Literature and Zombies
What is literature? When posed with that question what first comes
to mind is a picture of a leather bound book with gold-edged paper. I
immediately think of Jane Austen, Edgar Allen Poe, Shakespeare, and the like.
After thinking a little more abstractly about literature, I broaden my view out
to more modern literature. I bring my view of literature up into the current
century when it comes to authors, books, and everything else, however that is
about as far as my view on "what literature is" has extended--until
now. When Dr. T said that in this class, anything that tells a story is going
to be considered literature, I really had to argue with myself and decided what
my view on literature is. So what is it? I just I agree that anything that
tells a story has the potential to be literature, but is it actually
literature? I've always had, what I consider, a fairly rigid view on what is to
be deemed literature, yet somehow, when Dr. T said that all things that tell a
story are literature, I found myself agreeing with it. So for the purpose of
this class (and who knows, maybe the rest of my life) I agree that all things
that tell a story can and should be considered literature.
Now, onto the zombies. After watching the first episode of The Walking Dead, I was curious about what on Earth we would be talking about when we got to class the next day. To me, there didn’t seem to be anything that was literature related that we could talk about in class after just watching an episode of this TV show; however, when we got to class and got to talking, I was shocked to find out that we had a lot to say! In our small group discussion we moved away from talking about the episode itself, and more toward how the episode was playing on some of the same themes as other literature we’ve read. Our group realized that literature is always trying to explore the idea of life after death. In fact, it is something that humanity itself has obsessed over for eons, and will likely continue to obsess over until the mystery is solved (which I don’t think it ever will be). There is heaven, hell, purgatory, ghosts, vampires, zombies—you name it. Somehow, we always come up with another concept of what kind of life there is after one dies. This is what fuels a series like The Walking Dead. The idea and obsession with what lies beyond life is what essentially fuels this interest in stories that deal with the undead, and zombies are just another part of this puzzle. We know that zombies are not real, just as we know that vampires and werewolves are not real, but it doesn’t stop us from being curious about what life would be like if they were real. Needless to say, the idea that there is something out there beyond the lives we live is an intriguing idea for all, and even something as farfetched as zombies still pulls you into the story (no matter your hesitance to like the story).