The New York City Skyline
In the flashback scene at the beginning of the novel, Mark recalls visiting his Uncle Lloyd who lives in downtown Manhattan. At Lloyd's apartment, Mark would sit by the window and watch "the city churning below" (p. 5). In vivid detail, Whitehead depicts the scene from the windows, including "the ancient water towers lurking atop obstinate old prewar and, higher up, the massive central-air units that hunkered and child on the striving high-rises, glistening like extruded guts" (p. 5). In addition to the buildings, Mark also spots "pieces of citizens" through their windows, like "half a lady's torso, wrapped in a turquoise blazer, as glimpsed through a trapezoid" (p. 6). The sights from the window fill Mark with a sense of wonder and he dreams of one day moving to New York. Unfortunately, the New York of Zone One is juxtaposed so distinctly with the city he visited as a boy. By beginning the novel with this depiction of New York, Whitehead is able to illustrate the extent of destruction caused by the plague. Mark has thus not only lost his family in the plague, but also his childhood dreams.
Mark's Parents on the Last Night
Perhaps the most distressing image in the novel appears in a flashback to Mark's experiences on the Last Night. Returning from the casino, Mark thought "the house looked normal from the outside" (p. 68). Walking through the house, he comments on all the renovation projects that his parents had performed, concluding that "their makeover schemes betrayed an attempt to outwit death" (p. 69). Finally arriving at his parent's room, he opens the door and sees his mother bent over his father "gnawing with ecstatic fervor on a flap of his intestines" (p. 70). Immediately, Mark remembers walking into his parent's room when was six years old and seeing his mother performing oral sex on his father. The juxtaposition is shocking and unsettling, yet it effectively demonstrates the sort of trauma that Mark lives with on a daily basis. Whitehead makes it clear, however, that Mark is not alone in experiencing this trauma: when it comes to horrible stories about the Last Night, "everybody had one" (p. 71).
The Corn
One day during a meeting at Fort Wanton, Lieutenant begins talking about the harvest of crops at the Happy Acres settlement camp. This prompts Mark to remember his experience at the Happy Acres settlement camp after surviving in the wild for months. One night, he goes for a walk "toward the line of sodium lights at the far edge of camp" (p. 36). Across the perimeter of the camp, Mark sees a crop of corn "lit up, regimented, droopy with promise: the holy stalks, up to his chest and disappearing into the darkness" (p. 36-37). This vivid image, complete with religious language, indicates a sense of hope for renewal and regrowth, for just as corn has been regrown after the plague, so, too, can humankind be restored.
Yet while Mark marvels at the corn, two armed guards appear and tell him to "'back away from the fucking corn'" (p. 37). Mark, however, doesn't mind this abrupt end to his reverie and remarks that the corn "was still a wonder" (p. 37). In a sense, the armed guards represent a return to order after gangs of bandits stole and looted at the beginning of the plague. In order for progress–like the corn–to occur, security and policing are necessary.
Mark's First Straggler
In another flashback, Mark recalls encountering a straggler. The straggler is described as being "an older man, dwindling inside his red polo shirt and khaki pants" (p. 95). Whitehead elaborates that "a string trailed from his hand, leading to a roughed-up box height" (p. 95). Mark is shocked and confused that the man does not attack him like skels usually do. Instead "the man's gaze, if such a barren thing could be called that, was leveled at a void above the horizon" (p. 95). The scene is distinctly humanizing and it reveals Mark's compassion for the skels and stragglers. Rather than viewing them as creatures, Mark sees him as a man whose "mind had been eliminated" (p. 95). Thus instead of killing him, Mark "abandoned the man in the field" (p. 95). This crucial scene encourages the reader to have a similar sort of compassion towards the skels and stragglers that Mark has.
