Representations of Sleepwalkers and Zombies as Wartime Social Commentary: From Charles Brockden Brow

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Representations of Sleepwalkers and Zombies as
Wartime Social Commentary From Charles Brockden
Brown and the American Revolution to Stephen King
and the War on Terror.

• By Valerie Robin Simpson
• Northern Arizona University
• (This PowerPoint will be changing as I refine
  it. There will also be a works cited attached to
  the end of it never fear)

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Warning!

• The following presentation will contain horrific
  images of zombies, as well as give away several
  plot endings.
• Please use your own discretion.

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Preparing for the Zombie Apocalypse

• Ever considered what you would do in the event of
  a zombie apocalypse?
• I have. And Im not the only one
• How to Survive a Zombie Apocalypse

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How does this relate to Literature?

• Ever wonder why zombies are so popular?
• Have you considered that they might be directly
  reflecting our nations perception of our current
  culture and political quagmire?
• Did you know that this type of reflection has
  been going on since the beginnings of America in
  literature and film?
• Consider reformatting this is sort of your
  thesis

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• During the founding of this nation, despite the
  realistic predilections of the theorists of
  fiction, American readers in general seem to have
  read with delight tales of ghosts and specters
  (Ringe 8).

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Main Characteristics of Gothic Literature

• Mood / Atmosphere usually supernatural in
  nature
• Setting often remote, dark, involving a large
  house or castle
• Loss of Religion is typical (consider Hawthornes
  Young Goodman Brown or Irvings Rip Van Winkle)
• According to Clive Bloom in Gothic Horror A
  Readers Guide from Poe to King and Beyond, the
  gothic is, obsessionally connected with
  contemporary fears (2), a matter which I will
  demonstrate here.

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Aftermath of the Revolutionary War

• 3 Terrors of 1798
• Slaves (South)
• The South, became the
• repository for everything from
• which the Nation wanted to
• disassociate itself (Guddo 3 4).
• Indians
• Emergence of the
• enemy within(Gibbons 29).
• Irish Immigrants
• It was perhaps a penchant for clandestine
  politics that gave the particular cast to the
  Irish presence in Philadelphia which drew the
  opprobrium of the Alien and Sedition Acts (42).

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Charles Brockden Brown Edgar Huntly

• Where Does Edgar Huntly fit in the spectrum of
  our 3 terrors?
• Terror 1 - Irish Immigrants / Clithero
• The more I revolved the pensive and reserved
  deportment of this man his possible motives for
  abandoning his country and choosing a station
  so much below the standard of his intellectual
  attainments, the stronger my suspicions became
  (Brown 14 15).
• Alien Sedition Act of 1798
• (of which Brown was in favor)

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• Terror 2
• The American Indian
• The Natives of American lands were used in the
  same role that Catholic clergy were used in the
  European gothic tradition.
• The Indian replaces the feudal/Catholic other
  as the demon of American gothic (Gibbons 28).

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Edgar Huntly Male Hysteria

• Edgars Adventure
• Edgar Clithero
• Edgar wakes up in the cave goes on a killing
  rampage
• Queen Mabs cabin
• Journey Home
• Edgar Sarsefield
• The not-so-happy end

• The Psychology of it all
• What is Male Hysteria?
• by transforming him from an active, masculine
  subject into a passive and implicitly
  feminized victim of his own unwittingly
  diseased sensibility (Hustis 104).

Both Clithero Edny and Edgar Huntly strive to
articulate the causes and extent of their
respective sufferings through retrospective
narratives designed to bear witness to their
manly moral fortitude (Hustis 104).
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Man's Base Instincts

• Key elements of human survival.
• Murder
• Breeding
• Human aggression is instinctual. Humans have not
  evolved any ritualized aggression inhibiting
  mechanisms to ensure the survival of the species.
  For this reason man is considered a very
  dangerous animal (Lorenz qtd in Cell)

And Americans enjoy reading about and watching
all the carnage
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The Result

• Clithero Edny
• Clithero kills his benefactors brother
• The attack was so abrupt that my thoughts could
  not be suddenly recalled from the confusion into
  which they were thrown. My exertions were
  mechanical (EH 67).

• Edgar Huntly
• Edgar is starving in the cave
• I felt a strong propensity to bite the flesh
  from my arm. My heart overflowed with cruelty,
  and I pondered on the delight I should experience
  in rending some living animal to pieces, and
  drinking its blood and grinding its quivering
  fibres between my teeth (EH 157).

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But What About Sleepwalking?

