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Geoffrey A. Wright, PhD
Associate Professor of English
Samford University
June 2014
Hobbes, Locke, Calvin, Darwin, and Zombies:
The Post-Apocalyptic Politics of Ethics in AMC’s The Walking Dead
“We are alone, with no excuses.”
—Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism (416)
Introduction: Body and Soul
Images of the end of the world abound in film, television, and video games. Global
disasters and the dystopias that emerge in their wake have long been staples of the sciencefiction film genre in particular. A (very) short list of examples includes Planet of the Apes,
Outbreak, Twelve Monkeys, Armageddon, The Day After Tomorrow, and Deep Impact.
Similarly, video game franchises such as Fallout, Metro, and Darksiders set players loose in
post-apocalyptic wastelands. Within the umbrella category of disaster narratives, the zombie
genre has recently emerged as a dominant force in film and gaming.1 In just the past ten to
fifteen years, we have seen 28 Days Later and its sequel 28 Weeks Later, as well as the longrunning Resident Evil franchise, and even zombie parodies such as Zombieland. The recent trend
is prevalent in video games as well, with titles such as Left 4 Dead, Dead Space, Dead Rising,
and Dead Island seizing headlines during the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 console generations.
Amid the clamor, AMC’s The Walking Dead—adapted, of course, from Robert
Kirkman’s graphic novel series—has set itself apart and redefined the zombie genre for
1
And this observation has become the dominant, if not obligatory, opening rhetorical maneuver
in essays on contemporary zombie narratives.
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television.2 Focusing on AMC’s version of the Walking Dead story, I am interested in this vision
of a post-apocalyptic dystopia in which the characters struggle to survive not only in a literal,
physical sense but also in a spiritual-ethical sense. My argument is that the TV series stages a
debate among tyrannical, democratic, and theocratic philosophies of political and moral
governance. For the purpose of this essay, I am focusing on three central characters who
dominate the storylines throughout the first three seasons: the protagonist and sheriff’s deputy,
Rick Grimes; the farmer, Hershel; and the Governor, the maniacal despot of Woodbury.
Each character embodies a philosophy that is both political and ethical in scope. The
zombie-infested wasteland of Georgia takes shape as a Darwinian dystopia governed by one law:
“survival of the fittest.” This dystopia acts as an arena in which the beliefs these men profess are
tested, when the groups of survivors face the zombie hordes, and pitted against each other, when
the groups find themselves in competition with each other. Rick haltingly attempts to form a
pseudo-democracy and serve as its reluctant leader. His most forceful antagonist during the first
three seasons is the Governor, whose rule over the “utopia” of Woodbury is tyrannical. Yet, Rick
also faces pressure from Hershel, whose Georgia farm offers a pastoral sanctuary grounded on
Hershel’s Protestant religious principles.
The stances these men take can be traced back to the Reformation and Enlightenment
thinkers John Calvin, John Locke, and Thomas Hobbes. In Leviathan, Hobbes asserts that the
only way for humanity to emerge from the violent chaos of nature is for people “to confer all
their power and strength upon one man . . . that may reduce all their wills . . . unto one will”
(136). What Hobbes is describing, of course, is tyranny, precisely the sort of all-powerful rule by
one man that the Governor endorses. Rick, in contrast, struggles to preserve a Lockean notion
2
While this essay does not address the video game adaptations, it is worth noting that the series
of games has garnered generally positive reviews.
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that a leader’s power is purely fiduciary and is derived from the consent of those he/she leads.
The third alternative that the series entertains is that of a theocratic state: Hershel governs his
family farm as though it were a miniature theocracy whose centralized authority manifests the
will of God in the world.
In the following section, I review Darwin’s principles of evolutionary survival and then
demonstrate how The Walking Dead presents a world ruled by such violence. I begin with
Darwin because the scenario of violence for the sake of survival predicates the series’ debate
over tyrannical, democratic, and theocratic modes of governance. From there, the essay proceeds
through sections on Hobbes, Locke, and Calvin, in that order. Each of these sections first reviews
the concepts central to each thinker’s theory of political and ethical governance and then
proceeds to apply those concepts to The Walking Dead. The essay concludes with a short
reflection on the existentialist tone of the series. The overarching trajectory of the series suggests
that while human beings might struggle, even admirably, to cling to the vestiges of the social
order and moral value system that once defined their humanity, their failure is as irresistible as
gravity. All the characters eventually end up in the same situation: having to choose between the
survival of the body and the integrity of the soul.
A Darwinian Dystopia: Survival of the Fittest
The world the characters inhabit in The Walking Dead is plainly Darwinian. This is partly
dictated by genre: both the disaster genre and the zombie genre hinge on the premise that some
form of civilization-ending catastrophe is occurring or has occurred and the survivors are faced
with one primary objective: to stay alive. In this sense, the world of The Walking Dead is
dictated by one supreme natural law, which Darwin is most famous for articulating: the “survival
of the fittest” (318). Throughout its first three seasons, the series repeatedly probes the
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Darwinian proposition that only those individuals who are strong or smart are able to overcome
when they are attacked by zombies—or by other humans. Both major and minor characters alike
are constantly challenged to think creatively and act swiftly in order to survive, and often the
difference between a major and a minor character is that the former possesses greater
dispensations of these abilities, while the latter possesses less.3
One passage from Darwin’s Origin of Species rings with special clarity and urgency
regarding The Walking Dead. Darwin writes about contemplating “a tangled bank, clothed with
many plants of many kinds” and reflecting on the fact “that these elaborately constructed forms,
so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all
been produced by laws acting around us” (325). The deterministic nature of evolutionary biology
is evident here: the laws of nature, such as reproduction and competition for available resources
in the name of survival, dictate all the variations of life forms on the planet—including humans.
Darwin concludes, “Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted
object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals,
directly follows” (325, my italics). What I wish to stress here is the Darwinian concept that the
condition of nature, prior to the establishment of human societies, was essentially open and
never-ending warfare. The use of physical violence in attack—to procure food or territory—and
defense—to guard territory or to prevent oneself from becoming food for another organism—
would have been a daily necessity.
One especially unnerving moment in The Walking Dead illustrates this point, and it
occurs when Lori and Carl are feeding grain to chickens on Hershel’s farm. Interrupting a rare
Regarding this essay’s overarching argument about governance, it is interesting to note that
only those individuals with the greatest propensity for survival, namely Rick Grimes, Shane,
Hershel, and the Governor, are placed in (or take) positions of leadership.
3
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lighthearted moment between mother and son, Carl suddenly grows serious and observes,
“Everything’s food for something else” (WD, S2, E6, “Secrets”).4 The scene then cuts to
Patricia, a relative of Hershel’s, breaking the legs of several chickens and feeding them to a barn
full of captive zombies.5 Carl intuits (and the subsequent shot of Patricia underscores) a central
trope of the zombie narrative: that humans, who have existed at the top of the food chain for
millennia, suddenly are rendered prey on which another predator is designed to feed. Humans are
then placed in the vulnerable position, alongside other prey animals, of having to defend
themselves from predators in order to survive. Herein lies one attraction of the zombie narrative:
seeing our ontological position as the pinnacle of evolution get overturned and then watching
characters wrestle with the social and moral ramifications of being cast back into the “war of
nature.” In this light, Darwin’s assessment of the “grandeur in this view of life” (325) is ironic.
As grand as the system of evolutionary biology is, the experience of being subject to the natural
law of survival, with no sociological and political barriers in place, is nothing short of brutal.
Despite the seriousness and pervasiveness of the zombie threat in The Walking Dead, it is
by far not the only threat Rick’s group faces throughout the first three seasons. Other humans are
a continual problem in the first two seasons, and by season three, with the introduction of the
Woodbury community and the Governor, other humans have become even more dangerous than
the zombies. This fits with Darwin’s description of the “survival of the fittest”: “As the
individuals of the same species come in all respects into the closest competition with each other,
4
Throughout the essay, I will use the following citation style when citing specific episodes from
the TV series: I will abbreviate The Walking Dead as WD, and following that I will indicate the
season number and episode number as S#, E#. When citing an episode for the first time, I will
provide its title in the citation.
5
As season two of the series explains, Patricia does so because Hershel, who is in charge of his
family farm, believes that the zombies are still human beings who will someday be cured of
whatever disease afflicts them.
