Morality and the Living Dead

The literature (and film) that we’ve read and seen so far all explore issues of human morality. It’s like Robert Kirkman has said, “Good zombie movies show us how messed up we are, they make us question our station in society ...” Simply put, the Zombie apocalypse scenario rips our ideas about what it means to be a “good person” or indeed, what it means to be a person at all, to pieces. This is, in large part, what I find so fascinating about the zombie genre: it forces you to reflect on your own humanity, and further, what being human means.

These are questions that struck when I began watching The Walking Dead. It seems clear that the world into which Rick and his cohorts are thrust is not one in which it is easy, nor is it generally smart to uphold the kind of modern values that Western society usually praises. Values such as empathy, compassion and selflessness - arguably the best of humanity - seem, in a zombie apocalypse scenario, more likely to get you, and often times those around you, killed. This leaves us with a disconcerting truth – that characters who readily sacrifice these values, or perhaps never had them to begin with, seem almost to thrive in this “brave new world,” maybe even more-so than they did in their old lives. In a way, the zombie apocalypse creates conditions under which two kinds of monsters exist: the zombies, of course, but also one’s fellow humans. Those fellow humans, who are possessors of profound agency as the Derksen and Hick article put it, are often more threatening, and more deadly than the zombies themselves.

In all of the material we’ve reviewed thus far, from Spoiler, The Walking Dead, to Can You Survive morality becomes a precarious balancing act. Rick, for instance, is constantly making difficult decisions which often pit his own family and group against other humans who may, or may not be, a threat. In Spoiler the assembled team of police and the medical examiner, must make a decision about whether or not to essentially incinerate an entire family. Similarly, In Can You Survive, we are periodically asked to make moral decisions, such as whether or not to be proactive and save a stranger’s life even if it jeopardizes our own, whether or not to kill a fellow human being before they’ve “turned,” etc. And, spoiler alert, most of the time, if you choose to play the hero, you die.

Which raises the question: what is the point of morality if, when push comes to shove, saving someone means potentially getting your intestines eaten out of your still-living flesh, only to eventually become one of the very beasts that you fear? I mean… shit, that’s pretty bad.

It’s obvious that this ongoing internal conflict takes its toll. In Can You Survive, for instance, a Marine who is forced to kill his commander and his friends becomes a virtual killing machine, his sanity jeopardized by the weight of what he has had to do to survive. The changing, or rather, disintegrating morality of society is also illustrated in subtler details as well, such as during a scene on packed subway: “On board, people wave their phones around, trying to get a signal. A pregnant woman cries in the corner. No one offers her a seat” (Brallier, 9). Similarly, the contrast between the Rick we see in the first episode of The Walking Dead and the Rick of the more recent episodes is staggering. In Spoiler, it’s clear from the tone of the film, and the attitudes of the police and the main character towards the decision they are about to make that this weighs heavily on them. The entire film is quite dark, almost blue-tinted – the music is somber rather than the kind of rile-rousing, dramatic drums one expects to hear in a “zombie flick.”

But the alternative to the weight of maintaining morality in a zombie apocalypse scenario is to become one of the monsters – to resemble in some ways, the zombies more than a decent human being – single-minded. We see this, too, in the literature and film of the genre. In Can You Survive, for instance, we often run across characters whose morality seems to have faded, or at times, withered completely away. Sometimes we are even asked to make a choice about whether or not to stop them. I won’t spoil The Walking Dead for anyone, but similarly, there are characters who appear to walk the line between monster and man – apparently unable to cope with the gravity of the situation in any other way.

So...do desperate times really call for desperate measures? Does a situation like that of Can You Survive, or The Walking Dead, or Spoiler really mean we must put some of our humanity away for safe-keeping? Does survival in a zombie apocalypse scenario recommend or even require a new, or perhaps revised, moral code? These are all questions, that as someone whose role within the community is as part of a “defense squadron,” I feel are important to think about. Those who patrol and defend the community are quite literally on the front lines, and can expect to face a lot of conflict from both the zombie horde and not-so-nice humans. For me, it’s important to have a strong sense of moral “boundaries” if you like, so that you neither become like the monsters you’re fighting, nor do you fail to act with compassion when it is necessary.