IVIV (8): An Occasional Certified Zombie

[Dave Monroe]

"... populated day and night with the insomniac, the stranded and
deserted, not to mention an occasional certified zombie."  (IV, Ch. 8,
p. 115)


"an occasional certified zombie"

Cf. ...

The Thanatoids: Like Death, Only Different

Another mystery, that of the Thanatoids, is a bit easier to figure.
Pynchon muddies the water by giving us overlapping, contradictory data
about these ghost-like characters. Literally, the term means "like
death, only different," hence living-dead, or zombies. At other times
Pynchon tells us that Thanatoids watch lots of TV, and try to advance
further into the condition of death. Under this definition they could
be Reaganites, couch potatoes, embittered hippies, or possibly the
entire population of America.

Thanatoids are also "victims of karmic imbalances -- unanswered blows,
unredeemed suffering..." So does this make the Thanatoids victims of
the sixties? Another version of the preterites* in Gravity's Rainbow?
Or simply over-determined ghosts? Thanatoids are injured by "what was
done to them." This might make them Vietnam vets, or a larger set of
America's victims. At one point Pynchon describes them as a "lost
tribe with a failed cause," which makes us think of the Herreros and
the gauchos in Gravity's Rainbow. And as the book is drawing to a
close, Pynchon says, "What was a Thanatoid, at the end of the long
dread day, but memory?"

[*The term "preterite," is a Calvinist theological reference meaning
"those passed over by God, or those not elected to salvation or
eternal life." Thus, a preterite is anyone living life with no promise
of redemption -- the true condition of everyone who faces life
honestly. Pynchon's compassion for these universal losers is central
to his work.

The term does not appear in Vineland, but the concept does -- and in
any case, Pynchon uses it loosely. Since he's not really a Calvinist
(nor, we suspect, a Believer in any conventional way), he often uses
the concept to describe those without power. Vond, who has power, is
elected. Zoyd, who doesn't really have power, is preterite -- as are
the Thanatoids. DL and Takeshi, who have at least some power, are
somewhere in between.

On an even simpler level, Pynchon believes in Good (Preterite) Things
and Bad (Elect) Things. Good Things include musicians, Hohner F harps,
ukuleles, hip forties slang, zoot suits, dope, etc. (This clearly
makes Zoyd, DL, and Takeshi Good/Preterite.) Bad Things includes
power, the elite, Reagan politics, etc. (Vond is clearly Bad/Elect.)
What makes tragedy and suspense is that there are things (and
particularly people) that are both, or in between, or of unknown
quality. Frenesi has both good and bad qualities; Zuniga does too.]

We think the Thanatoids are not meant to be taken as "real" characters
at all, but as a literary representation (all right, make that
"symbol," goddammit) of the failed dreams of living people (or
societies). Also great disappointments, missed opportunities,
Unfinished Business, and/or awful unredeemed mistakes. These
particular Thanatoids exist because the history of the sixties has
been stolen, and falsified. Reclaiming that history may let them rest
(or even party) at last.

http://www.mindspring.com/~shadow88/intro.htm

"'Wandering all up and down the halls'"

That's why what's buried always returns: even if hideously decayed,
and even if only in bits and pieces. The flesh is more than willing,
though the spirit is all too weak. The "afterlife" is a wholly
material phenomenon: it concerns the body, and not the soul. Today we
fear the subsistence of the flesh, more than we do its annihilation.
The great terror in George Romero's "living dead" trilogy is not being
killed, but being unable to stay dead, being compelled to return as
one of them. Postmodern space swarms with the Undead. Zombies throng
our city danger zones, our suburban backyards, our shopping malls.

http://www.dhalgren.com/Doom/ch05.html

Capitalism is a parasitic system, and Romero’s zombies are the
ultimate manifestations of this parasitism. Shaviro writes:

They are the long-accumulated stock of energy and desire upon which
our ilitarized and technocratic culture vampiristically feeds, which
it compulsively manipulates and exploits, but cannot forever hope to
control. (94)

The zombies are the silenced majority who bought into the ideology of
the ruling class. They are the laborers who have been exploited and
alienated from their product, and they are the consumers who have been
led down the road of accumulation and assimilation. While they seem to
uphold their individuality [...] they undermine and usurp these
negligable differences. The power is drained from their individuality,
and they are all after the same goal: to satisfy their hunger (Shaviro
84). Romero has commented that he was attracted to zombies because
they are the "underclass of the monster world" (Beard 30). Beard
extrapolates this to view the zombies as "the disenfranchised
underclass of the material world;" they are a "stand in for those
workers and consumers who ... have been thrown on the  scrap heap"
(30).

If the zombies seem foreign to us, it is only because we do not want
to see ourselves. [...] Logan notes, "They are us. They are the
extensions of us." Indeed, they exhibit consumer desire and they are
drawn to places we are drawn to, such as malls, homes, and bastions of
civilization. Their desire is insatiable. Shaviro writes, "Want is a
function of excess and extravagence, not of deficiency: the more I
consume, the more I demand to consume" (92). Likewise, the zombies
become enraged when presented with a "fresh" meal of live humans, and
they are content to stumble around for eternity, looking for another
bite. Indeed, the zombies are not a foreign invader, but the
ressurected dead of late consumer capitalism.

http://www.wdog.com/rider/writings/romero.htm

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0311&msg=87431