Conservation in Twenty-Three Snapshots

“Twenty-Three Snapshots of San Francisco” deals with a post apocalyptic world, in which zombies have overrun the city, and the only remnants of civilization that the narrator has are photographs he took. The narrator goes on to explain that the photographs “are my life, at least in that time” (Lindberg 91). He reflects on his past, and the meaning of his lives, and the lives of all people. The photographs represent a gateway to the past for the narrator to relive better days. Everyone he knows has been lost to him to the disease, and it makes him truly question reality. The narrator says, “these prints are all I have,” an emphasis that he physically needs the photographs because they are the only pieces of evidence of his friends and experiences, therefore acting as his memory (Lindberg 84).  The past, and the need to conserve things that are special to us is seen in both “Danger Word” and “Twenty-Three Snapshots of San Francisco” in the rapid degradation of the world, and the efforts of humans to conserve memories, and children in the latter story.