Zombies, Zombies, Everywhere

There are different types of zombies that one might experience in literature, and by our definition that includes movies and tv shows. You might encounter the same zombies we are seeing in The Walking Dead—slow-walking, brain eating, mindless undead humans. These zombies might have some part of human left in them, but you really don’t know. All you know is that these pseudo-living creatures of death are wandering around the world, looking for living things to eat. Walking Dead zombies were once humans who have been infected with the zombie virus, and now are these undead creatures who are in some form of decomposition who wander the earth simply looking for brains to chomp on. But then, you might encounter some different types of zombies, or zombie-like creatures, and how do these play into the overall zombie culture and literature? Well, I’m just going to try to explore that here.

Now let’s take the White Walkers of Game of Thrones into consideration. These creatures, whose origination is unknown, descended upon Westeros and killed all in their path. Those that they killed could be reanimated after death to do the White Walkers’ bidding. Eventually the people of Westeros defeated the White Walkers and drove them back to the farthest North, and built a wall between the North and Westeros to keep the White Walkers at bay. I digress; these characters are essentially the living dead as well. These creatures were never, and will never be human (although the people that they kill do become mindless zombies that the White Walkers can control). White Walkers have a humanoid figure, and act zombie-like, but are entirely different from anything we’ve seen in zombie culture before.  They have long white hair, gray, wrinkled, skin pulled taut over their bodies and seem to have a mummified appearance. I consider the White Walkers to be zombies for all intents and purposes.

Next, let’s take a look at the zombies of the novel, and movie, Warm Bodies. In this particular piece of work, the people who become infected with the zombie virus, become zombies. They stumble around, seemingly mindlessly, looking for brains to eat—sounds like a typical zombie movie, right? The difference between these zombies is that the movie is set up so that the audience gets a peek inside of the zombies’ minds. It shows us that zombies are not mindless. So while these zombies share the basic characteristics of the stereotypical and often played-out zombie, the zombies of Warm Bodies are just a little different. These zombies have thoughts, but they have no recollection of being human. Another odd thing about these zombies is that in order to feel human, in order to have human memories, they must eat a human’s brains. When a zombie from this movie eats a human’s brains, they acquire that human’s memories and they get (if only for a moment) to feel human again. SPOILERT ALERT! These zombies become human again through finding love. This is a concept that I don’t think any other zombie literature has ever explored before, which makes it infinitely more interesting to me. In addition to these zombies that can get their humanity back, there are zombies that can descend into a darker and more gruesome type of creature than your original zombie. In the movie, these are referred to as Bonies. These creatures are what a zombie becomes once their skin has completely decayed. These creatures have no skin, no eyes, no ears, and are extremely fast. In addition to these twists, Bonies will eat absolutely anything with a heartbeat, and have no humanity left, and are therefore irredeemable. Again, and interesting twist on the average zombie tale. 

So no matter where we turn, we might find zombies in the literature we are reading/watching. And no matter where we turn, we might just find a new twist on these old characters. It intrigues me to think about how/why/when these characters became the object of popular culture obsession, and how/why/when these undead creatures shifted from simply mindless brain chompers to the different types of zombies we see them portrayed as in more recent popular culture. Their story has changed over the course of the decades and that's an interesting thing to think about in terms of how stories are told and what literature is. I am excited to see how the graphic novel plays into this whole storytelling of the zombies and even the human element of the tales.