The Tragic Dilemma in The Walking Dead

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Programme: MA Media studies: Television and Cross-Media Culture, University of Amsterdam Date of completion: 26 June, 2015

The Tragic Dilemma in The Walking Dead

Name: Marike van Ringen

Supervisor: dhr. dr. J.W. Kooijman Second reader: dhr. dr. S.M. Dasgupta

A research on how The Walking Dead transcends the given genres and

how Greek tragedy can give a broader understanding of the series.

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Introduction

The terrifying walkers growl, bumping into the fences around the Prison. They try to get at the human flesh on the other side of the wall. Four children jump up and down on the other side, waving and calling the walkers names; actual names like Nick. The sisters Mika and Lizzie are part of this group. Their fun is interrupted by Carl, who cannot believe that the girls are giving the walkers names. He tries to set them straight, telling them that ‘they had names when they were alive, they are dead now’. Lizzie responds: ‘No they are not, they are just different.’ This makes Carl snap at her: ‘What the hell are you talking about!? […] they do not talk, they do not think, they eat people, they kill people!’ After which Lizzie ends the discussion with the following remark: ‘People kill people, they still have names’ (04:01). That last remark kept haunting my thoughts; it triggered me into thinking. Before this scene, I agreed more or less with Carl’s idea of walkers, that they are monsters and do not deserve the same treatment as humans. This moment was not the first moment in The Walking

Dead that made me rethink long-held beliefs, and did not turn out to be the last one either.

Nevertheless, this particular remark caused me to think what the series was about and re-watch the series on a different level. The small remark through which Lizzie shows how much walkers and humans are alike says a great deal about what the series tries to accomplish and how it transcends the borders of the genre it is supposed to be part of. Lizzie’s remark says more about humans than about walkers, and it transcends the simple divide between good - humans - and evil - the walkers. Walkers should be killed, based on the criterion that they kill people; this is also why they do not deserve names. However, humans meet this criterion as well, and are in some ways even worse: they kill other humans out of their own free will, intentionally. Walkers are merely driven by a biological, unstoppable need to feed on humans. The popular AMC series The Walking Dead, currently in its fifth season (2014-2015), revolves around a small group of survivors in a post-apocalyptic world who try to stay alive in a hostile society in which they are threatened not only threatened by walkers, but by other survivors as well. The series is an adaptation of a comic book by Robert Kirkman. The

Walking Dead, according to the AMC, is a series that combines drama with the horror genre.

However, the series raises complex discussions that question the basic principles of the horror and melodrama genres. The ethical complexity of The Walking Dead raises interesting ethical questions that cannot be easily explained within the confines of the horror or melodrama genre; in short, its complexity transcends both genres.

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there is never a way out of the situations that characters encounter that contains no moral wrongdoing. In the post-apocalyptic world, the group of survivors faces tragic dilemmas in which all of their options have bad consequences. I believe that the tragic situation in which the characters of The Walking Dead find themselves has striking parallels to the Greek tragedy and the tragic dilemmas the characters of Greek tragedy encounter. The tragic

dilemma and the tragic question it raises are central to Greek tragedy. Using a tragic question as opposed to an obvious question might give a broader understanding of The Walking Dead. Therefore, the research questions for this thesis are:

1. How does the ethical discussion raised in The Walking Dead transcend the horror and melodrama genre?

2. How can comparison with the Greek tragedy create a broader understanding of the ethical complexity in The Walking Dead?

In the first chapter, I will look at the tradition of the zombie genre as a sub-category of the horror genre. I will mainly concentrate on the origin of the zombie and its representation in film and television in Western society. After this overview, the representation of zombies in The Walking Dead will be compared to the general representation of zombies in the horror genre. In the second chapter, The Walking Dead will be analysed in view of aspects of the melodrama genre, to indicate how the series transcends the melodrama genre with its complex ethical features. The second part of the second chapter will revolve around the proposal to analyse The Walking Dead with the tragic question as part of the Greek tragedy in mind. In it, main features of the Greek tragedy will be compared to main features of The Walking Dead. The first two chapters will generate an answer to the first research question. A foundation for answering the second research question will be created in the second part of the second chapter, and will be discussed and covered more thoroughly in the last two chapters.

In the last two chapters, I will take two major themes from the series and investigate them more thoroughly in view of the horror and melodrama genres, and eventually explain the events in the series again with a viewing perspective derived from the Greek tragedy. Those two main themes will be life and death. The third chapter will revolve around the killing of both humans and walkers, and the fourth chapter will revolve around what the characters in the series consider to be necessary in order for them to be able to live like human beings, which amounts to more than just survival. In both chapters, I will try to create a broader understanding of the characters and their actions by using the tragic question. To show how these characters and their actions are understood differently from a horror and melodrama genre viewer perspective compared to the Greek tragedy viewer perspective, I

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will use reviews of the series as representations of these perspectives.

In this thesis, viewer perspective will be considered to be the perspective a viewer constructs based on expectations raised by genre conventions. The viewer perspective can influence how the viewer perceives series and films in general. To show viewer perspectives towards specific characters and their actions in The Walking Dead, online reviews will be used. The selected reviews represent the viewer perspectives of viewers that did not have their expectations met by the show. The use of these reviews allows comparison of different

viewing perspectives. The reviews that are selected criticize the characters, their actions and the context that the characters create by their actions. The reason these reviews where chosen is not because the reviewers should be proven wrong, but rather because they represent one view, and allow me to analyse the main themes of The Walking Dead in a broader way, with the genre conventions of the Greek tragedy as opposed to those of melodrama and horror in mind. For this thesis, I chose to analyse characters and their actions instead of specific episodes in the series. The reason for this is that the actions of the characters and the internal struggle of the characters are essential factors of the ethical and moral debate of the series. The characters and their actions create the main themes and the tragic dilemmas, and so I will concentrate on the characters and their actions specifically. However, I will refrain from isolating them from the context, since context is very important in both The Walking Dead and the Greek tragedy. In the text I will refer to the context of characters’ actions, but not elaborate extensively. For added background information, a complete overview of all the episodes of The Walking Dead can be found in the appendix. The appendix was created while the fifth season had not yet aired fully, so the second half of the fifth season is not included.

