The Applicability of…Zombies?
Last Thursday something a little unusual happened here on WU. The post published that day was a new edition of the popular monthly feature Flog A Pro, by WU’s own Ray Rhamey. If you haven’t read the post and plan to, here’s your spoiler alert! in regard to the unusual aspect. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the pro Ray featured was an icon of fantasy, and the book is beloved staple to the genre. The book: The Wizard of Earthsea (1968). The author: the late great Ursula K. Le Guin.
The results of the poll, however, were less surprising, with almost two-thirds saying they would not read on past the first page. And although Ray voted yes, and the majority of the comments were positive (with no few recognizing the book and author), I was also unsurprised by several commenters making their reflexive aversion to the genre apparent.
Hey, I get it. Everyone has a right to dislike certain types of stories. As a lifelong fantasy fan, I’m long past having hard feelings over that. Besides, things have never been better for fantasy as a genre, both for creators and consumers. The adaptations keep rolling and the fandom keeps growing. Still, it makes me just a little sad, to think that so many still dismiss an entire genre out of hand.
The response to Ray’s post got me thinking about the breadth and the versatility of the fantasy genre. I honestly don’t think there’s another literary genre that so aptly and routinely incorporates the tropes and motifs of other genres. You name it, fantasy authors have done it. Murder mystery?—guilty. Horror—frightfully often. Political intrigue?—I’ll swear to it. Romance?—it’s adorably routine. Thriller?—yahoo!
In other words, there’s something for just about everyone in my genre. Not to mention the staggering scope of possibilities for creators. Still, there are obviously some types of stories that fantasy does better than others. For me, fantasy is at its best on a vast canvas, exploring big themes, even existential ones.
“Fantasy is a different approach to reality; an alternative technique for apprehending and coping with existence. It is not antirational, but para-rational, super-rational—a heightening of reality.”—Ursula Le Guin (from the essay, From Elfland to Poughkeepsie)
Pondering the things I think the genre apprehends particularly well, in combination with the horrific headlines of the past week, reminded me of something else that recently appeared here on WU. On Tuesday, Dave King published a thought-provoking piece on writing good versus evil. I tend to agree with Dave, that capturing goodness in humans is a complex undertaking for writers. I also tend to agree that evil can be—and often is—simplified in storytelling. In the piece Dave mentions the willful shelling of a train station in Ukraine by Russian invaders. He says, “Evil people make the deliberate decision to be bad and often take delight in doing harm.” And, “Evil is simple. Good is complex.”
While I don’t disagree with the broad principles Dave presents in his essay, I do think the finer aspects of those principles beg a few questions. And they’re questions that epic fantasy often tends to posit—perhaps better than any other genre. I believe they are questions that should be asked, even if they can’t always be satisfactorily answered. If you’re willing to stay with me, allow me to at least attempt to make my case.
What’s In Your Head, Zombie?
If you’re wondering how the zombies in the title figure into this essay, well, the answer starts with a 28 year old song. I randomly heard it while pondering the issue of evil. The song is Zombie, by the Irish rock band The Cranberries. If you’re not familiar, Zombie is an antiwar song written in regard to “the Troubles” in Northern Ireland. Cranberries frontwoman Dolores O’Riordan wrote it in response to the IRA (Irish Republican Army) bombing in Warrington, Cheshire, England on March 20, 1993, in which two young boys were killed. Zombie charted at #1 in eight countries in 1994, and the impactful video for the song has been viewed on YouTube over 1.2 billion times (that’s billion with a B). I’ll leave it to others to ascribe or refute any level of correlation, but The Good Friday Agreement, signaling the beginning of the end of the Troubles, was signed on April 10, 1998.
I was wowed by the song when I first heard it, and yet when I hear it these days, instead of 1994 I’m transported to 2016. That was the year that my wife set up a guided tour of Belfast for a group of eight of us, all close friends and family. On the bus on our way from Dublin to Belfast, our guide, a lifelong citizen of Belfast, spoke at length about life during the Troubles. He spoke of living in a perpetual state of fear and mistrust, with the threat of violence an instant away and the reminders of past transgression and martyrdom ever-present; how every child is so naturally indoctrinated into the grim circumstance of enduring conflict.
Our guide explained to us that when the song first hit the charts, it caused a sensation in his city because everyone—Ulster loyalist and Catholic republican alike—felt reflexively defensive to it. He asked us to listen to the lyrics anew, imagining how he and his fellow citizens felt, confronting whether or not their state of mind—what was in their heads—had indeed made them zombies.
“Another head hangs lowly
A child is slowly taken
And the violence, caused such silence
Who are we mistaken?But you see, it’s not me
It’s not my family
In your head, in your head, they are fighting
With their tanks, and their bombs
And their bombs, and their guns
In your head, in your head they are cryingIn your head, in your head
Zombie, zombie, zombie-ie-ie
What’s in your head, in your head?
