anyways, that’s why I think a sloppy blowjob would fix his problems.