Whiteheads’ Zone One takes a unique approach to the zombie apocalypse. The story takes place in lower Manhattan, with the uninfected building a quarantine zone to avoid the skels. The Skels in this booka re not all dangerous; some of these infected just sit around, as if stuck in a moment of their old lives. After reading the book, I wasn’t sure how I felt about the open ending and the story overall. I looked up some reviews to see what other people thought of this novel. While reading Zone One, one of my first thoughts was how disappointed the avid zombie fan would be with this book. There is hardly any action at all, and everytime we think an action scene is going to take place, Whitehead takes us back to a memory or flashback of some sort. The reviews I found on Amazon certainly helped prove my theory;
Category Archives: November
I want to be a part of it…. Nuke York, Nuke York!
After seeing Mick Brodericks’ exhibit Nuke York, New York, I was really impressed with the amount of research that he has done on the subject. I learned that he travels around the world to collect his material, and he even resorts to ebay to look for vintage art. His dedication to the subject of obvious, and it was clear in his lecture that he was passionate about the end of the world.
Observations on Zone One
What I immediately noticed about Colson Whitehead’s Zone One is his use of kairotic time similar to what we had read in “The Albertine Notes”. However, unlike “The Albertine Notes,” the use of kairotic time is easier to follow in Zone One. There is no concept of chronological time in “The Albertine Notes”; instead days are marked by events such as before Albertine or after the blast. In Zone One, events still play a big role in marking time, but there is still a sense of chronology. Whitehead emphasizes the before and after by adding a sense of nostalgia of New York pre-apocalypse.
A Different Kind of Zombie Apocalypse
Whitehead’s Zone One has many component that are common to post-apocalytpic zombie texts. Obviously, an important part to the text is the removal of zombies. Also the story is told with kairotic time and the world is trying to rebuild civilization despite an unstable central government. However, this book is not like most zombie novels, instead of gore and thrill, emotions and personality play a larger role. Continue reading
Zone One: All Places At Once
Reading Colson Whitehead’s Zone One, I was reminded most of one reading in particular – Rick Mood’s The Albertine Notes. As Colby mentions in her post, I too found myself getting lost amongst the time in Mark Spitz’s world because he so often slips from pre-Last Day to post-Last Day.
What stuck out to me the most was the relationship, if I can call it that, between Mark Spitz and the skels. On one hand, there was this desire to recognize their humanness, and in a sense it is completely unavoidable. There is the fact that he sees skels and automatically associates them with people he “knew;” his desire to leave “Ned the copy boy” alone; his noticing of thongs – all of these things show that, in this knew world ruled by military organization and tactical emotion-quelling, he struggles to reconcile the pre-Last Day with this “new” world.
I did also love the fact that Whitehead doesn’t allow for this novel to become a hack-‘n’-slash, Zombie-hating kind of story, which I feel it easily could have. He instead ties in elements, like Mark Spitz’s emotionalism, that allow for the reader to feel, and notice, moments of connect and disconnect. There is the fact that PTSD becomes PASD, and that all of the sweepers are heavily aware that their jobs are both allowing some closer and completely screwing up their psychological relations to the dead, the Apocalypse, and their place in this new world.
Lastly, the language in Whitehead’s book is so concise and crisp, which I think fits the processing one’s mind would go through in the new world. One would focus and process things in terms of essential-ness: “What is the essential knowledge about what I am doing? What memories? What thoughts?” in a way that one can easily be thrown off track, but also make associations. I found this interpretation (as someone who tends to dislike both violence and zombies in entertainment) much more rewarding than the more violent, kill-em-dead types of entertainment that often utilize military ethics, control, and violence in regards to zombies and the Apocalypse.
The Everyman and the Apocalypse
I hate to admit that I didn’t do this week’s reading, especially given that I love novels and was looking forward to “real zombies” making their appearance in this course. Even though I swear that I grabbed “Zone One” on my first trip to grab stuff from Brookdale, I can’t find it in that suitcase. I would have emailed Professor Quinby, if not for my sad habit of waiting to the last possible minute to work. I hope to read it sometime following my return to Brookdale. Until then I can only theorize on what happened in the book based on reviews, both on Amazon and from professionals and the excerpt at Amazon.com.
Zombies are a popular metaphor for brainwashed masses. Zombification results in the sense of homogeneity that some argue is found in embracing popular culture and incorporating mass expectation into one’s life style. Thus I found it interesting that the narrator of Zone One, a person that has apparently outlived the existence of life as we know it, introduce himself as unremarkably common even as he heads out on a noteworthy mission. The average person is capable of overcoming adversity and adapting to new situations. This sort of higher sense of activity or awareness and/or ascension to a higher plain under a religious leader is a fairly big part of why some people fantasize about the end of time. People want to believe that they are important, even if they do not seem exceptional. However, the existence of zombies show that mass lifestyle changes can be problematic if people cannot recognize themselves.I believe the zombie is a personal apocalypse that plays out in the public sphere, affecting the masses both with and without the central demon’s consent. Perhaps, this is what makes zombies, with their obvious losses, a post-apocalyptic staple, both in movies and in video games.
The Zombie Fixation and Zone One
From day one in our class, the buzz about zombies has been present and persisted, despite the vast majority of our material not being zombie-related. Being a fan of zombies myself, I’ve always wondered what it was about them–and the prospect of a zombie apocalypse–that draws so many of us in. Reading Colson Whitehead’s Zone One, I felt he highlighted something about zombies that I had never picked up one: wish fulfillment.