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the struggle will generally be most severe between them” (317). After establishing a sanctuary
inside a Georgia prison, Rick’s group discovers that its new home neighbors the town of
Woodbury. Its leader, the Governor, refuses to share territory and resources with another group.
The ensuing conflict dominates the last phase of season three and ultimately results in the
slaughter of many of Woodbury’s citizens as the Governor leads them in a disastrous assault on
Rick’s group, which by that time is entrenched in the prison.
The series’ most sustained exploration of this notion of competition between individuals
of the same species lies in its development of the “love triangle” among Rick, Lori, and Shane.
Their increasingly tense and complicated relationship dominates much of the storyline for
seasons one and two. Darwin writes, “With animals having separated sexes, there will be in most
cases a struggle between the males for the possession of the females. The most vigorous males,
or those which have most successfully struggled with their conditions of life, will generally leave
the most progeny” (317). After having been told by Shane that Rick is dead, Lori consummates a
sexual relationship with Shane, only to be subsequently reunited with Rick when he finds their
group’s camp outside of Atlanta. While Shane and Lori publicly retreat from each other in the
wake of Rick’s return, the tension among the three main characters only increases over the
course of the next season and a half as Shane privately insists to Lori that he, not Rick, is the one
who saved her and Carl and he, not Rick, is the one best suited to keep them alive now. While
the affair is not discussed openly until late in season two, Shane repeatedly questions Rick and
challenges his authority, and this conflict between the two men (which is mostly verbal but does
erupt into a fistfight at one point in season two) is clearly expressed as a contest to determine
which male is most “vigorous,” to use Darwin’s terminology, which of them will “have most
successfully struggled with their conditions of life” (317). The conflict between the two men gets
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resolved only through violence, when Rick finally kills Shane in what amounts to a Wild Weststyle showdown (WD, S2, E12, “Better Angels”). What I wish to stress here is that the
Darwinian conditions of the post-apocalyptic dystopia dissolve the sociological obligations of
friendship and marriage that these three characters formerly honored with respect to each other
and replaces them with the law of “survival of the fittest.”6
While the struggle to survive is a generic commonplace in zombie narratives, my
argument here is that The Walking Dead does far more than take this Darwinian premise as an
excuse to indulge in excessively gory action. Instead, the series establishes these Darwinian
circumstances as an environment in which to interrogate the conditions of political governance
and socialized morality.7 The series’ philosophical interrogation revolves around the use and
necessity of violence in what Darwin calls “the constantly recurrent Struggle for Existence”
(317). In the Darwinian dystopia of The Walking Dead, the universal need for survival makes
violence universal, and violence erodes the characters’ humanity.
The pessimistic philosophical position that the series (and the graphic novels on which it
is based) takes constitutes a significant break from the tradition of the zombie genre. Kyle
Bishop observes that the traditional zombie narrative revolves around “one key premise: the
monsters represent humanity” (73). What this means is that the zombie genre is predicated on a
stable set of binaries between zombies and humans: humans are good, zombies bad; humans are
the protagonists, zombies the villains; humans represent what is good about humanity, zombies
what is bad about humanity. Bishop asserts that The Walking Dead, in contrast, “present[s] the
6
To underscore this point, Shane explains to Rick that he never desired Lori until after the
apocalypse had begun.
7
I concur with Kyle Bishop’s assessment that the series of graphic novels (or in my case the TV
series) performs “important cultural work by providing the audience with ethical guideposts and
a sober warning against atavistic barbarism” by “featuring protagonists who combat both
zombies and other humans with equal degrees of brutality” (74).
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otherwise sympathetic protagonists as monstrous creatures” and has essentially “flipped the
original allegory: humans are truly monstrous” (73-4, author’s italics).8 He goes on to argue that
the main characters’ “slow, tragic loss of humanity develops into the most important subject of
the story” and that the story “engages with the barbaric transformations that befall its
protagonists, especially those in positions of authority” (78). Indeed, The Walking Dead raises
difficult questions about the human potential for inhuman behavior once the political and moral
guardrails built into modern society have been dismantled.
The series speaks poignantly to the dehumanizing effect of violence in the final phase of
season two, in which Dale, who serves as the voice of moral protest throughout the first two
seasons, argues with the group about executing Randall, a man who was taken prisoner after his
group attacked Rick, Glen, and Hershel (WD, S2, E11, “Judge, Jury, Executioner”). Dale is the
lone voice of dissent in this instance, and he pleads with Andrea to join with him in voting
against the execution. He accusingly tells her, “You were a Civil Rights lawyer” before the
apocalypse, but she dismisses his pleas with the pointed question, “Who says we’re civil
anymore?” Dale points to the power of violence to erode the group’s collective humanity when
he subsequently asserts, “The world is gone, but keeping our humanity . . . that’s a choice.”
When the group does, indeed, vote to execute Randall, Dale concludes, “This world is ugly,
Bishop’s claims are aimed at Robert Kirkman’s graphic novels, and he does not address AMC’s
adaptation in his essay. Nonetheless, I believe his basic premise can be extrapolated to apply to
the TV series. I should note, however, that Bishop goes on to read the graphic novels as an
allegory for the Bush administration’s controversial practices during the War on Terror. He states
that the books “demonstrate a new symbolic manifestation, one that reflects not cultural fears
about what terrorists might do, but rather what the ‘good guys’ can do against potential or
suspected terrorists” (77). The contemporary orientation of Bishop’s critique, therefore, lies
outside the jurisdiction of my essay.
8
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harsh. It’s survival of the fittest” (WD, S2, E11, my italics).9 The series reflexively underscores
this point about the unmitigated use of violence in the quest for survival. Dale, repulsed by the
group’s decision, states that he does not want to live in such a world. Only moments later, while
he is wandering outside, alone and disillusioned, he is attacked and killed by a zombie. This
ironic turn of events suggests that modern morality is out of place in a Darwinian state of nature.
The series only deepens the characters’ loss of humanity in season three. While on a
mission to find a cache of weapons with which to defend the group at the prison against the
imminent onslaught of the Governor, Rick discovers an acquaintance from the series’ pilot
episode. This man, named Morgan, had already lost his wife to the zombie infection by the time
Rick originally met him, and he has since lost his son, who was killed by his own zombieinfected mother. When Rick, ever sympathetic to the plight of others, tells Morgan, “I can help
you. You can heal,” Morgan dismisses Rick’s gesture by telling him, “If you got something
good, that just means that there’s somebody else who wants to take it. . . . You will be torn apart
by teeth or bullets” (WD, S3, E12, “Clear”). Morgan articulates the inevitability of violent
competition for resources in nature. He realizes not only that he has valuable resources which
Rick needs, but also that Rick possesses something, in this case shelter and territory, to which
another natural competitor desires access. Morgan’s Darwinian epiphany—that individuals or
groups will always end up fighting for the same finite resources—is ironically underscored by
the fact that, despite their former friendship, Rick is in fact taking a large portion of Morgan’s
9
This moment echoes a scene in an earlier episode from season two, when Carl has been shot
accidentally and lies in critical condition. The closest that Rick and Lori have to a surgeon and
the only hope of saving their son is Hershel, who is a veterinarian. Rick and Lori end up debating
whether or not to risk surgery, which itself could endanger Carl. Rick argues they should have
Hershel attempt the surgery. Lori, on the other hand, asks Rick why they should save Carl now
only to have him become “just another animal knowing nothing but to survive” (WD, S2, E3,
“Save the Last One”).
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cache of weapons, and he is doing so by force, without Morgan’s consent (at least initially).
Unlike Rick, Morgan further acknowledges that in a Darwinian state of nature, violent death is
all but inevitable, and if it does not come at the teeth of zombies, it will come from the triggers
being pulled by other humans.
The final episode of season three capitalizes on this notion. The episode opens with the
Governor torturing Milton, his former right-hand man, because Milton attempted to sabotage the
Governor’s plans to destroy Rick’s group at the prison. The Governor instructs Milton in the
Darwinian reality in which they are all caught, telling him, “In this life now, you kill or you die.
