This zombie does not smell like a teen spirit

by Camila Cháves

Zombies' curious existence calls teens' attention as much as death does. For some reason, teenagers usually feel attracted to zombies' rotten bodies. They seem to be fascinated about the fact that these people, who are neither alive nor dead, eat the living and enjoy scaring them. Since mortals usually affirm that a story about a zombie is a story for teens, this would be enough to store A Zombie´s Lament in any young adult's bookshelf. However, there are other important characteristics that, according to Small (cited in Herz & Gallo, 1996), make a story a case of Young Adults Literature (YAL). An example that appears to be out of this category is A Zombie's Lament, since despite being a short story about zombies, could not be considered YAL.

If there is something about YAL that Small takes as a must, it is the fact that a story for teenagers should have one of them as the main character. In A Zombie’s Lament, Andy, the protagonist, is a thirty-two-year-old husband and father whose undefined existence would not allow him to sleep if he were able to. It takes him a while to realise he is locked inside a wounded and stinky body. From an extrinsic point of view, he is the typical zombie any teenager may find interesting. He smells like a stale piece of meat and he dresses the clothes he was buried with. Yet, zombies’ archetypes break themselves easily looking at Andy’s emotional side. Although his heartbeat is long gone now, his emotions have not died yet. Perhaps, it is this emotional side what cannot be appealing to adolescents because Andy’s situation does not function as a mirror for their reality. He misses the life that was taken away from him. He is worried about the fact that he has not a social security number and everything that this implies. Andy misses his living daughter and his dead wife. He is not worried about the classmate he has a crush on or about his low marks at school. Besides, Small also considers that, in YAL, the actions performed by the main characters determine the result of the conflict of the story. In this case it is for sure that Andy only wants to have his time again but, he can do nothing to turn back the tide.

In A Zombie’s Lament the zombie does not want to perform the typical occupation society has attached to him. Andy is not starving for human flesh and he will not appear with drops of blood coming out of his dry mouth. Some important issues that are part of adolescents’ concerns, such as drugs and pregnancy, do not fit in this story. The more you dive in the story, the more the characteristics of YAL become diluted. A Zombie’s Lament perfectly teaches us not to judge a book by its cover.