Handling the Undead - An Essay

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danielma
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Handling the Undead - An Essay

Post by danielma » Mon May 21, 2012 2:57 am

Okay people...be honest with me and tell me if this is good, what needs fixing, does it make sense? This is an essay I wrote on Handling the Undead and how I feel it is a parallel to the Pro Life Arguement

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HANDLING THE UNDEAD – An Essay

Handling the Undead is a zombie novel that avoids featuring your typical zombie. The zombies that occupy this book are not the nameless faceless flesh eaters of the past. Instead they are real people with real connections to their loved ones. John Ajvide Lindqvist uses the Zombie construct as a back drop to delve into relevant topics. Now this is not the first time that people have used the Zombie construct as a form of social commentary. Let us not forget George Romero’s Dead trilogy focused on three different aspects of society. Night of the Living Dead was about Racism. Dawn of the Dead was about Consumerism. Day of the Dead was about Vivisection. The key thing that Romero’s films have shared is the idea of the antagonist being your typical flesh eaters. Handling the Undead flips this notion on its ear and instead paints its Reliving as Damaged People. They live off basic instincts but don’t necessarily mean any harm to the living, at least not from the outset. It is through this motion that the social commentary of Handling the Undead becomes clear. If Dawn of the Dead was about consumerism then Handling the Undead is about the Pro-Life argument.

The story of Handling the Undead shifts between at least five different protagonists. I could go into great detail into each and every one of these protagonist but for now I want to focus on just three of them and how they relate back to the central idea of the Pro-Life argument that is running underneath the story. But in order to do this, I still have to explain the bare basic plot. The story takes place in Stockholm during a summer heat wave. All across Stockholm the power is refusing to go out, household appliances will not turn off. The heat is unbearable and everyone seems to be suffering from the same head splitting migraine. Then suddenly it just stops, almost like an overload of an overheated system. As a result a strange occurrence has happened, the dead have been resurrected.

The story of the novel deals with society and how society deals with this unexplainable phenomenon. The five protagonists in the story represent different sides of society. You have the elderly grandmother Elvy who believes that this is a sign of End Days and the eventual resurrection of our saviour Jesus Christ. Then there is her granddaughter Flora who initially believes that this phenomenon will lead to the natural conclusion of Chaos amongst society. Then there is David whose wife, Eva, died on the eve of the strange phenomenon. David is the everyman and represents a cross between hope and denial. On one hand, David is hoping that his wife will be returned to him and life will go on and on the other hand, he wants to deny everything that is otherworldly strange about this phenomenon. Then there is the final story and in many ways the truly heartbreaking and emotionally devastating story of the piece. The story of Mahler, Anna and her six year old son Elias; their representation to this society is that of the Pro-Life argument.

Mahler is a freelance journalist for a major Stockholm paper who is informed of the unexplained happenings by his Editor and told to get down to the Morgue to get the scoop. Once Mahler arrives at the morgue, he descends down via an elevator to hear high pitched screams. Here he witnesses that it is indeed true, the dead have come back. At first Mahler is startled by the sight but then he grows anxious at the thought of his recently deceased 6 year old grandson, Elias, possibly returning. Elias died just a month earlier after a tragic accident where he fell from Mahler’s beach house veranda to the asphalt dying on impact. Mahler rushes out of the morgue and heads for Elia’s grave.

Mahler returns to Elias grave. There is no sign of Elias returning, nor is there sign of any dead in the cemetery rising. He starts to think that maybe it’s a lost cause until he hears the slightest hint of scratching from Elias grave. In one of the more heartbreaking and disturbing scenes of the novel Mahler frantically starts to dig at the dirt with his bare hands and as he digs further the scratching becomes louder. Eventually he gets to Elias coffin and manages to pry it open to reveal a harsh truth. That Elias’ frail body has started to mummify due to the decomposing process. This is not the Elias that Mahler fondly remembers. Gone is the happy and lively child and in its place are the frail and fragile remains of that child. But none the less Mahler takes him back to his apartment. It is about this time that the authorities have started to round up the reliving and move them to a medical centre in Danderyd for further studying.

Once he gets Elias back to the apartment, he tries to bathe Elias to remove the rotting smell of the decomposing child. Soon after, the police contact Elias’ mother, Anna, in regards to the tampered grave. Anna immediately contacts Mahler to whom Mahler confesses that it was him and that he has Elias. Anna rushes over and demands to see her now reliving son. But much like Mahler’s initial reaction, she is shocked and disappointed to realize that it is not the Elias she remembers. However they both decide to keep the child in hope that maybe over time he will get better and become somewhat functional.

However the Police start to investigate and soon after Mahler and Anna are forced to flee the apartment for Mahler’s holiday home to escape the authorities. Once they arrive at the holiday home Mahler continues to try and help Elias develop a little more. They resort to books written about Autism as Mahler truly begins to believe that he can help Elias return as a somewhat passable functioning member of society. Anna is a little more sceptical as a whole but goes with it out of the love for her child.