Or you die, then you kill” (WD, S3, E16, “Welcome to the Tombs”). While the Governor is in no
way the moral voice of the series, his point is essentially correct: in a Darwinian state of nature,
individuals inevitably are forced to kill, whether that be zombies and/or other humans, in order to
preserve their own lives. The irony of which the Governor is all too aware is that when people
die, they metamorphose into zombies and are then a danger to any human they encounter. The
Governor’s actions illustrate the dehumanizing effect of this endless violence when he
subsequently kills Milton and leaves him locked in a room with Andrea, the Governor’s former
lover, who has also betrayed him. Milton, of course, transforms into a zombie—a mindless,
inhuman predator—and Andrea is bitten and infected in the process of fighting to protect herself
against him.10
Hobbes: Power Is Law
According to Enlightenment political philosophy, human societies formed in response to
the incessantly violent and unstable conditions of nature. In his groundbreaking treatise of 1651,
Leviathan, or the Matter, Forme, and Power of a Common-wealth, Thomas Hobbes establishes
10
She later commits suicide rather than allow herself to become a zombie.
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his theory of social formation: the “final cause, end, or design of men . . . in the introduction of
that restraint upon themselves, in which we see them live in Commonwealths, is the foresight of
their own preservation, . . . that is to say, of getting themselves out from that miserable condition
of war which is necessarily consequent . . . to the natural passions of men” (133). The reason that
individuals gather themselves together and restrict their behavior within social boundaries is that
their existence in nature is inherently precarious, due to the desires of others (desires,
presumably, for resources, or what John Locke will later call “property”). John Locke, in his
Second Treatise of Civil Government (1690), concurs with Hobbes. Locke asks, “If man in the
state of nature be so free . . . why will he part with his freedom?” (162), and he answers his
rhetorical question as follows: “though in the state of nature he hath such a right [to freedom],
yet the enjoyment of it is very uncertain, and constantly exposed to the invasion of others” (162).
Hobbes and Locke both reason that the need to defend oneself, or preserve oneself, from
constant threats from other human beings is the fundamental reason for societal formation.
For both Hobbes and Locke, the insecurity and instability that individuals experience in
nature results not from inequity, as might be expected, but from equity. Hobbes explains that
nature has “made men so equal in the faculties of body and mind as that, though there be found
one man sometimes manifestly stronger in body or of quicker mind than another, yet when all is
reckoned together the difference between man and man is not so considerable as that one man
can thereupon claim to himself any benefit to which another may not pretend as well as he”
(129-30). In other words, in their natural state, individual humans are roughly equal in terms of
physical and mental ability, and even though some individuals are somewhat stronger or smarter
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than others, these differences are negligible and do not produce any scenario in which an
individual could realistically enforce any sort of undisputed superiority over all others.11
The resulting situation is not a natural order among individuals but, rather, a constant
struggle. According to Hobbes, the result is that “From this equality of ability ariseth equality of
hope in the attaining of our ends. And therefore if any two men desire the same thing, which
nevertheless they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies; and in the way to their end . . .
endeavor to destroy or subdue one another” (130). When two or more individuals (or groups) of
roughly equal ability find themselves in need of the same finite resources, the inevitable result
(as Darwin argues some two-hundred years after Hobbes) is conflict. Richard Tuck observes,
“conflict arises as a result of men’s differing beliefs about their own power, and in particular
about the means by which they might come to preserve themselves—self-preservation being . . .
the aim that can most plausibly be attributed to them” (185). This conflict gets resolved in one of
two ways, according to Hobbes: either one party subdues, or intimidates, the other into
relinquishing claim to the resources, or one party destroys the other through the application of
physical violence.12 Hobbes’s theory is revolutionary on two counts: one is that he (and Locke
like him some forty years later) asserts the inherent equality of individuals, and two is that he
(and Locke) views equality not as the key to natural order but as the engine of anarchy.
Without a self-evident hierarchy among individuals of the same species, decisions about
the use of life-giving resources are settled by what Hobbes and Darwin both call “competition.”
This, of course, does not stop individuals from trying. Locke states, “for all being kings as
much as he, every man his equal, and the greater part no strict observers of equity and justice,
the enjoyment of property he has in this state is very unsafe, very insecure” (162, my italics).
12
I am reminded of the famous scene from early in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, in
which two groups of humanoid apes seek access to a meager watering hole. At first, one group
scares the other away. Later, the head of the subdued group discovers that a thighbone can be
used to crush objects, and his group returns to the watering hole, beats the enemy leader to death
with its new weapons, and claims the priceless resource for itself.
11
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If all individuals are equal and all are obligated to resort to fighting for resources, then, in
Hobbes’s view, “we must preserve our lives, and . . . we have an absolute right to do whatever
conduces to that end” (Ryan 223). Tuck observes that, for Hobbes, “Self-preservation was indeed
an extremely plausible candidate for a universal principle” of human behavior (188).13 The
“absolute right” to self-preservation results in what Hobbes famously calls war: “Hereby it is
manifest that during the time when men live without a common power to keep them all in awe,
they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every
man” (131, my italics). I wish to draw a link between what Hobbes here calls the “war . . . of
every man against every man” and what Darwin calls “the war of nature” (see above). Both
thinkers use the term “war” to characterize the natural, pre-societal condition in which different
species, and the individual members of the same species, preserve their existence through
violence. Hobbes laments, “In such condition there is no place for industry . . . and consequently
no culture of the earth . . . no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear,
and danger of violent death” (131-2). What Hobbes describes is a markedly Darwinian existence
in which the cultivation of higher forms of human expression has no place and in which the only
priority is self-preservation.
This Hobbesian “war . . . of every man against every man” is precisely the postapocalyptic scenario that The Walking Dead sets in motion. Hobbes famously describes this
natural state as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” (132), and it is no coincidence that the
Tuck suggests that Hobbes “added to this universal right [of self-preservation] another set of
principles . . . presented as an implication of the principle of self-preservation” (189). This set of
principles that Hobbes sets out is to seek peace and prepare defense against those who might not
mutually seek peace—the idea being that it is reasonable to think that no individual will preserve
him- or herself for long in a state of conflict with all other individuals (189). Ryan concurs,
stating, “To escape this condition [of universal war], men must devise institutions that will
enforce rules of conduct that ensure peace” (222).
13
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series virtually quotes this passage from Hobbes on more than one occasion. In the climactic
episode of the first season, Rick’s group has succeeded in finding the CDC (Center for Disease
Control) in Atlanta, Georgia. However, the CDC proves not to be the sanctuary they had
assumed it would be. Instead, they find the military cordon around the building overrun, only one
surviving scientist (Dr. Edwin Jenner), and no hope for a cure to the zombie pandemic (WD, S1,
E6, “TS-19”). Rather than a cure or at least the hope of finding one, the only option Jenner offers
is mass suicide. In fact, he initially makes the unilateral decision on behalf of everyone in Rick’s
group that mass suicide is preferable to that Darwinian “struggle for existence.” When the group
understandably protests, Jenner explains to them, “You know what’s out there. A short, brutal
life and an agonizing death” (WD, S1, E6, my italics). A similar moment occurs in the middle of
season two, when Rick discovers that Lori is pregnant. Before notifying Rick, Lori privately
debates with herself whether to abort the pregnancy. In fact, she attempts to do so by taking a
handful of “Morning After” pills, but she immediately makes herself expel them. Rick finds out,
nonetheless, and confronts her about the pregnancy. Still torn over the issue, Lori fears they
would be condemning the child “to live a short, cruel life” (WD, S2, E6, “Secrets,” my italics).
Her statement suggests that having the baby would be tantamount to imposing the death sentence
on another human being.
Hobbes’s solution to the problem of living a “nasty, brutish, and short” life in nature goes
beyond that of instituting a society or commonwealth. Hobbes prescribes that the authority of
government be structured in a particular way: “The only way to erect such a common power, as
may be able to defend them from the invasion of foreigners, and the injuries of one another . . . is
to confer all their power and strength upon one man . . . that may reduce all their wills . . . unto
one will . . . and therein to submit their wills, every one to his will, and their judgements to his
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judgement” (136). Tuck observes that Hobbes proposes a way “that we should successfully
coordinate our judgments about what conduces to our preservation” (191) and that the best way
to ensure this mutual self-preservation is for a society to have a single, all-powerful ruler decide
what the terms are on which everyone is to agree (193). What Hobbes describes is, of course,
tyranny, not necessarily in the modern sense of cruel and arbitrary power but at least in the
original Greek sense of rule by an individual who singularly possesses absolute power. I take
Hobbes’s point to be that bringing together a plurality of equals is not sufficient to sustain the
social order since the collective will be left with basically the same problem it faced in nature:
the constant struggle among equals. Hobbes’s solution is that all the members of the society must
relinquish their free will to a single individual, who is then entrusted with absolute power to
dictate how society runs. This arrangement constitutes a hierarchy in which power ensures order.
