Point of View “To Da-duh, in Memoriam” is written from the first-person point of view. The majority of the story is viewed through the child narrator’s eyes. She recalls when she first met Da-duh, her first impression of the sugar cane fields, and the rivalry that exists between the two family members. Hers is the…
Tag: The United States of America
To Da-Duh, in Memoriam: Themes
Rivalry The story pits an aging Barbadian grandmother against her youthful American granddaughter. Upon their first meeting, the two sense a similarity in each other that far outweighs the differences presented by the seventy years between them. Most importantly, each has a stubborn strength of will and a confidence that her way of regarding the…
To Da-Duh, in Memoriam: Characters
Da-duh Da-duh is the narrator’s eighty-year-old grandmother. She has lived her whole life on Barbados and is confident and proud of her lifestyle, surroundings, and ways of looking at the world. She dislikes the trappings of the modern world, such as any form of machinery, and is uncomfortable in the city of Bridgetown. When Da-duh…
To Da-Duh, in Memoriam: Summary
“To Da-duh, in Memoriam” is an autobiographical story told from the point of view of an adult looking back on a childhood memory. The story opens as the nine-year-old narrator, along with her mother and sister, disembarks from a boat that has brought them to Bridgetown, Barbados. It is 1937, and the family has come…
I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream: Analysis
Harlan Ellison first published “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” in the March 1967 issue of IF: Worlds of Science Fiction, before using it as the title story in his 1967 collection / Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream. A horrifying and ghastly story of a post-apocalyptic hell controlled by a monster…
I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream: Setting
The Cold War From the end of World War II through the mid1980s, the world endured a period commonly known as “The Cold War,” a standoff between nuclear superpowers which constantly threatened each other with mutual destruction. During this time, both the United States and the former Soviet Union built up huge arsenals of nuclear…
I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream: Literary Devices
Point of View Ellison has provided “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” with a limited, first-person narrator. Thus, all of the events of the story must be filtered through the mind and voice of Ted, one of the humans trapped by the computer AM. Because everything is told from the “I” perspective, the…
I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream: Themes
Individual versus Machine Any number of critics have noted that one of Ellison’s favorite themes is the relationship between humans and the machines they create. Certainly, “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” explores what happens when people create machines “because our time was badly spent.” Like other dystopian writers of the 1950s and…
I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream: Characters
AM Although not human, the computer, which calls itself AM, is perhaps the main character in the story. Originally, AM was one of several national computers designed to fight wars for the nation that owned it. Eventually, the computers learned to link themselves to each other, forming one supercomputer. When this supercomputer awoke, or became…
I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream: Summary
“I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” opens with a terrifying image of Gorrister hanging upside down with his throat slit. Almost immediately, however, Gorrister returns to the group and the reader understands that the opening image has been created by the supercomputer, AM. Ted, the narrator, continues to describe the situation: five survivors…