Zone One Literary Elements

Post-Apocalyptic Fiction

The action of the novel occurs in the Northeastern United States (New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts) in the aftermath of a plague which turns humans into zombified creatures.

The narrative is delivered in the third person with limited omniscience.

The mood of the novel is generally somber and depressed, reflecting the devastation that has resulted from the plague. While there are occasional glimmers of hope, they soon give way to the harsh depictions of life after the plague.

In broad terms, the protagonist of the story is humankind (represented by Mark Spitz) and the antagonists are the skels and stragglers who have been infected by the plague.

The major conflict in the novel is between humans and the skels who have been infected by the plague. In addition to this, there are a number of conflicts that occur between human characters. For example, gangs of bandits routinely attack other humans and steal their supplies.

The climax occurs near the end of the novel when the stragglers inexplicably revert to skels and begin to attack humans. Gary is bitten by a fortune teller and is forced to kill himself before he is zombified. The hordes of newly-animated skels begin to attack the wall of Zone One, which soon collapses. As skels begin to stream through Zone One, a group of survivors, including Mark, attempt to escape in a truck.

As is conventional of works in the horror and thriller genre, there is frequent foreshadowing throughout Zone One. Most notably, Whitehead signals that characters will die well in advance of their deaths. For example, Gary is described as looking as though "something bad roosted deep in his bones, uncatalogued and undiagnosable" and as having a general "sickness" about him (p. 27). At the end of the novel, he is infected with the sickness of the plague. Likewise, Josh is described as lacking "the bearing of one who was going to make it to the other side" (p. 258). Several pages later, he is killed along with the rest of the Gamma crew.

To comic effect, Whitehead occasionally understates the significance of the plague and the destruction it has caused. For example, Lily–a Disposal tech who deals with the bodies of stragglers that have been killed–complains that the disposal bags they use to store the bodies are not recyclable. Even though the world has essentially been destroyed, she is worried about "the environment" (p. 236). In these moments of comical understatement, Whitehead suggests that it is difficult–or impossible–for these characters to comprehend the magnitude and irreversibility of the destruction that has been caused.

Interestingly enough, the term "zombie" is never used in the novel. While skels closely resemble zombies, the narrator and the characters refer exclusively in terms of "skels" and "stragglers." Nonetheless, Zone One makes extensive allusions to the genre of zombie narratives–in which humans are forced to survive the attacks of flesh-hungry creatures.

The novel also contains several biblical allusions, most notably the Tromanhauser triplets. The number three–or the "trinity"–has an important place in the Christian and represents the division of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. While the Tromanhausers are not presented as manifestations of divinity, they are nonetheless treated with the reverence of divine figures. Kaitlyn, for example, prays for the triplets, and Mark is described as being "a firm believer" in them. In a sense, the triplets represent the possibility of the resurrection of humankind.

See the separate "Imagery" section of this ClassicNote.

The concept of futurity is a constant paradox throughout the novel. For some characters, the hope of a future is necessary to continue living in the present. All the work they do wrecking and sweeping is in service of a better future. Yet at the same time, a belief in the future leaves one vulnerable to the crushing realization that such a future will never materialize. Thus, while Mark dreams of a future in which he lives in New York, like he always dreams, he is eventually forced to realize "that city didn't exist anymore" (p. 320).

Whitehead occasionally uses parallelism at the level of the sentence. An example includes the sentence, "dead or bandit, straggler or survivor" (p. 137).

The Zone, along with Fort Wanton, is a metonymy for all of human civilization after the plague. It is the very hope–and possibility–of a brighter future. In this sense, the wall around Zone One is symbolic of the divide between the humans and the skels. Outside of Zone One, "Buffalo" is referred to as the representation of government and law-making, similar to the way that "Washington" is referred to now.

At one point in the novel, Mark puzzles over the fact that while "the regular skels got referred to as it, the stragglers were awarded male and female pronouns" (p. 102). In other words, the stragglers are personified while the skels are treated as animals or objects. The personification of stragglers continues through the novel, to the extent that stragglers are even given names like "Ned the copy boy" (p. 82).