The Walking Dead takes up this Hobbesian philosophy of tyranny in the form of the
Governor. By the time he is introduced to the series in season three, the Governor stands in
absolute control of the town of Woodbury: he controls the town’s militia, all final decisions
about how the town is run belong to him, and he even marshals the town’s resources in service to
his own secret imperialistic agenda. On the surface, Woodbury appears to be a utopia in the
sense that it provides safety and security to its citizens, along with the homely comforts to which
they all had grown accustomed prior to the zombie apocalypse. Even the name “Woodbury”
evokes an aura of white picket fences and suburban contentment. In one sense, this is precisely
what the creation of the town was meant to accomplish. Early in season three, the Governor’s
militia “rescues” Andrea and Michonne, who are then given shelter within the town. While
treating the cautious pair of strangers to their first hot meal in months, the Governor tells them he
will inform them of the “secret” of Woodbury, after which he proudly announces, “We’re a
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community” (WD, S3, E3, “Walk with Me”). The Governor subsequently declares, “We’re
going out there and taking back what’s ours: civilization.” I take his use of the words
“community” and “civilization” to be synonymous with Hobbes’s “commonwealth” in the sense
that what the Governor envisions Woodbury to be is a self-contained group of individuals who
provide for their mutual care under the leadership of one all-powerful individual (himself).
If this were the extent of the socio-political arrangement in Woodbury, it would be a
happy example of Hobbes’s idealistic vision of tyrannical rule. However, the negative potential
of tyranny gradually becomes evident in the Governor’s behavior. Still relatively early in season
three, tensions arise among Andrea, Michonne, and the Governor over the fact that while he tells
them publicly that they are free to leave when they wish, contingencies repeatedly and
mysteriously arise that prevent them from actually doing so. Even prior to this, their weapons are
removed without their consent—weapons that, outside the walls of Woodbury, mean the
difference between life and death. When Michonne is caught trying to steal back her sword, the
Governor lectures her, telling her, “People follow the rules. . . . It keeps them alive” (WD, S3,
E5, “Say the Word”). In one sense, the Governor could be said merely to be fulfilling the
function of the Hobbesian tyrant: that being to bend all other wills and judgments to his will and
judgment. After all, Hobbes goes to great lengths in Leviathan to assert that the sovereign ruler
can, in effect, do no wrong to his people: “there can happen no breach of covenant on the part of
the sovereign; and consequently none of his subjects, by any pretence of forfeiture, can be freed
from his subjection” (138). Hobbes’s reasoning suggests that power precedes morality, not vice
versa. Indeed, MM Goldsmith argues that Hobbes “denies that laws need be just, right, moral, or
good in order to be laws” (275). Instead, all a law needs in order to be a law is to be “perceptibly
signified as the legislator’s command” (275). In such an arrangement, “no authority can declare a
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law beyond the sovereign’s jurisdiction. So the sovereign’s authority is unlimited” (Goldsmith
279). According to Hobbes’s logic, if absolute power is truly absolute, then no boundary exists to
mark when the tyrant could be said to transgress in his behavior.
However, Locke articulates a dramatically different understanding of tyranny. He states,
“freedom of men under government is, to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one
of that society, . . . and not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary will of
another man. This freedom from absolute, arbitrary power, is so necessary to, and closely joined
with a man’s preservation, that he cannot part with it” (158). The Governor is guilty of precisely
what Locke fears: that absolute power wielded by a single individual inevitably becomes
arbitrary and self-serving—not power applied equally to all members of the society, not power
used for the good of the society as a whole. The Governor allows himself exceptions to “the
rules” that are mercilessly applied to all other citizens of Woodbury. The arbitrary and selfserving way in which the Governor administers his authority is made clear when it is revealed
that he is keeping his own zombie-infected daughter alive in a cage (WD, S3, E5). In this light,
the town of Woodbury is merely a façade allowing the Governor to marshal the vast resources
needed to perform the scientific experiments necessary to seek a cure for his daughter. Richard
Ashcraft argues that, according to Locke, “Tyranny occurs, . . . ‘when the Governour . . . makes
not the Law, but his Will, the Rule’” (228). By Locke’s definition, then, tyranny “is the ruler’s
use of his political power ‘not for the good of those, who are under it, but for his own private
separate Advantage’” (228). This line of reasoning clearly distinguishes Locke from Hobbes.
Unlike Hobbes, Locke perceives singular, absolute power as being inherently arbitrary and,
therefore, at odds with the good of the people. Consequently, tyranny, in Locke’s view, is
inherently antithetical to proper government: “not only will the common good always take
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precedence over self-interest but, also, government will have to be constituted in such a manner
as to rule out a Hobbesian Sovereign . . . who retains an interest that is distinct and separate from
that of his subjects” (Ashcraft 228). While The Walking Dead spends much of season three
exploring the nature, and even the allure, of a Hobbesian tyrant, the series ultimately takes a
Lockean view of this type of ruler. As season three marches towards its climax, the Governor
only becomes increasingly maniacal, and he abandons the good of Woodbury in favor of his
obsession with revenge against Rick and Michonne.14
The Governor’s fateful actions in the second half of season three confirm his corruption
of purpose—and his mastery of Hobbesian political philosophy. Rick’s group runs a covert
mission to free Glen and Maggie, who have been taken prisoner by Merle, who has become the
head of the Woodbury militia. The resulting firefight throws the town of Woodbury into panic.
Sensing both the threat to his rule that Rick’s group poses and the opportunity to consolidate his
power further, the Governor plays upon the people’s fears. With the streets of the town still
smoking from the firefight, he gathers the people together and gives a rousing speech in which
he recalls “the fear we all felt then” when the zombie outbreak first started (WD, S3, E8, “Made
to Suffer”). He goes on to compare that fear to what they are all feeling now, and he admits, “I’m
afraid of terrorists who want what we have, want to destroy us.” Therein lies his rhetorical
strategy. He plays on the people’s fear of violent attack from an outside entity, and he casts this
threat in the Darwinian terms of a struggle for limited resources, a struggle for existence itself.
14
The series underscores the maniacal quality of the Governor when, after being attacked by
Michonne and wounded in the eye, he dons a black eye patch (WD, S3, E11, “I Ain’t a Judas”).
The eye patch, and his hideously wounded eye ball, become focal points of his physique during
the remainder of season three, and he self-consciously uses them to impact people with whom he
interacts. I read this modification of the Governor’s character as an allusion to Herman
Melville’s Captain Ahab, from the novel Moby Dick. This allusion underscores the Governor’s
maniacal behavior by linking him to Ahab, who was himself a one-eyed tyrant of sorts who
sacrifices everything for his obsession with killing the white whale.
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Fear is a key component to Hobbes’s political philosophy. Reflecting on the societies of
Native Americans, Hobbes writes, “where there were no common power to fear,” the members
of the society live “in that brutish manner” (132). And he asserts that “fear of punishment” is the
primary factor motivating members in “the performance of their covenants” (133). Ryan
comments on “how important fear is in explaining the causes and character of the ‘war of all
against all’ in the state of nature, in motivating persons in the state of nature to contract with one
another to set up an authority to ‘overawe them all’ and make peace possible” (209). This is
precisely the Governor’s intent: to use fear to consolidate his power and to motivate the citizens
of Woodbury to embark on an extremely dangerous enterprise, that of attacking Rick’s group at
the prison. Such an objective offers no benefit to the citizens of Woodbury, as Rick’s group in
fact has no plans of threatening them anymore. It merely expands the Governor’s “empire” and
gratifies his ego and his desire for revenge—at the expense of the people’s lives. The Lockean
notion that absolute power creates a hierarchy in which the ruler’s will is opposed to the good of
the people is fully realized in the climactic episode of season three. After their attack on Rick’s
group at the prison gets repulsed, the members of Woodbury’s militia flee in fear for their own
lives. The Governor stops them on the road and, without warning, murders them all (save one
woman who survives by hiding under a dead body) for disobeying his orders.
