"The Girl with All the Gifts: A New Era for Zombie Texts

Zombies, they have been around for

quite a while. Actually, it is believed that
zombies originated in Haiti where they were
portrayed as flesh-eating corpses, but as
victims of voodoo rituals and spells. The
word comes from the Kongo word Soul, nzambi (Haiti and The Truth about Zombies). The
zombie genre has come a long way from its origin. Zombies have been portrayed in the past from
fast, vicious, and scary monsters whose only purpose is to attack any living being thats around them
(World War Z), to slow, disoriented, even comical alterations of humans (The Walking Dead). I have
seen many twists and changes to the Zombie genre but nothing like the one seen in the novel The
Girl with All the Gifts by M.R. Carey.

This novel is set in and around London in, most likely, the far future. When reading
this novel we are introduced to the life of 10-year-old Melanie, the protagonist of the story, an
apparent ordinary girl who enjoys learning about Greek mythology, science, and history. Except
Melanie is not ordinary at all, she lives in a military base run by Sergeant Eddie Parks and directed
by Doctor Caroline Caldwell along with several other peculiar children and her favorite teacher
Mrs. Justineau. The base was created because the world that we know and love no longer exists; it
has been overtaken by hungries, this novels name for Zombies. Melanie and the other children are
there for a purpose, they are Dr. Caldwells scientific experiments, they are a type of hungry, one that
thinks and feels and is not brain-thirsty all the time.This story has 3 kinds of people. The humans, the
hungries, and the Junkers. Junkers are savages that refused to join the bases cause and instead,
ventured into the woods to live ungoverned. There is a series of events that leads Melanie and other

members of the base to venture out of the safety of the base and into remote, abandoned, hungryinfested territories in hope of reaching Beacon, the closest known safe major city. In this trip is where
all the characters grow and learn from not only their surroundings, but most importantly from each
other, leaving the readers with the question What is right or wrong in the case of a real life
disaster?

Each main character begins with a certain mindset and ends with a somewhat different one.
Sergeant Parks has the military mentality and thinks that his only purpose is to give instructions
and live by the rules; he sees hungries, and therefore Melanie, as the ultimate threat and doesnt trust
her at all. By the end of the novel he learns to accept Melanie as an ally but more so as a person, thus
demonstrating the novels overall theme of acceptance and trust.

Dr. Caldwell appears to be a cold-hearted scientist that doesnt care about anyone other than
herself and her experiments, and that would kill anyone and anything that intervened with her plans;
this is true, she definitely is all of those things, but she also is just genuinely worried about finding
the cure to the infective disease, maybe to prove herself better than the
other scientists that were chosen instead of her to complete that
research, or maybe because she truly is just trying to help mankind,
regardless of her motives, she teaches the readers that dedication and
hard work pay off.

Mrs. Justineau is very emotionally attached to Melanie, she knows

what Melanie is but she sees her as a person no less valuable than
herself. This emotional attachment causes troubles along the novel but it overall demonstrates the
theme of humans and humanity. Miss J also proves to everyone that what may seem right to them,

may be completely wrong for everybody else, and this is the most
important question to ask in this review.

Finally, Melanie is oblivious to the life outside the base, at first, she
doesnt comprehend almost anything that is happening around her,
especially when she is placed with a handful of adults on a dangerous road
trip but she becomes wise and analytical by the end of the trip, she
understands what she is and assumes the role of a grownup, she makes hard decisions and is
ultimately a lot more human in her half-hungry-half-human state than most true humans. She turns
into an adult dressed as a kid, dressed as a hungry (page 247). She is the most notorious example of
nature vs. nurture.

While reading other reviews on this novel I came across one in particular that gave me a
different perspective of the novel in general, it said that this novel isnt about the zombie outbreak
itself, or the world left in its wake, its about the stories of this specific group of people (review by
theguardian.com). I agree with this, even though Carey gives his readers many facts about the
infection, time frames, scientific facts, locations, etc, he concentrates on the individual stories of the
five individuals in the road trip, some more than other, but in the end, the readers connect with the
characters a lot better because of his decision to center it on them.

Carey is a British writer of comic books, novels, and films (Biography on Wikiedia) so he
knows how to use many different elements of literary style along with rhetorical strategies to prove
his points and make the story a bit easier to connect to for the readers. Most notoriously, he uses
pathos. He centers the entire novel around a 10-year-old child, her innocence and charm makes us,
the readers, feel attached to her and the other characters. He makes us love Melanie and hate
Caldwell. Another example of a great strategy used by Carey to draw us into the story is his decision

of narrating the story in an omniscient/3 person multiple vision way, he tells us what exactly the
rd

characters are feeling and why, therefore making the story feel more personal, like we are a part of it.

He also uses references to other literary works and publications like books such as Winnie the
Pooh and other Greek Mythology stories such as Pandoras Box along with other childrens books
(page 192 & 242). He not only uses literary publications, he mentions an actual study in which ants
became infected with a virus and then spread it through the air, which helped the readers make sense
of the hungry virus later on in the story. There are also music mentions such as The Beatles, Pink
Floyd, and Fleetwood Mac (page 270). Carey didnt make up a city name or an unknown location, he
tells the readers specific locations and landmarks as well. All these real-world mentions, in my
opinion, make the story feel more real, its not so fictional anymore; it forces the readers to perhaps
consider the possibility of the infection happening in the future.

I think Carey does a great job first of all, creating a relatable environment for his readers and
then drawing them in so that theyre attached to the characters he describes, this is the most effective
way to build up trust and make your overall point heard and believable. The Girl with All the Gifts is
not a novel for children to read, although it teaches you valuable life lessons and makes you think
analytically, it contains very strong language and some sexual instances that children may not be
ready to read. This novel makes the readers think not only about the
consequences of a possible zombie apocalypse, but also it raises
many social problems in todays society. What would you do in case
of a zombie apocalypse? Now, take the words zombie apocalypse
and replace them with natural disaster or economical collapse or
major riot. And that is the lesson that this novel has taught me, to
think about what is considered morally acceptable (good or bad) in case of an extreme emergency.

Works Cited.

Carey, M R. The Girl with All the Gifts. Print.

"Haiti and The Truth About Zombies." Umich.edu. University of Michigan, n.d. Web. 7 Feb. 2015.

Smythe, James. "The Girl with All the Gifts by MR Carey Review." TheGuardian.com. N.p., 15 Jan.

2014. Web. 7 Feb. 2015.

"Mike Carey (writer)." Wikipedia. Biography, Wikimedia Foundation, 13 Jan. 2015. Web. 09 Feb.

2015