I Have no Mouth and I Must Scream – Ellen’s character analysis

I love horror movies, the way it uses your fears and expectations against you. But I'm also very picky about it, they need to be somewhat unexpected.

Recently I decided to look more into horror books, and I've seem I Have no Mouth and I Must Scream gain some traction online. A video analysis made by Wendigoon have been in my recommended videos for quite some time, so I decided to give the short story a chance, and what I have to say is: OH. MY. GODS.

THIS STORY IS AMAZING.

But I'm not here to talk about how good this story is, I'm here to talk about one of the characters that have intrigued me the most: Ellen. I've looked through some character analysis, and some really seem to not understand the story and the function the character serves in it, so I wanted to talk a little bit about my understanding of her.

Warning: I will not be talking about the game, since I haven't played yet. This may contain spoilers of the book.

First it's important to do a quick synopsis of the story.

The horror sci-fi short story was published in an anthologic book in march of 1997. It follows five characters Ted (the narrator), Nimdok, Gorrister, Benny and Ellen, as they are eternally tortured by a supercomputer who calls itself AM. In the story the humans are in a pilgrimage to find a stack of canned food. In the meanwhile AM keeps taunting and torturing them both physically and mentally.

Now we can properly talk about Ellen, who is objectively the nicest character in the whole story.

Ellen is the only woman in the group, and the only one that still has some kind of morality amongst them. She carries a type of empathy that not even 109 years of torture were able to break. There are many instances of that in the story, but I wanted to highlight a specific part (this is an excerpt from the book).

"He squatted there for a moment, looking like the chimpanzee AM had intended him to resemble.

Then he leaped high, caught a trailing beam of pitted and corroded metal, and went up it, hand­over­hand like an animal, till he was on a girdered ledge, twenty feet above us.

"Oh, Ted, Nimdok, please, help him, get him down before—" She cut off. Tears began to stand in her eyes. She moved her hands aimlessly." (Page 3)

She is the only one that still cares about Benny. She is the only one that tries to save him. In the whole story she is the only one that is seen showing her emotions, the only one that still cries. Ellen, in my opinion, has some of the saddest character dynamics, and that's because she cares.

In others parts of the story it shows how far her "care" can go: to a point of hurting her.

"He was big in the privates; she loved that! She serviced us, as a matter of course, but she loved it from him. Oh Ellen, pedestal Ellen, pristine­ pure Ellen; oh Ellen the clean! Scum filth." (Page 3)

"No, AM had given her pleasure, even if she said it wasn't nice to do." (Page 5)

Ellen, as a means to keep peace, and to "help release emotional steam" by having sex with the other man who are trapped with her. She is not only used by AM as a form of entertainment. Her torture is not confined to the actions of AM, but also to the actions of the other prisoners.

Now we need to talk a little bit about Ted. He is the main character and narrator of the book, and, we can see by his descriptions of Ellen, that he despises her. But why? Because she is sweet, nice, and, of course, because she is a "slut". He, in his descriptions, attack her. To be quite honest, he did that to the others too, but to her, he reserved a special kind of hate.

"And Ellen. That douche bag! AM had left her alone, had made her more of a slut than she had ever been. All her talk of sweetness and light, all her memories of true love, all the lies she wanted us to believe: that she had been a virgin only twice removed before AM grabbed her and brought her down here with us. No, AM had given her pleasure, even if she said it wasn't nice to do." (Page 5)

It's important to note that this isn't the autor opinion on woman, it's actually shown as a contradiction. What Ted says about Ellen don't match up with her actions through the book.

Now, let's talk about the end of the book.

As an act of piety, when Ted sees a window of opportunity, he kills Benny and Gorrister with an stalactite, Ellen realizes what is happening and kills Nimdok. At this moment there is only time for one to die, and be free of this eternal torture. Ted decides to sacrifice himself, and kills Ellen.

What I'm going to say might seem odd, but this is the most beautiful act of the entire story, and is one of the moments that I think defines the story as a whole. Ted seemed to hate Ellen, but he still saved her, even tho it meant he would suffer eternally. This is the humanity shining through. The death of Ellen exemplifies that.

The ending is sad, but still shines a bit of hope. Ellen through the whole book is a beacon of hope.

I love Ellen