Locke: Representative Leadership
At the risk of overreaching, I wish to draw a connection between the science-fiction
scenario of the zombie apocalypse in The Walking Dead and the real, historical moment in which
John Locke lived and wrote. JB Schneewind points out that Locke “lived in circumstances that
forced on him an awareness of the genuine possibility of political chaos and social
disintegration” (208). Locke’s was a precarious time in England, marred by civil war, and his
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revolutionary political philosophy responds to this very real threat to the social order.
Underscoring this point is the fact that the nature of war, which Locke calls “a state of enmity
and destruction” (156), and its justifiable use are among the central concerns he addresses in his
Second Treatise of Civil Government. Following Hobbes and anticipating Darwin, Locke regards
the absence of the social order as a guarantee only of universal war: “Protection is necessary
because, given the unsocial sociability of our nature, competition and conflict will inevitably
continue” (Schneewind 210, my italics). Locke’s situation is not entirely without parallel to The
Walking Dead, in which the zombie apocalypse has erased every semblance of modern
government. In both instances, chaos and violence threaten survival and raise the question of
what constitutes a sustainable political structure.
Locke’s answer to this question is, of course, revolutionary. He asserts, “The liberty of
man, in society, is to be under no other legislative power, but that established, by consent, in the
commonwealth” (157, my italics). He goes on to theorize, “The only way, whereby any one
divests himself of his natural liberty, and puts on the bonds of civil society, is by agreeing with
other men to join and unite into a community, for their comfortable, safe, and peaceable living
one amongst another, in secure enjoyment of their properties, and a greater security against any,
that are not of it” (161, my italics). For Locke, power over people is not granted by any force
external to the will of those people. The crux of Locke’s philosophy is that power over a
community derives from the consent that the members of the community grant when they agree,
explicitly or implicitly, to submit themselves to that power. In short, power is not seized but
rather entrusted.
This Lockean notion of power is precisely the model that former sheriff’s deputy Rick
Grimes embodies in The Walking Dead. Rick is, throughout the vast majority of the series, the
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leader of the ragged group of survivors travelling across the post-apocalyptic wasteland of
Georgia.15 The group’s initial consent to Rick’s leadership is implicit. No vote is ever taken to
decide who will lead. In fact, when Rick arrives at the group’s camp outside of Atlanta and is
reunited with his wife and son (WD, S1, E3, “Tell It to the Frogs”), Shane is the one in charge of
the group. However, even Shane, who is extremely opinionated and outspoken, automatically
starts deferring to Rick’s decision making. Though Shane constantly questions the wisdom of
Rick’s choices throughout the first two seasons, he never attempts to assert any sort of groupsanctioned authority over Rick. Shane never attempts to order Rick to do something, and he
never countermands Rick’s decisions. While large portions of Rick’s dialogue are spent in
defending his actions to Shane, he never actually asks Shane—or anyone else for that matter—
for permission to pursue an objective on which he has decided. Such is the case even when it
means leaving Lori and Carl, with whom he has just been reunited, in order to rescue Merle, who
is universally disliked by the group (WD, S1, E3). The most Rick will do is debate Shane and
plead with Lori to trust him, and he does all of this privately. This is in sharp contrast to the other
members of the group, to whom Shane repeatedly issues orders, at least during season one, and
who consistently acquiesce to his commands.16
15
It is clear that Rick and his son Carl are the central protagonists and the only two genuinely
non-expendable characters in the series, despite the unexpected popularity of characters such as
Daryl and Michonne. This is due to the series’ fidelity to its source material, Robert Kirkman’s
graphic novel series The Walking Dead, which orbits around Rick’s struggle to keep his son alive
amid the zombie apocalypse.
16 Even after Rick’s arrival, Shane issues orders to other group members, but only on matters on
which Rick takes no position, typically because Rick is gone on a self-imposed rescue mission.
Shane exercises his secondary authority, secondary to Rick’s that is, in matters small and great.
For example, he admonishes a minor group member named Ed for building a campfire up too
high and thereby making their camp more visible to zombies (WD, S1, E3). And later, after Ed
has bragged about beating his wife, Carol, and has threatened other women in the group, Shane
savagely beats Ed while repeatedly warning him never to hit his wife again (WD, S1, E3).
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Yet, despite all of the force that Shane exercises within the group, the group instinctively
consents to Rick’s leadership and implicitly transfers power from Shane to Rick. This social
order is maintained throughout the first two seasons, even when Rick’s decision making puts
members of the group at risk. This is nowhere clearer than during the search for Carol’s daughter
Sophia, which dominates the first half of season two. When the group encounters a “herd” of
zombies on a highway, Sophia gets attacked and flees into the woods (WD, S2, E1, “What Lies
Ahead”). Rick alone chases after her, but though he succeeds in distracting and killing two
zombies, Sophia becomes hopelessly lost in the process. While his actions could be considered
heroic, Carol only blames Rick for abandoning her daughter. As painful as the accusation is, it
also implies that Rick is the one who is ultimately responsible for what happens to the group.
Sensing this burden, Rick commits the group to searching for Sophia, despite the low odds of
actually finding her and despite the risk of exposing other members of the group to attack by
zombies. Lori intuits this burden of responsibility that Rick bears as their unofficial leader.
During the search for Sophia, Lori rebukes Carol and the group at large, saying, “You all look to
him, and then you blame him when he’s not perfect” (WD, S2, E1). She essentially puts an
ultimatum to the group: either they follow through on their consent to Rick’s leadership and
support his decisions, or they break from the community and attempt to survive on their own.
Despite the repeated dangers they suffer during the prolonged search for Sophia, the group
members continue to follow Rick.17
The group’s acceptance of Rick’s leadership likely has something to do with the fact that
he is, or at least was before the zombie apocalypse, a sheriff’s deputy. However, this cannot be
17
These dangers are numerous and severe: Carl accidentally gets shot and almost dies, Daryl
gets badly wounded and is almost killed by a pair of zombies, and Shane becomes so frustrated
by the turns of events that he nearly leads an armed coup against Rick and Hershel.
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the sole reason because Shane also was a police officer and was, in fact, Rick’s partner, and the
group almost immediately stops following Shane in favor of Rick. It could also be because Rick
is confident and strong-willed, though, again, so is Shane. The answer to the question of why the
group instinctively follows Rick lies in the Lockean philosophy by which Rick determines his
choices and actions. Locke theorizes, “Though in a constituted commonwealth . . . there can be
but one supreme power, which is the legislative, to which all the rest are and must be
subordinate; yet the legislative being only a fiduciary power to act for certain ends, there
remains still ‘in the people a supreme power . . .’” (164, my italics). The crux of Locke’s
philosophy is that political power is fiduciary, that is, it is power that individuals wield for the
sake of others, for the sake of the community as a whole. The group follows Rick because they
see in him a leader who is not pursuing his own good above all others but rather the good of all.18
Rick’s dialogue and behavior make his fiduciary sense of power evident early in season
one. The pivotal moment occurs on a rooftop in Atlanta. Rick has just been rescued by Glen and
welcomed into a small group that turns out to be a scouting party for Shane’s larger group
(though Rick is ignorant of this connection at the time). When a racially charged argument over
how to escape the city erupts between Merle (a southern “redneck”) and T-Dog (an AfricanAmerican), Merle savagely beats T-Dog and then demands they all “have a talk” about “who’s in
charge” (WD, S1, E2, “Guts”). Brandishing a firearm, Merle coyly warns that everyone “ought
to be more polite to a man with a gun,” and then he flatly asserts, “I’m in charge.” Merle’s
actions exhibit a Hobbesian approach to power in two ways: one, he seizes power by force; and
two, he does not share power with others but rather assumes absolute control. However, Rick
subdues Merle (also by force), handcuffs him to a pipe, and states, “We survive this by pulling
18
Rick’s stance contrasts him with the group’s other potential leaders, namely Merle and Shane.
