Jovi sent me this story; he picked it up somewhere on the peyups LJ methinks. I papered it for English 11. Haha. Here goes:
The story deals with a well known, fictional creature—the zombie. A reanimated human corpse who eats living flesh to survive, the zombie is something of a pop culture icon, spawning many horror films, comic books and novels. The zombie prototype was established in the hugely popular 1968 film, Night of the Living Dead.
In this short story, Isaac Marion delves into the mind of a thoughtful young zombie, as he tackles life and love in the realm of the undead. Marion writes with humor and insight, and is able to connect with the readers, even when speaking from a rotting corpse’s point of view.
Being dead changes you, as the nameless narrator points out: I don’t think much about the future anymore. That’s something that’s very different from before. When I was alive, the future was all I thought about. Obsessed about. Death has relaxed me.
The story takes place in a post-apocalyptic world, where pretty much everyone has been turned into a zombie. Of course, there are still cities with living people in them, but everything is slowly disintegrating and decaying. The author describes to us the way of life of a zombie: they eat, they lose some of their number, they walk around in circles in the dust, and they groan. As mentioned earlier, death is uncomplicated. There are no more obsessions to worry about, because there is no more future. Dead is dead.
Of course, there are certain things that transcend death, according to the story. A handful of memories, the capacity to think, and, love. The narrator falls in love with another zombie named Emily, but according to him, it is a different, simpler kind of love than the love that existed when he was alive. Here, the world is stripped of sex, fights, and ulterior motives. There are no more reasons to hurt each other, and no more reasons to mind anything.
In the end, the story is all about how nothing really matters anymore, once you are dead. It’s an entertaining read, and it brings to light a question: What really matters when you are alive? Is it riches, sex, ambition, success? What do they matter, when you’re a zombie? The story’s answer, of course, is love. Love matters, love can be carried over, even in death.
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