Cabin in the Woods: Monsters

In Cabin in the Woods we see a large variety of monsters contained in their glass prisons. Many of which are obviously supernatural and their presence preys on our more outlandish fears. These creatures include Fornicus Lord of bondage and pain, the Sugarplum Fairy, the Angry Molesting Tree, and other such obviously supernatural and mythological creatures. This movie, however, excels as a motion picture as it also includes horrors from all portions of the uncanny-supernatural spectrum. There is the clown who, at first,  seems to be a human murderer in a costume but later proves impervious to bullets. There is also the alien beast which is perceived as a real possible threat by many people. Then there are 'monsters' who seem to be nothing more than dangerous humans such as the Dolls and the Huron. By utilizing all areas of the spectrum to frighten the audience the motion picture fully captures all fears and the full attention of those watching and provides for a better movie.

Who are the horror characters?

I thought it was really interesting how these supernatural elements exist from other past supernatural film. When I was watching the film, I realized that these characters are the sames ones I've seen in the past. For instance, the clown, is seen in many scary movies. What I really didn't understand was why the directors required people to get murdered in some horrendous plot. Why didn't they just kidnap people and instantly murder them without the risk of an apocalypse. 

This film also reminds me of a metafiction because the film takes place in two worlds. One manipulates life to save all of humanity and to keep an evil monster contained, while the other world consist of college students having a summer cabin trip. 

The Cabin In the Woods

To be honest, Cabin in the Woods is a pretty ridiculous movie. When I first started watching it I thought it was actually a horror film and although there are elements of horror and gothic. I thought the film was overall pretty silly.

There are some interesting concepts presented though. I want to focus mainly on the idea of the greater good/free will and the contrast of scifi vs. gothic. The movie is centered around governmental group that is forced to sacrifice living humans in order to satisfy the "ancient ones." They set up the scenario to make it seem like the people choose their fate out of free will but I think the director wants us to question the validity of this. Is it really free will to be forced by chemicals to have sex or go against your gut feeling? Is it free will to be locked in your room or video taped?

Along with presenting these questions the film also contrasts the genres of gothic and scifi. We start the film at a very stereotypical gothic house with horror cues left and right. Then as the movie progresses we are transferred into a world filled with scifi and futuristic ideas. I think it is definitely unique but I also think it is where most of my odd feelings come from. Mixing these genres the way they did and with all the clichés they did just made it a comical mess.

Will and the "Greater Good"

From the movie Cabin in the Woods, an idea that I thought was interestingly presented is how the new security guard brought up how the circumstances they create for the sacrifices are rigged. The two main workers talked about how although they (the organization working for the ancient gods) plan out and manipulate the five college kids to the possible options of their deaths, it is ultimately up to them to choose. This leeway provides a loophole because their lack of faith in humanity backfires when the fool's and the virgin's will to live allows them to infiltrate the system. The idea of humanity posed between the "innocent" sacrifices and the organization is also interesting because it seems that the organization finds justification that this ritual is to deter the ancient ones from taking out all of humanity. They celebrate not because they won, but because the death of a few takes the ancient ones off humanity's back for some time. This reminds me of Warm Bodies because the idea of survival and self preservation is prevalent in the organization's reasoning, but their humanity is degraded because of it.

Cabin in the Woods

     Cabin in the Woods reminded me very much of all of the zombie stories we've read. Not in the literal zombies that appear in the movie in the form of the Bucknards, but rather, how uncanny the, for lack of greater clarification, government workers are. While they are in fact, humans, their personalities are rather inhuman. The opening scenes show quite a fair bit of human interaction. We can see the friendship bonds between the two main government workers, who gripe about their home life, talk about life outside of work, and rib their coworkers. In these aspects, they are distinctly human. However, as the movie progresses, their lack of compassion becomes more and more clear. They make jokes about people dying while watching their deaths in stark clarity. They talk casually about suffering, express anger over the survival of sacrifices in other countries, and take bets on the ways in which the sacrifices will die. Worst of all, with the supposed success of the program and the deaths of all five people impending, the government workers bring out bottles of alcohol and celebrate. In these regards, these people area starkly inhuman. They exhibit little sense of morality and compassion, aspects that are largely definitive of humanity. For these reasons, I believe the government workers to be good examples of the uncanny, because of their clearly human form and personalities coupled with their seeming complete lack of actual humanity.

Cabin in the Woods

The Cabin in the Woods can be seen as a supernatural movie.  The movie in general does not appear supernatural because the audience knows why and how the events are occurring while the sacrifices are unaware until later on when two of them slowly piece together the “puppetry” of the event.  What really makes this movie supernatural is the idea that the events around us we have no control over and that others can choose what will happen and even make us change how we are, unknowing of their presence they have that makes this supernatural.  This is what is uncomfortable for the viewers that we may be being watched right now and be influenced without even knowing there is someone else pulling the strings. This idea of puppet and puppet master separates those in control from our world and makes them seem other worldly by their ability to extort complete control.  Even though the puppet masters are human in the movie their ability to have complete control over the event and their normality towards the event makes it supernatural.  Beside the control the fact that those who have control over these events for them this is a normal day at the office is what separates them and places them in another world.  That the sacrifice of five people is normal for them and they can still be sane viewing and controlling these events makes them appear to the viewers other worldly as if they are not human.  The movie through this pokes at the idea of what actually makes us human and what is humanity.  Are the puppet masters, that appear as normal humans going about their job, still human as they can sit and control the deaths of five unknowing sacrifices.

