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.