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Chapter 1: The Walking Dead and the History of the Zombie genre

Introduction

Zombies are both famous and infamous in Western visual and literary culture; they are popular monsters in the horror genre in the sense that they are used frequently, while at the same time they fill us with fear, as they feed on humans. People encounter these horror creatures in book, comics, games, films and series, which are an important part of the horror culture (McIntosh 1). However, the origin of the zombie lies not within Western culture, in which it has embedded itself so successfully, but in a different culture: the Voodoo culture of Haiti (McIntosh 2). In Haitian folklore, becoming a zombie involves a curse performed by a bokor, an evil Voodoo sorcerer. It does not happen at random, but is always ordered by others, and can be considered retribution for past bad behaviour (McIntosh 3). The

consequence of becoming a zombie is isolation from society: he or she will be isolated from their group and forced to become a loner. Voodoo culture differentiates between two kinds of zombies: the spirit zombie and the body or physical zombie (McIntosh 2). McIntosh describes the two zombies as follows: “[…] spirit zombies are souls without bodies and “walking” zombies are bodies without souls” (3). The first time a zombie appeared on the silver screen in Western society, it had many similarities to the zombies from Voodoo culture: a bokor performed a spell and thus gained control over a person’s the mind. Since this first

introduction, zombies have been transformed throughout time and adapted to Western society; the concept of the zombie has become fully integrated into Western culture.

In this chapter, the transformation of the zombie’s representation in media will be explained. The following bird’s eye view of these developments begins with the moment the zombie first made an appearance in western visual culture and ends with the representation of the zombie in series and films with a similar release date to that of The Walking Dead,

between 2010 and 2015. A bird’s eye view of this development is needed in order to give an idea of the different representations of zombies in the past and show how The Walking Dead can be considered as new development in the zombie genre (Round 163-164). In The Walking

Dead, the zombie is not the main threat, unlike in other films and series in the same genre.

The main focus is not on the slaying of the zombie population, but on humans rebuilding their lives and all the ethical and moral issues that rise during the process. This chapter will explore the aspects in which The Walking Dead differs from the horror genre on the one hand, and the features in which The Walking Dead corresponds with the horror genre on the other hand.

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Zombies in Western Visual Culture

There is no clear single point at which zombies became part of Western culture (McIntosh 4). The first time a zombie was mentioned in the West was in a travelogue by William Seabrook in 1929, but even before that, some documentation of zombification due to possession already existed. These sources originate from the late 18th century (McIntosh 4). Furthermore, in the late nineteenth century, folklore and ghost tales from the Haitian region had already been collected by people from Western society. The idea of the zombie became popular and well-known when the United States occupied Haiti. During this period (1915-1934), Voodoo culture was often sensationalized in books. In this sensationalized representation of zombie and Voodoo culture in literature, the origin of the zombie and the zombie itself where still strongly interwoven. This was also the case with the first appearance of the zombie on the silver screen in 1932, in a film called White Zombie (McIntosh 4). The film tells the story of a white couple staying in Haiti. The woman gets possessed by an evil Voodoo ‘bokor’ who desires her. The film contains all the characteristics of the first stage of the zombie genre’s adoption into Western culture, during the 1930s and 1940s (McIntosh 5).

Firstly, the setting of the film is a (to Western society) ‘exotic place’: non-European, non-Western and embedded in Voodoo culture. Secondly, the woman is possessed because the sorcerer sexually desires her. The turning is a rather selective turning that underscores a divide between men and women. Another divide in the film is between the civilized, good, Western white couple and the native, uncivilized, dark and evil people of Haiti (McIntosh 5-6). The topics of gender, ethnic, social and cultural studies are not part of the scope of this thesis, but I mention these two characteristics here anyway because they are signs of the selective and intentional creation of zombies in the early zombie films. Thirdly, the woman is possessed mentally. She is still more or less the same; the only difference is that she is being mentally controlled by the sorcerer. When evil sorcerer’s spell is broken, she turns back into her normal self (Greene 30; McIntosh 5). These characteristics can all be found in the small number of zombie movies produced between 1930 and 1940 (McIntosh 5).

In the 1940s, the setting of the zombie film changed a little. Zombies were transposed from their original exotic setting to the Western world, but the idea behind them remained the same: people were possessed and turned into zombies. This was still the case during the 1950s and 1960s (McIntosh 7-8). A stark contrast to the zombies we know nowadays is that the bodies of the zombies in these films stayed intact:

Up to this point [1966] in the movies, zombies were always portrayed simply as gaunt, slow-moving automatons with shabby clothes, as if a trip to the cleaners and a bit of rouge would be the only things needed

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to freshen one up after a stint underground. (McIntosh 8)

The first appearance of the zombie as a decaying, moving body in Western society was in 1966 in the movie The Plague of the Zombies (McIntosh 8). Nevertheless, these zombies where still possessed by a master and thus remained connected to Voodoo culture. The setting on the other hand was Western: Cornwall, England (IMDb: The Plague of the Zombies). The flesh-eating-zombie emerged for the first time in the movie Night of the Living

Dead (1968). Up until this moment, the zombie was not a particularly interesting monster in

the horror genre (McIntosh 6, 8). After The Night of the Living Dead, the cannibal-zombie became more prominent in popular visual culture and replacing other kinds of monsters (McIntosh 8). In a sense, Night of the Living Dead did with zombies in movies what had already been done in comic books in the 1950s. The zombie no longer had a master or a purpose, but became biologically driven by a need to eat human flesh (McIntosh 8). This transformation set a new trend for the years to come and it became the dominant

representation of the zombie in different media (McIntosh 8-9). Apart from appearance of the cannibal-zombie, Night of the Living Dead was the first to introduce an apocalyptic aspect to zombie films, an aspect which also became broadly adopted by the zombie genre as a whole (McIntosh 9). The transformation of zombies as innocent people being mentally controlled by an evil sorcerer to dead monsters with no recollection of a past life which are only out to eat humans changes the way the audience perceives the zombie. By stripping the zombie of everything that made it innocent before, it becomes a dead thing that can be slaughtered without guilt or remorse (Krzywinska 153; McIntosh 13).

The origin of the outbreak of the zombie apocalypse was unclear in Night of the Living

Dead, but in the following years (1970s and 1980s), zombie apocalypse outbreaks became

linked to politics. The link between politics and zombie outbreaks is a logical development:

Zombies are obviously linked strongly to the dominant fears of their era.

A fear of the Other is expressed through racial and sexual exoticization and animalism in films such as White Zombie and I Walked with Zombie […]. George Romero’s Living Dead films are the most famous examples of this type of commentary on contemporary racial and political themes; particularly Dawn of the Dead whose shopping mall setting has famously been interpreted as critique on mass consumerism. Reading contemporary texts as a similar commentary (on technological overload in today’s society) therefore seems logical. (Round 165)

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As there is a link between the dominant fear of a time period and the zombie movie, the origin of the zombie outbreak has changed over time. At first, the origin was native, uncivilized, dark and evil people, which link to a fear of the unknown, to the colonized world and the culture of racism. After that, the Cold War and the constant threat of nuclear war due to politics and governments became the dominant fear of the time, and so government became the cause of a post-apocalyptic world in film. After a period in which the government was the origin of the zombie virus, science became the new origin, as by this point, science had developed to a point where it would be capable of creating a disaster comparable to an apocalypse (Krzywinska 153).