The Cabin in the Woods

Although this the first time I’ve watched Cabin in the Woods, going into the screening knowing that it was co-written by Joss Whedon did shift my attention towards certain themes that are common to his other works. His television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spinoff, Angel (both of which I am an unapologetically huge fan) operate according to the premise that there exists a parallel universe in which humans and other supernatural creatures (for the most part) function unknowingly as pawns in the political games of “Divine Engineers” (called the “Powers that Be” in the series). In particular, the concept of an undercover, human-run facility in which supernatural/fantastic species are imprisoned for observation and testing is also a direct carryover from season 4 of Buffy, in which the protagonist becomes romantically involved with a member of a secret military organization -- coined “the Initiative” – that uses vampires, werewolves, and other spooks as lab rats for the creation of a demonoid master-race.

Fan-girl observations aside, I felt that a certain homage was paid to the Gothic genre in the film’s opening plot. Similar to The Haunting of Hill House, or The Fall of The House of Usher, a person or group of persons retire to an aged, geographically isolated building (the cabin) with a sinister history involving some sort of ill-fated family (the Buckner’s “pain-cult,” the-inbred, “cursed” Usher line) and with one of the characters having a family connection to the building (the cabin is supposedly the property of Curt’s cousin, Luke is the heir of Hill House, etc). 

Warm Bodies

A major symbol in Isaac Marion’s novel Warm Bodies is the mouth/teeth. For example, towards the end of the novel, as Julie and R flee from the Boneys and return to the stadium, R describes how “the stadium roof rises on the horizon, rearing up like some monolithic beast. Climb into my mouth, it teases. Come on, kids, don’t mind the teeth” (215). By describing the stadium as having a mouth and teeth, the reader gets a sense that the stadium is doing to devour Julie and R. The mouth/teeth symbol represents a quality of a threatening entity (not necessarily alive) trying to entice and envelop/eat it’s prey.

Cabin in the Woods(Blog #8)

When watching Cabin in the Woods, one thing that really caught my attention was how humanity was portrayed. Five teenagers go to the woods supposedly for a vacation, yet they find themselves in the middle of a mission where they are victimized and sacrificed to the "ancient ones." What's even more thought provoking is that a mysterious top-secret group is responsible. They believe that what they are doing is saving humanity. But how is killing innocent people an act of saving humanity? The point here is that maybe humanity was already lost, and these sacrifices are now being carried out merely just for entertainment. Another thing I'd like to point out is that the concept of monsters and creatures of all sorts were accepted as normal. This concept follows the theme of Magical Realism where odd things pass by as normal and accepted in everyday life.

Cabin in the Woods

This movie was interesting because it is a blend of two types of fantasy: sci fi and the supernatural. However, the supernatural aspect of the film has not really been explored yet in the film, but i think this part will be explained in the last few minutes of the film. The film seems to be a reflection of what the government is willing to sacrifice for the "greater good". They do what they can to detach themselves from their cruelty to the young people they are sacrificing to some "downstairs" being, in a similar fashion to the government throwing away the lives of thousands of soldiers for a cause that the masses do not really understand, but are told is for "the best" and with the "safety of the nation" in mind. Putting this situation in an outrageous context allows this parallel to sort of slip through the viewers mind without even really being noted. The viewer simply thinks "wow how can they do such a thing to these poor people" without realizing that something very similar occurs every day in the real world. Also those zombies were scary.

Cabin in the Woods (8)

The movie Cabin in the Woods involved notions of magical realism, in which many mythological creatures are seen in the "real" world as normal beings. The plot line of the movie involves  five students that are suppose to get sacrifice to the "Ancient Ones" by being killed by these supernatural beings, in this case, it was zombies. Once again, this story had questioned the idea of humanity. It is seen that the government is in charge of killing innocent humans in order to save humanity, but is this really a humane thing to do? If humans are merely killing innocent people to preserve humanity then maybe it has already been lost. In fact, in the movie, Marty even states that maybe humanity should be lost if the only way to save it is to continue murdering people. I believe the film causes the audience to question the lengths we will go to in order to obtain what we believe is humanity.

Cabin in the Woods

Cabin in the Woods deals largely with character and movie stereotypes. Within the movie, we’re first introduced to these characters with the connotations of being a jock, slut, nerd, goofy guy, and innocent girl attached to them. These stereotypes are common in classic horror film genres, so it’s very interesting to see how Cabin in the Woods takes these stereotypes and satirizes them. There is a contrast in the joking tone of the people working in the facility to the serious tension with the teenagers stuck in the cabin. This play on emotions and tones causes the viewer to become amused by the contrast in scenes, thus giving the “horror” movie a sense of amusement. This change in perspective of the movie pokes fun at more traditional horror movies, and the absurdness.

