Zombies are one of the more frightening monsters in film and literature because they are intelligent, emotional, and moral human beings who are transformed into dead, instinctual animals with zero intellect or emotions and no moral compass. The eerie and monstrous thing about zombies is that they blur the distinction between human and animal; they still retain their human form, but they become animals in intellect and by their cannibalistic eating habits. The Girl With All the Gifts by M. R. Carey succeeds in blurring this distinction even further by introducing the protagonist, Melanie, who is a “hungry,” and yet is still presented as human, which terrifies Sergeant Parks. Although she is infected, Melanie retains her humanity because she can think, is emotionally responsive, and can make moral decisions. Because of these qualities, Melanie becomes more human than uninfected people like Dr. Caldwell, the junkers, and Gallagher’s family.
Even though Melanie is a hungry, she is separate from first-generation hungries, who have completely turned into animals, because she can make rational and moral decisions. It is made clear that the first-generation hungries have ceased to be human. Melanie decides that “the hungries weren’t really people any more... They were more like empty houses where people used to live” (205). However, although a hungry herself, Melanie knows that she is different because she is still infected with Ophiocordyceps but she does not let the virus completely control her. When she eats a cat, “a part of her was entirely satisfied, entirely at peace” but another part of her “kept itself at a distance from the horrible cruelty and the horrible messiness” (296). Melanie tells Sergeant Parks: “I’m different because I don’t want to eat anyone… Sometimes I need to eat people. I never want to” (229-30). Parks has “never seen a hungry in a meat frenzy and not acting it on” and stares in wonder at Melanie who is able to restrain herself from attacking the teacher she loves (121). Melanie attacks people who are “going to hurt Miss Justineau, not because of the irresistible fresh meat smell” (133). Miss Justineau tells Melanie: “you’re not a hungry, because you can still think, and they can’t” (244). Melanie wonders if this important distinction makes “her not a monster after all?” (244). By the end of the novel, the reader is encouraged to view Melanie not as a monster, but as a little girl who can think and feel, and who happens to be infected.
Melanie is presented as a sympathetic character because she displays more morality and compassion than some humans. Dr. Caldwell is determined to see Melanie and her second-generation friends as “subjects” who “aren’t human” (50). When Caldwell dissects Liam without any anesthesia, she believes that “though it speaks and can even be christened with a boy’s name or a girl’s name, is not the host. It’s the parasite” (38). Caldwell’s inhumane treatment of the hungry children is seen as morally wrong. Melanie recognizes that Caldwell thinks “it [is] okay to cut her up on a table and put pieces of her in jars” because she is just a hungry (193). Caldwell is determined to find a cure so she can “save the world” (39), but Melanie decides that “catching little children and cutting them into pieces, even if you’re doing it to try to make medicine that stops people being hungries” is “bad” (245). Melanie is not operating out a sense of self-preservation for herself, who, as Caldwell’s “test subject number one” (72), nearly succumbed to being dissected herself. Melanie is capable of making moral judgments and recognizes that she and her friends are thinking, breathing children who deserve to be treated as humans and not as lab rats.
Caldwell is seen as inhuman because of how she treats hungry children and the junkers and Gallagher’s family also become dehumanized because of their lack of emotion and morality. The junkers are described as “[s]urvivalists who’ve forgotten how to do anything else besides survive. Parasites and scavengers almost as inhuman in their own way as Ophiocordyceps. They don’t build, or preserve. They just stay alive. And their ruthlessly patriarchal structures reduce women to pack animals or breeding stock” (216). Being human is more than just existing; it means having emotions, thinking rationally, and making moral judgments. Gallagher reflects: “His father, and his brother Steve, and his cousin Jackie looked like normal human beings and even sometimes acted like them, but most of the time they veered between two extremes: reckless violence when they were drinking, and comatose violence when the drink wore off” (150). Melanie becomes more human than Caldwell and the junkers because she can recognize moral dilemmas and act in a morally right way and wants to live for more than to just exist and survive; she wants to live for the love of her beloved Miss Justineau.
By the conclusion of the novel, the second-generation hungries become the only hope that a rational human race can continue to live on the earth. Melanie recognizes that “[t]here’s no cure for the hungry plague, but in the end the plague becomes its own cure. It’s terribly, terribly sad for the people who get it first, but their children will be okay and they’ll be the ones who live and grow up and have children of their own and make a new world” (399). Carey creates a new kind of human through the intelligent hungries, which is exciting and also unsettling. These emotional, rational, and moral hungries blur the line between animal and human but are presented as the only future for the human race.
Carey, M. R. The Girl with All the Gifts. Orbit, 2014.
I loved this one. I thought it was well written and really different.
If you're into zombie lit, have you read Arden Bell's books or Colston Whitehead's zombie book? Loved both.
Thank you. I appreciate the feedback.
Zombie literature is quite new to me. I'm usually not a big fan of zombies so The Girl With All The Gifts surprised me because I quite enjoyed it. I appreciated the questions of ethics and humanity that Carey raises throughout the novel.
Yes. Arden Bell does the same. The young narrator can't remember a world without zombies and muses about the preciousness of all life. Zombie literary fiction is a thing - who know. I love zombie films but until I found Carey, Whitehead and Bell I didn't know they could be well written. There's also an awesome anthology called Living Dead edited by John Joseph Adams which is fantastic as well - they are really great metaphors for social ills across time.
I'll have to check those titles out! Thanks for sharing them.
I think the zombie genre allows for important conversations about humanity, society, and as you said, the preciousness of life. I think people (including myself, until recently) underestimate the power that fictional narratives can have in raising important conversations and encouraging discussion about such topics.
As an English teacher, it's the message I'm trying to communicate to my students in response to: 'why do we have to read this, miss?' :)
thank you for this! keep writing! upvoted!