The Graves of Wrath: A Hypothesis on the Creation of the American Zombie

While zombie scholars agree both that George Romero’s 1968 film Night of the Living Dead inaugurated the American zombie myth, and that the various manifestations of the zombie reflect the cultural anxieties of each age, this essay aspires to propose the reason behind the particular transformation of the Haitian figure of the zonbi, or reanimated slave, to the wandering, uncontrollable, cannibalistic, hideous undead hordes of American zombie lore. Inspired by Dwight Codr’s 2014 PMLA article “Arresting Monstrosity: Polio, Frankenstein, and the Horror Film,” the essay will suggest how, beyond all the other noted cultural factors operant in the reception and incubation of the Haitian myth in the US, it was the resonance of the Great Depression in the popular imaginary through such works as John Steinbeck’s 1939 The Grapes of Wrath that gave American zombies their formative features. Such an affinity would also explain how the zombie came to represent a metaphor for financial anxiety that resurfaces every time the economy crashes, as can be attested from the proliferation of “zombie apocalypse” narratives in the twenty-first century. The mutation of the zombie allowed the Franklinian-Weberian work ethic to survive at the expense of the jobless, homeless workers scapegoated for the failings of capitalism.