World War Z

Tristen Lyle
3-22-13
2A Dead and Undead Lapham
The Ignorance of the Human Race In 2006, a great piece of literature was written, its name: World War Z by Max Brooks. This book documents the survivors of the World War Z apocalypse; while of course this book is fictional it draws you in and will at times make you feel like you are reading a piece of non-fictional literature. This is what fascinated me most by it. Not only did the book draw you in with its non-fictional fiction style, its theme draws on a central problem on us as humans today. We are ignorant, in whole or in part, regardless if there are many or few. It’s sad that we are that way today, from all the wars to all the bomb threats that are thrown around annually by almost anybody and everybody because its “fear” that runs us as a society today. World War Z by Max Brooks brilliantly shows this theme and expands on it to reach deep inside the human psyche to reveal our dark, segregated minds. This theme of ignorance shines through in many parts of the book, but one of the key points of it in my mind was the interview Max Brooks had with fictional interviewee, Saladin Kader. This man was ousted from the land he was born and raised in by Kuwait City by his own father. His father didn’t like the way the government was ran to the point where he decided to leave, he wasn’t poor, he wasn’t rich, and they lived a middle-class family life. Of course, since our governments and leaders of such have manipulated our minds, especially those of the young, we, as youth, side with the government. That is all we know, so we believe they are correct by nature. Kader called it “blasphemy” that which his father was doing. He admits in the interview he tried to “convince him with my adolescent logic”. Of course this whole experience stemmed from the main problem in the book, which was the emergence of “zombies”. The father had seen the reawakening of a zombie at the hospital while he was there, and realized the cover up the government was trying to make when he seen the news coverage that started the whole quarrel between him and Kader. However back to the main point of this argument, the government has very much manipulated the minds of youth more so than the current adults; this will come back around full spin in about one to two generations. We are programmed to ignorantly believe anything we hear from the media, and that is part of the reason why us as humans are starting to crumble away at our bricks (intellect) instead of stacking new bricks that won’t crumble, metaphorically speaking. The quote that struck me as striking during this interview though was this, “My father tried … to make me see that he had no more love for Israel … they seemed to be the only country actively preparing for the coming storm.” This caught me as striking because he was one of the few humans in this book to set aside his negative feelings about one country to help protect his family at any costs. I truly respect this man; regardless of his reality never have existing, and his ideals. Sadly men like him are far and few between these days, for we as a human race are ignorant. Human ignorance can only be held down in the event of cataclysmic destruction, or as most call it, an apocalypse. The key words here are “held down”. As long as man exists, so does his ignorance. This is spoken beautifully by Joe Mohammad during his kayfabe (not real) interview with Max Brooks. The quote reads as follows, “All of us have this powerful shared experience … we had people from everywhere, and even though the details were different, the stories remained the same … once our kids or grandkids grow up in a peaceful and comfortable world, they’ll probably go right back to being selfish and narrow-minded.” This quote can alone by itself refute the whole counter argument to my claim that the main theme. People will try to say, well the world can unite when it needs too. No. Never in the history of man has everybody gotten along and not been ignorant, selfish bastards. This book shows that only in a post-apocalyptic world can everybody get past the little differences one another has to get along, it then proceeds to say that the world will go back to normal in a generation or two. Humans have this savage like desire to always be in control at all costs, and they do that by inducing fear. Ignorance at its finest. My last example isn’t necessarily from this amazing book, but yet from a movie that helped inspire the book itself; a movie that is one of Max Brooks’s favorite, The Day of the Dead by George A. Romero. This classic movie is one of the best zombie movies of all time, and shows my theme to the fullest. I believe since that movie was used as an inspiration that it can fit here. We as humans are ignorant, in whole or in part. These people are, as far as they know, the last humans alive. You would think they would all try to get along in order to stay alive. Nope, of course they wouldn’t, why would they? They’re humans. They decided to divide themselves into three separate groups: The military (commanders), Scientists, and Civilians. The military thought it would be best to just try and shoot them all, even though they were outnumbered 400,000 to 1, according to the scientists’ calculations. The scientists disagreed and thought they should try to find a way to control the zombies, or find a cure for the “dead”. Neither side could agree. The Civilians, with just common sense, sided with the scientists as they realized they couldn’t beat the zombies by brute force alone. This all shows though that even in the small surviving group of the apocalypse, there is still ignorance, even racism towards non-military Hispanics. Ignorance is part of our society, part of our genes; we can’t run away from it forever. These three examples show the great depths of the humans as a whole. We are ignorant creatures, and I personally believe we had to accept that when we start to gain knowledge and begin to build upon our intelligence. Whether we choose to look at it or not, there will always be segregation rooted deep into our society, in one shape or another. If you’re poor, rich, black, white, yellow, part of this group, part of that group, etc. it doesn’t matter. We always find little differences that we find the need to point out and ridicule people for and will always go to an extreme to get rid of them. It would take something that could destroy humans as a whole to shatter ignorance for that moment, and that moment alone; for after that moment, the shattered pieces will come back together like puzzle pieces to a puzzle, and show the dark, revolting personality of human ignorance once again.