In short, the zombie started out as a human being that was mentally controlled by a Voodoo sorcerer, or at least the zombie always had a master and therefore a purpose, in that it served the purpose of the master. In these movies, the source of the zombie outbreak was always non-European, and there is thus a cultural connection to colonization and inequality between races (McIntosh 6). The creation of a zombie was a deliberate act, which was

controlled and selective. After a while, zombies became biologically driven creatures without any purpose beyond wildly consuming human flesh. Practically everyone who got bitten or otherwise infected could turn into one. The zombie itself became the main threat, instead of the evil master behind the act of zombification; therefore the zombie could be killed without any sense of guilt. Gradually, the setting changed from an exotic place to Western society, and the source of the epidemic zombie infection shifted to the government, instead of a non-Western entity, due to the political problems during the Cold War. During this time, zombie movies were sometimes a protest against the capitalistic consumer society of the day. Finally, the focus shifted again and the cause of the apocalypse was linked to science.

The zombie in The Walking Dead

After the above bird’s eye view of the development of the zombie in Western visual culture, it is important to point out a difference in terminology before a comparison to The Walking

Dead can be made. In The Walking Dead, the survivors all have different names for the

walking dead, or in other words, the zombies; walkers, roamers, lurkers, geeks and biters. The most prominent is ‘the walkers’, which is used by the main characters. In this passage the walking dead will be called walkers, a term which should be considered interchangeable with zombie. How does The Walking Dead relate to the zombie genre in present time?

The main character in the first season of The Walking Dead is Rick Grimes. The first episode, “Days Gone By”, introduces Rick to the audience as a police officer in a world which is at that point still normal. He gets shot before the outbreak of the virus that turns

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people into walkers, ends up in a coma and therefore misses the outbreak, and wakes up in a post-apocalyptic world completely unaware of what happened (1:01). The situation uses the post-apocalyptic theme that is typical of the zombie genre; it features a world in which the government has fallen and civil society has collapsed due to an immense epidemic zombie disaster. Attacks by zombie herds have wiped out both local police forces and the army (Walker 83). The few survivors are left in a new world where all previous rules, borders or legal systems are gone. (Walker 82). Old rules do not apply anymore. Rick puts this shift into words in the episode Guts. When the survivors are taking shelter in a shopping mall, Andrea sees a necklace in a shopping mall which she wants to take as a gift for her younger sister Amy. She hesitates, and Rick asks her why she does not just take the necklace. Andrea jokes that there is a police officer watching her. For her, the act of taking a necklace without paying still feels like stealing and Rick, who is at that point still dressed as a police officer, still seems like an authority figure to her. Rick replies: “I don’t think those rules apply anymore, do you?” (Barkman 207; 1:02). This is the case for everything in the new world of The

Walking Dead.

The cause of the outbreak of the zombie apocalypse remains unclear throughout the series. However, it is clear from the very beginning that one should not be bitten by a zombie, because that is how the infection spreads. This happens to Jim and Amy in the episode

“Vatos”. They are bitten, die of a high fever and come back as walkers. We do not see Jim’s transformation, as he is left on the road to die on his own in the episode “Wildfire”, but Amy dies in the camp and is shown coming back as a walker the next morning in the episode “Wildfire” (1:04; 1:05). The viewer gets more information in the episode “TS-19”, when the group of survivors arrives at a science centre where a man named Dr. Jenner is looking for a cure to the zombie virus. He illustrates the process of getting infected by showing the survivors brain scans of a test person, which shows how their brain shuts down, followed by their body. Afterwards, the virus restarts the body and the most basic part of the brain, the brainstem, and results in the resurrection of a deceased body (Littmann 19; 1:06). Dr. Jenner explains that the rest of the brain, including the places where our memories, our emotions and all the aspects that made us the person we were are located, is gone. “The frontal lobes, the neocortex, the human part – that doesn’t come back. The you part” (Littmann 20; 1:06). Before leaving the science facility, Dr. Jenner entrusts Rick with the information that

everyone has already been infected with the virus. Because of this, whether they are bitten or not, they will become zombies once they die. Rick shares this knowledge with the group and the viewer (as the viewer cannot hear what Dr. Jenner says) later on in the series (1:06).

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Some similarities can be found when comparing features of The Walking Dead to features of the zombie genre. As explained by Dr. Jenner, people who are bitten die and are resurrected. This way of getting infected is closely linked to the origin of the zombie; the body of the deceased person is resurrected and is a body without soul. As Dr. Jenner explains, everything that made a person the way they were is gone. Proof of walkers being empty shells is given in the series even prior to the encounter with Dr. Jenner. As mentioned before, Amy, one of the survivors, is bitten in the episode “Vatos” (1:04). When Amy turns in “Wildfire”, someone has to destroy her brain. Her sister Andrea takes the task upon herself. She waits for Amy to turn, but then when Amy is turned, Andrea looks for traces of her little sister in the walker that once was Amy. The walker Amy tries to bite Andrea; as she is willing to eat her own sister, there are obviously no traces left of her from before she was turned (1:05). A similar thing happens to brothers Merle and Daryl in the episode “This Sorrowful Life” when Merle is turned. Daryl is not aware of his brother’s turning and tries to find him, and when he does, the walker Merle tries to eat Daryl. Daryl has to then kill Merle to save himself (3:15). Another even more harrowing example of the lost ‘you-part’ is the story of Morgan, Jenny and Duane Jones. In the episode “Days Gone By”, Morgan takes in a weakened Rick who has just woken up from his coma. Morgan and his son Duane have ‘moved in’ next door to Rick’s old house, and they nurse Rick back to health. Rick learns that Morgan’s wife is turned, because he is still emotional attached to her he cannot shoot his walker wife (1:01). When Rick meets Morgan again in season three, Morgan is close to insanity. He tells Rick that Duane got bit by the walker that once was his mother. Jenny, Duane’s mother, obviously has no recollection of her previous self at this point, otherwise she would not feed on her son (3:12). The turning of humans in The Walking Dead is identical to the way it usually happens in the zombie genre; when someone is resurrected, only their soulless body remains. In The

Walking Dead, becoming a walker and losing the things that make a person an individual,

instead becoming part of a mindless herd, is people’s biggest fear (McIntosh 3). That is why the majority of the characters make others promise to kill them if they are bitten or otherwise turned. In short, the walkers in The Walking Dead possess all the characteristics of the well-known zombie from the zombie genre. The zombies’ bodies are decaying, they have no soul or any recollection of a previous life, and there is no way to communicate with them. They are eager to eat human flesh and have no mercy, eating the old, the sick, and even children; in short, they eat anything they can get their hands on. The only way to kill them is to smash their brains.