Cabin in the Woods

Cabin in the woods is a unique perspective on zombies. They are not the focus of the story, but merely a tool to express the idea of supernatural. Throughout the movie the characters who are in the control room allude to mysterious gods that are slumbering. This is almost a magical realism story because the characters allude to gods and mystical creatures as though they are a normal day occurrence. However, from the perspective of the characters that are in the cabin, the story could be seen as supernatural. There are monsters appearing out of no where and there seems to be no explanation. The zombies are also different than the other zombies that we have read about. Most of the other zombies are a face-less mass and terror that is threatening the safety the world. These zombies are specific individuals rather than a mass. They have a history and a story rather than being nothing. These zombies are also used as pawns rather than moving with no purpose.

Cabin in the Woods

In this science fiction film, the question rises about the costs of humanity. In the end, a woman from the facility reveals herself to Dana and Marty, explaining to them what is going on.  These ritualistic sacrifices of groups of five people at a time are consistently performed in order to satisfy the "Ancient Ones," to keep them from destroying the world. If these sacrifices fail, the Ancient Ones will rise and destroy human kind. Marty suggests that if saving humanity can only be achieved by the continuous murder of innocent people, then perhaps humanity should be lost. This satirizes the act of humans killing humans. If people kill each other, then whatever this human way of life is, is not worth living. This ironic situation suggests that if the price for keeping the rest of the world alive is to kill people, then that is not a price worth paying.

Cabin in the Woods

Zombie films and texts often times employ and bring over certain elements of the Gothic. The use of isolation is employed heavily within this film, in that both the character of Mordecai and the cabin itself are isolated. Isolation is often used to create a sort of anxiety and mistrusting atmosphere among the characters, which was what happened with the main characters and Mordecai and the cabin. The main characters were mistrustful of Mordecai because of the fact that he was isolated off on his own from their own perception of normal society, and because of it were skeptical of his character. The cabin itself was also seen as strange and sketchy because of the fact it was in an isolated location in the woods. The film also used the darkness in order to assert this overly Gothic atmosphere with the cabin in the woods. All of these Gothic elements were used to instill fear and tension in not only the characters of the film, but also with the audience viewing the film.

Cabin in the Woods

Directors employed gothic elements and zombie fiction ideas to create the psychological thriller “Cabin in the Woods”. Gothic elements are used in order to create a dark and mysterious environment and the zombies build on the ideas created by the gothic theme. The film takes place in a dense mountainous region and the characters visit a desolate cabin. The location of the cabin is important because its isolation creates anxiety in the viewer. The viewer can expect that because the cabin is located away from civilization that whatever occurs in the house will be unknown to the rest of the population. There is also a history associated with the house, and the history involves a father torturing his family. The history comes to life during the film via the zombies that emerge from their graves. It can be assumed that the zombies are members of the family that were tortured long ago. The fact that the history is reoccurring is chilling because it gives the viewer a sense that the house is unchanging and that the people that go to the house cannot change the fate of the house. By using a mix of the gothic and zombie ideas the creators of the film are able to leave viewers in a state of psychological horror after viewing. 

Warm Bodies

I was a bit annoyed with Perry’s constant ‘invasion’ in R’s mind but as I kept reading I made the observation that through Perry’s constant memories playing through R’s mind, R and the reader are able to grasp what the humans have gone through for the past years. I see the parallel with 28 Days Later where Selena and Perry take the role of informing those who are unaware of what’s going on. In both the book and the movie our protagonists have no idea as to what’s going on or what caused the present, as readers we’re on the same boat with the characters and need someone to give us an update.

Warm Bodies

"When I was alive, I could never have done this. Standing still, watching the world pass by me, thinking about nearly nothing. I remember effort. ... I remember being purposeful, always everywhere all the time. Now I'm just standing here on the conveyor, along for the ride." (9)

Despite all the book's (understandable and expected) portrayals of zombiehood as dull and unsatisfying, this part strikes me as rather appealing. Much of real life does of course involve a lot of "purpose" and "effort", which can become pretty exhausting when it continues indefinitely. Yet this passage is unique in its seeming positivity, which makes me wonder if the author intended it that way at all. With the "death of the author", one could say it doesn't really matter, but I'm still curious; perhaps it's a bit of critique on modern life.

I remember reading in an anthropology class about an anthropologist from the 18th or 19th century who wrote an article entitled "On Cannibals", which made the point that in some ways the cannibals he was writing about were actually more "civilized" and intelligent than his own culture. This passage in Warm Bodies reminds me faintly of that, which is probably a bit of a stretch.

Maybe being a zombie wouldn't be all bad.