Throughout the novel Anna and Mahler find themselves at odds. Mahler believes that Anna has no will to help Elias recover or develop. Mahler essentially plays the role of the Pro Life argument whilst Anna plays the opposite end of the argument. Anna believes that there is a method of cruelty in what Mahler is trying to do. Indeed there are many moments in the novel where Mahler’s actions could be considered as being quite cruel. Once such moment is when he takes a remote controlled car and starts driving it around in front of Elias. Mahler’s intentions are honourable as it can be seen as a way to try and re-develop Elias reactionary and motor skills. Elias reaches out for the car but can never quite catch it due to his limited strength. Mahler grows frustrated with Elias limited capacity of development. As a result Elias takes the toy car and dismantles it almost reflecting Mahler’s own aggravation and frustrations.

Whilst reading these sections of the novel, I couldn’t help but think of the Terri Schiavo case. I couldn’t help but think that Elias plays a great parallel to Terri Schiavo. He is essentially a comatose child throughout most of the novel. He has a few basic motor skills and reflex’s but the flesh is weak and the mind unwilling. In one of the earlier scenes of the novel, we see Mahler trying to feed Elias through a syringe since Elias is unable to digest or swallow on his own. This of course calls up images of comatose brain damaged patients on feeding tubes. Indeed this is reminiscent of Terri Schiavo who was determined to be unable to swallow and lived for many years through life support. Mahler is offering the same support to his grandson in form of both malnutrition and development.

For Mahler it is that constant struggle of trying to bring Elias back to a state of awareness. Throughout the novel we catch glimpses that may or maybe not prove that Elias was potentially slowly returning. As the novel progresses, Elias does show some minor sign of life. But the question is left in the air as to whether Mahler’s treatment was really working or not. This is questionable due to the nature of telepathy that the novel deals in. There is a telepathic line of communication between the dead and the living. When the thousands of reliving people are sent to Danderyd there are reported instances of the medical advisors being driven mad due to the ability to hear the thoughts of other people surrounding them. This leads to a catastrophe of sorts when the reliving is relocated to an unfinished apartment residence in order for the living to receive visitation rights. But it also leads to the reveal that Anna has been in contact with Elias via telepathy.

It seems that the dead react in favour to our own emotions and thoughts. An instance of this is a moment in which Mahler shows frustration with his daughter for her lack of co-operation. That frustration reflects of Elias as he pops up in defence of his mother. It’s questionable whether it was truly Elias or whether it is a shared energy between the dead and the living. After all, David’s wife Eva is one of the few who is capable of speech and yet every time she talks, it sounds robotic and almost parrot like. The question is somewhat left in the air as to just how much of the reliving are the people we once loved.

All of this leads into the rights issues. Certainly the Terri Schaivo case gave way to the Pro-Life movement and disabled rights groups. But what bearing does this have within the world that Handling the Undead takes place in? Well it is discussed by politicians in one of the many overview moments of the novel. There are no precedents for a situation like this and it leaves the politicians stumped. What rights do the reliving have? Do they have any rights? What do we do with close to a thousand of these damaged people now roaming the surface? What is the answer to this? Well in the novel's case, they move the undead from the medical facility to a block of housing flats. Or as it is described in the novel, a slightly bigger coffin. Essentially the government keep the dead in a residency with the purpose to keep them malnourished and under supervisition. Its topics like these that most Zombie stories avoid completely as they opt for the story of raw instinct survival. And yet funnily enough, these arguments end up echoing Terri Schaivo once again. After all, without a living will, what rights did Terri Schaivo have? Considering she couldn’t speak for herself, it almost becomes the issue of society. All of this is wisely skimmed in Handling the Undead. I say wisely because John Lindqvist doesn’t necessarily side with one or the other. He opens the ideas and leaves his readers to think about those ideas.

It is this very topic that plays a big part on an argument that our world went through from 1998 right up to this day. The legal battle of the Terri Schaivo case ran from 1998 through to 2002. Due to a lack of a living will, it became a grey area as to whether it was morally just to keep Terri Schaivo alive in the state that she was in. All of this led to Michael Shaivo starting a petition for the removal of the feeding tube and to let his wife die in peace whilst her parents refused and insisted to keep her alive. In Handling the Undead it becomes clear through their arguments that Anna and Mahler are the representation of the two opposing sides.

You could argue that John does choose a side in the end. After-all the novel ends with the overall idea that you have to let go of those you loved and move on. But I don’t know if this is necessarily a conclusive ending or a statement on John’s behalf. It’s a conclusive ending in regards to the emotional journey of those characters. Anna finally comes to terms with letting Elias go whilst learning that there will be a part of him that will be with her forever. That is indeed a satisfying conclusion for Anna’s own emotional journey but what of society? The novel ends rather abruptly in regards to society. In fact the last image we see of society is panic and fear gripping the nation. Whilst John gives his main characters an emotional conclusion, he still leaves the notion of what happens to society up in the air.

