Walking Corpses & Conscious Plants: Possibilist Ecologies in ...

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fragility can influence interpersonal interactions. They can also affect how individuals
perceive their relationship to the environment they inhabit. On a larger scale, if multiple
individuals come to the same conclusions about a particular idea, or recognize patterns in
the appearance or dissipation of violence, they can take constructive action which will be
world altering.
The Walking Dead is more of a cautionary tale than a straightforward
consciousness raising exercise, though. As Elkins posits, “Pictures of the body elicit
thoughts about the body, and they can also provoke physical reactions in my body”
(Object 138). Thus the simple act of viewing an image can manifest doubly in both body
and mind. When we an encounter an unthinkable event, like one where a child is forced
to kill to protect his parent, it's impossible not to interrogate the conditions that have
made the event a reality. Undoubtedly, changes to the anticipated time-line of bodily
existence partially account for this state of affairs. In the actual world we inhabit as
readers, life is incontestably punctuated by three events: conception, birth, and death.
Human existence has become complicated within the fictional universe of The Walking
Dead though. Another two events have been added to the expected trajectory of the
body: reanimation and cerebral annihilation. These states are devoid of the
consciousness which characterizes the others. Even though these bodily transformations
are mediated through fiction, they prompt emotional and physical reactions from readers.
Seeing such horror manifest within the work via illustration as well as narrative pushes
readers to adopt and challenge the view points of the characters who are confronted by it.
According to Arthur Asa Berger, “On the visual level alone the grotesque is significant.
Its ugliness is an affront to society and suggests that something is wrong with the social