Less flesh, more substance in Warm Bodies

      I thought I was “done” with the zombie genre (literature, movies, books, you name it) after I’d watched one too many Undead thrillers that played out more like high-definition gore-porn than entertaining (if disturbing) stories with actual substance (or creativity). Once you’d seen the modern remake of Dawn of the Dead,  I felt like you’d basically partaken of every zombie-apocalypse scenario (aside from some gems like 28 Days Later or The Walking Dead) imagined in the last decade or so. Given my past experiences, I actually found the nature of, and the motivation behind the actions of the Undead as they are written in Isaac Marion’s Warm Bodies a refreshing surprise. Here “zombies” aren’t simply walking carcasses with a taste for other, fresher carcasses but semi-sentient relics of the people they once were, munching on brains so that they might live vicariously through the fleeting memories of others. These are zombies looking for enlightenment, not food. I found that tangent, combined with the first-person narrative of an actual Zombie (R.) quite demonstrative of the need of humans to “feed off” the drama/interests/achievements/experiences/ideas of others to escape from the monotonous routine of their own lives and grasp for some kind of “purpose.” I’ll take the philosophical Undead over rabid CGI drones any day…

Science Fiction and Zombies

A similar aspect between the zombie genre and science fiction is the sense of wonder and alienation felt by the characters.  This sense of wonder cannot be without the alienation felt by the characters.  This is seen in many of the readings by Philip K Dick and in 28 days later.  By questioning the society’s current structure or state of existence they are alienated from others.  The alienation in zombie movies is more from the lack of knowledge than as in the science fiction genre where there is knowledge of the events but the characters choose to question rather than comply with their society.  Even so there cannot be alienation without a sense of wonder and vice versa.  In the zombie movies the indifference toward the current situation causes the characters to question their societies beforehand and even question humanity as a whole and what it is.  In science fiction the indifference is toward their current society’s actions and the role their society is allowed to play in their own life and in others such as in The Word for World is Forest. Overall to question a part of humanity or society creates a separation from that society and causes the character to appear alienated and separate from those who comply with the current state of the world or humanity.

R's thought processes

I think the most interesting element of Warm Bodies is R's level of awareness. Before he meets Julie, he is essentially setting up his life for the reader to understand. The depth of this thoughts about his existence and the existence of his fellow zombies indicates a type of consciousness we do not associate with anything less than human. R often speaks of the disconnect between his thoughts and what he is actually able to communicate to the world, while at the same time, he feels dead inside and must resort to other human's memories to feel alive. Both his desperation to feel alive and his complex thought processes force the reader to see him as human, yet every time he speaks of his hunger for brains, the reader is unsettled. As he shifts between seeming human and unhuman, the reader does not know which side to fall on. I didn't like reading about R having a wife and child and just accepting the ways of the other zombies, because since we see inside R's head, he is different from the other zombies, and we would expect him not to conform to the rest of his zombie society's customs. R's complexity is the driving force behind the novel, since their is something different about his conscious compared to other zombies that makes him see something in Julie other than another meal.

Warm Bodies

     Something that fascinated me about Warm Bodies is the relationship that the zombies had with the boneys. We see from the beginning that the boneys perform seemingly religious functions in a zombie society which, by our expectations of the zombie genre overall, should not exist. As well, these boneys also perform the function of bureaucracy, in that when quotes dip, as with the amount of child zombies, they appear with new ones. They perform marriages and assign children to parents as with R and his nameless wife, and also act as judge and executioner, as noted when R is confronted by them for keeping a living human. It seems then, that the boneys seem to act as a sort of government for the zombies - a thinking, conscious nucleus around which zombie hives form - implied also by the fact that boneys are rarely seen and instead, have all retreated to hives. They also perform as an almost Orwellian propaganda propagation system, through their continuous taking of pictures of conflict, in order to generate a sort of font of negative energy, which they present to other zombies to keep them mindless. The significance of these actions is that these boneys have become a representation of the inhumanity within a government system. These boneys are completely inhuman. While they have a humanoid form from their skeletal shape, they don't have the defining physical features of humans - such as the skin, faces, eyes, musculature, etc. They are all faceless, with none of the boneys possessing distinguishable features. As well, their functions are inhuman as well. They perform a marriage by linking two zombies and declaring them married. They then show up the next day and hand them children. There are no words, there are no gestures, there's no celebration of joy or anything. It becomes essentially a bare-bones mimicry of human actions. As well, when attacking R and Julie, R notes that the boneys aren't attacking them out of a sense of hatred or emotion, but are rather, attacking them out of a sense of pragmatism, that the couple is a danger to the boneys and their society, and they must be killed because of that. The boneys possess a sort of complete absence of emotion that highlights the differences between them and humanity, while maintaining a skeletal framework of human society. Thus, the boneys are an ugly mirror of humankind, propped up against the stadium city as a warning, and also a reflection, of what that society is like.