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together.” In my reading, Rick’s words become a singular statement—a declaration of sorts—
that echoes throughout the entire series. It is a statement of collective action for the sake of the
collective good. Rick’s declaration also implicitly asserts that he is the leader who is capable of
exercising power in a properly fiduciary manner. In other words, this is the pivotal moment in
which Rick assumes the role of leader, of the one who speaks for the will of the group. His
subsequent actions bear this out, as he puts himself at risk in an effort to get the entire scouting
party—whom he just met hours ago—out of Atlanta safely.
In acting this way, Rick operates according to a set of moral guidelines inherited from
Locke. Schneewind writes that, in Locke’s view, the “basic law of nature is that no one’s rights
may be violated” (210). Indeed, Locke asserts that the “state of nature has a law of nature to
govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind . . . that
being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or
possessions” (154, my italics). The claim of universal natural rights to life, freedom, and
property is, of course, the foundation of Locke’s philosophy of government for the people.
According to Ashcraft, Locke “argues that property ownership precedes the establishment of
political society and therefore must be understood in terms of the moral principles pertaining to
the rights and duties of individuals” (235-6). The point I wish to stress here is twofold: first, that
Locke presumes a moral underpinning to proper political practice and, second, that this sense of
universal moral obligation to others is precisely what Rick follows in his exercising of his power.
This obligation extends even to the bigot Merle. Despite just being reunited with his wife and
son, Rick leaves them to lead a rescue party to free Merle from his rooftop prison. When
challenged on this decision, Rick responds that despite Merle’s repulsive behavior, he is still a
human being and, therefore, does not deserve to be “chained like an animal” (WD, S1, E3, “Tell
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It to the Frogs”). Rick recognizes that the natural rights of life and liberty extend to all, and he
acts according to a sense that he, as the leader, is responsible for ensuring these rights—even for
someone such as Merle.
However, Rick fails to sustain this representative philosophy of governance throughout
the series. Stranded by the roadside after escaping the herd of zombies that destroys Hershel’s
farm, the group begins to grumble about Rick’s leadership. In what is arguably Rick’s darkest
moment in the first two seasons, he angrily replies, “I didn’t ask for this! I killed my best friend
for you people for Christ’s sake! . . . Maybe you people are better off without me. Go ahead. . . .
Why don’t you go and find out yourself? Send me a postcard. . . . Let’s see how far you get. . . .
If you’re staying, this isn’t a democracy anymore.” Disillusioned and heartbroken after having to
kill Shane in a duel and after seeing Hershel’s farm—and the group’s sole sanctuary—overrun
by zombies (WD, S2, E12-13), Rick breaks his unspoken covenant with the group. In fact, this is
the first time anyone in the series has used the word “democracy” to describe the group, but Rick
invokes the term only for the sake of rejecting the idea. He has passed his emotional breaking
point because he understands himself to have committed a heinous act, that of killing his best
friend, for the sake of his political values. In short, Rick believes he killed Shane not for his own
good but for the good of the group. He does so despite the fact that Lori and Shane’s affair is
common knowledge within the group at this point, and he does not even entertain the possibility,
at least not openly, that his actions were motivated by revenge. Instead, he suggests that he has
made an unimaginable sacrifice in the name of Locke’s democratic ideal.
Unfortunately for Rick and for the group, this sacrifice proves too much for him, and he
renounces the idea that he owes his power as leader to the will of those whom he leads. He does
not, however, relinquish power. Instead, he behaves in dictatorial fashion throughout the
Wright 26
majority of season three.19 His tyrannical behavior is ironic because season three revolves around
the Hobbesian figure of the Governor. Fortunately, during the final quarter of season three, Rick
gradually rediscovers the value of representative leadership. The turning point comes when Rick
is unexpectedly reunited with Morgan, who rages against Rick for abandoning him when he most
needed aid. Rick desperately defends himself against Morgan’s accusations by saying, “I had
people. I had to keep them safe. I swear to God I didn’t have a choice” (WD, S3, E12, “Clear”).
In this moment, Rick suddenly rediscovers his fiduciary obligation to the group. His defense,
once again, is that he sacrificed one person—and by extension his own personal good—for the
sake of the group as a whole.
Though Rick articulates this forgotten democratic ideal, he does so in a fit of passion, and
he does not follow through on it immediately. It is only after his dealings with the Governor over
the course of the next several episodes that Rick fully realizes his error. In the penultimate
episode of season three, as all-out war with Woodbury is imminent, Rick humbles himself before
the group and states, “What I said last year, that first night after the farm . . . It can’t be like that.
It can’t. What we do . . . who we are. . . . It’s not my call. It can’t be. . . . I couldn’t sacrifice one
of us for the greater good because we are the greater good. We’re the reason we’re still here.
This is life and death. How you live, how you die, isn’t up to me. We choose to go. We choose to
stay. We stick together. We vote” (WD, S3, E15, “This Sorrowful Life,” actor’s emphasis). Rick
essentially abdicates his self-imposed position as Hobbesian tyrant and reverts back to the
Lockean mode of governing by consent. Implicit in his monologue is the notion that all members
of the group possess natural rights of life, liberty, and property, and Rick relinquishes the notion
that he has absolute say over what happens to their rights, especially when those rights are so
19
Worse yet, after Lori dies in childbirth early in season three, Rick becomes mentally unstable
and all but forfeits his leadership position while he wrestles with hallucinations of his dead wife.
Wright 27
urgently threatened by a state of war. In his repetition of “we” (nine times), Rick acknowledges
the Lockean ideal that a sense of the collective good is what rightly determines a leader’s
actions, and Rick places power back where it originated: within the will of the people.
Calvin: Faith-Based Community
Amid the increasingly secular age of the Enlightenment, Locke drew a connection,
however indirect, between politics and theology. This might be surprising insofar as Locke
argues that “Conscience is simply one’s opinion of the rightness or wrongness of one’s own
actions” (Schneewind 200, my italics) and that these opinions are formed from personal
experience, not from inborn principles (200). In arguing this and especially in “stressing the
enormous role played by custom” (201), Locke runs directly counter to the traditional reading of
Scripture in his day and “seemed to be casting doubt on the existence of any justifiable universal
morality” (201). However, Locke “emphatically asserted that he was not denying the truth of
basic moral principles” (201). Instead, he argues that moral concepts are not innately registered
in the mind because “God gave us a faculty of reason sufficient to . . . discover all the knowledge
needed by beings such as we are” (202). In this respect, innate ideas would mean “that there is no
need for further thought about the matters they cover” (202). What Locke posits is that humans
acquire knowledge of God’s foundational moral principles through experience and the use of
their faculty of reason.20 Ashcraft indicates that Locke “took political actions to be guided by
beliefs grounded upon probable evidence constrained by a few fundamental tenets of a
theologically structured morality” (226). For Locke, politics is social action guided by
theologically sanctioned ethics acquired through experience (226). Schneewind observes,
“Hobbes provided . . . a theory of obligation” to moral authority, but he took the “sidelining of
See Locke’s famous theory of the “tabula rasa” in his An Essay Concerning Human
Understanding.
20
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religion to an extreme, making God nearly irrelevant to the moral life” (210-1). In this light,
Locke’s theory takes shape as an attempt to define politics as a middle way that compensates for
the reality of competition in human nature and denies innate human knowledge of morality, yet
also accepts the revelation of God’s laws in Scripture (210-1).
Roughly one-hundred-fifty years prior to Locke, John Calvin articulated a much more
direct link between theology, universal morality, and politics. Guenther Haas suggests that
Calvin “makes a sharp break with classical philosophers and medieval scholastic theologians
who view reason as a sufficient guide for human conduct” (93, my italics). Calvin’s stance puts
him at odds not only with the theologians who preceded him but also with Locke’s later
emphasis on the human acquisition of a moral code through reason and experience. Calvin
rejects reason as the basis for morality because, in his view, sin “corrupts the mind, the will, and
the affections with the result that humans cannot know moral truth” (Haas 93). Moral truth is
accessible “only [through] the renewing work of the grace of God in the human heart” (93). For
Calvin, moral behavior stems not from the human faculty of rational thinking but from God’s
intervention in human life.
Calvin understood moral law and civil law to be two sides of the same coin, so to speak.
