The Walking Dead is one of the most popular series on television with the story following an infectious zombie outbreak, forcing the world into chaotic dystopia. The plot of the story centers around a police officer named Rick Grimes who wakes up from a coma and is thrown into this horror movie scenario. Throughout the series Rick finds himself facing challenging ethical decisions that effects his morality and those who surround him. In the television series everyone’s humanity and morals are pushed to the limits, this idea of survival at any cost is arguably the main aspect of horror in the show.
In the show there is a strong sense of ethical contemplation through the use of extreme events, well developed characters, and morally challenging decisions. In the second episode, “Guts”, Rick is trapped inside a tank surrounded by …show more content…
In Charles Nuckolls’s The Walking Dead As Conservative Cultural Critique he states, “When a man tries (but fails) to shoot his zombie-wife, she eventually ends up biting and killing their son, and the husband eventually goes insane. Presumably this is intended to suggest the moral dilemma in killing someone who is known and loved” (103). As common as this is in The Walking Dead franchise, killing someone you know after they turned into a zombie is an extreme circumstance which is a real fear in the series. The thought of killing a loved one isn’t even imaginable for most people, but this show makes the viewers think about what they would do in that type of situation and if killing them would morally correct. At the beginning of the series it is even argued a few times if it’s ethical to kill zombies at all since at one point they were all human, but this leads to someone putting individual survival and sense of morals at odds because in that type of world it is almost impossible to achieve
In the show there is a strong sense of ethical contemplation through the use of extreme events, well developed characters, and morally challenging decisions. In the second episode, “Guts”, Rick is trapped inside a tank surrounded by …show more content…
In Charles Nuckolls’s The Walking Dead As Conservative Cultural Critique he states, “When a man tries (but fails) to shoot his zombie-wife, she eventually ends up biting and killing their son, and the husband eventually goes insane. Presumably this is intended to suggest the moral dilemma in killing someone who is known and loved” (103). As common as this is in The Walking Dead franchise, killing someone you know after they turned into a zombie is an extreme circumstance which is a real fear in the series. The thought of killing a loved one isn’t even imaginable for most people, but this show makes the viewers think about what they would do in that type of situation and if killing them would morally correct. At the beginning of the series it is even argued a few times if it’s ethical to kill zombies at all since at one point they were all human, but this leads to someone putting individual survival and sense of morals at odds because in that type of world it is almost impossible to achieve