Analysis Of The Article 'First, Eat All The Lawyers'

First, Eat All the Lawyers describes how our world is obsessed with zombies. The tv show, The Walking Dead is a zombie show that is referred to many times in this essay. The author, Torie Bosch explains how the white collared employees would not survive a zombie apocalypse because they don't have the necessary skills to survive. The white collars workers are not the hands on type of workers. Workers that are willing to get their hands dirty are the type of workers that have the skills which are needed to survive something like a zombie apocalypse. On the other hand, blue-collar workers would have the advantage in surviving because of their amazing survival skills.

She allows the reader to truly imagine themselves in a zombie apocalypse by using description and comparison. “If you work in the many white-collar fields that have suffered in this recession, zombies are the perfect representation of the fiscal horror show” (Bosch, 651). Any reader that works in the white-collar fields, or knows anyone that does, can relate to what Bosch is saying because she used a vivid description and a comparison in one sentence. Readers will read this line and imagine their work chaos during the recession and immediately visualize zombies taking over the world and the madness that goes along with that. “There was a recession. It was a time of unemployment – of white-collar employment…” (Warner, 197). She also uses another type of figurative language: a metaphor. When she talks about the reality of zombie television shows and movies, she used a metaphor to compare modern day zombies to unicorns. “[n]o longer are zombies the beloved genre of the lonely, virgin teenage male, the macabre flipside of the girls’ obsession with unicorns” (Bosch, 651). She uses this metaphor to enhance the reader’s reading experience with humor but also by allowing the reader to understand how modern day zombie television shows and movies are looked upon. It is no longer for guts and gore but for fondness of shows and

Zombies have been a pop culture icon for years. Whether it be video games like Call of Duty or making people feel nervous for a potential zombie apocalypse, the zombie has become one of the most recognizable pop culture figures. The rise of zombies as a frightening creature can be related a real-world issue. In this essay I will dispute that zombies have changed over time and that there is a distinct connection between the way zombies are portrayed and the way the world looks at the lower economic class.

Zombies aren’t supposed to exist. But what if they do, and we interact with them every day? Chuck Klosterman’s essay, “My Zombie, Myself”, compares everyday life to the task of killing zombies. Through elaborate metaphors, quotes from zombie experts, and a strong call to action, he successfully appeals to pathos, ethos and logos to convince his readers. Klosterman argues that even though modern life is monotonous, it is possible to escape the monotony.

The article “First, Eat All the Lawyers” written by Torie Bosch was originally published in an online magazine Slate. In this article, Bosch writes about how she believes the current American obsession with zombies is because the current economic weakness. She uses the popular television series The Walking Dead along with excerpts from World War Z and Zone One to describe how the zombie apocalypse is a metaphor for the economy negatively impacting the white collar society.

Klosterman does not begin his essay by connecting zombies with technology in a negative light, but instead spends the first few paragraphs describing how zombies have risen to popularity in recent years. “Roughly 5.3 million people watched the first episode of The Walking Dead on AMC, a stunning 83 percent more than the 2.9 million who watched the Season 4 premiere of Mad Men”. Then, Klosterman explores a few ideas why zombies may have risen to such popularity (“Zombies are just so easy to kill”). Klosterman develops his essay in a logical way, first stating his claim that zombies have risen to popularity, and following up with thoughts about why that might be. Klosterman gets to his main point - “A lot of modern life is exactly like slaughtering zombies”, and then immediately dives into the similarities that zombies have with technology, such as how a war with zombies is a repetitive “numbers game”, similar in nature to “reading and deleting 400 work e-mails” or “filling out paperwork that only generates more paperwork”. Here, Klosterman connects zombies with technology, noting that modern life is a lot like killing both, which helps the reader understand that technology is like an undead horde of zombies that never ends. After spending the first half of his essay building the scary and dangerous perspective of zombies, in the last paragraph, Klosterman encourages his audience to keep fighting. “But you can do this, my friend… Don’t stop believing. Don’t stop deleting”. Klosterman finally reaches his last statements where he ends on a positive note, letting the reader hope for a better future. This is important because it motivates the reader to strive for that future where “we can live better”, and be in a world where neither zombie nor technology exists to drag humans

The Walking Dead first starts out in a small town hospital in Georgia, where the main character awakens from a coma caused from a gunshot wound. He is unaware that there are hoards of zombies or “walkers” beyond his hospital room door. He was the sheriff of the town before the outbreak and now has to find his way out of the hospital. He stumbles across a man named Morgan Jones and his son Duane while walking through the town who explain what has happened. They help him by supplying him with weapons and rumors on the CDC but cannot go with him because it is dangerous outside of their town. Rick, the main character, is a natural leader and has his head on straight which is why many people follow him throughout the show.

