World War Z: An Oral History Of The Zombie War

World War Z and the Sins of Dystopia

Many authors use dystopian stories to highlight what is wrong with society. If a utopia is an ideal, virtuous society, then a dystopia must be one filled with sin. A dystopia is the least perfect society in which horrible aspects of our lives such as death, misery, and sadness are present all of the time. The book World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks uses the sins of greed, pride and lust to show an imperfect society or dystopia. The reason people like dystopias so much is that it gives them a glimpse of what society would look like in a worst case scenario. People understand dystopias by the kind of sins being committed by the citizens of the dystopia.

World War Z gives people

In World War Z, and in our own society, people are extremely greedy. Greed is one of the seven deadly sins and was the downfall of many individuals in the zombie dystopia. “They told us it was rabies, so we made a vaccine for rabies.”(Brooks 57). Breckinridge Scott created the drug Phalanx to make a quick buck, and he never thought about how his actions would affect other people. He knew the vaccine would not prevent people from becoming zombies, but he sold the drug anyways. This resulted in the American people not being ready for the Great Panic which killed millions of people. Once people achieved their greed, they succumbed to the additional sin of

Greed created wealth so that luxurious jobs such as movie producer, or corporate attorney were highly regarded as the best job a person could have. However, this mentality caused the people in those positions to believe that they were superior to their fellow citizens. Jobs like plumber or housekeeper were generally looked down upon. “Now they were being trained as custodians for a munitions plant in Bakersfield, California.” (Brooks 140). In World War Z, the movie producers, and corporate attorneys did not contribute to the war effort. Their pride prevented them from working at jobs they they thought were beneath their status. They had to learn to fix pipes, grow food, and be self sustaining. The menial labor intensive jobs were now the most important jobs in the community. Bullets were needed by all of mankind to fight the zombies. But, these prideful producers and attorneys could not bring themselves to help make bullets to support the war effort. Just as greed led to pride, so too did greed lead to