Zombie Essay

Submitted By christinetable
Words: 1124
Pages: 5
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Christine Mesa
English 1500-22
Professor Thompson
4 March 2015

Zombie by Chuck Palahniuk Imagine being so depressed you need a permanent self-harm to take away the pain. The permanent self-harm is not suicide, but another form of taking your own life using defibrillators. In the short story, “Zombie” by Chuck Palahniuk, the characters take their lives away by shocking themselves. Although the students do not kill themselves, they are basically brain dead. They attach the pads onto their temples and press the button and let the machines do the rest. Some may be in favor for using the defibrillator to take their lives, while others are not. Using defibrillators as a way to end pain and find happiness again is not morally acceptable for multiple reasons. “Self-zombification” is a term used through out the short story. This term is used when the students turn themselves into “zombies.” The kids are described as zombies because they physically look normal and human-like, but they have lost everything about themselves. They take an AED that is used for the heart and to perform CPR to self-destruct. The way that the teenagers self-zombificate themselves is ironic. The defibrillators were made to save lives, not end them. Once these teenagers get their hands on these devices they use it and become almost brain dead. “After pushing the red defibrillator button, yeah, a person suffers some consequences but he doesn’t know he’s suffering” (Pulahniuk 3). Not only are the teens abusing the machines to have no worries or regrets, but because it has become the latest trend. Some are joining in this foolish act because they feel as if there are very few ‘regular’ people left. The teenagers purposely misuse the defibrillators for self-harm and social reasons, which is not a fair enough reason to become a zombie. Morally, it is wrong to use these devices for ‘self-zombification.’ Many of the students started to self-harm for social reasons. They wanted to fit in with the rest of their classmates. It got to the point where more students were acting like zombies than their normal selves. The narrator was conversing with his uncle about the new trend of using heart shockers to fall into this dull state. “If all your friends jumped off a cliff, would you?” (Palahniuk 3). His uncle was making sure that his nephew was not getting any ideas about self-harming himself. It was important that the author includes this scene in the text because it relates to today’s society. Today, teens give into peer pressure and do things because it has become the new trend even if they feel uncomfortable. This quote proves that these adolescents are putting permanent damage to their bodies just because they think they are following the rest.
Many people will argue that shocking oneself is a good idea because it gives the person no worries and no regrets. Using the AEDs for evil instead of good is almost suicide. Even though all the functions of the body work, the person he used to be is gone. Examples of students becoming zombies include; Tricia Gedding not wearing pants in public, Boris Declan sniffing his buttocks in the school cafeteria, and Griffith Wilson masturbating on the school bus. It is clear that these examples have no use for their brain anymore. They become infants trapped in 16-year-old bodies, they cannot do anything for themselves.
Not only does this action affect themselves but their families as well. In the story, the narrator, Trevor, and his uncle are in the airport and Trevor comes running out to his uncle attached to the machine. His uncle is drenched in sweat from fear of seeing his nephew about to take his own life in front of hundreds of people. Trevor turns to his uncle and says, “I’ll keep loving you, Uncle Henry…I just won’t know who are you” (page 6). By becoming brain dead and self-zombfied, Trevor and the rest of his friends are hurting the loved ones around them. Uncle Henry then responds with, “If you hurt yourself, you
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