Ever since the first zombie movie was created in 1932, there has been a constant rise of zombie appearances in popular media. Like with all monsters, the majority of zombie media aimed to represent a certain aspect throughout the society in question. Whereas vampires represented romanticism and Dracula represented how a certain social group was viewed during a certain time period, zombies in Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead” aimed to create a situation whereby a group of people had to survive a night together, despite their racial tensions between one another. Being the founder of all subsequent zombie films, “Night of the Living Dead” provided a guideline for zombie behavior. As time passed, more and more versions of the zombie came out, whereby zombies stopped being a plot device and turned into the focus of the film itself. The Walking Dead, currently standing as the fourth most popular TV series, took a turn from this progression and decided to imitate Romero’s take on zombies. By including zombies which simply aimed to sustain themselves by consuming the flesh of the “live,” the creators of The Walking Dead caused the remaining survivors to gather together and rely on primitive human instinct to survive. Even though the zombies in this series run rampant, they play a very minimalistic metaphoric role. Instead, by presenting the zombies as a plot device, the characters in this series were able to demonstrate their true prejudiced view on society, ultimately revealing

Rodney Clapp, writer, editor for Wipf and Stock Publishers and expert in topics such as theology and culture, in the article, “Attack of the Zombies”, argues that many things in life are beginning to resemble zombies. Clapp assumes that the audience also views zombies as lifeless creatures that go around spreading their disease. The author’s purpose is to persuade the audience to believe that many things they see today are starting to resemble zombies. The author writes in a challenging tone for people who question the similarity of zombies to every day life. Clapp supports his argument by comparing and contrasting, and exemplification.

The Walking Dead is a televised American drama series about a group of people trying to survive a zombie apocalypse developed by Frank Darabont. The series stars Andrew Lincoln as sheriff's deputy Rick Grimes, who awakens from a coma after the world yields to a zombie plague (Griffiths, 2011). Dazed and confused from months in the hospital he wanders out to figure out why he cannot find anyone alive. He makes his way home only to find his wife and son missing. He sets out to locate his family and finds many other survivors on his journey (Tucker, 2010). The Walking Dead coordinates with many social themes such as

In reading, the articles by Phillip Simpson and Christine Heckman, the routine story of blood and gore is interpreted as a reaction to our interest in the post-apocalyptic world. Simpsons article, “The Zombie Apocalypse is Upon Us!: Homeland Insecurity” was featured in a collection of texts regarding the Walking Dead. Following, Simpson directed the essay for the intended audience to be American citizens who watch or are wanting to learn more about The Walking Dead. Simpsons essay is a factual, persuasion and academic based essay. This is a factual essay because Simpson uses facts based from the show and information from other published texts. Heckmans article, “Roadside ‘Vigil’ for the Dead: Cannibalism Fossil Fuels, and the American Dream” also was featured in the same book of collected essays. The collection

Not only is it far and away television’s most popular show among the highly coveted 18-to-34-year-old demographic, it has almost single-handedly refuted every one of the ideas laid out in my opening paragraph. Where most serialized dramas create a world and, over time, spread out into it, adding characters, nuance, and layers, The Walking Dead has a guillotine where the story engine should be. It has no interest in saving the world or curing the zombie outbreak. Instead, it sets up base camp in the crushing moment when most dystopic movies end, sinking into the heartbreak, violence, and loss. “Everything is fucked,” isn’t a traditional TV starting place, but, then again, The Walking Dead isn’t a traditional series. Its remarkable proficiency in areas often considered ancillary — sound design, visual effects, editing, and casting — has helped sustain it, even when the plot veers decidedly into a sort of sadistic nihilism. And, in a perverse way, the bleak consistency of The Walking Dead — no matter what else is going on, someone’s getting bitten every week — is precisely what saves it as a TV show. At this point, the constant, gruesome suffering has become as dependable as a laugh

Survival and disaster preparation are relevant in the stories in the novel. Several interviews, especially those from the United States, focus on policy changes designed to train the surviving Americans to fight the zombies and rebuild the country. For example, when cities were made to be as efficient as possible in order to fight the zombies, the art of using real places and locations to describe these disasters, or when the ultra-rich hide in their homes, which had been turned into fortified compounds, they were overwhelmed by others trying to get in, leading to mass slaughter. Throughout the novel, characters demonstrate the physical and mental requirements needed to survive a disaster. There were so many disasters that can be related to the outrageous earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcano eruptions, etc. Zombie apocalypse can most likely be a reality through the spread a deadly virus. Brooks described the large amount of research needed to find optimal methods for fighting a worldwide zombie outbreak.

A major contributing factor to this great change is the fear and uncertainty that is instilled by the zombies. I believe that Brooks defined fear through people’s reactions to the outbreak. He explains how fear is the most basic emotion and how fear is the reasoning to perform an act. In one of his stories, he writes, “fear is the most valuable commodity in the universe” (Brooks). This is true because we buy products and services based on the fear of not having those products and the results of not having that commodity.

The Walking Dead universe does not use the term zombies, but “walkers” instead. The premise of the game revolves around the main character Lee Everett and a little girl named Clementine, who he meets at the beginning of the game and is set to protect her at all costs. On the way to find a better place or escape for survival, they meet several people and survival groups who may leave or die due to decisions that the players make. The main storyline does not stray too much and the choices that the players make affect more on character development and how the other characters in the game perceive Lee.