Humanism And Objectivism In The Walking Dead

Kirkman’s Portrayal of Humanism and Objectivism Rick Grimes, in the Walking Dead, is a great representation of the dynamic between humanism and objectivism. He tries to be completely humanist, but there are subtle outbursts of his objectivist side. Kirkman portrays the tradeoff by making Rick break the law which he used to abide by, forcing Rick to deny the group some luxuries of civilization, and showing how other characters react to Rick’s objectivist choices. Kirkman aims to portray Rick as an extreme humanist early on. The first experience the reader has with Rick is when he is involved in a firefight as a law enforcement officer (1:1). The page shows Rick as enforcing the law, protecting others from an active shooter, and risking his life in order to defeat the shooter, all very humanist actions. Kirkman uses the scene to paint Rick as a humanist, however, he proceeds to test the extent of the humanism. The next couple scenes in the first issue show Rick’s …show more content…
Whenever Rick makes a decision, Kirkman provides an opinion from another character. For example, when Rick chose to give Carl a gun in order for the group to be better protected, a humanist behavior, Rick’s wife was completely against it. She said that Carl is just a little boy, showing a contradicting opinion of the matter (5:6). Also, when the group stumbled upon the first set of wanderers, Rick immediately invited them into the RV, again, a humanist behavior. However, his wife was completely against this and worried for the children, an objectivist behavior (7:13). Using these contradictions between Rick and other characters not only allow Kirkman to build drama, but they allow the decisions of Rick to be questioned in the reader’s mind. Although, the reader can see that Kirkman is trying to portray Rick as being a humanist, but using the other characters as reality checks. Showing that Kirkman believes complete humanism is