Procreation in 28 Days Later

One thing I found interesting about 28 Days Later was the inclusion of the survivor’s need to procreate. Shortly after arriving at the mansion run by soldiers, Jim discovers that they see Selena and Hannah as a means for survival, for procreation. This theme of procreation also made me think of The Word for World is Forest. In both stories, women are a portrayed (through the eyes of some characters) as only being important because of their ability to birth a new generation. The men who see the woman as such cling to this idea; it is their motivation for survival. Yet they don’t regard the woman with any respect, treating them as dolls at the men’s disposal. In contrast there are characters in both stories that do not regard the woman solely as offspring generators. Jim does views the woman with just as much respect as he has for himself. Selver in The Word for World is Forest also represents a man/society that views woman as crucial to the world, for much more than procreation. This contrast in how different men view woman shows the different reactions an individual may have when faced with the possibility of the extinction of their species. 

28 Days Later - Leadership

Zombie Apocalypse stories are fascinating in that they provide an excellent setting for raw human behavior. People in imminent danger, with many friends and family not only dying but attempting to kill them, cannot mask their baser instincts. The will to survive, the hunt for food, the desire - or lack of desire - for human companionship, are exposed as society crumbles. In most of these stories, people must band together in order to survive. However, this pseudo-society is very fragile: any one of them could be dead at any moment, and the struggle for survival interferes with their ability to form relationships.

In 28 Days Later, the societies that form are defined by the leaders that either are appointed or assume command. The first leader is Selena, and her group is defined by survival at any cost. By her hand, her companion of the last few weeks dies, and she warns Jim that the same would happen to him. She is focused only on her own life, and has followers only for the sake of safety in numbers. When they meet Frank and his daughter, the society changes as leadership changes hands. She slowly relinquishes her command of the group, and in doing so adopts Frank's outlook on the situation. People become more important as individuals, and friendships form as survival takes a backseat to creating a society that is worth living in. Frank's death throws everything out of balance, and we see Selena cry for the first time as the society that made sense, that was worth living for, loses its leader. In its place Major Henry West assumes command of the group, and under his leadership the friends are worse off than they'd ever been. He is a man of war, and sees the infection as nothing more than "men killing men." As such, he treats his new guests as part of the war effort, endorses the rape of the women for survival and attempts to kill Jim for insubordination.

In all of this we see that leadership is important, and a society formed under authoritarianism and "survival of the fittest" does not ever work, even in dire circumstances. We must always be aware of our humanity, and strive to form and value relationships, or else the society will not be worth living in.

"What's left of us? What's at our core, then?"

"What is left of us? ...What's at our core, then? What's still squirming in our bones when everything else is stripped?"(p. 138)

In Warm Bodies, it is seemed apparent how the three main groups of "humans" (Living, Undead and Boneys) comments on themes of what it means to be alive and provides a critique on humanity. As discussed in sections and in class, being "alive" means more than just surviving but also we need connection and sentiment, among other complex human needs. In this way, that's what it means to be uniquely human and to "be alive," otherwise we become un-human when all that is left is pure instinct and survival.
It was interesting to see how Isaac Marion characterized the Boneys in the novel. They appeared to be the manifestation of the lowest level of humanity reached when all the things that make us human and alive, such as sentiment and connection, are disregarded and buried deep down in the face of hopelessness or desperate situations. Julie realizes that the origins of the Boneys are not "any spell of virus or nuclear rays" (p. 199), but from within us: "we crushed ourselves down over the centuries. Buried ourselves under greed and hate and whatever other sins we could find our souls finally hit the rock bottom of the universe. And then they scraped a hole through it, into some...dark place." (p. 199). I believe Marion distinguishes the Boneys for true deadness in this manner.
Marion further plays with the notions of what it means to be "alive" between the "Living" humans and the Undead between R's and Mr. Grigio's characters. We can see R's flexibility of moving between the ideas of alive and dead, compared to Mr. Grigio who is pragmatic and unwavering to his own idea of what it means to be alive (surviving). This makes Mr. Grigio more like the Boneys because the Boneys have set black and white ideas over what it means to be dead that should not deviate. In this case, the zombie is more alive than the living because R acts on his emotions, not instincts, and takes steps to compromise and better of his situation rather than just surviving and self-preservation in the face of hopelessness. I think Marion’s main point on this is that humanity must keep moving forward, evolving not just biologically but mentally and emphasizing the importance of finding ways to stay alive, not stagnant, on the inside. This is more meaningful because "memory can't overtake the present; history has its limits. Are we all just Dark Age doctors, swearing by our leeches? We crave a greater science. We want to be proven wrong (p. 190).