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focus of the series is on humans dealing with themselves in relation to survival, walkers and other human beings. The series uses most of its screen time to develop the characters, to show the viewer their struggles with decisions about life or death, their inner struggles with guilt, the death of a loved one or a shady history in the world previous to the virus outbreak. This character depth makes the series more layered in comparison to other apocalyptic stories, in which little of the psychological struggle and history of the characters is revealed in favour of showing more action and gore. Because The Walking Dead focuses on the characters’

struggles and shows them in context, the clean divide between good and evil disappears since old rules do not apply. Therefore, new rules are discussed amongst the survivors and the viewer is present for all of these arguments, step by step. The events that occur and the things the characters have to do raise ethical discussions, which are important because they trigger the viewer into thinking.

These ethical discussions are enabled by two aspects of The Walking Dead. Firstly, the walkers are not exactly killing monsters, like in other zombie movies. For example, other recent zombie films use a virus, which induces a rabid-like state in people, such as 28 Days

Later, World War Z and the Resident Evil films. In this rabid-like state, they kill everything in

their way (Delfino 51). These zombies are fast, and they can run, climb and mutate into a perfect killing machine. Walkers on the other hand cannot run quickly: they stumble clumsily, bumping into everything that is in their way, such as branches, cars, bicycles or fences. They lack the ability to see these obstacles, and as a result they often trip or cause blockages by failing to either walk around a fence or climb it (Greene 31). An example of the basic movement of the walkers occurs in the episode “Them” from season five, when Maggie sits alone in the woods under a tree, crying over the loss of her family. In the distance, the viewer can hear a walker’s gurgling growl and the viewer thus knows Maggie is in danger. The walker comes into view over her shoulder, stumbling through leaves and branches on the ground. Maggie does not move; she keeps crying. The walker comes up behind her but is prevented from reaching her, because it has gotten stuck in a liana-like structure. Maggie is thus in no actual danger, and when she is done crying she gets up and kills the walker (5:09). Walkers are also not able to run. In the same episode, Rick and his group of survivors are moving to Washington by foot and attract the attention of a group of walkers. These walkers follow them. Rick and his group are low on supplies and energy, so Rick decides not to kill the walkers; the group of survivors simply walks just a little bit harder than the small herd of walkers for a long period of time. The walkers do not pose a direct threat in this setting either (5:09; 5:10). Of course, they are not completely harmless; when a person comes to close to a

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walker, they are at risk of being bitten or eaten, which does happen a couple of times. In a herd, the walkers are more dangerous and are able to overrun houses, breaking them down with their weight; this happens to Hershel’s farm (2:13).

The walkers are very basically wired: they go straight for flesh and blood. Rick demonstrates this when he is on a mission with Shane Walsh. Shane is a character from the first two seasons and a high school friend of Rick’s. They also worked together in the police force before the apocalypse, and Shane takes care of Lori and Carl during Rick’s absence. They conclude that they need to save up their bullets for when they really need them, so Rick cuts his finger and smears the blood on part of a fence, causing the walker on the other side of the fence to be attracted by the blood; with the creature distracted, Rick is able to quickly and easily kill it (2:10). The walkers are a constant threat, but as the series unfolds, it becomes clear that they are not the most dangerous thing that threatens the lives of the survivors. As a consequence of the collapse of society, there is a shortage of the basic supplies that are needed for survival, such as food, and there is no law to protect people from one another. The latter problem results in survival of the fittest (Walker 83). Besides the threats of supply shortage and other survivors, a third threat is oneself; the survivors are constantly struggling not to become living walkers, battling against insanity and for their humanity.

The second aspect of The Walking Dead that enables deeper ethical discussion is the fact that the attitude towards the walkers is different compared to that in the normal zombie genre. When walkers pose a threat, they are killed, just as in the zombie genre. However, in

The Walking Dead walkers are killed only when they pose a direct threat, as the survivors

believe that when the walkers do not form a threat one should leave them alone. Hunting them for sport as Merle does in “Guts” is deemed wrong (McKendry 61; 1:02). When walkers need to be killed, the killing should be done with respect and as quickly as possible (McKendry 58). In the beginning of the series Rick encounters a walker that is left with only her upper body and arms, dragging herself forward across the ground. In spite of her sorry state, she still tries to bite Rick. He kills her, but before he does he tells her: “I’m sorry this happened to you” (1:01). This is an example from the very beginning of the series, but this more respectful treatment of walkers remains an important feature throughout. The zombie or walker, in the case of The Walking Dead, is not a creature that can be killed without guilt.

Conclusion

The zombie has changed considerably since it has become part of the Western visual culture. The setting of the story and the representation of the zombie have changed over time.

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Nowadays, zombie films or series are set in a post-apocalyptic world in the near future, the settings are Western countries and the zombies are deceased people out to eat human flesh, brought back from the dead by a virus. The Walking Dead ticks all these boxes, and is evidently very much part of the horror genre which the zombie genre is also part of.

Nevertheless, The Walking Dead differs from that genre in one important aspect. In the series, the walkers are not the main threat and consequently, the main focus is not slaying zombies and staying alive. The main focus of the series is rebuilding society and it is made very clear just staying alive is not the same as truly living. The Walking Dead addresses questions about how a new society should look, how one should deal with killing other humans who pose a threat, in what way zombies should or should not be killed, and what it means to be alive. The main focus of The Walking Dead is the ethical discussion that arises from the issues

mentioned above. Making a comparison between the horror genre and The Walking Dead is important for the line of argumentation, because it substantiates that the horror and zombie genre do not sufficiently account for the main aspect of the series: the ethical discussion.

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Chapter 2: The Walking Dead in Relation to Melodrama and The Greek

tragedy

Introduction

The network AMC, which produces The Walking Dead, labels its series as a serial drama before anything else (AMC). For this reason, The Walking Dead has been compared to the melodrama genre in television. This comparison will be explored within this chapter. The comparison concentrates on visual features like close ups and extended dialogue which are used to expose the inner emotional struggle of the characters (Feuer 4). These features will be briefly mentioned in the chapter, but are not the main focus; the main focus will be

comparison of the use and discussion of ethics in the series and the melodrama genre, because this is the most important aspect of The Walking Dead series. The comparison to melodrama is interesting, because there are clear parallels between melodrama and The Walking Dead. Nevertheless, the comparison does not fully apply: the formalistic and narrative aspects of the series can be considered similar to those in the melodrama genre, but the most important part, the ethics, cannot be considered as such. The ethics in The Walking Dead are more complex than the ethics in melodrama and are therefore more similar to the ethics in Greek tragedy. In comparing The Walking Dead as a television series with the Greek tragedy as a theatre play, the nature of the two different media, each with their own medium specificity, could cause problems (MacKinnon 22-31). However, medium specificity is not relevant to the argumentation in this thesis, because it concentrates on viewer perspective based on genre conventions. Concentrating on medium-specific aspects could provide insight into the effect of a medium on the viewing experience, but the argumentation here instead concentrates on the viewing perspective, which is shaped by genre conventions, not by medium specificity. The main argumentation centres around the narrative of the story and what kind of ethics and moral discussion it raises. The different approaches regarding ethical discussion in melodrama and Greek tragedy will be substantiated with the difference between the obvious question and the tragic question (Nussbaum 2000, 1007). Melodrama concentrates on the obvious question, while this chapter will argue that The Walking Dead instead discusses the tragic question. How The Walking Dead evokes this discussion and in what way it is comparable to the Greek tragedy will be the main argument of this chapter.

