Death Goes On: The Body at Rest?

Mary Roach's chapter, "Life After Death," from her book Stiff, addresses what happens to a human body after a person has died. It isn't pretty.

We can all look forward to the following:

• Skin loosening, and possibly falling off of the body,
• Bloating, due to bacteria eating organs,
• Larvae eating fat from the body,
• Putrefaction, or liquefying of body tissue, due to bacteria.

Embalming a body can delay these effects, but cannot postpone them indefinitely (and is a pretty horrendous process in and of itself).

So what does this have to do with zombies?
Well, two facets of zombie narratives relate directly to this topic.

1. Zombies are dead bodies, so, depending on how long they were dead before becoming zombies, they may show signs of decomposition (sagging skin, maggots in the eye sockets, etc.). This forces the audience to directly face their own mortality.

2. Zombies do not seem to decompose further once they have been zombified, at least according to most narratives. They are trapped in the middle of this final process of decomposition.


This leads to several questions that may not have concrete answers:

1. Is the sight of a decomposed zombie more or less sympathetic than a "fresh" zombie?
2. Do zombies decompose, and, if so, is it at a slower rate than a normal dead body?
3. Does the need to destroy zombies imply a quest for immortality?
4. Does the fact that most modern societies avoid seeing "real" death give the zombie a more dramatic impact than would otherwise be the case?

I have no definitive answers to these questions, but will try to think on them a bit.