Monster Island

The first part of Monster Island was both thoroughly enjoyable and understandable. Everything had an explanation: we knew how Gary’s ingenuity saved his dead brain from brain damage and we knew just enough about the Epidemic to believe it was a widespread disease of some sort. The second and third parts I found to be rather bewildering. The novel jumped from being science-fiction based to fantastically magical. The rules became a bit unclear too. Gary, a zombie, “snacked” on mummy after it was explained that the dead hunger for life, explaining why they don’t eat each other. Nonetheless is was a fast paced format and kept you at the edge of your seat.  

Being animated corpses, I always thought of zombies as being primarily a mass personification of death. They show, in a way a single fictional being like the Grim Reaper can’t, the extent to which death claims the human race. Everything – or rather everyone - that would be buried six feet underground is now up and about walking before your eyes, reminding you of your own fate and what certain unfortunate friends and loved ones have become. But then it seems more and more zombies are distinguished not by the contradiction of their existence but by their hunger, lack of intelligence, or as it was described in Romero’s Night of the Living Dead: their trance-like state. Anyone of us can succumb to the masses by becoming something else, something unable of original thought or thinking for itself. This makes Wellington’s Gary character so interesting. Even though he preserved his intelligence he wasn’t able retain his most human qualities for long, as he eventually not only gave into his new cravings for human flesh, but also lost all sense of shame in such self-proclaimed evil doings. (Typically, comic-book-like villains who are openly evil are very flat and lacking a convincing personality, however, I think this works in Gary’s case given that he should be undergoing this psychological transformation into something less than human.) In the sense that Gary lost sight of himself, he became every bit as much a zombie and all they represent. By use of Gary, Wellington is able to how giving into the zombies can be easier and at times more appealing than constantly fighting them. Or alternatively, the arrogance that one can join life’s metaphorical zombies without also becoming one.

There’s no character quite like this in Night of the Living Dead nor any of the other (albeit few) zombie movies I’ve seen, so Wellington’s approach appears fresh.