User:Kelsey.Dong

Description
The main character Mark Spitz worked with the other people who had survived the pandemic by eliminating the zombies from New York City and create a better environment in the city for people to live there again. They also tried to clear the widely spread and deadly pandemic, but it was difficult to do anything about the virus (Swanson, 2014). This novel implied the world's civilization from its plot, which was attacked and destroyed by the virus. Whitehead conceived that the glory of the past has gone, and the culture will eventually die and become only a portion of history.
 * Zone one is a novel written by Colson Whitehead, an American novelist in the year of 2011. The book talks about how the world's civilization was attacked and destroyed by an epidemic virus (Sorensen, 2014). The virus 4 infected people and transformed them into flesh-eating and mortally contagious zombies. The zombies lived in lower Manhattan and emerged due to the division of humanity to two different groups, namely the living and the living dead- the zombies (Hurley, 2015). Several scientists and other different army units fought to cure the pandemic and heal the falling world with every effort possible.

Characters
Mark Spitz is the main character in this novel. He is one of the survivors and belonged to a sweeper unit to help other people who were spared by the pandemic (Sorensen, 2014). Spitz and his fellow sweepers tried to eliminate the zombies and make the New York City habitable again (Sorensen, 2014). He was regarded as a hero in this novel (Sorensen, 2014). The book described him as a great guy who lived in New York and fought for the nail and tooth for the city to become average and exceptional again (Sorensen, 2014). Stragglers These are emotional sentiments that were attached to the survivors of the pandemic. The Stragglers were attached to the souls and previous lives of the survivors and haunted them day and night. This made the survivors emotionally unstable, always disturbed, and uneasy (Sorensen, 2014). The survivors had to detach themselves from the Stragglers from their personal lives and dehumanize them (Sorensen, 2014). Buffalo headquarters They represented civilization and corporate sponsorships. All the authorities were located in this headquarter, the commands where issues and rulings were made from there (Ness, 2011). It had a hierarchical system of governance that gave hope and authority. New York city This is the origin of Zone One novel. It was also called the Manhattan or the China town. It was a very developed town with many skyscrapers and a highly raised apartment with the world's best civilization. Its development is evident in the novel Zone One as the author describes it with so many great things (Ness, 2011).
 * Mark Spitz

Literary Analysis
Mark Spitz, together with Gary, a trigger-happy guy, and their team leader Kaitlyn, who always followed the rule of law, were a sweeper team. The team was working hand in hand to eliminate zombies, especially the trafficker type, in each building. Throughout the entire novel, Spitz suffers from post-apocalyptic stress disorder (PASD), and he always has to pause and recall the mass killing. We discover the zombie anthology through his memory. There was a disease that resulted in panic, and before he knew it, people were on each other's neck (Whitehead, 2012). Even before the narrative begins, the Uptown was beyond redeemable since most of the area was thoroughly infested with zombies, all except Zone One. It is only the trio that survived the cleanup as most of the marines deployed into Manhattan to regain control of the city perished in the line of duty. From the "Zone One" passage, Buffalo's government is described as a form of government that implements the hierarchical system to imbues false optimism and authority (Whitehead). Through the hierarchical system, the Buffalo government employs an insincere survival branding approach to return the city of Manhattan to its previous civilization and corporate sponsorship. Due to the chaotic and the disorderly plague, the Buffalo government understood that through the development of an authority that provided people with false optimism, they would encourage hope of survival to the few citizens who had not been affected by the plague (Whitehead, 2012). The psychological lives of the survivors of Manhattan's plagues were impacted negatively after the "Last Night." Most of the survivors began to develop a condition known as Post-apocalyptic Stress Disorder (PASD). According to the passage, the disorder was significantly influenced by the experience of the plague. Additionally, the P.A.S.D limited the affected population by developing new attachments with the people around them (Whitehead, 2012). The most significant memory of Mark's past was "the night before his time at Zone One when he stumbled across a big home on the edge of Massachusetts. He called into the houses because two dead lingered behind him in the woods. The members of the house were reluctant to let him in" (Whitehead, 2012). The memory is significant because it describes Mark’s narrow escape of becoming a zombie. If the members of the house did not let him in, he would have contracted the plague and become a Zombie. Also, it is significant because it shows the reader how Mark was able to meet with survivors such as Jerry, Margie, and Tad. “In the silence, Mark Spitz signed off on a rest period for himself” (Whitehead, 2012). In this passage, the Whitehead's choice was to bring out the ability of self-reflection on how the past guides the present life. To effectively develop the author's choice, Whitehead characterizes Mark Spitz based on his personality and past life experiences. He asserts that Mark Spitz had a high socialization ability and socio-economic milieu, which guide him to achieve and overcome the obstacles of the various stages of life. Additionally, Whitehead uses an admiral tone to describe the personal reflection of Mark Spitz. PASD's assumes a role that intends to harden reconstruction for any victim involved, even Mark Spitz. This raises to a level in the play where Mark reminisces how he misses the guilt and shame that came through in times when he acted dumb, which ultimately triggered his actins (Whitehead, 2012). This means that the disorder makes it hard for one to recover from a mistake. Still, Dr Herkimer recommends psychotherapy, which can ease an individual's guilt and give them a chance to start over. From my thoughtful rationality of PASD understanding, many of those who are believers of apocalypse validate the idea that we are approaching the end of the world.
 * The context of this novel is predicated in Manhattan, where, according to Whitehead, a plague has turned the significant proportion of the town's population into "skels." The skels are of two types: those who are catatonic and are trapped in their earlier posts or those who turn into predators to eat live fish. Regionally, Zone one is comparable to Canal Street's South, a zone that has been cleaned up for undead by the armed forces. In addition to the absence of Colson's post-apocalyptic novel, I can't help but realize the tendencies of the ethics of dystopia.

