The Zombie Papers, Part 2
Click here for Part 1
Vampires have appeared in folklore and
myth since the Sumerian times, but it was not until Lord Byron penned his Fragment
of a Novel in 1816 that the vampire became part of the literary
tradition. Byron’s gentlemanly fiend,
feasting on virgins has he made his way across Europe, commented on social
manners and sexual repression of the day—in addition to its reflect on Byron’s
own wanton behaviors. While the undead have
long been present in myth and folktale, it is not until the last century that
we’ve seen this monster become a center-piece in works of literature. Starting
with Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend written in 1954s, we now have a canon
in progress. Zombies, as we conceive of
then in contemporary pop culture, are at the beginning of a new monster canon. In Our Vampires, Ourselves, Nina
Auerbach wrote that “every age embraces the vampire it needs” (145). This certainly seems true when one reflects on
the variations of vampires we’ve seen since 1816: from eccentric counts to glimmering high school
students. We might suggest, instead, that
every age embraces the monster it needs. Contemporary zombies, in their endless
pursuit of oral consumption, are a fitting symbol of modern social ills.
Despite
the fact that zombie is the monster du jour, this does not mean that the undead
are altogether absent from folklore or earlier works of literature. In fact, the oldest recorded reference to the
living dead occurs in the ancient Sumerian poem, “The Epic of Gilgamesh.” In
the epic poem, the Goddess Ishtar threatens to:
break in the
doors of hell and smash the bolts; there will be confusion of people, those
above with those from the lower depths. I shall bring up the dead to eat food
like the living; and the hosts of dead will outnumber the living (12).
The undead’s rightful place is in the “lower depths,”
and their presence in the world of the living would be an incursion on the
order of the Sumerian world-view. They
would not consume the living, but would eat food and outnumber them. Their presence amongst the living is a threat
to cosmology. The dead’s presence
amongst the living raises questions often considered in zombie literature: if
the undead are rising, what does that mean for my immortal soul? What has happened to the after-life? The dead mixing with the living breaks taboo allowing
a cross-over of worlds. Questions about mortality and immortality, a
significant theme in “The Epic of Gilgamesh,” are called into question. Such
questions are still relevant in the discussion of zombie literature today.
Early
Slavic and Russian folktale also contains references to the undead. One of the most common undead characters is Koschie
the deathless, an undead—often skeletal—prankster who tempts unwitting maidens
and Russian bogatyrs. In many folktales,
Koschie is bound by chains and locked in a closet. When discovered, he begs to be released. Usually
an innocent maiden will set him free only to be abducted. Defeating Koschie the
deathless usually involves hacking him to pieces, burning his body, and
scattering his ashes. Encounters with
the undead usually spell trouble for the living. In The Dead Mother, an undead mother
returns from the grave to nurse the baby she left behind. When the undead mother is discovered,
however, the child dies. Another tale, The
Fiend, features a young woman charmed by a handsome stranger only to find
him feasting on a corpse. Slavic and
Russian traditions have very strict rules regarding burial ritual. The appearance of the undead is often the
result of failure to follow ritual.
Cannibalistic
and zombie-like creatures appear in the folk beliefs of many cultures. Native American folktales include the figure
of the windigo (weendigo). The windigo has
a variety of descriptions: from a wolf-like creature that devours humans,
preferably immoral ones, to something akin to the contemporary Slender Man. One of the main qualities of a windigo is
cannibalism. This concept is so
prevalent that it has been termed as windigo psychosis, a culture-bound
psychopathology attributed North American Native American tribes from which the
windigo legend emerges. (citation) While
windigos are often described as flesh eaters, Ojibwa author Basil Johnston
explains the motivation of a windigo in different terms:
The Weendigo
has no other objective in life but to satisfy this lust and hunger, expending
all its energy on this purpose. As long as its lust and hunger are satisfied,
nothing else matters--not compassion, sorrow, reason, or judgment. Although the
Weendigo is an exaggeration, it exemplifies human nature's tendency to indulge
its self-interests, which, once indulged, demand even greater indulgence and
ultimately result in the extreme--the erosion of principles and values (224).
What is being described by Johnston is not exactly
cannibalism nor is this a fanged creature stalking campers in the woods. In this case, qualities of the windigo are
depicted much like the zombies of today—beings who were once human now
consuming endlessly without satisfaction.
But when do these zombie like legends begin to make the jump from the
monsters of folklore to the monster of literature? We'll explore this more in the next edition of The Zombie Papers!
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