Warm Bodies Codes And Conventions

Zombie, as a sub-genre of horror, seems to start to bore its audience with similar concepts and scenarios. Tired of cliches, some writers like Issac Marion have began to explore the new possibilities within the genre through genre mixing. In his book Warm Bodies, Marion breaks out of the traditional zombie genre tweaking zombie conventions and incorporating romance to add more varieties to the existing zombie template and to let the zombie return to its shocking roots.

Warm Bodies manipulates the idea of what zombies are like in order to show the audience something they have never seen before in the zombie genre. Unlike other zombie novels, the most controversial aspect of Warm Bodies is that the zombies are aware of themselves and other people.

A new type of zombies, Boneys, is introduced in the book. Like the name suggests, Boneys take their flesh-eating life style to the next level that they eat their own flesh until there is nothing left but bones. They are so fast, aggressive, cruel even zombies are scared of them. The existence of Bonys is the violation of zombie norms. Traditionally, zombies are famous for their inability to run and their exclusive diet of the living. By adding zombie variation, the fear of zombies is no longer restricted to human, but shared by human and normal zombies, which dramatizes the overall shocking effect. Also, the introduction of new conventions apply a new meaning to the fear of zombies. The fear of zombie in classical zombie fictions is always the fear of dying. In Warm Bodies, zombies are the representation of illness rather that unconscious walking people, and fear of zombies comes from the inability to react. R perceives the world, nevertheless, he cannot interact with the world other than wandering around, grunting at other zombies and feeding off human flesh. He dislikes the typical zombie routine, but he cannot do anything about it. The idea of one’s mind trapped in a zombie body is more horrifying than the old idea of zombies being mindless, and this idea comes from people’s fear of their inability to act. Therefore, Warm Bodies’ new zombie norms contribute to the scariness of the

When people read a book, they have an assumption of what it is about, so it is hard to surprise audience when writers follow the genre rules while writing. Since Warm Bodies combines horror and romance, audience does not know what to anticipate. The sudden transitions from running away from zombies for safety to listening to a record and talking about feeling in an abandon plane make the audience question if this really is a horror story. This bewildered reaction is what the rhetor wants, and it lays a nice foundation for the terror in later chapters. Romance distracts audience’s attention from the horror part. Even at moments like R hiding Julie’s boyfriend’ brain in his pocket, audience is leaded to focus on the guilty R is experiencing rather than the horrifying truth that he ate Julie’s boyfriend. Once audience is used to the romance, it will be more effective to scare