• Clithero sleepwalks
• Zombie-like behavior directly resulting from
  guilt/dire situations.
• Edgar Huntly sleepwalks
• E.H. suffers from, a seemingly infectious case
  of somnambulism (Hustis 112).
• Krause on sleepwalking sleepwalking does more
  than just release the inner man. He acts, often
  dangerously (qtd in Hustis 113).

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Sleepwalking Zombism?

• Edgar Huntly refers to sleepwalking as, a morbid
  activity (13)
• Sleepwalking (or somnambulism) has been around
  since biblical times However, a widely accepted
  pathophysiological theory was lacking until about
  40 years ago (Szelenberger, Niemcewicz
  Dabrowska 263).

• Largely misunderstood, what better creature to
  incorporate into the minds of America than the
  ultimate sleepwalker the zombie?!?

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American Gothic Ripple Effect

• Gothic literature has affected the rest of the
  American literary tradition.
• Mid Examples
• Poe Hawthorne(mid 1800s)
• Henry James (1898)
• Ambrose Bierce (until 1914)
• Slipping into the realm of the popular novel with
  H.P. Lovecraft and cult-fiction (1920s 1940s).

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1930's Hysteria A Turn to Film

• H-Bomb hysteria
• B Movie fascination
• Radioactive mutation
• UFO delirium
• Then current events
• WWI WWII
• Depression
• Dustbowl
• Prolonging Life
• At some point, the obsession with medical
  advancement brings us to neo-gothic and horror
  (see Bloom 3-4).

• White Zombie (1932)
• Revolt of the Zombies (1936)
• The Voodoo Man (1944)
• Zombies on Broadway (1945)

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Why Film and How Did We get to Zombies?

• Film
• Style and form, are secondary to the emotional
  impact of its images film is above all an
  essentially physically involving art (Gross 75).
  

• Zombie Connection
• When Madeleine (played by Madge Bellamy), upon
  Lugosis death, wakes from having been zombified,
  she states, I feel as if Ive just woken from a
  dream (1932) look this up for accuracy.
• It is as though Madeleine has been sleepwalking
  the whole time!

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Developments in film

• Zombies gain vampiric qualities, but remain under
  a master
• I Eat Your Skin (1961)
• The Plague of Zombies (1965)
• Zombie Breakthrough
• Romeros Night of the Living Dead (1968)
• Vietnam, Cold War, Bio-chemical warfare

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• The Rest of Romero
• Dawn of the Dead (1978)
• Vietnam reminiscent
• Day of the Dead (1985)
• Plans of massive bombings
• I Am Legend Films
• Last Man on Earth (1964)
• Omega Man (1971)
• I Am Legend (2007)
• Bio-chemical warfare and infectious disease
• 28 Days Later (2002)
• Zombies get faster and deadlier

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Three Types of Zombies Emerge

• Voodoo Zombie Largely non-dangerous, led by a
  master. Voodoo zombies most often can be cured by
  killing the master.
• Nuclear/Unexplained Undead Recently deceased
  return to life either by nuclear fallout or
  explosion, or by inexplicable circumstances.
  Undead are slow but dangerous, crave human flesh
  and may be killed by destroying the brain or
  removing the head
• Infected Not always dead, often infected by a
  man-made substance, extremely dangerous. Infected
  can sometimes run and are often destroyable by
  the same means one would kill any human.
• Mine is similar to Max Brookss zombie typology
  which I discovered after I came up with my own.
  Please see Zombie Survival Guide for a different
  perspective.

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Zombie as 'Other'

• Voodoo Zombie Southern African American Slave
• Nuclear/Unexplained Undead American Indian
• Infected Irish Immigrant

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Back to the Books

• 1970s gothic revival
• Stephen Kings Carrie (1974)
• Anne Rices Interview with a Vampire (1973)

• Why does King get to be gothic?
• King is concerned with American values an
  (ironically) provincial security, his work is
  based in social relations and family ties and is
  both democratic and yet nostalgic and
  conservative (Bloom 8).

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Bringing it Up to the Present

• Throughout our history, the American Dream has
  been denied to a large population of Americans.
  Dream denied its consequence nightmare (Krause
  294).

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What is Neo-Gothic?

• Since the 1980s, Batman comics and films have
  invented a neo- or retro-gothic amongst the art
  deco of New Yorks skyscrapers, making these the
  equivalent of the crumbling castles and monastic
  ruins of old (Bloom 2).
• While, the American gothic is haunted by race
  (Goddu 7), the American neo-gothic is haunted by
  a more P.C. other the zombie.

