Dead Men Working In The Cane Field Analysis

Undead creatures of night consume human flesh, terrorize televisions, haunt stories and, pique the interest of millions but the most fearful part about zombies is not the fact they rip apart humans, it is that zombies exemplify them. Originating from the slave religion of voodoo in Haiti in order to resist social and cultural death during the Triangular Slave Trade, zombies became popular during the early 19th century as a cinematic monster and a psychological example. The idea of a lack of control and being submitted to a stronger force, zombies exhibit a human’s greatest fear, powerlessness to a single desire. In 1492, Christopher Columbus established the first European colony in Haiti, once known as Hispaniola, marking the beginning of

Seabrook’s “Dead Men Working in the Cane Fields,” took the idea of slavery and powerlessness and put both into the creatures who were dug out of their graves in order to work in cane fields, such as the slaves in Haiti were taken from their place of peace and forced to work. The narrator kept the zombies away from others because he did not want them to be recognized, this was the same methodology used by the Europeans, to rip leading to the idea that zombies are close to people and that there is a fine line between being alive and undead. This was the inspiration for Halperin’s 1932, White Zombie, where a man, Charles, falls in love with a woman, Madeleine, who he could not win over so, he enlisted the assistance of a voodoo master, Murder, in order to turn the woman into a zombie and submit to the will of Charles. Murder already had perfected the art of turning people into zombies, he had a sugar mill that was worked by people he had turned into zombies he created. In both of these tales, people who once were able to control their actions and ideas were forced to become and do things that they had no power over, they were forced to become slaves. The theme of slavery continues on to modern day zombies but who the master of these zombies has changed from people to a hunger for