In Class Blog: Jeff's PSA Draft

Rights of the Walking Dead

Jeff Frank

9/11/12

           

The Walking Dead is a critically acclaimed television show that airs on AMC. The show is a post-apocalyptic drama series in which police sheriff Rick Grimes is faced with a horrible realization of an apparent end to the world as he knows it. When Rick wakes up in an abandoned hospital with no sense of date, time, or location.  He is immediately forced to fight his way through hordes of infectious zombies in order to get back to his wife Lori and young son Carl. Rick is helped along the by numerous supporting characters. Many of which are important in the proving of the writer’s position on important topics in this show. After Rick is reunited with his family and former partner, Shane, he is thrown into the roll of helping to keep everyone safe. There are many lives lost and new members of the group gained along the way but one thing is for sure, the dead are alive and always lurking around every corner.

            In this scene Andrea, one of the supporting characters, is in the group with Rick and his family. The setting is a wooded area that overlooks a small lake. The group is carrying out their normal tasks such as cleaning, cooking, and scavenging when small but very dangerous wave of Walkers silently creeps into the camp. Most run in terror towards the R.V. while some defend themselves against the attackers. Andrea’s younger sister Amy does not get away in time as a Walker bites her on her neck. Amy lets out a blood-curdling scream. The group rushes to save her and kill the Walkers. When they get to Amy it is too late, she had lost too much blood and passed away. Andrea sits with Amy’s head on her lap for a whole day just staring into Amy’s cold, blank face. Some members of the group begin to chatter about what comes next after being bit and Shane even tries to do the deed of shooting Amy himself. When he approaches Andrea, she pulls a gun and points it at him. After the night Amy slowly begins to make noises and Andrea says her name several times. Amy sits up and opens her eyes; she does not give the appearance to be the same Amy from before. She makes a moaning breathing noise and then tries to attack Andrea, proving that she is no longer the girl from before. Andrea begins to cry and apologizes then pulls the trigger in her gun killing Amy for good.

             Andrea is faced with what is most likely the hardest decision of her life. What should she do with her little sister after she is bitten? She knows that Amy is going to come back as a Walker but in a way she wants some closure by sitting with her for as long as possible. The rest of the group also knows what happens when Amy comes back and that she becomes an immediate threat to everyone including Andrea. The writers vaguely hint to Andrea knowing that Amy is going to be a threat but also she cannot just end her sister’s life without any closure. Knowing that she is eventually going to have to do the inevitable has to be extremely hard on Andrea. However, she does not want anyone else to even come close to being the one to kill Amy. This feeds the point that if the infected person is unable to choose their fate for themselves then the burden then falls on the family of the victim. In this scenario the only family of Amy is her sister Andrea and she decides to end Amy’s misery when she comes back as a Walker.

             In the same wave of Walkers that took Amy also got Jim, a lesser character up to this point. He tries to hide his wound from the others but is discovered pretty quickly because he is laboring over the pain. The group quarantines him to the R.V. when his fever sets in. There is a long debate about what to do with Jim because everyone knows what is going to happen. The group no longer feels safe in their current location so they begin a caravan to a new location. As the fever gets worse Jim cannot handle the road trip and asks to be left on the side of the highway. He says he wants to go the way the rest of his family did and become a Walker. The group debates but eventually obliges to Jim’s demands. Jim states that he is completely aware of the consequences and still made his own decision. Jim is set against a tree with a gun and left.

            This is the scene where the writers clearly express their full opinion on the human rights side of how to deal with people who are still coherent and have been bitten by a Walker. They believe that people who are able to acknowledge and understand their injury fully and what is going to happen should have the right to decide what to do with themselves. By Jim asking Rick to leave him on the side of the highway shows that he consciously made the decision and used his rights as a human being to secure his fate. Jim states that he is completely aware of the consequences and still made his own decision. He wanted to die the same as his family before him did.

            The writers of The Walking Dead use the numerous instances of the cast being attacked and infected by Walkers to argue their point that the characters have a choice in what happens to them or what happens to loved ones when they are bitten because of their rights as a human being. The world is no longer the same as it was before Rick woke up in the hospital. There is no longer a government. It is essentially everyone for themselves and the one thing that cannot be forgotten and fall by the wayside is a person’s undeniable rights as a human being. The writers’ stance is that everyone has a choice if they know both sides of the situation. They can make a decision on whether to “opt out,” as the show says, or die and come back as a Walker.