Zombies and Afrofuturism
Afrofuturism aims to motivate and offer a platform that uplifts self-identity and respect for every person. This is accomplished by encouraging the re-evaluation of the environment and the reimaging of the future as we perceive it, pushing enthusiasts into a cross-cultural framework. Afrofuturism is also based on the synchronization of the future and the past, which act as the unique characterization feature. While not all works referred to as Afrofuturism are created by artists of African descent or talk about black identity on the surface, they usually have in common some imagery, symbolism, or themes that evoke cultural markers (Forsberg, 2012). This paper examines how zombie stories manifest Afrofuturism through the analysis of Colson Whitehead’s novel Zone One. Zombies correspond with the aesthetics and beautiful possibilities of Afrofuturism. One of the main aesthetics of Afrofuturism is the synchronization of the present and the past. Unlike many science fiction works that disavow the past, Afrofuturism works revere ancestors and ancient societies. Such reverence is usually articulated in these works through paralleling and merging of the present and the past (Forsberg, 2012). This quality is vividly depicted in Colson Whitehead's novel Zone One through numerous flashbacks into the past, which makes it difficult for a reader to differentiate between the past and the present. The author uses flashbacks to juxtapose the past and the present. One character, Spitz, recalls at length his life before the plague. He also uses flashback to make a comparison between the traditional past system of government and the present corporatized government. Another outstanding aesthetic of the Afrofuturism works is that they celebrate histories that have played a role in facilitating social change. People of African descent lived in America as members of the lower social class subjected to several social oppressions such as slavery. Through afro-futuristic works, the events that led to social changes granting them more rights are celebrated (Forsberg, 2012). In Colson Whitehead's novel Zone One, the narrative begins when a zombie uprising has been going on long enough. A civilization changing plague resulted in two types of zombies. The author symbolically uses the two types of zombies to depict social and race distinctions in the society and the zombie uprising to symbolize the anti-racism demonstrations. In most Afrofuturism works, the themes of humanity, self-determination, and freedom are common threads. Afrofuturistic artists usually rearticulate these concepts in a futuristic context. The theme of humanity is well articulated in Whitehead's novel Zone One. The character Spitz reflects over the humanity of the category of zombies called the stragglers who are not motivated by the lust for blood. This reflection leaves the reader wondering where they will belong in such a state. Zombies correspond with the aesthetics and beautiful possibilities of Afrofuturism. A close analysis of Colson Whitehead’s novel Zone One reveals a correspondence of zombies with these aesthetics and possibilities through synchronization of the present and the past, celebration of histories that facilitated social change and depiction of the theme of humanity.
 * Afrofuturism, as a term, was coined in the 1990s by Mark Dery, a cultural critic. Dery applied the word 'afro-futurism' to the then progressively artistic movement and the criticism of the discourses, which in futuristic bilateral agreements had attributes of African origin (Forsberg, 2012). Despite common convictions, Afrofuturism does not interpret black sci-fi or black fantasy. Instead, it is a societal aesthetic that focuses on problems of black agency, the future, and expression in art, including visual media and music, in ways to construct something entirely different.

A Reflection
Just like other zombie stories, zombies are corpses that revive from the dead. In this novel, the author uses a similar approach to describe the zombies in his passage, but he uses a 9/11 terrorist attack to base the evolution of his zombies. The zombies used in the passage are different from those of the previous zombies because the zombies used in the passage were not violent, they were not scary rather than more poignant, and they were caught in the various loops of their former lives. The zombies were a description of the significant impact on the U.S after the 9/11 attack (Whitehead, 2012). Focusing on the post-zombie economy, it ran on optimistic approaches that were used to “rebrand survival” such as declaring United States remnants as the “American Phoenix” and diagnosing the remaining population with "P.A.S.D.," post-apocalyptic stress disorder. The Post-Zombie economy is similar to the United States' current economy because the government is always developing approaches to address the various economic and social issues within the country (Whitehead, 2012).
 * Whitehead describes Mark Spitz as a muted, outset, meandering character who often views himself to be above average. This description allows the author to characterize him as an individual who stands out from everyone else in a positive way. "He was their typical, he was their most; he was their average" (Whitehead, 2012). The author's characterization sounds rhetorical because the emptiness of New York City after the devouring of the monster inside out resembles the void in Mark Spitz Life.