Most zombie apocalypse novels, movies, and T.V shows focus on a survivalist narrative. The main characters band together to fight off attacks from zombies. The typical run-and-hide scenes are common in zombie apocalypse narratives. Their desire to live and complicated characterizations is the focus of these narratives. Zombies are typically portrayed as mindless, meat eating entities that seem to go through the motions of their shallow existence. They have no characterization, and they are viewed as a large, singular mass. Even though Colson Whitehead’s Zone One has some of these elements, such as when Mark Spitz is attacked by one of the skels or his experience during the Last Night, Whitehead flips the survivalist narrative by having the survivors be the mindless entities that are killing machines. They hunt down skels and stragglers to kill them. In typical zombie narratives, it is the survivors who are the hunted. As a result, Whitehead can explore what it looks like in the day-to-day grind of an apocalypse.
Another interesting element in Whitehead’s novel is that the readers are more horrified by the survivors’ actions than the stragglers themselves. The survivors play sick games with stragglers who are frozen in one moment in time. They mutilate the stragglers by cutting off fingers, drawing Hitler mustaches, and giving them wedgies. Mark Spitz and his team of sweepers are under orders to “Pop em’ and Drop em’.” There is some sympathy towards the stragglers because of their deep characterization. Of course, Mark Spitz wrestles with the mercy killings of both skels and stragglers alike. Whitehead develops skels and stragglers to have real humanity by giving them backstories and genuine characterization, especially the stragglers who are harmless. Giving the drooling zombie monsters characteristics and life stories is unheard of in zombie narratives. The lieutenant who oversees Mark Sptiz’s unit even has sympathy for them. As Mark Spitz recognizes the humanity in skels and stragglers, he wrestles with his own morals and what it means to be human in the face of a devastating apocalypse. As readers, we are forced to question how we view people and things that are not “normal.” We are forced to question where we place our sympathies and how we act on these sympathies, which is something we all must face.
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