Zombie, zombie, zombie-ie-ie, oh…”
Hearing the song after he spoke was incredibly powerful. Once in Belfast, we went on to take the famous Black Cab tour, which I highly recommend. We saw the walls that separate the neighborhoods, the gates that for decades cordoned off citizens in conflict each night. We saw the murals intended both to memorialize the fallen and stoke vengefulness. Our driver, who happened to be Catholic and a former IRA fighter, was about my age, as were the drivers who were former Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) fighters. These men had been blood-sworn enemies, and yet they were doing this together. Our driver told us that although he and his fellow cabbies likely had tried to kill one another in dozens of skirmishes, they can now share a beer. Zombies no more, but still, the lingering tension was clear. For example, our driver did not enter the Protestant neighborhood we toured (we got out and walked), and vice-versa (those with Protestant drivers walked into the Catholic neighborhood).
Ultimately, Belfast is a tale of hope. Our driver told us the tale of his sister, who married a Protestant (a mixed marriage by Belfast standards). He told us of his daughter and her high school swim team, how they entered an intercity swim meet; told us of how before the pool opened, her Catholic teammates and their Protestant school opponents naturally moved to opposite sides of the holding room; told us how his daughter spotted her cousin there among the opposing team, how they ran to hug one another—the communal shock at the sight of the embrace. Our driver told us that he and the other parents watched in awe as the two groups of teenagers slowly gravitated together in the wake of the cousins’ embrace, how they tentatively integrated and then swiftly got acquainted. How the room was transformed—filled with teenage banter and laughter.
“Our hope, the hope of this city—it lies in our young ones,” he said to us. “They’re the ones who’ll carry us beyond the trauma and get us to that hope.”
The Nature of Evil
“In Freudian terminology, fantasy employs primary, not secondary, process thinking. It employs archetypes, which Jung warned us are dangerous things. Dragons are more dangerous, and a good deal commoner, than bears.”—Le Guin (From Elfland to Poughkeepsie)
Which brings me back to Dave’s assertion that evil is simple. Maybe so. But the nature of zombies and the birth of hope in Belfast makes me wonder: What exactly is evil? Can a human being be born evil? Is it the human that’s evil, or is it their acts that are evil? Is evil born of hate? Is hate born of resentment? Can resentment be born of lies?
In Ukraine, the situation only becomes more dire, more horrifying, by the day. The mass graves, the targeting of civilians—the willful terrorizing of an entire populace, with the intention of erasing an entire nation. Beyond a doubt, these things are evil. Still, even if we believe that Putin himself is evil, how does one compel the active participation in evil of tens of thousands of young soldiers? How does one make hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of young human beings—humans who have mothers and sweethearts and pets—into state-sponsored terrorists? Is a chain of command all it takes? Can orders from a superior ever warrant slaughter?
If so, how far can any of us claim to be from zombies?
Horrifying as war is, and as guilty as the criminals already are, I don’t find those questions to be easy ones. I don’t believe they can be dismissed, either. Even if evil can be portrayed in a simple way, I don’t think war and the hatred and lies that fuel it should be simplified or presumed to be inexorable.
Off the top of my head, I can think of at least a dozen epic fantasy series that explore, in very serious and often profound ways, this very topic—of war, of the blood and killing and trauma intrinsic to it. In other words, epic fantasy is chock full of zombies. And I think they’re pretty damn applicable.
I think there’s an antiquated notion that much of epic fantasy relies on a simple good versus evil dynamic. If it was ever true, I assure you it no longer is. If you haven’t read any lately, I can also assure you that war and the questions surrounding it are rarely taken lightly in modern epic fantasy. Many of the series that spring to mind also delve concepts like penitence, redemption, reparation, and forgiveness. These are concepts that the world will need if we are to navigate from the perils of these dark and frightening times.
Getting to the Hope
As I say, maybe evil is simple. It cannot be tolerated. We must always strive to defeat it. These are simple binaries, unarguable. But don’t those simple truths implore us to better understand it? Zombies exist. They perpetuate horrific crimes. But doesn’t that beg us to cry out, as O’Riordan did: “What’s in your head?”
“Fantasy is nearer to poetry, to mysticism, and to insanity than naturalistic fiction is. It is a real wilderness, and those who go there should not feel too safe. And their guides, the writers of fantasy, should take their responsibilities seriously.”—Le Guin (From Elfland to Poughkeepsie)
Now more than ever, I believe that epic fantasy is well-suited—perhaps better than any other genre—to asking the vital questions about war, bloodshed, and hate. I believe we need to question the nature of evil, and I think many in my genre are already doing just that.
If we, like my family’s ex-IRA and ex-UVF cabbie guides, are ever going to get past the trauma in our world, to be awed by the sight of our young ones coming together in embrace—if we’re ever going to get through to the hope—we must strive to understand what it is that makes zombies of so many of our fellow humans. I think that requires us to ask questions that take us beyond the simplicity of good versus evil.
I believe that, as writers, it’s incumbent upon us to strive to pose the difficult questions, even if we don’t have the answers. Or maybe especially if we don’t. Even if you’re not ready or able to write explicitly of war—whether you explore the complexities of goodness or the nature of evil—we need your truths. We need each other in order to be better. If you have any lingering doubts that your questions, your words, your truths, can make an impact, you have but to think of Dolores, asking her countrymen, “What’s in your heads?”
As an epic fantasy writer, I—for one—am ready and willing to strive. In response to Le Guin I say yes, I will take my responsibilities seriously.
What about you, WU? Have you been to Belfast? Do you believe in zombies? Do you think we should strive to explore the nature of evil in order to get to the hope?
