HOPE AND SURVIVAL IN ZOMBIE POST-APOCALYPSE ENVIRONMENTS: WORLD WAR Z AND ZONE ONE

Öz

The recent popularity of zombie apocalypse narratives across various media highlights their deep engagement with social, cultural, political, and environmental issues. These narratives often use zombies as allegorical figures to explore contemporary problems, such as ecological neglect and societal collapse. The emergence of a zombie-creating virus in contemporary fiction mirrors fears of biological and ecological disasters, framing zombie culture as a reflection on environmental degradation in industrial-capitalist societies. By highlighting the potential consequences of ecological destruction, zombie post-apocalyptic fiction underscores how the collapse of social order exposes internal conflicts—such as fear, mistrust, and selfishness—that obstruct collective survival efforts. This narrative device suggests that while environmental and biological threats are significant, moral and social cohesion are equally crucial for overcoming crises and ensuring survival. Despite the grim scenarios presented, zombie narratives also offer hope by showcasing the importance of collective action, adaptability, and the rebuilding of social units. Thus, this paper argues that the portrayal of hope and survival goes beyond simple thematic analysis in both Max Brooks’ World War Z (2006) and Colson Whitehead’s Zone One (2011) since human ingenuity and resilience are innate qualities, as demonstrated by how societies recover and rebuild following a zombie apocalypse. This claim challenges the conventional view of post-apocalyptic societies as inevitably doomed, instead emphasizing their potential for progress and renewal, not only for the betterment of humanity but also for the preservation of planet Earth.

Anahtar Kelimeler

• Hope
• Survival
• Zombie Post-Apocalypse
• World War Z
• Zone One

POST-APOKALİPTİK ZOMBİ ORTAMLARINDA UMUT VE HAYATTA KALMA: WORLD WAR Z & ZONE ONE

Öz

Zombi kıyameti anlatılarının çeşitli medyalarda son zamanlarda kazandığı popülerlik, bu anlatıların sosyal, kültürel, siyasi ve çevresel meselelerle olan derin ilişkisini vurgulamaktadır. Bu anlatılar, zombileri genellikle çevresel ihmal ve toplumsal çöküş gibi güncel sorunları ele almak için alegorik figürler olarak kullanmaktadır. Çağdaş kurguda zombi yaratan bir virüsün ortaya çıkışı ise, biyolojik ve ekolojik felaketlere dair korkuları yansıtmakta ve zombi kültürünü endüstriyel-kapitalist toplumlardaki çevresel bozulmanın bir yansıması olarak ifade etmektedir. Zombi post-apokaliptik kurgu, çevresel yıkımın potansiyel sonuçlarını vurgulayarak, sosyal düzenin çöküşünün korku, güvensizlik ve bencillik gibi kolektif hayatta kalma çabalarını engelleyen iç çatışmaları nasıl ortaya çıkardığının altını çizer. Bu anlatı aracı, çevresel ve biyolojik tehditler önemli olsa da, ahlaki ve sosyal uyumun krizlerin üstesinden gelmek ve hayatta kalmayı sağlamak için eşit derecede önemli olduğunu öne sürmektedir. Sunulan korkunç senaryolara rağmen, zombi anlatıları aynı zamanda kolektif eylemin, uyum becerisinin ve sosyal birimlerin yeniden inşasının önemini göstererek umut vermektedir. Dolayısıyla bu makale, hem Max Brooks’un World War Z (2006) hem de Colson Whitehead’in Zone One (2011) adlı eserlerinde umut ve hayatta kalma tasvirlerinin basit tematik analizlerin ötesine geçtiğini, zira zombi kıyametinin ardından toplumların nasıl toparlandığı ve yeniden inşa edildiğinin gösterdiği üzere, insan yaratıcılığı ve dayanıklılığının doğuştan gelen nitelikler olduğunu savunmaktadır. Bu iddia, kıyamet sonrası toplumların kaçınılmaz olarak ölüme mahkum olduğu şeklindeki geleneksel görüşe meydan okumakta, bunun yerine sadece insanlığın iyiliği için değil, aynı zamanda Dünya gezegeninin korunması için de ilerleme ve yenilenme potansiyellerini vurgulamaktadır.

