Introduction
Earl T. Roske presents a unique kind of a relationship in Zombie Love between Emily and her boyfriend Walter, who is a zombie. Kathy, who is the best friend of Emily, is against the relationship and tries to dissuade Emily from her relationship with Walter. In this sense, Kathy belongs to the world that does not accept the mixing of two worlds that are not the same that is the zombie world and the normal human world, On the other hand, Emily is in love with Walter despite the fact that her boyfriend is a zombie and does not see anything wrong with her having a relationship with Walter despite the perception of the people in society. Consequently, Emily is a self-aware person who has let go of ego and does not see any barriers between anyone existing in the world.
Emily is experiencing the emotion of love towards her boyfriend Walter, who is a zombie hence of a different world than the world that Emily is living in and Kathy is trying to persuade her of the same. In this sense, Emily wants to have a relationship with her boyfriend Walter, and the relationship should be respected by every person in society just like any other relationship despite the fact that her boyfriend is from another world, that is the zombie world. She also wants to keep her best friend, Kathy, who does not support her relationship with Walter. She tries to persuade her friend Kathy that Walter is a good and caring person who would be there to help her in the event that she needed his help as seen when she says.” Emily: Don’t talk to him like that. At least I know Walter will be there when I need him.” (Roske, 2011, scene 1). In this regard, she wants Kathy among other people who are opposed to her relationship to change their minds and support the relationship because she appreciates Walter, who is a caring person. Therefore despite the fact that he is a zombie, he would still help her when she needs him; hence he should not be discriminated against by any person.
The conflict that Emily encounters in the Zombie Love is that the world she is living in does not support a relationship between human beings and zombies. She is in love with a zombie boyfriend, Walter, where many people, including her best friend, is against. Subsequently, she has to choose between her best friend, Kathy and her boyfriend, whom she loves, Walter, who is a zombie; hence she is torn into two. She tries to get this desire of continuing to have a relationship with Walter by persuading her best friend Kathy that Walter is a good person who loves and cares for her by stating that “Emily: You just don’t get it. He’s not like other guys. He really cares about me.” (Roske, 2011, scene 1). In this sense, she tries to reason with Kathy concerning Walter due to the fact that she knows Walter hence she is aware of what Walter is capable of doing and what she is not capable of doing. Due to the fact that Emily sees Walter as a normal boyfriend with all the capabilities of a normal boyfriend, she is considered not to discriminate as she sees no barriers between her and her boyfriend hence attempts to achieve her desire to have a relationship with him. Despite her attempts to persuade Kathy about no barriers existing between her and Walter, Kathy is still adamant and does not still support the relationship of Emily and Walter, and she does not achieve her goal of having her best friend support the relationship she has with Walter hence cannot have both her friend and boyfriend.
Emily decides to make a surprising and selfish decision that would ensure that she keeps both her zombie boyfriend, Walter as well as her best friend Kathy as she could not achieve what she wanted of having both through persuading Kathy. She decides to make her zombie boyfriend, Walter, turn her best friend, Kathy, into a zombie so that she can have both of them in her life because Kathy would not support her relationship with Walter. For fear of losing one of the two who were important in her life, she decides to have them both to herself through selfish means.
Conclusion
In this sense, Emily does not change her character of loving, caring, non-discriminatory, self-aware person at the end of the play but she decides to adopt a selfish character to save her position between the two important people in her life. She does not care what people say in society about her, and her zombie boyfriend hence lets her ego to champion her desires of being in a relationship with Walter. In this regard, she chose to see no barriers between the two worlds that she lived in and the one that her zombie boyfriend lived in as she loved him.
References
Roske, E., L. (2011). Beauty. In L.G. Kirszner & S.R. Mandell (Eds.), Compact Literature: Reading, Reacting, Writing [VitalSource digital version] (pp. 1069-1073). Boston: Cengage.