Warm Bodies

I am immensely enjoying Warm Bodies as a novel. I think of it as an easy, lightheart-ed read with tons of gore because it is at its core: the tale of impossible love. What I found most interesting about the novel was the fact that R is struggling to find his identity amidst the chaos, even though he and most of the world is dead. I love how the brains of living humans provide a high for the zombies, allowing them a chance of glimpsing what life could have been. I noticed how the abduction/taking of Julie is quite similar to the rape of Persephone. Whether there is any connection or not, through my reading of the novel, R is acting as "Hades" struck by the potency of the brains - struck by an arrow by Cupid - of Julie's dead boyfriend, wanting to protect/take Julie from her people. And like the myth, Julie is struggling but afraid of the strange zombie, R. She has needs that R struggles to full quite like how Hades tried to convince the increasingly depressed Persephone to cheer up. It's kind of cool in my opinion that a novel such as this one is able to incorporate the ideas of transformation and family.

The School of Survival

Both the human and zombie method of raising their future generations reveals that both groups have the common similarity of just trying to survive. Within one of Perry's memory, he sees the new schools of a post- apocalyptic world, "We taught them how to shoot, how to kill and how to survive. If they masstered those skills and had time to spare, then we taught them how to read and write, and to relate and understand their world." The human world no longer values the ideals of sympathy and understanding; instead, humans only value to survive. Learning how to kill is the most important ideal, and since humans are not taught sympathy, they will never understand that zombies also have a sense of human values. From the other perspective, zombie too are only taught to survive, "'Wrong! Get throat!' The teacher kills him and stands up, blood streaming down his face. 'Get Throat!'" Both humans and zombies only want to survive. The zombies drag in the human corpse to end it's life simply to teach the children how to catch humans.

Warm Bodies

I found it interesting that in Warm Bodies, the story was told largely from a zombie’s perspective. This was probably the first, if not only, book that had this unique perspective on the popular topic of a future zombie apocalypse. Never before has a zombie survival story been told through a zombie’s eyes, with many forms of media opting to tell zombie stories through the eyes of a human. I also found it interesting that in the story the zombies are described as to having an almost human-like society, in that like human society they have their own versions of churches, schools, and familial ties, with all of these aspects of society being told through the zombie, R’s, perspective. Isaac Marion may have chosen these unique story elements and narrative perspectives to create the sense that by any definition or word zombies could still be classified as “human,” which contrasts heavily with other stories and how they portrayed zombies. If anything, Marion depicts the zombies as more human than the human survivors themselves, especially when dealing with the interactions with R and General Grigio.

Warm Bodies: Who's Fighting Who

In Warm Bodies Isaac Marion  leads us to believe there is a war going on between the living and the living dead. The war, however, is not between those with a heartbeat and those without but it is between those who want to live and care and be human, and those who do not. When the lines of this battle are drawn, M, R, and Julie find themselves on one side accompanied by many mortals and zombies alike. This side fights to live past just surviving. They all work to recapture their humanity in this post-apocalyptic world. They have not given up hope and are willing to change. On the other side we have the Boneys and John Grigio. This side has lost all hope. They do not strive to remember who they once were; when the plauge swept the globe they gave up and turned into something dark. They are empty inside and whats left of their mind resists change coming to what they believe the world to be. One side has hope where the other has 'tradition'. One side wishes to live while the other only wants to survive. One side wishes to reclaim their humanity, while the other is simply trying to remain alive (or reanimated).

Warm Bodies(Blog #7)

Before going into anything too detailed about the novel, I'd just like to say that it was a very enjoyable read. Marion is able to display humor and discuss central and important themes simultaneously. A few themes arrise in the novel "Warm Bodies," however the important topics that Marion touches upon are themes of memory and themes of humanity. Through out the novel, we see that "R" the narrator transforms from a nobody to a somebody by engaging in human like qualities. For instance, when R kills Perry and saves his brain to have memories, R wishes to become more human. Memories are what define us, and without memories, there seems to lack of purpose in living life anymore. I thought Marion's message about humanity was interesting because when he introduced this "medicine-less" healing of zombies, he's basically saying that "zombie-ness" is not a mental condition, but a state of mind. When R chooses to interact with Julie, to consider his existence, and not follow his instinct, he is able to regain back his human-like qualities. This critique plays on the modern issue of today's society. People tend to lose the ability to relate to one another, and because of that lost relationship/communication, we get a result of a destructive society.

Warm Bodies (7)

In "Warm Bodies," the story revolves around the themes of memories and possible ideas of racism? It is shown multiple times in the story that without our memories we are basically nobody. We no longer have our own identity, making us no different than anyone else. "We are just here" (4). Without any memories of our past we lack a purpose in life as a result of knowing nothing about ourselves. This says a lot about humanity because as humans, constantly look for goals to achieve is a very important quality to have. "I...find things...sometimes. But we don't...seek." In addition to this theme, I took notice to the fact that R winces whenever Julie mentions words like "humans" or "corpse" due to the reason that he feels like they are all human whether they are the "Living" or the "Dead" (42). This caused me to wonder if this idea was trying to hint about ideas of racism in our society today.

