And I Must Scream/Literature: Difference between revisions

* In the book and movie ''[[Johnny Got His Gun]]'', the main character loses all of his limbs and all of his senses '''but''' feeling in an explosion and is unable to suffocate due to a tracheostomy. At one point, he thinks in a panic, "What good is living if I can't even tell if I'm asleep or awake?!?" He begins attempting to communicate via Morse Code, but [[Everyone Knows Morse|his nurse doesn't know Morse]] - so she brings in an officer to interpret. He asks to either be displayed as a symbol of the horrors of war, or to be permitted to die. The officer's response? ''[[Armies Are Evil|What you ask is against regulations.]]'' All that's missing is the [[Evil Laughter]].

* [[Comedic Sociopathy|Parodied]] in ''[[Hitch Hikers Guide to The Galaxy|The Restaurant at the End of the Universe]]''. Marvin, the android, was left completely alone on a dead world by Zaphod for five hundred and seventy-six thousand million years. When the protagonists catch up to him, [[The Eeyore|he hasn't changed a bit.]]

* In ''[[Nineteen Eighty-Four|1984]]'', the whole world is effectively under this trope. "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever."

* In ''[[Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell]]'', the gentleman with the thistledown hair speaks of trapping someone in the pattern of a Turkish rug... unable to escape from the endless labyrinthine geometry of a length of carpet? Yeah that would probably drive anyone mad.

*** Those who ''are'' turned to ornaments in ''Ozma of Oz'' don't seem to be aware, though, so such transformations wouldn't fall under this trope.

*** ''The Scarecrow of Oz'' has a usurper who tripped his predecessor into a deep pond, and then threw in a mass of heavy stones to trap him there. Called out in the text:

**** The ruler before those two fell into a [[Bottomless Pit]].

** Then there's the Tin Woodsman, rusted solid for years until Dorothy rescued him. Before rusting solid, his axe was enchanted by the Witch of the East to slip and slowly hack him to pieces. It's also terribly plausible that the tinner who "saved" Nick and Fyter was working for the Witch all along, which just adds to the nastiness. Baum was really fond of [[Nightmare Fuel]].

** Another King story, ''Autopsy Room Four'', has a man being prepared for autopsy after being paralyzed by a snakebite and mistaken for dead.

* The [[H.P. Lovecraft]] story ''Out of the Aeons'' has the [[Cosmic Horror]] Ghatanothoa:

** The Mi-Go who appear more often in the Cthulhu mythos can fly through space unassisted. Most beings (such as humans) can't do this, so they are turned into [[Brain In a Jar|brains in jars]], and fitted to suitable sensory and motor apparatus when needed. If they're unplugged, they're in a sensory deprivation chamber that doubles as a robust life support unit which will ensure they have a very long life indeed.

*** This is presumably the fate of Henry Akeley in the [[H.P. Lovecraft]] short story ''The Whisperer In Darkness''. In the original short story, although not explicit, it is heavily implied that Akeley was [[Nightmare Fuel|trapped and debrained by the Mi-Go very much against his will]].

** Qwan turned himself and fellow warlocks into statues when trying to save them from magic gone wrong. He can't come out of the form by himself, and remains stuck as statue while conscious for 10,000 years. Oddly enough, it doesn't seem to have affected his sanity.

** In a nightmare, imp No.1 is terrified of the same thing happening to him.

** {{spoiler|Opal Koboi}} manipulates this trope to her own advantage; to avoid being punished for her supervillainous deeds, she pretends to have suffered a [[Heroic BSOD]] and goes into a meditative coma. She gets put under heavy guard and ''intentionally keeps herself asleep for a year'' until some of her minions get a chance to sneak her out, leaving a mindless clone in her place and conveniently making the good guys think she's still out of the picture. It's mentioned that doing this meditative-coma thing for so long can be hard on your sanity, which might explain the [[Roaring Rampage of Revenge|crazed vengeance spree]] she embarks on right after waking up...

* In the ''[[Thursday Next]]'' series, Aornis Hades is trapped in a time loop of six minutes stuck in a queue at a department store. As soon as she reaches the front of the line, she is transported back to the beginning.

*** This is the fate of the "Family of Blood" who wanted to "live forever". The Doctor made sure that they did.

* In the [[Orson Scott Card]] short story ''Kingsmeat'', the main character commits "gross atrocities" against the people of his colony (by cutting off bits of them and feeding them to an evil alien), but it is found by to have been the only way to keep the colonists alive, so the court rules that he shall be "helped to live as long as science and prudence can keep a man alive". The colonists obey the judgement of the court, but they also [[Pay Evil Unto Evil|cut off all his limbs]], leaving only a head and a "loose sac of flesh that pulsed with life." This is not quite a literal application of the trope, as he is technically capable of screaming:

* In the novelization of [[Return of the Jedi]], Han Solo's time in carbon-freeze is described as "conscious, painful asphyxiation".

* In the [[Star Wars Expanded Universe]], [[X Wing Series|Ysanne Isard]], the Director of Imperial Intelligence, when finally brough to justice informed her captors that she knew too many secrets to be ever taken to trial. They concurred. Instead, she would be quietly locked away in a section of her ship, with no one to manipulate, no one to hurt, tended by droids and left all alone for the rest of her natural lifespan. Isard's horror at the thought of "life entombed" ''finally'' got her to act impulsively, and she was shot and killed.

** Most recently, this clearly happened to Abeloth, [[Sealed Evil in a Can]] and all.

* In [[Robert E. Howard]]'s [[Conan the Barbarian]] story "The People of the Black Circle", the king demands his sister kill him because sorcerers are trying to trap his soul.

* I can't remember the author or title, but I once read a short story in which vampires are living in secret in [[Victorian London]], and they all get really, really mad at this new vampire who's appeared recently. The new guy is [[Drunk with Power]] and won't listen to reason, has been [[Jack the Ripper|brutally murdering prostitutes]], doesn't care about upholding the [[Masquerade]], and, worst of all, he ''isn't a gentleman''! They can't actually kill him, because vampires are immortal, so they encase him in a giant cement block and leave him at the bottom of the Thames River. They figure it'll be a few tens of thousands of years before the cement erodes enough to let him out...

** That would be "Gentlemen of the Shade" by [[Harry Turtledove]]. (The block is not in the river, it's used in the construction of the Tower Bridge over the river.)