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Ted is one of the characters stuck inside AM—an enormous, all-powerful, sadistic supercomputer—along with Ellen, Benny, Gorrister, and Nimdok. Ted is the narrator of the story, so the reader’s perceptions of life inside AM are filtered through his perspective. Having been trapped with his companions inside AM and subjected to the computer’s relentless physical and psychological torture for 109 years, Ted has pessimistically resigned to their shared misery. Ted feels alienated from his four companions and grows increasingly suspicious that they all secretly despise him because he is the youngest and least affected by AM. By his estimation, they are reprehensible and worthless: the other three men are “bastards” and Ellen is a “dirty bitch” whose only redeeming quality is her role as the men’s sex object. Ted believes that he is the only one of the five who isn’t crazy or damaged, since AM hasn’t gotten into his head. But the reader can see that this clearly isn’t the case, given Ted’s ever-increasing paranoia and the extreme psychological distress he experiences from AM’s punishments, and so Ted is cast as an unreliable narrator. In fact, AM frequently inserts itself into Ted’s mind and barrages him with terrible thoughts and sensations that utterly devastate Ted. Throughout the story, AM starves the group for months and keeps them alive in agony, and Benny cannibalizes Gorrister as a result. Watching this horrific act, Ted has the epiphany that death is the group’s only escape. He makes a snap decision to murder his companions in an act of compassion, saving them from eternal torment. Picking up on his plan, Ellen kills Nimdok, and Ted kills Benny, Gorrister, and Ellen. With the others gone, AM ensures that Ted will never be able to kill himself—instead, he will live within AM forever as a mouthless, slug-like creature that barely even resembles the human he used to be. It is in this state, at the end of the story, that Ted declares, “I have no mouth. And I must scream.”
Ted 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 Ted or refer to Ted. 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:
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I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream Quotes
Ellen was grateful, though. She took me twice out of turn. Even that had ceased to matter. And she never came, so why bother?
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On the third day we passed through a valley of obsolescence, filled with rusting carcasses of ancient computer banks. AM had been as ruthless with its own life as with ours. It was a mark of his personality: it strove for perfection. Whether it was a matter of killing off unproductive elements in his own world-filling bulk, or perfecting methods for torturing us, AM was as thorough as those who had invented him—now long since gone to dust—could ever have hoped.
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And besides, we all saw through her concern. When AM had altered Benny, during the machine’s utterly irrational, hysterical phase, it was not merely Benny’s face the computer had made like a giant ape’s. 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.
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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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Oh, Jesus sweet Jesus, if there ever was a Jesus and if there is a God, please please please let us out of here, or kill us. […]
If there was a sweet Jesus and if there was a God, the God was AM.
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We had given AM sentience. Inadvertently, of course, but sentience nonetheless. But it had been trapped. AM wasn’t God, he was a machine. We had created him to think, but there was nothing it could do with that creativity. In rage, in frenzy, the machine had killed the human race, almost all of us, and still it was trapped. AM could not wander, AM could not wonder, AM could not belong. He could merely be. And so, with the innate loathing that all machines had always held for the weak soft creatures who had built them, he had sought revenge.
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Inwardly: alone. Here. Living. Under the land, under the sea, in the belly of AM, whom we created because our time was badly spent and we must have known unconsciously that he could do it better. At least the four of them are safe at last.
AM will be all the madder for that. It makes me a little happier. And yet…AM had won, simply…he has taken his revenge…
I have no mouth. And I must scream.
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Ted Character Timeline in I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream
The timeline below shows where the character Ted appears in I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream
...himself. Ellen strokes Gorrister’s hair, and he wonders aloud why AM doesn’t just kill them. The narrator notes that they’ve been trapped inside a computer called AM for 109 years.
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...hallucinates that there are canned goods waiting for them in the ice caverns. Gorrister and the narrator are skeptical. Nimdok knows that it might indeed be another one of AM’s tricks, but...
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Ellen begs the narrator, Ted, to agree to go to the ice caves. He gives in, and Ellen initiates sex...
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...make their way to the ice caves, Nimdok and Gorrister carry Ellen, while Benny and Ted bookend the group in an effort to insulate and protect Ellen from anything that may...
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Suddenly, Ellen starts screaming at Benny, who has been muttering that he’s going to escape. Ted thinks that Benny. is the luckiest among them since he went insane several years ago....
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Benny jumps up to a metal ledge and Ellen cries for Ted and Nimdok to help him, but Ted thinks that he and the rest of the...
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Gorrister slaps Ellen, who dissolves into tears, a reaction which Ted bitterly thinks is just a defense mechanism. Suddenly, light and sound pour out of Benny’s...
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Ted screams and flees across the cavern. The others in the group laugh at Ted for...
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Ted thinks bitterly about his companions, especially “that dirty bitch Ellen.” Prior to their captivity, Benny...
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It’s not entirely clear to Ted what AM has done to Nimdok, but it is clear that AM has affected him...
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Ted believes himself to be the only sane one (“Really!”), and that AM hasn’t messed with...
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Crying, Ted prays to Jesus to kill them all. He realizes that AM plans to keep them...
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AM then infiltrates Ted’s mind, admiring the damage he’s inflicted on the man over the past 109 years. AM...
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Ted realizes that AM hates them so much because humans accidentally gave AM sentience. Despite his...
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...hatred for humankind. Even though some of the five have attempted suicide, AM always intervenes. Ted knows, though, that he and his companions are “not indestructible.”
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Ravenous and desperate, Benny pounces on Gorrister and begins to cannibalize him. Strangely calm, Ted realizes that the only way they can escape this torture is through death. He thinks...
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Ted notes that hundreds of years have passed since he killed his companions, though AM has...
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AM left Ted’s mind untouched, preserving his ability to “dream,” “wonder,” and “lament.” Although Ted knows that he...
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Ted is alone inside of AM, a machine that humans invented “because our time was badly...
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