Textual Analysis of the Walking Dead

Ruben Villanueva

COM 408

Donovan Conley

Textual Analysis Paper

TEXTUAL ANALYSIS OF THE WALKING DEAD

Ruben Villanueva

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

The television series, The Walking Dead, depicts the life of a group of survivors in a post apocalyptic world comprised of zombies or the undead. The group comprises of a small town sheriff and his family as they embark on a journey across America in search of a safe heaven. The fictional element of the show makes it a prime rhetorical artifact for analysis mainly because it contains or depicts human elements of companionship, kinship and survival through the activities and situations the characters face in the show. Currently headed to the fourth season, the show mainly follows the life of Rick, the deputy sheriff, as he tries to lead his wife and son to some form of safety as well as other people who join his group, essentially entrusting their lives to Rick and his leadership (Darabont, 2010). This paper analyses the show as a rhetorical artifact, analyzing unique patterns such as lexicon, imagery, ideas, arguments and form contained in the show in its depiction of a post apocalyptic world where survival is the only option left for the living that are virtually surrounded by the undead.

The foremost unique pattern in the show is the overall idea or theme of the show where the world ends and the human race is practically fighting for its survival, edging closer to extinction with every person who dies. In the show, there are no governments, authorities or economy to operate in rather a soulless world in which people struggle not to be killed by either the undead or other living people because in the struggle to survive, people compete for the remaining resources and secure areas away from the infected undead. The zombie meme in American culture has grown significantly stronger since the early 1950s when Hollywood began producing such films (Dawkins, 1989). Throughout this period, the filmmakers based much of the depictions of zombies on superstition, as soulless corpses condemned to consume the living. Moreover, the realities of biological warfare in the Anthrax attacks and scares in the war against terror instigated the promulgation of the meme in American entertainment since for the first time in American history the potential for destruction through biological warfare became valid if not real (Bishop, 2009).

Furthermore, the idea of employing characters depicting regular people to depict the story rather than the usual central figures of authority who understand what the infection is makes it appeal even more to an audience.