Anahtar Kelimeler

• Umut
• Hayatta Kalma
• World War Z
• Zone One
• Zombi Post-Apokaliptik

Kaynakça

1. Abel, T. D., & Stephen, M. (2008). Tools of Environmental Justice and Meaningful Involvement. Environmental Practice, 10 (4), 152-163. doi: 10.1017/S1466046608080368
2. Baker, R. (2018). The Role of Fiction in Environmental Advocacy: Lessons from the Zombie Genre. Environmental Communication, 12(2), 234-250.
3. Berger, J. (1999). After the end: Representations of post-apocalypse. University of Minnesota Press.
4. Brooks, M. (2003). The zombie survival guide: Complete protection from the living dead. Three Rivers Press.
5. Brooks, M. (2006). World War Z: An oral history of the zombie war. Crown.
6. Cassity, M. (2018, January 26). The eco-zombie: Using biology to imagine zombies beyond the human. Broadly Textual. Retrieved October 5, 2023, from https://broadlytextual.com/2018/01/26/the-eco-zombie-using-biology-to-imagine-zombies-beyond-the-human/
7. Drezner, D. W. (2011). Theories of international politics and zombies. Princeton University Press.
8. Dryzek, J. S. (2017). The politics of the Earth: Environmental discourses. Oxford University Press.

9. Fehrle, J. (2016). ‘Zombies Don’t Recognize Borders’: Capitalism, Ecology, and Mobility in the Zombie Outbreak Narrative. Amerikastudien / American Studies, 61 (4), 527-44.
10. Frow, J. (2006). Genre. Routledge.
11. Gordon, R. (2012). Zombie Apocalypse and the Environment: A Critical Examination of Post-Apocalyptic Narratives. Journal of Environmental Humanities, 6(1), 45-60.
12. Hurley, J. (2015). History is what bites. Extrapolation, 56 (3), 311–33.
13. Irr, C. (2004). Toward the Geopolitical Novel: U.S. Fiction in the Twenty-First Century. Columbia University Press.
14. Lanzendörfer, T. (2014). Max Brooks’ World War Z: An oral history of the zombie war: Conservative Armageddon and liberal post-apocalypse. LİNQ, 41, 112-123.
15. Lanzendörfer, T. (2015). The politics of genre fiction: Colson Whitehead’s Zone One. C21 Literature: Journal of 21st Century Writings, 3 (1), 39-52.
16. Larsen, E. (2022). Unhealthy horrors: The biopolitical zombie in 21st-century film and television. Routledge handbook of health and media. R. Shaw & J. Baker (Eds.). Routledge.
17. Lauro, S. J. (2011). The eco-zombie: Environmental critique in zombie narratives. Generation zombie: Essays on the living dead in modern culture. W. Lenz & S. Boluk (Eds.). McFarland.
18. Martin, T. (2010). The ecological thought. Harvard University Press.
19. Murphy, P. D. (2017). Lessons from the zombie apocalypse in global popular culture: An environmental discourse approach to The Walking Dead. Environmental Communication, 12(1), 44-57. doi: 10.1080/17524032.2017.1346518
20. Orpana, S. (2017). Spooks of biopower: The uncanny carnivalesque of zombie walks. Zombie theory: A reader (pp. 294-315). S. J. Lauro (Ed.). University of Minnesota Press. https://doi.org/10.5749/j.ctt1pwt6zr.24
21. Pedretti, M. (2022). Tedium and terror: Dreading narration in Colson Whitehead’s Zone One. European Journal of American Studies. http://journals.openedition.org/ejas/19078
22. Perry, S. (2015). Survival and Adaptability in Post-Apocalyptic Fiction: Analyzing the Role of Hope and Human Connections. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 32(4), 375-390.
23. Piret, J. & Boivin, G. (2021). Pandemics throughout history. Frontiers in Microbiology, 11, 631736. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2020.631736
24. Saldívar, R. (Spring 2013). The second elevation of the novel: Race, form, and the postrace aesthetic in contemporary American narrative. Narrative, 21(1), 1-18.
25. Slovic, S. & Slovic, P. (2015). Postscript. Numbers and nerves: Information, emotion, and meaning in a world of data (pp. 217-220). S. Slovic & P. Slovic (Eds.). Oregon State University Press.
26. Sollazzo, E. (2017). ‘The dead city’: Corporate anxiety and the post-apocalyptic vision in Colson Whitehead’s Zone One. Law & Literature, 29(3), 457-483.
27. Stevenson, H. (2014). Representing green radicalism: The limits of state-based representation in global climate governance. Review of International Studies, 40 (1), 177-201. doi: 10.1017/s0260210513000077
28. Thaler, M. (2024). Eco-miserabilism and radical hope: On the utopian vision of post-apocalyptic environmentalism. American Political Science Review, 118 (1), 318-331. doi:10.1017/S000305542300031X
29. Thompson, R. (2019). Zombie apocalypse: A reflection of ecological anxiety. Environmental Journal, 34(2), 45-60.
30. Wallace-Wells, D. (2019). The uninhabitable Earth: Life after warming. Tim Duggan Books.
31. Wilkinson, A. (2020, March 31). “You can’t scare a virus”: World War Z author Max Brooks on pandemics, fear, panic, and hope. Vox. https://www.vox.com/2020/03/31/21200109/world-war-z-author-max-brooks-pandemics-fear-panic-hope.