In Institutes of the Christian Religion, he asserts, “man is the subject of two kinds of
government, . . . that which is situated in the soul, or the inner man, and relates to eternal life . . .
[and that] which relates to civil justice, and the regulation of external conduct” (36). Morality
was essentially the application of God’s will to the individual’s inner character. Civil law was the
application of God’s will to the intersubjective practices of communal living. What cannot be
overstated is that, for Calvin, both forms of law originate from God: “The origin and foundation
of the law is the will of God. His will is neither arbitrary nor capricious. . . . The law is the
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authority because God wills it to be so, but he wills it to be so because it expresses his righteous
and holy character” (Haas 97). While moral law restrains the individual’s inward inclinations,
civil law “restrain[s] people in civil society from engaging in evil actions that violate public
peace and justice” (100). Put another way, “Sin makes government necessary because without it
even minimally constructive relationships among human beings would be difficult to imagine”
(Stevenson 173). The law, in both its moral and civil aspects, functions to ensure that a person’s
internal and external life is synchronized, so to speak, with the will and righteousness of God.
Calvin’s understanding of the interrelationship between faith, morality, and civil life
anticipates the political philosophies of Hobbes and Locke in at least two respects. First, both
Enlightenment thinkers viewed self-preservation, or the preservation of property in Locke’s
specific terms, as the engine of societal formation. Similarly, Calvin writes that the “exercise of
civil polity . . . is equally as necessary to mankind as bread and water” (38) and that abandoning
government amounts to “inhuman barbarism” (38). The reason is that government “tends to
secure the accommodations arising from all these things, that men may breathe, eat, drink and be
sustained in life” (38). Calvin anticipates Locke quite closely when he asserts that the object of
government is “that every person may enjoy his property without molestation; that men may
transact their business together without fraud or injustice” (39, my italics). For Calvin, much like
Locke and Hobbes, societal formation revolves around mutual self-preservation—or, in more
Calvinist terms, “the good of one’s neighbor” (Haas 95). Second, Calvin favors a more Lockeandemocratic form of government over a Hobbesian-tyrannical one. Calvin reasons that the “vice
or imperfection of men therefore renders it safer and more tolerable for the government to be in
the hands of many, that they may afford each other mutual assistance and admonition, and that if
any one arrogate to himself more than is right, the many may act as censors and masters to
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restrain his ambition” (41). As with moral truth, the reason Calvin favors a democratic,
legislative system is the sinfulness of human nature, which predisposes any leader to the abuse of
power. A democracy, unlike a Hobbesian tyranny, enables the restraint of leaders who go astray.
Nonetheless, Calvin differs dramatically from both Enlightenment thinkers in his
unification of government and religion. He argues, “civil government is designed, as long as we
live in this world, to cherish and support the external worship of God, to preserve the pure
doctrine of religion, to defend the constitution of the Church” (38). While societal formation
provides for the mutual life and property of it citizens, it also, in Calvin’s view, rightly provides
a safe environment for the public worship and study of God. Calvin views government as having
a dual purpose: “to protect the physical integrity of its subjects and to ensure the legitimacy of
the church” (Stevenson 175). Calvin qualifies this point when he explains, “Nor let any one think
it strange that I now refer to human polity the charge of the due maintenance of religion. . . . I
approve of civil government which provides that the true religion which is contained in the law
of God be not violated and polluted by public blasphemies with impunity” (39). True to his
Protestant religious philosophy, Calvin retains Scripture—not the government—as the proper
authority on religious matters, but he insists that the role of government is, in part, to ensure the
ongoing and public practice of religious faith.
Not surprisingly, The Walking Dead consistently explores questions about the relevance
of faith and faith-based morality in its post-apocalyptic world. The series also interrogates the
relationship between faith and communal governance. Questions about the relevance of faith
after the apparent end of the world are raised immediately, that is, in the pilot episode. After Rick
wakes up in the hospital and discovers that society has collapsed while he was in a coma, he
wanders the streets of his hometown in a daze. A stranger named Morgan takes him in, treats his
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wounds, and gives him shelter. In aiding a stranger in this manner, Morgan serves as a Good
Samaritan figure. He bandages Rick, whom he does not even know, and who was in a sense
“bleeding and dying” on the side of the road. As they sit down to eat a humble dinner of rations,
Morgan’s son Dwayne insists they pray. This family prayer and Morgan’s merciful, selfless
behavior all suggest that faith and virtue remain despite the circumstances. However, though
Morgan and Rick consent to Dwayne’s request, the camera pointedly lingers on Rick, who keeps
his eyes open during the prayer and gazes skeptically at his hosts. Rick’s reaction indicates that
he either does not believe in God or is at least struggling with his faith. This moment of doubt
undercuts what has come before it, suggesting that it might be nothing more than empty ritual.
A pivotal moment in the series’ exploration of faith occurs while the group searches for
Sophia early in season two. Hearing the sound of church bells ringing, the group frantically
rushes to find the source, thinking that it might be Sophia who is ringing them in an effort to be
found (WD, S2, E1, “What Lies Ahead”). However, the rural, one-room church turns out to be
empty—except, that is, for zombies. Sophia is nowhere to be found, and the group discovers that
the church bells are actually a recording set to a timer. This discovery suggests that the church
itself is artificial, like its bells. Furthermore, the fact that the only inhabitants of the church are
zombies suggests that faith cannot protect people from disaster. To underscore this point, when
Rick’s group arrives and finds the zombies infesting the church, the zombies themselves are
actually seated in the pews and facing the altar, as though they are worshipping. More to the
point, the most likely scenario is that these people were seated in the pews, praying to God for
aid when they died—without an answer to their prayers—and subsequently transformed into the
undead. Also underscoring this point is a shot of Rick savagely stabbing one of the zombies in
the brain while the Crucifix on the front wall of the church is visible in the background of the
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shot. This shot suggests that only violence—not faith in Christ—can save anyone in this postapocalyptic world.
Nonetheless, Rick’s response to the church and its iconography is surprisingly
sympathetic.21 Outside, Rick rejects Shane’s bid to abandon the search for Sophia, telling Shane
that finding Sophia “will be the miracle we need” (WD, S2, E1, my italics). He obviously
invokes the religious notion of divine intervention in reasoning with Shane about not giving up
hope—hope, that is, for Sophia in this particular moment but also for themselves as they struggle
to survive the zombie outbreak. Rick then goes back inside the church to pray. Gazing up at the
Crucifix, he states, “I guess you already know I’m not much of a believer. I just chose to put my
faith elsewhere, family mostly, my friends, my job. . . . I could use a little help right now, some
indication I’m doing the right thing. I don’t need all the answers, just a nudge, a sign.” Of course,
no immediate sign is given in response to Rick’s prayer. Nonetheless, the moment is ambivalent.
Rick does not necessarily call himself a non-believer, per se. The line “not much of a believer”
suggests that Rick is more agnostic than atheistic, that he has previously been more indifferent
than hostile to religion. And the fact is that, however much a believer or non-believer he may be,
he addresses himself to a deity, whom he asks for help. Like Rick, the series itself appears to be
ambivalent about faith. The fact that Carl is accidentally shot just a few scenes later indicates
that praying for a sign is foolishness and that events are purely random. On the other hand, a
relative of Hershel’s is the one who shoots Carl, and Hershel happens to have the medical
expertise needed to save Carl’s life, a twist that suggests providence is indeed real.
21
The producers of the TV show appear to conflate Protestant and Catholic modes of
Christianity. The location and exterior of the church plainly evoke a rural, Protestant community,
but the interior features padded pews and a Crucifix. My sense is that this situation arose out of
practical necessity, as the producers or writers were aiming for the pathos inherent in seeing a
desperate protagonist praying and looking up at the tortured body of Christ on the cross.
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It is through the character arc of Hershel that The Walking Dead performs its most
sustained treatment of faith-based morality and faith-based politics. Hershel is expressly depicted
as a southern man of Christian faith. He reads from the Bible at Otis’s funeral, after Otis is killed
on the mission to get the medical supplies Hershel needs in order to operate on Carl (WD, S2,
E4, “Cherokee Rose”). Hershel also is seen reading from his Bible during lunch (WD, S2, E7,
“Pretty Much Dead Already”). While showing Rick around his property, Hershel asks Rick to
stop and consider the beauty of the land and “be reminded for a moment” (WD, S2, E4). When
Rick looks befuddled, Hershel offers, “For me, it’s often God,” indicating that Hershel interprets
the beauty of nature as the handiwork of a divine creator. Rick, however, declines to comment.
