earticle

영어

This study aims to analyze general tendencies of post-apocalypse narratives in North America after the attacks of 9/11 and the subsequent War on Terror, focusing on Colson Whitehead’s the zombie post-apocalypse novel, Zone One. 9/11 was not only an apocalyptic event, but also contributed to the derivation of post-apocalypse narratives that flourished in the 21st century. Many writers including Whitehead critically engage with a hope for return, recovery, or reconstruction with American optimism after 9/11. In this point, Zone One can be read a sort of social criticism that restoring the pre-apocalyptic America is not a utopian solution. Through Zone One, Whitehead depicts how he criticizes optimism about future and suggests different kinds of alternative on future. The novel consists of three parts with detailed protagonist’s flashbacks on New York city, spanning from “Friday” to “Sunday” after ‘Last Night.’ Mark Spitz, one member of three-man sweeper team, has been clearing zombies in eponymous ‘Zone one’ located in Manhattan with co-workers. In Zone One, Whitehead produces a new kind of zombies, straggler, that are unable to leave a meaningful place even after death. The fact that they cannot get out of ‘Zone One’ makes the difference between stragglers and survivors including the sweeper team blurred. It also expands to a critical metaphor for beings who cannot leave the pre-apocalyptic world even in the post-apocalyptic world. Depicting Mark Spitz’s a routine in after-disaster world, what Whitehead pays attention to is that the future driven by the past is an inappropriate way, which ‘Buffalo’ and ‘the American Phoenix’ do in the novel. Also, by leaving an open ending that Mark Spitz makes a choice to walk into ‘the sea of the dead,’ Whitehead leaves questions about the world after disaster and let us re-imagine the ending of post-apocalyptic novel. The theme of Zone One resonates with zombies and contemporary issues, reflecting our anxieties such as neo-liberal ideology and post-capitalistic mechanism, terrorism, climate change and viruses and contagion.