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The Walking Dead as Melodrama

The Walking Dead has been compared to melodrama, mostly in popular media. The

comparison is understandable; with the main argument in favour of the comparison is the large amount of drama in the series. The Walking Dead, similar to melodrama, does take potential problematic elements and enlarges them to create a sensational narrative combined with emotionally-charged behaviour and highly emotional themes. According to the authors, this is a way to engage the viewers (Cinemarchaeologist 2013, 2014). According to the authors, a comparison to melodrama can also be drawn based on the human struggle and the display of human drama. The melodrama genre focuses on a human struggle to do the right thing, and The Walking Dead shows this human struggle as well, maintaining a certain humanity (Jenkins).To substantiate on which level similarities exist between the two genres and on which level they differ, a definition of the melodrama genre is needed. The following definition is taken from the essay ‘Melodrama, Serial Form and Television Today’ by television scholar Jane Feuer. Her definition of melodrama is:

The indulgence of strong emotionalism; moral polarization and schematization; extreme states of being, situations, action; overt villainy, persecution of the good, and final reward of virtue; inflated and extravagant expression. (Feuer 4)

This quote outlines the key characteristics of the melodrama genre. In order for an argument to be based on these characteristics, further elaboration on the keywords used is necessary. Therefore, these keywords will be discussed below with specific examples from the genre. First, melodrama is a genre in which the emotional spectrum of the human being is exposed to the viewer. Characters are followed in their day-to-day lives as they try to pursue happiness and do the right thing. An important way melodrama ‘follows’ the characters around is through the use of close ups and medium close ups: characters are “filmed in medium close-up to give full reign to emotionality” (Feuer 10). This way of filming ensures that characters’ facial expressions are clearly visible and every emotional development can be illustrated with a change in facial expression.

Second, moral conflict is introduced to trigger an emotional response in the characters. The characters are nearly always caught up in a moral struggle, a situation which has one good and one bad outcome. Since every situation always has a right answer and a wrong answer, the character is expected to make the right decision. If the character fails to do so, this

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automatically results in negative consequences for them. The streak of negativity ends when he or she instead makes the right decision, which will be rewarded: the “final reward of the virtue” (Feuer 4). The melodrama genre has a clear divide between good and evil, and situations are exaggerated to the extreme; families endure a higher average of deaths of relatives, diseases, divorces, affairs, natural disasters and other disasters than the general public. Nevertheless, melodrama series cannot stretch the extreme endlessly. There are certain boundaries which a melodramatic story, placed in Western society in contemporary time, has to respect. It would not be appreciated if the soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful would introduce a zombie apocalypse or an alien invasion. What a melodrama series can do,

however, is stretch the narrative endlessly. In fact, the writers of melodrama series have to do so, because they cannot give narrative closure; when they are happy, their story is finished, and that makes them useless for the narrative. So, when the characters eventually do the right thing and their virtue is rewarded, a new moral conflict has to be introduced (Feuer 12) This is why so many different, horrible things happen to the main characters of a melodrama series.

The Walking Dead is a story set in an extreme environment, namely a post-apocalyptic

world overrun with flesh-eating zombies. The characters have to do extreme things in order to stay alive in this environment. Consequently, the environment and the characters’ resulting actions evoke extreme emotions. This exploration of the emotional spectrum of the characters in extreme situations is comparable to melodrama, and visualised optimally in a similar way, through medium-close ups and close ups. The camera stays close on the character so as to not miss out on sign of emotion in their expression. However, The Walking Dead does not solely use this kind of close shot. In it, (medium) close-ups are alternated with overview shots of abandoned cities, countryside, forests and wasteland. Melodrama, on the other hand, unfolds in a domestic sphere, mostly indoors, and therefore is characterised by extensive use of medium-close ups and does not incorporate many other kinds of shots.

Virtue is part of the ethical discussion in melodrama. Melodramas offer a place for discussion of problems in society by transposing these bigger problems into a family: they always concern a domestic sphere in which one or more families clash on moral grounds (Feuer 7). These problems are never resolved within one episode, are often discussed over numerous episodes, or appear to be resolved but reoccur in later episodes (Feuer 15). The

Walking Dead also raises issues from society in this way and places them in an extreme world

in which the survivors form families. Issues like war, xenophobia, racism, abortion, suicide, murder and euthanasia are explored. The main group of survivors in the series refers to themselves as a family and Rick is considered head of the family. The survivors clash with

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each other on moral grounds within their own family and with other ‘families’ they come across. These moral and ethical discussions are spread over multiple episodes and sometimes problems reoccur in later seasons. Nevertheless, there is a crucial difference between the moral discussions raised in melodrama and the discussions in The Walking Dead, a difference which is closely linked to the idea of ‘virtue’ and the classical divide between good and bad, which in the series is instead a blurred line that continues to shift depending on the context. Even though there are some similarities between The Walking Dead and melodrama, perceiving the series as just another melodrama is inaccurate. The crucial difference between the two has to do with the difference between an obvious dilemma and a tragic dilemma. The ethical dilemmas in melodrama are typically easily resolved, whereas the dilemmas raised in

The Walking Dead are not. Since the most important aspect of The Walking Dead is these

ethical discussions, it is not sufficient to refer the dilemmas in the series as melodramatic, because they are far more complex. The difference between these two levels of complexity will now be illustrated with the difference between the obvious and the tragic question.