Warm Bodies: zombie vs. human

Much of this story revolves around the concept of identity. Zombie stories usually are separated into a protaganist group (the "Living") and the antagonists (the "Dead"). However, in this story, Marion creates a gray area in between these two starkly contrasting beings. The narrator and protagonist, R, is introduced as a zombie, but it is clear from the beginning that he is different from the rest. It is clear that much more goes on his mind than just feeding to keep from becoming corpses. He has very complex thoughts, and desires to understand things. "Lights flash and screens blink, machines jolt into motion. I cherish these moments. The feeling of things coming to life" (p. 5). R has an infatuation and longing for life. "In my mind I am eloquent; I can climb intricate scaffolds of words to reach the highest cathedral ceilings and paint my thoughts. But when I open my mouth, it all collapses" (p. 10). This indicates that perhaps his soul is not so lost as the other zombies. He is not as "dead" as the others, because he still wishes and hopes for life. As the story progresses, some conflict arises as to whether or not R is truly a zombie. When he meets Julie, he begins to display even more signs of life, namely emotions. Emotions are something that are purely characteristic of living humans. "This has become clearer and clearer to me recently, a desire so sharp and focused I can't believe it's mine: I don't want to die. I don't want to disappear. I want to stay" (p. 64). He now feels purpose again, he has a reason for living. This is one of the first blatant indicators that R is changing.

Warm Bodies

In Warm Bodies, a very stark critique and message is made throughout the novel; the themes of forgiveness, hope, and change for the future, are present in this post-apocalyptic world, which make this universe much different than typical end of the world novels or movies. Although this world is still overrun by zombies, the zombies represent people and their capacity to change from something horrible to something beautiful. The main character, R’s transformation is shown from being a something to someone, and that someone that wants to actively change his “fate” from being a monster. The capacity of people to change, and that life is more than simply surviving, and that it is finding a greater purpose are messages that shine through. The author’s critique is clear here, in that the roles of forgiveness, shown by Julie’s forgiveness of R in his part of the murder of Perry, and that war and hatred is the true cause of zombification; they are the true reasons people lose their souls.

Warm Bodies

Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion focuses on the themes of both communication and memory. Specifically Marion is able to tie the two ideas to together to expose how memories function as a form of communication. During his time in the stadium R envisions pieces of Perry past life, in one such vision Perry is giving up his dream to be a writer because he cannot find reason to write due to the worlds state and its unknown future. Colonel Rosso says in response to Perry’s comment. “ ‘ Writing isn’t letters on paper. It’s communication. Its memory ‘ “ (139).  Memories can only last the lifetime of an individual if they are not preserved in some way and writing is one way of saving a memory. If past memories, more specifically the ideas contained in memories, are not preserved and communicated to future generations there would be no way for humanity to change and evolve.  Writing is important because it allows the dissemination of information through time in a way that spoken word cannot preserve. 

Warm Bodies

In the book Warm Bodies, the author deals with the question of what makes us human. Is it our hearts beating, is it movement, what is the it? The zombies are treated as animals or creatures that are not human, even though their appearance is very similar and they move similar to humans. However, the zombies have slight differences that cause anxiety and tension, i.e. broken speech, uncoordinated movement, and eating people. The author suggests that what makes us human is not how we look or move, but humanity is defined by our ability to empathize with one another. Julie's father (a human) does not have this ability. He kills zombies with as little or less thought than the zombies have about killing humans. R is a zombie who wants to be human. He is more human than Julie's father because he is able to empathize with humans and zombies in a way that the father can't. Even though R is considered dead he is more alive than the father because he is still able to love and feel for his fellow creatures in the Earth. The author could be suggesting that humans can loose their humanity by choosing not to empathize with the rest of the world. Succumbing to hate and violence is in essence anti-human.

Warm Bodies

I really loved this book on both an academic level and a casual level. It is highly entertaining, thought provoking and well written. I saw several things that really spoke to me but mostly the comparison of humanity and memories.

Throughout the story there are correlations between the meaning of humanity and memories. Marion makes a point that without memories humanity is lost. Memories are how we remember where we have been and how we prepare for the future. When memories are lost we become inhuman because memories are defined by humanity.

I thought this really said a lot because we often forget our memories and this is when I feel we become less human. It is important to remember our pasts because they make the people we become and mistakes should be learned from not hidden away to be repeated someday again.

There are so many moments when memory comes into play in the book, from Perry's clear memories to R's broken and fuzzy ones and each one has the important job of explaining the human condition. Without our memories we do not exist, we become creatures without morals, loyalty or love.  

Twenty-Three Snapshots of San Francisco

This story is incredibly well written.  It's formatted in a very convenient layout for building suspense.  The first true sign of their being a potential fantasy aspect to the story comes to me in picture 4 at the description of the eyes.  The imagery of the blood red eyes as camera glare is excellent and builds suspicion that perhaps there is something more than a camera flash going on.  Repetition is used incredibly well in this piece, and the more he repeats this imagery of blood red, the more suspense builds.  The transition in the narrators character state from a normal tourist into a zombie apocalypse is uncannily well written.  He flows into acceptance of the dangers of this new world, and as quickly as he accepts this new reality, the reader accepts it as well.  As the story and photographs develop, the character seems to grow more detached from emotion.  Initially he seems quite interested in normal life and May and relationships.  However, by the time he is slitting his best friends throat, you begin to wonder whether he himself as already turned to a zombie without realizing it.  This quit, but prevalent thought adds a whole new layer of tension to the storyline.  It's interesting how quickly this transition is made.

