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Zombies Are Boring : The Zombie Plague

Decent Essays

Zombies are boring. Despite the amount of creative freedom authors can exhibit in the fiction genre, there is a singular, consistent, specific, and defining depiction of what is known as “the zombie.” The very uttering of this science fiction buzz-word conjures elaborate and imaginative images of decomposing, slack-jawed, mindless creatures hungering for flesh. Their clothes are usually dirty and ragged, their teeth stained yellow and red, the remnants of their last meal on their lips, and a telltale missing limb or chunk of flesh from when they crossed from life into un-death. The manner in which the zombie plague is passed will often differ: one of the earliest iterations of the zombie in the 1932 movie The White Zombie were simply …show more content…

Full of plague but unaware. That night the shivers came, and the legendary bad dreams… She returns to her cubicle the next day because she hasn 't taken a sick day in years. Then transformation," (Whitehead 18-19). The amount of detail devoted to a single zombie is disproportionate compared to most mainstream zombie depictions. To name a zombie, present that zombie with a backstory, and to rationalize that zombie’s presence is give the zombie human characteristics, and is to not generically refer to the zombie as “it.” The humanization of the zombies is fairly simple and straightforward.
Zone One’s dehumanization of the surviving remnants of society, however, is different. Most apocalyptic narratives focus on how the apocalypse traumatizes the survivors into being less human. Desperate times often call for depraved morals for the sake of survival: killing former humans, killing and stealing from other humans, or even eating other humans. However, Zone One takes into consideration not only the corruptions of humanity amidst the apocalypse, but also the underlying, hidden vices that predated the emergence of the apocalypse. “Dehumanization” is defined as the deprivation of human qualities, personality, or spirit, and this is applied by characterizing the pre-apocalypse humans like zombies. “The skel [zombie] wore a morose and deeply stained pinstripe suit, with a solid crimson tie and dark brown tasseled loafers… It was no

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