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Gothic vs. Horror

• Gothic

• Horror

• Always linked to the desire of contemporary
  readers (Bloom 2).
• Mood/atmosphere/ peculiarity
• Concerned with HUMAN NATURE

• Based on scientific progressbringing about
  changes which cannot themselves be rationally
  explained (11).
• Mood/atmosphere/ perversity
• Concerned with MANIPULATION OF EFFECT

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Stephen King's Cell (2006)

• The Pulse happens on October 1st at 303 PM
  Carnage
• Clay Riddell escapes Boston with Alice and Tom
  they head for Maine
• Staying at Gaiten Academy, the team learns that
  the phone-crazies are becoming a collective.
• The team blows up a hive of zombies and learns
  the zombies are telepathic.

• The team finds out that the rest of the normals
  are being herded to be changed.
• The team blows up the huge flock and the master
  (Raggedy Man).
• Clay goes after his son.

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Is Cell gothic?

• Yes

• No

• Setting Boston after the Pulse
• Mood/atmosphere very dark
• Clay Riddell is very concerned for other humans
  he even becomes concerned about the
  phone-crazies.
• Reflects current fears disease, terrorism,
  technology

• Setting is not remote, does not involve a large
  or dilapidated structure
• First chapters reek of carnage and gore
• Contains shocking/emotionally manipulative deaths
• apocalyptic in tone and plotting (Bloom 11)

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A Shocking Difference

• Clay Riddell views the zombies as more human
  than Edgar Huntly does the American Indians!
• mid-book narration - Hearing him talk that way,
  as if the phone people were organic computers in
  some kind of upload cycle, never failed to give
  Clay a chill (Cell 287).
• Clay ponders a great deal about how these
  rebooted zombies are going to live in their
  flock. Not once does Edgar Huntly consider the
  Indians as having a lifestyle.

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Instincts in a Time of Terror

• Edgar Huntly

• Clay Riddell Team

• Kills to survive
• Works alone
• Eats raw flesh to survive
• Catches the infection of sleepwalking
• Ultimately sympathizes with the Irish Immigrant
  other

• Kills to Survive
• Works in a team
• Eats canned goods and jerky to survive
• Does not catch the Pulse infection
• Ultimately sympathizes with his zombie son

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Instincts in a Time of Terror-Part II

• Edgar Huntly

• Phone-Crazy Zombies

• Kills to survive
• Works alone
• Eats raw flesh to survive
• Catches the infection of sleepwalking
• Ultimately sympathizes with the Irish Immigrant
  other

• Kills as murderous instinct then kills as
  survival
• Work as a flock (collective)
• Eats raw flesh as well as regular food
• Catches the infection of The Pulse
• Ultimately tries to make the normals sympathize
  with them.

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Back to Basic Instincts in Cell

• The Head We came to rule the earth not because
  we were the smartest, or even the meanest, but
  because we have always been the craziest, most
  murderous mother f_at_ers in the jungle (Cell
  206).
• Mankinds intelligence finally trumped mankinds
  killer instinct, and reason came to rule over
  mankinds maddest impulses. That, too, was
  survival (207).
• Jordan on motor function Even when you add in
  all the autonomic functions the infected
  control, plus the subconscious stuff dreams,
  blink-think, the sex drive, all that jazz our
  brains are barely ticking over (208), just like
  theyre sleepwalking.

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A Review

• 1789

• 1968

• End of Revolutionary War
• Brand New Settlements and the Unknown
• Battling Natives
• Fear of Slave Revolt
• Alien Sedition Acts
• Fear of Irish French Other

• The most violent year in American history since
  the end of the Civil War (qtd in Gross 85)
• Martin Luther King Assassinated
• Robert F. Kennedy is Shot
• Democratic National convention results in riot in
  Chicago
• Nixon is narrowly elected
• Vietnam continues

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2006

• War in Iraq continues
• Fight against immigration
• Enron executives found Guilty
• Liquids banned on all flights (some laptops
  banned as well)
• Iran nuclear standoff
• Hussein sentenced to death
• E. coli breakout spinach banned

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Films of 2006

• Pulse (largely the same issue as Stephen Kings
  Cell but with computers)
• The Hills Have Eyes remake by Wes Craven
• Slither (alien invasion)
• Ultraviolet (Mia Jovovich fights vampires)

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Conclusion

• As American history unfolds, so will the
  development of the zombie.
• How will the next generation of gothic/horror
  depict the zombie?
• Will neo-gothic elements continue to develop?
• Will they shift in and out of horror like they do
  now?
• How much worse could it really get?