Zombies are popping up everywhere. In video games. On TV. In the movies. In books. And much of it centers on blood, guts and death which, when you’re talking about zombies is usually what you’d expect. But is there something deeper going on in the zombie genre? Could there be important life lessons about ethics and spiritual formation lurking behind the horror and death? Well, if you as Baylor University professor Greg Garrett, author of the new book Living with the Living Dead: The Wisdom of the Zombie Apocalypse, the answer most definitely is “Yes!”
Key Takeaways:
- Professor Garrett says The Walking Dead is not really about zombies, it’s “about human beings in this world and the choices that they are forced to make in order to survive.”
- The book explores social breakdown, a phenomenon, Baylor asserts goes back hundreds of years, and the choices that individuals must make to survive.
- Stories that describe a species-wide struggle that ensues when government and familial mainstays collapse, as with zombie tales, can prove fodder even for religious sermons.
“Garrett said he’s studied such tales dating back hundreds of years, and found that from the Dark Ages through to the Holocaust, the nuclear age and the post 9-11 era, cultures have been fascinated with social breakdown and how people, including themselves, would handle it.”
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