What metaphors are used in I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison?

Thomas Dillingham, in a chapter he prepared for the Dictionary of Literary Biography, provides an intriguing interpretation of the story focusing on the American ideals of individuality and free will. He writes that the story not only explores special psychological problems of individuals caught in impersonal, mechanized systems, but also launches a satiric attack on the two poles of totalitarian victimization which are present in the twentieth century: total loss of will, intellect, and individuality, on the one hand; loss of effective control over the phenomenal world of which one is conscious on the other. These losses, along with the specter of nuclear holocaust, which is a metaphor for them both, constitutes the special nightmare of the second half of the century.