23 snapshots of SF

I think it would be easy to see that 23 snapshots of SF is about memories considering the fact that pictures capture a specific moment in time. Memories, in my opinion, are rather obscure because I don't actually remember what happened step by step. Memories become distorted just like photos that fade over the years. And like the narrator's memories, the pictures are fragments of what everything was "before everything happened" (203). And kind of like a bad disease, the narrator starts to forget who was his life except for those he loved or at least, were important in some kind of way. For example in snapshot 7, the narrator cannot remember where the photo was taken and he cannot remember who "a lot of [those] faces" are anymore. I think it is kind of funny how his memories blur along with his pictures and like the beginning of the short story, there are only 23 shots instead of 24; he does not remember what happened to the one lost.

"Little" things

       After reading “Twenty-Three Snapshots of San Francisco,” I couldn’t help but laugh at the irony of a man who chides himself for primarily ruminating on the “trivial” details of his relationship with his (estranged/possibly dead) girlfriend (p. 208) and yet preaches to the reader about the importance of “the dumb stuff” as perhaps the most vital component of one’s memories and life experience. He even questions us, “Is it right to live life knowing every detail will die?”

       Indeed, it may be a greater irony that, just as the culmination of “a lot of little things” led the narrator to choose to remain behind when May leaves on a truck for a refugee camp, and to the gradual deterioration of human civilization described in the story, there are “a lot of little things” our species does mindlessly every day that will ultimately be our undoing.  We generally don’t bat an eyelash at the number of bags of garbage our two to four-person homes crank out in a single week, or the amount of fossil fuels that went into making that factory-fresh pair of sneakers we “just had to have,” let alone consider that all of those “unremarkable” objects and (and the processes involved in their production) are slowly destroying the quality of life on Earth.

The Danger Word and The Road

From the moment Kendrick and Grandpa Joe set off in the car without Kendrick's parents, I was reminded of the novel, The Road. The main character is in a similar sort of post-apocalyptic world, albeit one without zombies, just people desperate to survive. In both stories, the man tries to teach the boy what he can in the time he has in order to try to ensure the boy's survival after the man's passing. However, in The Road, the man and the boy attempt to find other good people still out in the world, while Grandpa Joe instructs Kendrick to shoot first and ask questions later. Another stark contrast between these stories is that in The Road, the ending is hopeful. The Boy is left with a caring family who take him in after the man's death, while it is up to the reader to decide who walked away at the end of "Danger Word," Kendrick or his grandfather.

Danger Word and the Gothic

     While reading Danger Word, it was fascinating how many of the aspects of the story followed features common to Gothic literature. From the very beginning of the story, we are steeped in images of nature. Kendrick and Joe are in a cabin made of wood. The rooms smell strongly of cedar, and Grandpa Joe hunts deer and turns the meat into jerky. Even in the ending, we see Kendrick fleeing into the woods off the road, and as the story comes to a close, we see Kendrick trying to hide, staring at the spider clinging to his hand, its body swollen with eggs. All of these moments are written as though exulting in nature, celebrating its influence in our lives. As well, the story is constantly playing with family, a feature also common to Gothic literature. Grandpa Joe kills his own daughter and in the end, tries to kill Kendrick, demonstrating the ways in which the Gothic twists family relationships into ones of pain, death, and danger. In these ways, Danger Word exhibits a powerful connection to the Gothic.

Twenty-Three Snapshots of san Francisco

Twenty-Three Snapshots of San Francisco is similar to We Can Remember it for You Wholesale.  In Twenty-Three Snapshots of San Francisco the main character relies on the pictures to fortify his memories. The character relies on his memories of the past to continue to survive in the present apocalyptic world within San Francisco.  The pictures keep him sane thinking of times that are not far off but are far different. This is similar to We can Remember It for You Wholesale as the main character relies on his forgotten memories to give meaning to his life.  The character is completely dependent on his forgotten memories as they give him a sense of significance as he discovers himself to be a secret agent who was involved in a mission that took place on Mars instead of being a normal, therefore insignificant. In an apocalyptic world memories give people a sense of humanity it is the only aspect of their humanity that remains for them to grasp.  They lose their humanity no longer caring for others, leaving people for dead and seeing life being easily taken.  Their sanity and their humanity rest on the memories of a life where people were not monsters just like the protagonist relies on his memories to give meaning to his life in We Can Remember It for You Wholesale.  Both of these short story characters rely on their memories and choose for the memories to define who they are as a person instead of defining themselves by the actions they take in a new world and society.  They place the weight of their sanity and humanity on their character from their memories of past events; yet, past events define who they were in the past but not who they are in a new unfamiliar world.