The obvious question and the tragic question

According to Martha Nussbaum, when one is in a certain situation, “[t]he first question […] is the question what he ought to do” (Nussbaum 2000, 1006). If this question can be answered easily, for example with ‘you ought to do the right thing’, the question is an obvious question. In melodrama, such obvious questions are asked: should I steal from a relative? Should I cheat on my significant other? Should I kill someone in cold blood? Should I lie? These questions can simply be answered with ‘no’. An obvious question always has a right and a wrong answer. The characters have to choose the right path and when they do, their virtue will be rewarded. To further narrative development, characters in the melodramatic genre sometimes choose the wrong path and do things which are considered bad, but they are then punished for making this bad decision and eventually end up doing what is right and are rewarded for doing so. In The Walking Dead, the question of ‘what am I supposed to do’ is never easily answered. Every time a character is confronted with a situation where a decision needs to be made, there is no obvious answer because there is no right answer, in the sense that every choice has negative consequences. Nussbaum formulates it as follows:

The tragic question registers not the difficulty of solving the obvious question but a distinct difficulty: the fact that all the possible answers to the obvious question, including the best one, are bad, involving serious wrongdoing. In that sense, there

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is no ‘right answer.’ (Nussbaum 2000, 1007)

The tragic question does not have a right answer, only bad ones, and explores a new moral discussion in which one should consider which choice would bring the least damage to oneself and the people one is responsible for. This new discussion moves away from the traditional dialectic divide between good and evil and triggers deeper discussion. The viewer has to reflect on the different choices, calculating and imagining what they themselves would do. In season three, the episode “The Sorrowful Life” contains a tragic question. In this episode, the group of survivors led by Rick is living in a prison. Not far from the Prison, a man called the Governor has established a settlement called Woodbury. Rick and his group have taken in Michonne, who has escaped from Woodbury after killing the Governor’s zombie-daughter. Over the course of the third season, the viewer learns that Governor is a ruthless man who kills and mutilates people without any sense of guilt or remorse, lacking any form of empathy. The Governor sets out to avenge his daughter and gives Rick an ultimatum: Rick must give up Michonne or the Governor will start a war. If this was an obvious question, it would have an easy answer, but clearly both choices involve serious wrongdoing; if Rick gives up Michonne to the Governor, he knows she will be tortured to death, but if Rick does not give her up, the Governor will attack the Prison and thus Rick would be endangering his own family, including his children. Moreover, Rick has to take into account the fact that their enemy far outnumbers him in both manpower and weapons (3:13; 3:15). Consequently, Rick has to decide which decision would involve the least wrongdoing. Discussion about the ultimatum is shown throughout the episode as Rick discusses it with two other survivors. As both choices are discussed and laid out for the viewers, they are triggered to think for themselves. Is it possible to live with the idea of sacrificing someone for the greater good? Alternately, if one decides not to give the person up, that decision will start a war and cause the death of many people on one’s own side. Is it possible to live with that? The tragic question always involves making a decision that is deemed wrong, and the one making the choice has to calculate which choice is the least wrong, morally speaking. In that sense, The Walking Dead does not involve a clear divide between good and evil. Virtue is consequently not rewarded, because there is no right choice to begin with. Even though the melodrama genre and The Walking Dead both raise ethical and moral discussion, melodrama features an obvious divide and an obvious question, consequently not raising new ethical discussions, while The Walking Dead shows the viewer the more complex tragic question.

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The Walking Dead from a Greek tragedy viewing perspective

The tragic question is part of Greek tragedy, which concentrates on the display of men in all their goodness and wickedness. Ordinary people are placed in extraordinary circumstances in which a cruel act of faith ruins their lives, and these people require exceptional rationality to stay ‘good’ (Nussbaum 2001, 25). The word ‘good’ in this context differs from the idea of virtue as used in melodrama, as the ‘good’ in the Greek tragedy is not a fixed aspect. The following quote describes how Greek tragedy works:

Greek tragedy shows good people being ruined because of things that just happen to them, things that they do not control. This is certainly sad; but is an ordinary fact of human life, and no one would deny that it happens. […] Tragedy also, however, shows something more deeply disturbing: it shows good people doing bad things, things otherwise repugnant to their ethical character and commitments, because of circumstances whose origin does not lie with them. (Nussbaum 2001, 25)

The Greek tragedy is closely connected to normal human life, even though it portrays extreme situations. The main characters in these plays are put in horrible situations in which they have to manage to stay true to their humane side. But even when the characters are true or good, they are always forced to do bad things by a tragic question. These situations are central to tragic plays and “tragedy also seems to think it valuable to dwell upon these situations, exploring them in many ways, asking repeatedly what personal goodness, in such alarming complications is” (Nussbaum 2001, 25). In other words, the goodness of a person is

dependent on the situation they are in. In her book The Fragility of Goodness, Nussbaum gives the well-known example of Agamemnon. Agamemnon and his army are ready to set sail for Troy and go to war, but before they can take off, the Gods force Agamemnon to sacrifice his child to ensure the fortune of the ships and the entire war (33-34). This is a tragic dilemma. It is not possible for Agamemnon to call back his ships, because he is obligated to go to war, but if he does so without sacrificing his daughter, his army will perish and the war will be lost (Nussbaum 2001, 35-36). The act of killing ought to be condemned when

measured according to the classical divide between good and evil, because killing of an innocent child is, at all times, wrong. However, in Greek tragedy the killing of the child is not condemned, but instead considered a necessity. Instead, Agamemnon’s attitude towards doing

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so is deemed wrong: “[h]e adopted an inappropriate attitude towards his conflict, killing a human child with no more agony, no more revulsion of feeling, than if she had indeed be an animal of a different species” (Nussbaum 2001, 33). The moment in which Agamemnon turns from a good person into a bad one is the moment his feelings of remorse and sadness morph into feelings of righteousness about his actions. He believes it had to be done, and this attitude is the actual crime for which the Gods condemn him. In that sense, what is considered ‘good’ in the Greek tragedy depends on context, and it is not a fixed value like it is in melodrama. In The Walking Dead, the lives of normal, good people are heavily disturbed by a twist of fate, namely the zombie virus. The world in which the survivors have to live after the disaster is one full of tragic situations and tragic questions. They are forced to do things they would never do in their normal life, acts they would consider morally unjust under normal circumstances. For example, Rick would never have ended up as dictator of the group (from the end of season two onwards) under normal circumstances. He also refuses people who want to take refuge in the Prison. The exception to this is Michonne, but Rick later decides to give her up to the Governor. Under normal circumstances, a character like Rick, a cop, always trying to do what is right and just, would never have considered these actions as viable

options. The circumstances have changed and so has his ethical character.

What makes Rick’s actions so different from the actions of Agamemnon? There are some interesting parallels between the condemnation of Agamemnon and any character condemnation in The Walking Dead. Agamemnon is eventually condemned for his self-righteous attitude about his actions and the way he lays blame elsewhere. He does not feel remorse and sees his daughter as a lamb, no longer as a human being. In The Walking Dead, there is a stark contrast between Rick and Shane, similar to the difference between Rick and the Governor later on. In his actions, Rick does not differ much from either Shane or the Governor. For example, in the season two episode “What Lies Ahead”, Rick’s son Carl is shot accidently. Shane volunteers to get medical supplies for the operation that might save Carl’s life. He takes another survivor with him on the trip, Otis, and the pair gets held up by walkers during the mission. They do obtain the medical supplies, but the herd of walkers becomes a serious threat to them both and Shane realizes it is possible that they may not make it out alive. At that moment, Shane is faced with a tragic dilemma: should they to try to escape together, with the risk of both of them being killed and, as a result, no medical supplies for Carl, who will die too? Or should he sacrifice his partner to save himself and Carl, the child he sees as his own? Shane decides on the latter. He survives, Carl lives, and Otis is sacrificed to the herd of walkers (2:01; 2:03). His act, in this specific context, is understandable: what

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would a person not do for their own life and that of a child they consider to be their own? This raises the question of what the essential difference is between Rick wanting to sacrifice

Michonne for the greater good and Shane making a similar sacrifice. The essential difference here has to do with the Agamemnon-case: Shane should not have justified the act by himself. Like Agamemnon, he sees his act as something that had to be done and in the process, degrades Otis to some animal that can easily be sacrificed for the greater good. Rick on the other hand feels remorse for his actions, does not see them as a necessity and takes

responsibility for his decision.There is a similar difference between Rick and the Governor, for the Governor thinks very much like Shane does. Even though Rick, the Governor and Shane do not differ that much from each other in terms of their actions, their attitudes toward those actions make a crucial difference, and just like in a Greek tragedy, their attitudes are considered to be the most important aspect for deciding who is or is not a good human being.

