preview

Stragglers In Zone One Essay

Good Essays

After the world suffers through a tragic plague, many people are either dead or surviving. The infected are turned to either skels or stragglers. Skels are vicious and dangerous because they attack human beings, while stragglers are less likely to attack because they are motionless and repetitive. Human beings that survive are traumatized and suffer through Post-Apocalyptic Stress Disorder (PASD). The novel is delivered through the life events of Mark Spitz, who sees himself as mediocre. Spitz is not a typical hero who fends for anyone, but neither a heartless individual. In the span of three days the author deliberately uses his characters memories to relive through their past lifestyles. In his novel, Zone One, Whitehead uses descriptive imagery to acknowledge past and present human lifestyles. Whitehead uses the motionless gestures of stragglers to mirror the past and present …show more content…

Whitehead portrays the illusion of stragglers retaining dumbly human characteristics to indicate how the human mind is programmed to performing everyday tasks. While Mark Spitz attempts to define the difference between a skel and a straggler it is evident that stragglers simply pass through life. Mark Spitz mentions that stragglers “[do] not move” and are seen as “an army of mannequins” (60). When Whitehead infers that stragglers are like mannequins it pushes the reader to believe that they are unintelligently assembled and perhaps easily maneuvered around like puppets. Whitehead shows that stragglers are motionless and pursue no desire to get anything in life. Whitehead repeatedly includes scenarios where stragglers are shown, trying to relive everyday situations. For instance, Whitehead mentions, “[t]heir lives had been an interminable loop of repeated gestures; now their existences were winnowed to this discrete and eternal moment” (62). Whitehead

Get Access