In a scene towards the beginning of the book, when Mark encounters four zombies that had been cooped up in the break room of a legal office, he muses about being an angel of death with a chilling amount of glee. From that passage, it was clear that a part of Mark enjoyed participating in the apocalypse’s carnage. That’s when it hit me:
On some level, we’d all love to go on a killing spree.
We’re all imbued with that primal energy–that Freudian Id–which gives us a capacity for violence. These thoughts are curbed by our learning and internalizing of societal rules (like don’t murder people). Both of these attributes make sense in an evolutionary sense: those that were strongest and best at fighting got to pass on more of their genes over the course of many generations, and likewise those that could cooperate effectively also succeeded in dominating the gene pool. A zombie apocalypse lets us toss off our societal shackles and appease our violent impulses without having to deal with the moral hangups that accompany murder. Zombie apocalypse scenarios are–purely and simply–guiltless indulgences of our primal predisposition to violence.
More Than Nukes?
When reading Nuke York, New York, I wondered if there was something more to it than America’s obsession of attacks taking place in New York City. Instead of maintaining that mindset, it is better to take a look at this in different mindset. It seems more logical that NYC is used as the setting for attacks made on U.S. soil because it is an area that’s recognizable on the global level, and using a setting such as NYC appeals to Americans because it represents the busiest cities in the United States.
Mike Broderick and Robert Jacobs use different mediums of media throughout his essay in order to provide examples of NYC being the center of catastrophic attacks. The structure of topics that his paper covers also has sections that relate to media, including magazines, books, television, film, video games, and online content, with only two sections that do not directly relate to a medium of media. The trend that the media sections seem to follow is that they all involve NYC as a setting of attack that corresponds to an attack. For example, the authors gave the example of the film Rocket Attack as a response of the Soviet’s launch of Sputnik and also the example of the 2005 novel The Nuclear Suitcase that is about an attack on NYC with a weapon from the former Soviet Union that is purchased by jihadists. Instead of agreeing with the author’s conclusion stating an attack on NYC represents American anxieties and fears from bombing Japan and the post 9-11 world, I feel that an attack based in NYC is an attack on, as the authors write, “American progress, prestige, and profit” due to the powerful symbolism it provides. This symbolism is something that causes sensationalism in attacks that take place in NYC.
This is probably done because it is something that culture and society dictates. Philip Morrison, author of If the Bomb Gets Out of Hand, followed with the example that New York is a better setting to use because of the familiarity. Even though the novel was a reference to the atomic bombing of Japan, he had to set the story in NYC in order to appeal to the American audience. Therefore, there are two ways to address this: either there is a symbolic meaning behind attacking NYC or there is a location meaning behind attacking NYC because everyone will understand where the attack is. This will be something that I will look forward to find out when I hear Mike Broderick talk tomorrow. Furthermore, I was surprised at the many culture references that I missed like Heroes and 24, which included references to a potential nuclear blast. Nevertheless as the current villain to the U.S. is based in the Middle East, we’ll be in for a few more books, games, films, and movies about them. Just think of how Call of Duty’s villain changed over time.
Nuclear Suburbia
I found the online “Nuke York, New York” article fascinating especially as someone that considers herself a New Yorker, an a person that has been displaced from the city in the face of natural disaster. It was somewhat nice to see that the correlation between New York and fictional apocalypse depictions was more than my keeping my eyes open for my hometown, and interesting to see how 9/11 and Hiroshima imagery combined in the public psyche.
New York: The Place Apocalypse Calls Home
Reading Mick Broderick and Robert Jacobs’ Nuke York, New York essay, I found myself both surprised and having moments of, “Oh, that makes so much sense!” Why New York has always been depicted as a city that gets destroyed was something I think I had noticed, but never been consciously aware of – and now I understand why, at least historically.
I find the idea of this fascination, in culture, with discussing/seeing images of NYC’s destruction so bizarre. Why New York was chosen as the main point to transfer On one hand, there is the idea that I can totally understand – Hiroshima/Nagasaki was a horrible, destructive event. Max Page refers to New York as, “regarded as a national and international site for both awe and envy” (Broderick, Conclusion). This made some sense to me. (And the irony of the Manhattan project and then a fascination with Manhattan’s destruction isn’t lost on me either.) I found myself trying to interpret why people may have become so willing to, and interested in, the image of New York City as it is being rendered apocalyptically.
On one hand, if a citizen views the destruction of cities like Hiroshima and Nagasaki, one that, I feel, many Americans weren’t too culturally familiar with, picking a city like New York to use in the 1945 example “Here’s What Could Happen to New York in an Atomic Bombing,” chooses a city that everyone “knows,” with both foreign and familiar elements. It is als pretty tightly populated, so perhaps it makes sense to use it as an example to show things like mileage. However, it’s still curious to me. If I were a New Yorker, I don’t know how kindly I’d take to such populating images of a city’s destruction – watching movies where cities get destroyed, when I’ve been or have lived there, always feel different to me.
Post-9/11 I think that there is more of a direct link between the idea of New York’s destruction and the public or social consciousness. Also, I think that (commercial) filmmakers often set films in New York, and want to pick a place that an audience will have some identity in mind with. “Oh, a famous banker – Wall Street, let’s put it on Wall Street!” And with so many other films choosing New York, as a city where people move to “make their dreams come true,” I am not surprised that setting films where dreams come true is the first choice among lots of people. Also, New York has so many micro-cultures of its own – the line in Broderick’s essay about the destruction of east coast elites and minorities, I think, has a lot of validity for certain people. How true this kind of NYC-hate is in Hollywood, I’m less sure of, and more think that they are just keeping up an already popular kind of image.