As argued above, the tragic question and the different use of the term ‘good’ in Greek tragedy triggers a discussion about wrongdoing and goodness. The Walking Dead uses the tragic question to evoke a similar discussion. As a result, a clear divide between ‘moral’ and ‘non-moral’ is not very useful. As Nussbaum describes:

The use of two categories, ‘moral’ and ‘non-moral’ suggests to numerous writers on the topic that the cases to be investigated fall into two neatly demarcated and opposed categories. They accordingly structure their discussion around this sharp division. Our […] sketch, by contrast, suggests that in everyday life we find, instead, a complex spectrum of cases, interrelated and overlapping in ways not captured by any dichotomous taxonomy. (Nussbaum 2001, 29)

The sketch she talks about is the sketch she makes about the tragic dilemma in the Greek tragedy. Nussbaum compares the moral complexity in the Greek tragedy to the complex spectrum of morality and ethics in everyday life. In a sense, the argumentation in this thesis does the same by making a comparison between The Walking Dead and the Greek tragedy, moving away from the idea of The Walking Dead as a melodrama. Melodrama uses the categories of moral and non-moral, which do not represent the complexity of everyday ethics and morality. The Walking Dead sheds light on a far more complex spectrum of morality and ethics, comparable to that represented in Greek tragedy, and therefore, if we follow

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Conclusion

The Walking Dead has some similarities to the melodrama genre. For example, it uses

formalistic conventions like the medium-close up to expose the emotional reactions of the characters to extreme situations that occur. However, The Walking Dead also uses overview shots of the outside world, since the survivors travel through the wilderness in a nomadic way. This formalistic aspect contrasts with melodrama, which uses mostly medium close-up and is a genre that unfolds in the domestic sphere, usually indoors. Another similarity to the melodrama genre is the fact that The Walking Dead features an extreme situation in which extreme actions are necessary, which result in extreme emotions. However, in melodrama, virtue is an important part of the storyline; characters are expected to do the right thing in the end. Their dilemmas always involve an obvious question, which is easily answered. The

Walking Dead does not address the obvious question; instead the series concentrates on the

tragic question. A tragic question has no right answer, because all potential answers to the question are morally wrong. The tragic question is used frequently in Greek tragedy, which uses it to raise discussion about what it means to be a good person. Even though the word ‘good’ is mentioned here, this concept of ‘good’ is a different kind of ‘good’ than the good which is expected from the characters in a melodrama. The good in Greek tragedy is not a fixed concept; instead, good can mean many different things in many different contexts. The tragic question, with no right answer, and this changing definition of good depending on the situation, defy a clear divide between moral and non-moral action. The Walking Dead does the same by frequently bringing up tragic dilemmas and questions, which trigger the ethical discussion that is so important in the series, and enable it to distinguish itself from the horror genre, as has been discussed in the previous chapter.

The ethics and moral discussions that are discussed in The Walking Dead trigger the viewer’s thoughts because they does not follow established ideas of good and bad; the viewer is forced to rethink what is good or not in certain situations on their own, since they cannot rely on non-moral and moral as set concepts to dictate the answers for them. This broader spectrum of morality is interesting because it more closely resembles morality in everyday life than the artificial dichotomy between non-moral and moral does. The Walking Dead takes problems of contemporary society and relocates them in an extreme world in order to explore humanity. By exploring what it means to be a good human, similar to Greek tragedy, the series questions what people are capable of in certain situations. The examples in this chapter concerned the act of killing and what it means to be human. The first of these, the act of killing, prompts discussion about who gets to decide who lives and dies, including humans

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and walkers, and will be investigated more thoroughly in the next chapter. The latter question of what it means to be human is closely related to the question of what it means to be a good human, as discussed in the Greek tragedy.

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Chapter 3: The one who decides who lives and who dies

Introduction

In this chapter, the main focus will be on the act of killing. In the world of The Walking Dead, killing features frequently; after all, the survivors are situated in a hostile environment in which they have to fight for their lives. Walkers form a threat to the survivors, as do other humans. Therefore, the act of killing includes both the killing of human beings and the killing of walkers. The question posed in this chapter is the following: if killing becomes a necessity, what then are the moral consequences of the act? The discussion around killing humans is important because other humans pose a big threat to the main characters. Groups of survivors clash with each other, often resulting in war. In these wars, the survivors have to kill other people. Also, people pose threats to one other even when they are not at war as they fight over food, shelter, and weapons. The killing of walkers seems less important than the killing of humans as walkers are already considered to be dead. Much has been written in popular media and by scholars about whether there should be discussion about the killing of walkers at all, since walkers could be considered “things” that can be killed without guilt. Some of their statements will be used in this chapter, as well as those of authors that do believe that killing walkers cannot be done without guilt. The discussion about killing walkers is as important as the discussion about killing humans. In the series, these acts are closely interrelated, which will be explained more extensively.

First of all, the act of killing both humans and zombies in relation to the horror genre will be discussed. Discussions about killing zombies in particular, in the series and

surrounding the series, are frequently cited by both authors in popular media and scholars. Secondly, the discussion around killing humans and zombies will be extended through an analyses of the conventions of melodrama, using the melodrama viewer’s perspective to look at the moral consequences of the act of killing. Subsequently, I will employ the conventions of the Greek tragedy to examine how The Walking Dead addresses the act of killing. To showcase the viewing perspective on the portrayal of this particular topic, online reviews will be used. The reviews used are reviews that question the importance of the inclusion of these themes in the series. These reviews have been selected because they represent a different viewing perspective, of viewers who had certain expectations for the series that were not met. These expectations are based on genre conventions. By using the reviews as an example of a certain viewing perspective, it is possible to draw a comparison

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between this viewing perspective and other viewing perspectives in which expectations are different. The parts of the series that are criticized in the reviews will be analysed further with the genre conventions of the Greek tragedy in mind, as opposed to those of melodrama and horror. The purpose of the argumentation is not to argue that one perspective is better than the other, but rather to give an opportunity to experience the main themes in The Walking Dead in a broader way by using different perspectives. The reviews used originate from the IMDb: International Movie Database. This database is a source for all information concerning media, and has developed throughout the years into a popular and most used films and television database with a clear authority in the field of media databases (IMDb: The Newsroom)

The Act of Killing

In The Walking Dead, the killing of a human is discussed multiple times. The killing of humans is an issue because humans are one of the two main threats the central group of survivors has to deal with. The other main threat is the lack of resources (Round 164).

