Essay Questions

What type of narrator is R?

‘R’ is a classic ‘unreliable narrator’: “I am dead, but it’s not so bad. I’ve learned to live with it. I’m sorry I can’t properly introduce myself, but I don’t have a name any more. Hardly any of us do. We lose them like car keys, forget them like anniversaries. Mine might have started with an ‘R’, but that’s all I have now. It’s funny because back when I was alive, I was always forgetting other people’s names. My friend ‘M’ says the irony of being a zombie is that everything is funny, but you can’t smile, because your lips have rotted off.” First, R is non-existent; thus, his avowals cannot be categorized as categorically unfailing. Second, R’s memory is not sound considering that recollecting his name is difficult. Third, R’s emblematic decomposition casts aspersions on his sense of reality.

How would you categorize the instinct that governs the zombies in “Wanting-(Step1)”?

Principally, a Death Instinct galvanizes the zombies: “But, finally, we sense prey. The life scent electrifies our nostrils, abrupt and intense. They are very close, and there are a lot of them. Maybe close to half our own number. We hesitate, stumbling to a halt. M looks at me. He looks at our small group, then back at me. ‘No,’ he grunts.” The zombies’ resilient Death Instinct, which loathes fleshly sustenance, drives them to hunting for flesh sustenance in the bereavement of humans. Zombies’ object is to invigorate their death-like state through the dissolution of corporeal prey.