When it’s all said and done, I think that the central idea of novel plays on the Pro-Life argument and how society reacts to it. Is it cruel to hold on to your loved ones even if they aren’t your loved ones anymore? Those are the questions that I believe John Ajvide Lindqvist intends to impart on his audience. The main characters have their own emotional conclusion but as for society as a whole it’s still left in the air. To quote Men In Black “a person is smart, people are dumb dangerous animals”. That is well noted in Handling the Undead when all the terrible things start to happen because of humanity’s own fears.
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Re: Handling the Undead - An Essay

Post by gattoparde59 » Fri Sep 07, 2012 4:07 pm

I don’t think this novel is concerned with the Pro-life debate, or Terry Schiavo, or anything of the like except in the very general sense. It is very painful losing a loved one, painful and inevitable.

I am going to speculate and say this novel began something like this: “If the dead were suddenly resurrected what would happen? More to the point: “if the dead were suddenly resurrected what would it mean?” So in Handling the Undead you have corpses suddenly quick again and you get reactions from various concerned parties. The Media makes reports. Experts opine. The government takes measures and so forth.

What does it all mean? I think it turns into a “pro-life of the spirit” argument more than the Terry Schiavo case. If the dead come back to life in the absence of biological life that means that the souls of the dead have returned to their bodies. If the souls of the dead can return to their bodies that means that the soul has an existence separate from the material body. The dead bodies in Handling the Undead are given life by a spiritual force, the human soul, not vice versa. The arguments in the Terry Schiavo case seem to be almost dead opposite. :) If biological life continues than there must be a soul in there, right?

Things move backwards in Handling the Undead and the ordinary linear progression of life into death is thrown into reverse in a very disturbing way. The story is fantastic, but I think it does expose some basic fears we all share, since we all have to deal with death.

I'll break open the story and tell you what is there. Then, like the others that have fallen out onto the sand, I will finish with it, and the wind will take it away.

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Re: Handling the Undead - An Essay

Post by danielma » Sat Sep 08, 2012 12:20 am

gattoparde59 wrote:I don’t think this novel is concerned with the Pro-life debate, or Terry Schiavo, or anything of the like except in the very general sense. It is very painful losing a loved one, painful and inevitable.

I am going to speculate and say this novel began something like this: “If the dead were suddenly resurrected what would happen? More to the point: “if the dead were suddenly resurrected what would it mean?” So in Handling the Undead you have corpses suddenly quick again and you get reactions from various concerned parties. The Media makes reports. Experts opine. The government takes measures and so forth.

What does it all mean? I think it turns into a “pro-life of the spirit” argument more than the Terry Schiavo case. If the dead come back to life in the absence of biological life that means that the souls of the dead have returned to their bodies. If the souls of the dead can return to their bodies that means that the soul has an existence separate from the material body. The dead bodies in Handling the Undead are given life by a spiritual force, the human soul, not vice versa. The arguments in the Terry Schiavo case seem to be almost dead opposite. :) If biological life continues than there must be a soul in there, right?

Things move backwards in Handling the Undead and the ordinary linear progression of life into death is thrown into reverse in a very disturbing way. The story is fantastic, but I think it does expose some basic fears we all share, since we all have to deal with death.
When I say that, it's not like I think he sat down and wrote the novel with that in mind. I very much agree with you, I think he sat down and said "well if the dead were reanimated then how would society deal with it?" and then from there it became a meditation on the fear that is common in all our hearts - death. I think the two key themes in the novel are death and dealing with loss.

But, there is something that strikes me about the other idea running through the core of the novel, which is "how far does our capacity of love go when the person may no longer be the person we knew"...and it was from that where I started thinking about it in real-life. Like what would be a case that would come the closet to something like this situation...and that was when the Terry Schiavo case sprung to mind. I'm with you all the way, I don't think he sat down with the intent to write something that would parallel that situation...rather, it's a lot like the parallel's for Let the Right One, some call it a tender coming of age story, some call it a gay love story, some call it a warning and so on...but really, I doubt any of that was what JAL had in mind rather then wanting just wanting to write about the town he grew up in meeting the other. Point is, I think people come to those conclusions on their own terms and that was the same thing here, I came to this on my own term not knowing if that was in any way intent on JAL's behalf (which I doubt it was entirely)

I think you worded it better then I did...like I said, I wasn't sure whether what I was writing was in the right path or not, hence why I wanted opinions so thank you, you worded it better then I could :)...I just looked at the Anna, David and Elias story and think there is a method of cruelty by having Mahler want to cling on to Elias in hope. I think Anna provides the counter-argument. I think Anna knows deep down that it's wrong to want to keep him here. I think what you said about the "pro-life of the spirit" is spot on and worded better then I could have done.
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