Because the threat of other humans is high, the group clashes with other groups multiple times and people get killed in these wars. People are dangerous precisely because they have higher brain functions that walkers lack; for example, humans can plan an attack, they are

unpredictable and they can organize an army. The walkers, on the other hand, are “at least predictable as forces of nature; they don’t have the intelligence or ability to plan strategically as an organized force as seen in some zombie literature, like Land of the Dead” (Walker 83). Consequently, the group of survivors have more to fear from other humans than from the walkers. In total, out of all the characters in the show, halfway through the fifth season, only 31 remain alive; at this point in time, 21 characters have been killed by walkers and more than double that, 51 characters, have been killed by humans (Carlson). In the first two seasons, the threat comes from smaller groups of hostile humans, less organized, but just as dangerous. In the third and fourth seasons, the biggest threat is the Governor, who organizes a war and rounds up troops for revenge. At the end of season four and the beginning of season five, the small group of survivors is captured by Gareth, who pretends to give them sanctuary, but is actually just luring people in to eat them. Gareth’s group has become so monstrous because of other humans; at first, Gareth’s group actually did want to give sanctuary to all those in need, but groups from the outside who raped everyone, stole their belongings and killed part of the group completely changed their mind-set. All of these assaults are organized and executed by human beings. Thus, humans kill humans for resources, in self-defence and because of personal vendettas. Finally, humans also kill other survivors when they are infected.

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The first case in The Walking Dead that deals with the act of killing occurs in the second season. In the post-apocalyptic world, a new problem emerges: the old rules are gone, the old justice system is gone and the world is ruled by the principle of survival of the fittest. Rick’s group of survivors encounters a hostile group of humans. One of the hostile group members, Randall, is captured by Rick. When they return to the farm with Randall, a new problem arises, namely what to do with the boy (2:09). They cannot let Randall go, because he could return with his hostile group. The group is also not able to keep Randall at the farm, because he cannot be trusted. The group believes that there is no other solution than to execute him (2:11). The episode “Judge, Jury, Executioner” consists of the discussion about whether the group has the right to kill Randall or not. The larger part of the group, mainly out of fear, accepts the execution as a necessity. The only member of the group that does not agree is Dale Horvath; he states that if the group does execute Randall, they will be

sacrificing their human morals. The discussion is similar to that in the example of Michonne in the previous chapters: can one person be sacrificed for the greater good of a group?

A second case in the series addressing the issue of killing humans occurs in the fourth season. At this point in the series, the survivors are living in the Prison, and there is no direct threat from outside. Instead, a threat emerges within the fences of the Prison: a flu-like

version of the zombie virus spreads among the residents. The flu kills people, who then return as zombies. The first symptom of the flu-like virus is coughing, so when two residents, Karen and David, start coughing, they have to be isolated from the rest. However, while they are quarantined, they are murdered (4:02; 4:03; 4:04). It turns out that Carol Peletier killed them and has burned their bodies to prevent the flu from spreading through the Prison, sacrificing two people for the greater good. When Rick finds out, he sends Carol away, but not because he condemns her actions. Instead, he does it because he cannot take her back to the Prison and make the other residents understand why she committed the murders and make them trust her again, especially since Carol shows no signs of remorse. Moreover, he is afraid that Karen’s boyfriend, Tyreese, will kill Carol to avenge his girlfriend.

The killing of zombies seems rather unimportant in comparison to killing humans, since killing humans involves murdering living creatures. In popular media, any hesitation towards killing walkers shown in the series is labelled as unimportant: authors in popular media argue that zombies are creatures that the characters of The Walking Dead should be able to slaughter guiltlessly. There are scholars who agree with this statement and do not understand why survivors in the series are, more than once, hesitant to kill a zombie, and why when those zombies are finally killed, this is done with a great deal of compassion. The

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treatment of walkers in the series is an important point of discussion. There are even some characters who do not believe walkers should be killed at all; Hershel, who features in the second season, captures walkers in his barn and lets them live, believing them to be sick people instead of monsters. He tries to convince Rick by saying that sick people should not be killed, but cured (2:06). An example of a scholar who thinks the killing of zombies should not be a point of discussion at all is Franklin Allaire, who writes: “In all my years of being a fan of the living dead genre I have always been fascinated with peoples’ inability to kill a member of the walking dead even when their lives depended on it. How many times have we all yelled, ‘Just kill it!’ at the screen?” (Allaire 195). In his essay “The Only Good walker Is a Dead Walker”, Allaire argues that “we can kill [walkers] indiscriminately without feeling bad about it”. He says that all walkers can and should be killed, whether they pose a direct threat or not, because “the only good walker is a dead walker” (Allaire 196). Thus, Alaire argues that the killing of zombies should not even be contested. Even though the series is not mainly about slaying walkers, the actual killing of the walking dead fulfils an important function, because it enables ethical debate. Those who argue that walkers are to be killed without any guilt miss the main point of the series.

The first instance of compassion for walkers in the series that will be used for an analysis from different genre perspectives occurs in the first season. The situation has already been mentioned in a previous chapter, but will be examined more thoroughly in this one. It is the story of the Jones family. As explained before, Morgan and his son Duane travel together in order to survive, while Morgan’s wife Jenny has been turned. Morgan is not able to kill his zombified wife, and eventually, Morgan’s hesitation to do so results in the zombified Jenny feeding on their son when Morgan leaves him unprotected. Morgan kills Jenny, and then has to kill his zombified son (1:01; 3:12). The most important aspect here is Morgan's hesitation to kill his wife, because this hesitation to kill a walker is not understood by many scholars and by many authors within popular media.

The second instance of compassion for walkers occurs in the fourth season, after the group of main characters have lost their shelter, the Prison, in the war against the Governor. Beth and Daryl are cut off from the larger group and encounter a walker when they are

traveling through the woods. Daryl feels frustrated and desperate because their group has been split up, and as a result thereof, takes out his anger on the walker. He tries to shoot it, but instead of killing it, he pins it to a tree and decides that it is a good target for Beth to practice shooting a crossbow. Beth refuses to treat the walker in such a disrespectful manner and eventually convinces Daryl to stop by asking him what he would have done if the walker were

The Tragic Dilemma in The Walking Dead