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Literary Criticisms

The Ellison Trickster

 

     A character often seen within Ellison’s stories of speculative fiction is the trickster. This trickster character is frequently put against mediocrity and uniformity. Because Ellison’s stories are typically set in dystopian settings that push the extremes of speculative fiction as well as science fiction, the trickster of the story “fights the good fight” to make change, no matter how small, within their worlds. Some of the best examples of the Ellison trickster include The Harlequin from “Repent Harlequin!” Said the Ticktockman, William Bailey from The Region Between, Ted from I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, and Levendis from The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore. Expanding upon the topic of the Ellison trickster, “Repent Harlequin!” Said the Ticktockman is set in a dystopia where individuals are obsessed with punctuality and being on time. As aforementioned, the trickster in this story, The Harlequin, stands up to the Ticktockman and offsets the precise schedule. Although The Harlequin is eventually caught and is forced to admit that he was wrong for standing up to society’s norms, the Ticktockman is late to work one day and throws the world’s schedule off by just a little bit. Furthermore, in The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore, a time-traveler by the name of Levendis uses his powers in order to help humanity and to right the world’s wrongs. Ellison states that Levendis is a hero, “doing at least one good deed a day.” Levendis challenges the world’s mediocrity, exclaiming, “[I’m] good of course! There’s only one real evil in the world: mediocrity.” Levendis pushes humanity to be better and rise above ordinariness.


     Ellison characters are often pushing the boundaries of their worlds and societies. They are breaking the chains of dystopian societies and attempting to right their worlds’ wrongs. Furthermore, Ellison’s characters are actually, more often than not, a reflection of himself. Although Ellison celebrates humanity’s accomplishments within his writing, his stories primarily focus on warning humanity about it’s demise if we do not become more than mediocre. While some of Ellison’s stories push his pessimism of humanity, such as Approaching Oblivion: Road Signs on the Treadmill Toward Tomorrow, where Ellison comments in an interview, “What fools you are. Happy, secure corpses you’ll be. You’re approaching oblivion, and you know it, and you won’t do a thing to save yourselves.” “I’m going to laugh and jeer and wiggle my ears at your death throes. And how will I do that? By writing my stories.” The tricksters in Ellison’s stories may be viewed as being too hard on humanity and pushing our limits to the extremes, but they continue to fight complacency and mediocrity in order to show that humanity is worth fighting for.

AM and Ted in I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream

 

     In Harlan Ellison’s I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, the narrator of the story, Ted, suffers horrific traumas inflicted upon by the sophisticated artificial intelligence, AM. Although AM is essentially God in this universe, as it is omnipotent, it is only Ted who is both human and divine as he represents the human spirit. In the prolegomenon of the book, Ted’s religious view of AM is established. He refers to AM as “him,” although AM is merely a computer. Ted’s use of the pronoun “him,” further’s his perspective of AM as God. However, Ted often interchanges “him” with “it,” as demonstrated: “The passage of time was important to him…it…AM. It was a mark of his personality: it strove for perfection. He was machine. We had allowed him to think, but to do nothing with it.” Because Ted associates AM with God, he is able to humanize the machine. After all, AM’s name stems from cogito ergo sum, or “I think therefore I am.” AM also shows other defining qualities of human nature. “He” giggles and snickers; shows emotions like anger, hatred, and jealousy; goes through an “irrational, hysterical phase”; and possesses sentience, life, and thought. Perhaps the trait which most reveal AM’s human side is its sense of humor.” Even though AM possesses all of these qualities, it is still far from ever being human. It is limited in its freedoms and creativeness. However, while AM is not human, it represents humanity at its worst. Ellison even states, “AM represents… the dichotomous nature of the human race, created in the image of God; and that includes the demons in us.” 


     Ted is considered an interesting narrator because of his intense paranoia, which is simulated by AM. Expanding upon this idea, Ted is also viewed as an unreliable narrator because of this paranoia. He believes that he has been the least affected by AM out of the group he is stuck with, and believes that the rest of the group hates him. His paranoia affects the way he views the horrific world he is trapped in, and his thoughts project onto the others of his group, including AM. The fact that Ted’s thoughts can project onto the computer makes it evident that AM mirrors its creators. While Ted is not mentioned or implied to be a creator of AM, it is important to understand that AM can mirror humanity because it was made by humans, created in the image of God as mentioned prior. Because AM was created by humanity, it may not be as malevolent as it seems, only being perceived as this horrid entity because we are blinded by the narrator’s paranoia, Ted’s paranoia. Although this paranoia may be influencing how the story plays out, Ted can still be seen as fully human as well as fully divine because of the actions he takes throughout the story. For example, Ted's attempts to stand up to AM and protecting the other individuals from AM’s wrath, symbolize the courage of the human spirit.

Ellison’s Use of The First Person Narrator In I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream

 

     Ted is the narrator in I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream. The audience views the story from Ted’s point of view, a first person point of view. Because the story is in first person, the audience only knows the thoughts and feelings of the narrator, or Ted. Since I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream is written this way, readers immediately start to sympathize with Ted, as he is their only source of what is occurring in the story. However, Ted is often blinded by his paranoia throughout the narrative. Because the story is filtered through Ted, as well as his paranoia, the story becomes an extremely limited version of a first person point of view. The limits of Ted’s storytelling bring up the point of if Ted should be considered a reliable narrator or not. At the end of the story, Ted ends up murdering the rest of the group he is stuck with in order to free them from AM’s tortures. While some individuals view Ted’s act as a “supreme self-sacrifice” that “attribute Christ-like qualities” to him, others believe that Ted’s actions were just a mindless slaughter due to his paranoia. Because of Ellison’s use of first person point of view through Ted, he makes it impossible to construct a sane and reliable version of the story.​

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Poking Fun at Heroic Stories Through “Repent Harlequin!” Said the Ticktockman


     Throughout “Repent Harlequin!” Said the Ticktockman, Ellison utilizes themes typically noticed in heroic or epic stories. Elements such as, “...elaborate similes, an arming scene, launching of a ship, a dangerous woman, battles, single combat, a background of social disturbance…” While these elements often present a story of epic proportions, Ellison’s use of them creates a mock-epic or mock-heroic. Ellison parodies and twists these “heroic” elements into silly matters. For example, “...for battle, dressing not in armor but “that ghastly clown suit”... “Foof! Air-boat, indeed!... In the place of bloody battles, we find slapstick encounters that injure nothing but the smooth operation of social machinery and scheduling.” The Harlequin has other “childish” tricks too, such as throwing jellybeans out during a “battle.” Ellison utilizes the mock-heroic in order to attack the dystopian, “nightmare America of the future.”

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From Diane Andrews Henningfield's literary criticism: Critical Essay On "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream"
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 https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/H1420040676/LitRC?u=coal19787&sid=bookmark-LitRC&xid=c73b82df

From Stephen Adams's literary criticism: The Heroic and Mock-Heroic in Harlan Ellison's 'Harlequin'

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https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/H1420002609/LitRC?u=coal19787&sid=bookmark-LitRC&xid=9e7a5932

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