Monsters in western folklore

post your replies to 4 other students you must engage with what they’ve said in their post and contribute your own thoughts: For instance, I think what you are saying is ________ . I would like to add to that by pointing out ___________ from the reading titled________ because it__________. Offer a different viewpoint on their thoughts that uses the same evidence they have presented and looks at it another way. you will be doing 4 replies using the above instructions I attached my other classmates posts so you can reply to them the first two post are from chapter 7 and posts 3 and 4 are from chapter 8. I attached both chapters in case you need to draw off of them for references from the chapter text. 1. Class, After reading this week’s required materials and lecture notes on zombies, I want to mainly focus my analysis on “From Zombi to Zombie: Lafcadio Hearn and William Seabrook” by Roger Luckhurst. I’d first like to say that I did not know much about zombie myths and folklore prior to this week’s material, so I found myself asking many questions. While reading through “From Zombi to Zombie,” I found Luckurst’s description of William Seabrook both fascinating and disturbing. Although Seabrook was known as an alcoholic, occultist, bisexual, satanist, drug addict and even a cannibal, his written material was still considered valuable and reliable. I wondered how he would be received if he lived in today’s world. Would anyone believe his writings and teachings? I think that he would have had a much more difficult time trying to be well-received if he attempted to live a similar life to the one he did in today’s world. I continued asking myself this question as I read on and discovered more disgusting details of his life. Aside from his life story, I did appreciate that Seabrook gave a clear definition of “zombie,” while Lafcadio Hearn did not do this. According to Seabrook, a zombie is a “soulless human corpse, still dead, but taken from the grave and endowed with sorcery” (p. 30). He goes on to write that the zombie would have been “a servant or a slave” to its creator. The most interesting part to me about his definition of a zombie is that the zombie is created using sorcery or magic. Is this true of other depictions of the zombie? Often times when zombies are represented in films, their transformation is not shown (they will walk out of their graves or appear in swarms to attack). This made me consider how the film I chose for my film analysis this week, I Am Legend, represented the transformation of the “darkseekers” from human to zombie. They are transformed using a genetically engineered virus created to cure cancer, whose side effects turned the victim from cancer-cured to rabid beast. With this example to think about, I ask you all to consider, what are other ways that zombies are created? 2. As Luckhurst wrote in Zombies, A Cultural History about Hearn and Seabrook’s experiences in investigating the history of zombies in Haiti, I began wondering why Haitians (or any other suppressed ethnic group, for that matter) didn’t create monsters (therefore folklore) out of the colonials that were terrorizing them? I then read the bit about Seabrook visiting along with his servant, Louis, and she said “…white strangers in this twentieth century city, with our electric lights and motorcars…were surrounded by another world invisible, a world of marvels, miracles, and wonders – a world in which the dead rose from their graves and walked.” What is your insight into what she was referring to? Was it that zombies didn’t “arrive” until white man, forcing the locals into these overworked zombie-like beings? 3. Before this week’s reading I honestly had no clue what the origins of a zombie were. In terms of modern cultural context, most of my knowledge comes from the Walking Dead. I would have never guessed the term ‘zombies’ was created in relation to slavery. I’ve taken numerous Colonial America classes, so I have a decent understanding of slavery in the New England colonies, but I’ve never learned about how slavery was conducted in Haiti. After reading The New York Times article I was able to come up with the question, why do you think our understanding of a ‘zombie’ has been transformed from a spiritual state to a physical one? What I mean by this was the slaves on the plantations in Haiti viewed being a zombie as eternal slavery or more of a spiritual endeavor. In modern society zombies are represented in much a much more physical manner. What do you think brought about these changes to how the term is viewed? One of my theories is due to its physical attributes the modern zombie is much easier to market to the masses. 4. After reading “A Zombie Is a Slave Forever” I was very intrigued because ive never heard of slaves fearing to become zombies after death. “Death was feared but also wished for…(pg 2/3)” Suicide was a slave’s way to stick it to the master since they considered it the worst kind of thievery. It was also their only way to take control of their bodies. But the fear that they could die and become a zombie prevented most from doing it. “To become a zombie was the slave’s worst nightmare: to be dead and still a slave, an eternal field hand.(pg. 2/3)” The only way for the zombie to have his soul back was for him to get ahold of some salt and consume it. I think this is interesting especially at the end of the article it says when a child comes up to your door on Halloween dressed as a zombie to offer them some salt sprinkled in with their candy corn. I like this because it becomes an educational point and a story to tell when the children ask why we would do this. The last point I would make about the article is that it breaks my heart. I couldn’t imagine how they could have felt. No escape not even death. How terrible.