The walking dead and the Coronavirus : a critical study of selected zombie fiction in relation to the pandemic

الملخص EN

Since their appearances in literature and cinema, the infected walking dead masses present an implied fear of a future without a future: of humans being controlled by death and being deprived of their reasoning capacities; and of a modern world being paused by a state of dehumanization and cultural breakdown.

Such fear flags in real life by the emergence of coronavirus that has taken the world by surprise.

This paper discusses that, in the age of coronavirus, the fictional zombie figure, particularly in Isaac Marion's Warm Bodies (2010) and M.

R.

Carey'sThe Girl with All the Gifts (2014), is no longer read as a delineated monstrous 'Other' but has become a figurative image which serves to question our humanity tested by a viral pandemic resulting in profound alienation from ordinary daily life, human relationships and moral senses with the trauma theory at the heart of the discussion.