Dead Men Walking, by Travis Fishburn

Recently, I’ve found myself truly engaged by The Walking Dead. Just under a month ago, I wouldn’t have believed that to be possible. Halfway through the second season, watching the series on a weekly basis had nearly turned into a chore. The show, like the characters within it, seemed to know that it had to eventually move in a certain direction, but was unwilling to pick up and move. I didn’t want to dislike the show. It had a simple and intriguing premise, which offered it the opportunity to explore some interesting aspects of human survival and perseverance. Within the first few episodes of this season, I felt like the show was finally hitting the right pace for my preference, and was finally beginning to explore human nature faced with a world that’s free of civilization and the laws that accompany it.

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD

Last week’s episode, entitled “Killer Inside,” struck an emotional chord that made me start to truly consider the ideas and themes explored within the series. In the climax of the episode, Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies) comes to the decision that in order for her unborn child to survive, she must undergo a rudimentary and emergency c-section which will take her life. What’s more, Carl (Chandler Riggs), her son, is faced with the decision to put a bullet in the head of her lifeless body in order for it to stay undefiled and not return as a ‘walker’. As intense and dramatic as the scene is, the most gut-wrenching scene is the one that follows. Carl comes out of the building with Maggie (Lauren Cohan) holding the newborn baby, and Lori’s husband, Rick (Andrew Lincoln), realizes what has just happened and the implications of it.

Andrew Lincoln’s performance is chilling, and conveys Rick’s heartbreaking situation in a way that left me aghast. If played any differently, it could have gone overboard in a very cliche manner and taken away from the grievous predicament of these characters. Instead, it only adds to the despair and horror. I think most shows would end the episode with Lori’s death, and pick up the next episode with a more subdued version of the scene in which Rick is told about Lori’s fate. The scene might even have been cut altogether, in which the next episode opens with Rick in a catatonic state, suggesting that he was told off camera and is now in a solemn emotional state.

One of my biggest fears is losing my wife, the person whom I care about most in this world. I live in a world full of opportunity, people, family, and friends, but she is the one thing that I have truly invested myself in. With her lies my present life and any thoughts and dreams I have for the future. Rick’s circumstances have robbed him of everything else except for his family. Whatever hopes and intentions he had for the future was all for his wife and children, and now half of that is lost.

While Rick may be in anguish over the death of his wife, he looks at Carl and knows what his son must have had to do, which sends him over the edge. Right now I don’t have any children, but I know that when I do, I’m going to want to provide them with the best life I can. It’s a fact of life that any parent wants to give their children a life better than their own, and unfortunately circumstances have made it impossible to provide a life better than his own.

Frank Darabont’s The Mist, which Tyler and Josh discussed a few weeks ago, explores many similar themes as The Walking Dead (for which Darabont was once showrunner). At the end of the film, David (Thomas Jane), is faced with very similar grim circumstances. Transdimensional beasts have overrun the Earth, his wife has been killed, and the world as David sees it is at an end. At the end of the film, David has run out of the line and refuses to let the horrors of the world take his son. In what seems to be the only option left, David takes his own son’s life with the last of the bullets in his gun. Wanting to end it, he runs out into the mist in the hopes that his life will be ended. Out of the mist comes a military tank, followed by a convoy of other military vehicles and soldiers taking down all of the monsters in its path. While everything had seemed hopeless, had David waited longer and held out in faith, the mist through which he couldn’t see would have cleared and revealed salvation and hope for him and his son.

I don’t know where Rick goes from here. By the time this is up, this week’s episode will already have aired and answered how Rick responds to this, but I’m predicting we will eventually find him more dejected than ever. For his own sake, and for his children, he must find the strength to persevere and have hope for some sort of future.

The more important question is this: If I were in the same circumstances as Rick, would I be able to keep my faith, or would I give in to my despair and give up? If everything we depended on and cherished was suddenly taken from us, how many of us could weather the storm? I can tell you right now, based off of my history of giving up and giving in to challenges that I’ve faced, that currently my faith and my strength of will would buckle under such conditions. I depend too greatly on not only the luxuries of this world, but on the false idea that all of the things within my life will stay with me. My life is constantly changing, and the only thing I can truly depend on to see me through from one day to the next is God.