Summary:
The novel’s first section, “Friday,” begins with a flashback to the childhood of Mark Spitz, the protagonist of Zone One. Mark remembers visiting New York City with his parents to visit his Uncle Lloyd. At Uncle Lloyd’s apartment, Mark would watch “monster movies on TV” and stare out the window at the city below. Marveling at the view below–which is described in vivid detail–Mark dreams of one day living in the city himself.
The narrative then jumps to the present with the cryptic line: “When his unit finally started sweeping beyond the wall–whenever that –he knew he had to visit Uncle Lloyd’s apartment, to sit on the sectional one last time” (p. 8). It is also revealed that Mark “hadn’t seen his uncle’s name on the survivor’s list” (p. 8). While it is clear that something catastrophic has happened between the flashback sequence and the presence, Whitehead initially leaves this ambiguous.
It is then explained that Mark’s duty is to work as an armed “sweeper” with the “Omega Unit” as part of a process called “reconstruction” in an area called Zone One (9). Again, however, Whitehead leaves the description vague, and it is not clear what the reason for this task is.
In another brief flashback, Mark Spitz’s character is fleshed out in greater detail. It is indicated that he had once wanted to become a lawyer before “the curtain fell” and that he had also been an entirely average person who “sidestepped detention and honor role with equal aplomb” (p. 11).
Shifting back into the present, Mark and the Omega Unit continue their task of sweeping through an office building. The other two members of the Omega Unit, Gary and Kaitlyn, are briefly mentioned. Having split up to work alone, Mark opens a door to discover “four of them” who are described as being “a thin membrane of meat stretched over bone” (p. 16). Whitehead never uses the term, but he is describing what might be familiar to readers as zombies. It is then revealed that Mark’s task as a sweeper is to “put them down” (p. 17).
Before he can do that, however, they gang up and attack him. Looking at one of the “skels”–the novel’s term for people who have been infected by the plague that zombifies them–Mark is reminded of his old English teacher, Miss Alcott. His mind continues to wander as he thinks about his first job, “rattling a mail cart down the corridors of a payroll company” (p. 20). Then he thinks of the “first time he saw someone get pinned by a group of them,” and recounts a story of an old man who Mark saw being devoured by skels in the early days of the plague (p. 22).
Finally, Mark awakes from his daydreaming and begins shooting at the skels with a pistol. Gary arrives and helps kill the remaining skels.
Gary and Kaitlyn are then introduced in greater detail: Gary is depicted as being so grimy it was “as if he had clawed out of a coffin” (some important foreshadowing) and as someone without “much sympathy for the dead” (p. 27;30). Kaitlyn is described as an uptight “stickler” and a “grade-grubber” (p. 28) who wants to be the best at everything (p. 28).
Whitehead then describes the setting and context in greater detail. Zone One is an area of downtown Manhattan that has been selected for regeneration by a new government established in Buffalo. The headquarters of Zone One, Fort Wanton, is at an old Chinese Restaurant in what was once the Chinatown district. Fort Wanton is commanded by a figure named Lieutenant and his second-in-command Fabio.
Mark Spitz then remembers his first night at the Happy Acres settlement camp. There, he was delighted to have human company for the first time in months. That night, he wandered out to the edge of camp to find corn like “holy stalks, up to his chest and disappearing into the darkness” (p. 45). The corn is symbolically rich, for as the narrator notes, “the crop’s separated today’s interaction of humanity from last year’s” (p. 45).
Whitehead then proceeds to describe the rules of Zone One in greater detail. Residents are only permitted to use goods from companies that have signed sponsorship agreements with the government in Buffalo and there are strict “anti-looting regs…in effect” (p. 47).
The narrative shifts again to describe the story of the “Tromanhauser Triplets,” another important symbol in the novel. The triplets were born after the plague, and, like the corn, symbolized “new life in the midst of destruction” (p. 51).
Whitehead then describes several characters like Gina Speers, an Italian former adult film actress, who had become celebrities for their heroic actions during the plague. Mark then remembers his childhood “Chinatown runs for fireworks and bootlegs” and the narrator declares that “the neighborhood would never be that roiling and exuberant again” (p. 56).
Analysis:
With Zone One, Whitehead embraces the conventions of the horror and apocalyptic fiction genres. An important element of both genres is uncertainty and narrative suspense. These features are evident from the first pages of the novel. Whitehead slowly offers an explanation of the context in which the novel is set, but he also strategically leaves omissions. In the first pages of the novel, we do not know why Mark Spitz might be working as a "sweeper" or what Whitehead means when he refers to "the ruin" (p. 8). In this way, he motivates his readers to continue reading, if only to discover what is going on. Whitehead, however, does not leave his readers confused for long, as he begins to describe the plague, the skels, and the characters surrounding Mark.
What emerges in these first pages is a version of the world that is both fundamentally changed and, in many ways, the exact same. In his perceptive reading of the novel, scholar Ted Martin argues "that the new post-apocalyptic world is basically indistinguishable from the pre-apocalyptic world" and that this "this is the running joke and central conceit of Zone One. The plague did not transform or unmake the modern world; it 'only honed' its elemental features" (p. 181). Thus, just as Mark had toiled away in a boring office job before the plague happened, he still ends up working in an office after the apocalypse, albeit in a different profession. As Martin also observes, the novel "consistently emphasizes the repetitive nature of late capitalist life" (p. 181). In this way, Whitehead suggests that a life spent working a mundane job, traveling the same commute each day, and watching the same kinds of media content each night is already a zombified existence.
Also of note in these early pages of the novel is Whitehead's use of foreshadowing–another hallmark of the horror genre. Whitehead describes Mark's duties in Zone One as akin to "an insect exploring a gravestone," which implies that, in time, Zone One will be transformed into a graveyard (p. 9). Likewise, Gary is described as looking "as if he had clawed out of a coffin" (p. 27). More than just expressive metaphors, these phrases signal future developments in the plot. In this way, Whitehead skilfully encourages his reader to pay close attention and to try to speculate what might happen over the course of the novel.
Another notable feature in this section is the tension that Whitehead establishes between nihilism and hope. While characters like Kaitlyn are more hopeful about the future to come, Mark "believed he had successfully banished thoughts of the future" (p. 31-32). Throughout the novel, however, he fluctuates between moments of despair and hopefulness. The scene with the corn, for example, makes him more optimistic, if only momentarily, but he still rejects the general hopefulness of the other characters. At the end of this section, Whitehead poses the essential question which Mark struggles with throughout the novel: "if you didn't believe [in the future]... why are you here?" (p. 59).
