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.