Fear of Loss: Blog Post 1

            In “Zombies Are Us,” the locus of fear is stated to be pain. In zombie-lore, however, the greater fear seems to be “loss.” A human in a zombie apocalypse can experience loss in a number of ways. First, any human is in a constant struggle not to lose their life. However, in zombie-lore, typically a human is not only losing their life in death. A person killed by a zombie loses everything that makes them human in the first place. Sure, some muscle memory or basic instincts may remain, but emotion or agency is void, at least in the human way, for a zombie. A human in a zombie apocalypse does not seem to fear the physical pain of a zombie biting into his flesh. In the “Walking Dead,” for example, Rick does not hesitate to turn his pistol on himself under the tank. The pain is not the problem. The greater fear, which lies in any zombie apocalypse, is the fear of humanity.

            In the most obvious way, a zombie bite will quickly remove any humanity from a person. Quickly, the person will degrade into flesh eating, decaying, members of a horde. Even for the living, however, there is a constant struggle to retain humanity. In the beginning of the “Walking Dead,” Rick walks into his house convinced that his wife and son are still alive. When the other man asks how he knows, he points to the picture frames. The man sighs and states that his wife did the same thing. As he was gathering survival gear, his wife was collecting the photo albums. The man says this like it’s a bad thing. Focusing on gathering memorabilia of, what is now, a past life is less necessary than collecting water or weapons. For the wife, however, desperately clutching to the life that was normal only hours before is of dire importance. These memories, now artifacts, are what will keep her human in days to come. Of course, this is easily negated by the fact she turns into a zombie.

            Throughout “The Walking Dead,” however, there is a constant theme of a person struggling with their humanity. In the beginning, Rick is appalled when the other man kills a zombie. He calls the “walker” a person. For the man, killing zombies is a part of life. For both Rick and the man, however, it is a different matter when the zombie is someone loved or that should be protected. The man cannot kill his wife, even though he knows it is necessary for his survival. Just like his wife needed to collect physical memories, this man could not kill this walking memory of his wife. How much of his wife was left in there? Considering the man killed other zombies without a second thought, he must believe that they were no longer human. Yet, he cannot let go of his sentimentality. For Rick, this moment manifests when he faces a little girl zombie. The little girl slowly walks towards him and quickly switches to attack mode. Still, Rick is horrified and cannot help trying to save her at first. By reverting to killing what, in the past life was innocent, Rick needs to sacrifice some of his humanity.

            As a leader of my community, this struggle is of crucial importance. What is the point of running a community of people that have completely sacrificed their humanity? Sure, unlike the wife, my members have let go of their past lives. The world today is completely different than the one before. My focus, however, is to create a community where humanity can foster. The survival of humankind is only important if humanity survives as well. Any zombie community will face that constant struggle, allowing the emotion and sentimentality of humans grow while living in constant fear of loss. A community that is an example of this is the one present in “Spoiler.” Even though everyone knows the family will probably all be exterminated, the outsiders try their hardest to save the man and the baby. The safety of the rest of the community demands the death of the husband and wife, but they are not sacrificed in vain. A post-zombie apocalypse will never be the same as the old world; children can look outside and see their neighbors go up in flames. On the other hand, there is a semblance of normalcy where, at least in some way, humanity has survived.