Cell Part 1

In the first part of Steven Kings Cell the story centers around 3 survivors of an apocalyptic catastrophe which has overtaken the world turning those who have used cell phones lately to lose their minds and revert to animal instincts. The 3 survivors are Clay, an aspiring illustrator who has finally caught his break selling his portfolio before the disaster strikes, Tom a small man with a mustache who it seems is completely against his nature to be violent in any way, and Alice a 16 year old girl who was forced to kill her mother when the disaster first struck. These 3 survivors work together to try and stay alive and must evade those affected by the cell phone catastrophe and those who are just caught up in all the craziness of no order.
The disaster first strikes in this book at 3:03 PM and is referred to as the pulse. What happened is everyone who has used their cell phone since that time immediately become a new type of zombie we have not seen yet in any of our readings or movies. The zombie in this book seems to be more instinctual than any other zombie we have covered, and unlike some of the zombies we have talked about, these zombies do not kill for food but rather just kill. They even have the base intelligence to use weapons such as knifes just to kill. These zombies also are different than other zombies we have talked about because not only do they attack the people unaffected by the pulse they attack each other as exemplified in the first couple chapters with the death of Power Suit woman. These zombies have nothing to do with the living dead but rather seem to be like rabid animals, killing whoever with total lack of regard for who or why.
Another interesting theme in this book is how the catastrophe pits uninfected people against uninfected people. An interesting scene in this book occurs early when Clay and Tom are hiding out in Clay's hotel with Mr. Ricardi and they first encounter Alice. Alice is on the outside of the hotel and is being chased by a lone infected man with a giant knife, and begs to enter the hotel. Mr. Ricardi feels that it isn't his responsibility to help her if she is outside and if it were up to him would have let Alice die. Finally he comes around and lets her in to the hotel but the fact that he was tentative was interesting to me. I thought it was almost more cruel for them not to help her when they had a chance to than the zombies actually killing her. Another interesting example of uninfected people vs uninfected people happens later when they encounter 2 men fighting over a keg of beer. Rather than people helping people survive this predicament the world is in these 2 men are fist fighting over who has the rights to a stolen keg of beer. I thought it to be very scary how selfishly people acted towards each other in this time of crisis. If the people were to pool all of their resources together, stick together, and help each other I think everyone would have a much better chance of surviving but instead you have people fighting each other. There is no one you can trust in this book and I think that's what makes this whole situation so much more scary.