Hershel expresses his faith mostly pointedly when he subsequently asks Rick about seeing his
son’s life spared. He asks Rick, “You did not feel God’s hand in yours?” Hershel indicates that
he not only believes in God but also believes in providence, in the idea that God actively
intervenes in people’s lives for the better.
Hershel’s farm takes shape almost as a Calvinesque theocracy. Cut off from the
surrounding area due to the zombie outbreak, the farm has become its own self-contained
community. This community is run by Hershel, a stridently Christian man who models the rules
of the farm on the teachings of the Bible. When he indicates that he is giving Rick’s group only
temporary shelter, his daughter Maggie quotes Scripture to him, telling him, “Love one another,
as I have loved you” (WD, S2, E7). Yet, Hershel’s authority is no less powerful just because it is
also religious. He confronts Rick about how Rick is conducting the search for Sophia and warns
him, “I’ll control my people. You’ll control yours” (WD, S2, E5, “Chupacabra”). Hershel’s
authority over the little community that has formed on his land is almost totalitarian. What
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distinguishes him from a Hobbesian tyrant such as the Governor, however, is that Hershel’s way
of life is dictated by his religious beliefs and values, which are grounded in Scripture.
Though Hershel fervently asserts both his religious faith and his authority, even he
becomes disillusioned with God in the face of the shocks that the post-apocalyptic world
provides. In some ways similar to Rick, Hershel’s loss of faith is bound to the search for Sophia.
Hershel, believing that the zombies are not undead but are merely sick people, has been
capturing the ones who wander onto his property and storing them in his barn, waiting for a cure.
Shane, in a fit of rage, breaks open the barn and initiates a shooting spree (WD, S2, E7).
Unbeknownst to Shane, one of the zombies was Hershel’s wife. It is also revealed, as Sophia
stumbles out of the barn, that she, too, has been transformed. Devastated, Hershel disappears,
and Rick later finds him getting drunk at a local bar. When Rick confronts him, Hershel responds
by reflecting on how Carl’s life was saved earlier. He confesses, “That was the miracle that
proved to me that miracles exist. Only it was a sham, a bait-and-switch. I was a fool” (WD, S2,
E8, “Nebraska”). He goes on to conclude, “There is no hope, and you know it, too, like I do now.
There is no hope for any of us.” Faced with the reality of his wife’s death, Hershel’s faith in God
fails, and he can seek comfort only in alcohol. While Rick succeeds eventually in convincing
Hershel to return to the farm and care for his family, neither man is able to restore the other’s
faith. As in the earlier church scene, they are forced to resort to violence, not divine aid, to save
themselves when a pair of hostile men arrive at the bar and demand to know the location of the
farm. Again, The Walking Dead suggests that faith is useless in this Darwinian world.
This dark period of faithlessness in Hershel’s character arc lasts until late in season three.
In fact, it is not until then that Hershel even mentions faith or God again. As Rick’s group at the
prison begins to acknowledge the reality of the coming war with the Governor and the
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Woodbury militia, Hershel confesses, “I lost more than the Good Book for a while. Lost my
way” (WD, S3, E11, “I Ain’t a Judas”). However, faced once again with the specter of death,
Hershel rediscovers his faith. With the Governor’s attack no more than a day or two away,
Rick’s group prepares its defenses. Hershel, however, responds to the situation by gathering his
two daughters, Maggie and Beth, around him and reading to them from the Bible. What he reads
to them is from Psalm 91, about not fearing “the arrow that flieth by day” (WD, S3, E15, “This
Sorrowful Life”). He goes on to read, “No evil shall befall thee or any plague come nigh thy
dwelling.” This scene entails a stunning reclamation of faith on Hershel’s part, insofar as these
passages from Psalm 91 speak of trusting in God and His protection rather than fearing the
violence perpetrated by human enemies. The act of reading these passages directly contradicts
the message, repeated so many times in the series, that violence trumps faith.
Surprisingly, the series itself appears to follow in Hershel’s footsteps in reclaiming at
least some measure of hope, if not faith. When the Governor attacks, he finds the prison empty
(at first), and he sees Hershel’s Bible left open on a table. He picks it up and reads a highlighted
passage from the Gospel of John, chapter five, in which Christ teaches about those who receive
the “resurrection of life” and those who receive the “resurrection of damnation” (WD, S3, E16,
“Welcome to the Tombs”). What follows is a sequence in which Rick’s group springs its trap on
the Governor’s unsuspecting forces and drives them away in defeat. This sequence plays on the
phenomenon of zombie transformation as the “resurrection of damnation” to which Christ refers.
As one of the damned, the Governor suffers a humiliating and crippling defeat, despite his
superior forces. What is equally astounding and hopeful here is that the sequence posits an
alternative to the pandemic of death and evil that the characters have suffered so far. It posits, in
the victory Rick’s group celebrates, that hope in a “resurrection of life” is still possible. This
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hope—however tenuous it realistically is in the series—is underscored by the final shot of the
last episode of season three: a long take lingering on one of the handmade crosses in the group’s
cemetery in the prison yard. This shot clearly invokes the Christian imagery of the Messiah, and
in doing so it invites the audience to reanimate its hope in Rick and his resilient group.
Conclusion: Life after the End of the World
The science-fiction aspect of The Walking Dead is, in a sense, incidental to the story. It is
not insignificant that the series makes only the most meager attempt to engage the sci-fi
backstory. Portions of only two episodes in the entire series are dedicated to constructing some
sort of sci-fi explanation for how and why zombies are running around wreaking havoc on
Western society. Unlike traditional zombie narratives, the how and why of zombies is simply not
the point. Taking its queue from Robert Kirkman’s graphic novels, the point of the TV series is
to explore what happens to ordinary human beings when they are thrown back into a savage state
of Darwinian survival. The series offers a sobering vision of just how easy it is to lose our
humanity in the name of preserving our existence. As I hope I have established in this essay, the
series uses this Darwinian dystopia as an arena in which it stages an enormously provocative
debate about the relevance of morality and what constitutes a sustainable model of communal
order best suited to provide for “the common good.”
In this light, I do not read The Walking Dead as a sci-fi story or even as a zombie
narrative, per se. I read it as an existentialist reflection on the human condition. Despite the
surprisingly hopeful ending to season three, with that final shot lingering so evocatively on the
cross in the prison yard, the bulk of the series takes as its premise the idea that humans are alone
in this world, and, if they are to carve out any life for themselves, they will have to do it on their
own merits. The Sophia storyline, and especially the church scene I have analyzed in this essay,
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speak poignantly to this. There are, of course, many other examples, such as when Glen asks
Maggie (Hershel’s daughter), “Do you think God exists?” (WD, S2, E3, “Save the Last One”).
Maggie replies that she always “took it on faith,” but in the same breath she suggests that she is
beginning to have her doubts. She concludes, “The thing is you gotta make it okay somehow, no
matter what happens.” I take Maggie’s statement to be a profoundly existentialist comment on
the human predicament in the world of The Walking Dead. Jean-Paul Sartre claims,
“Existentialism isn’t so atheistic that it wears itself out showing that God doesn’t exist. Rather, it
declares that even if God did exist, that would change nothing” (426). Maggie reaches basically
the same conclusion about this post-apocalyptic moment in human history: even if God turns out
to be real, the conditions of human existence will, nonetheless, lie in human hands.
If the world of The Walking Dead is, indeed, existentialist, then Rick’s group—and
particularly Rick himself—is Sisyphus. In “The Myth of Sisyphus,” Albert Camus draws, of
course, on the Greek myth of Sisyphus and his eternal punishment as a metaphor for the modern
condition. What Camus is interested in is the precise nature of Sisyphus’s experience and his
response to it. Camus observes that the gods “had thought with some reason that there is no more
dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor” (406). Camus goes on to relate, “It is during
that return, that pause, that Sisyphus interests me. . . . That hour like a breathing-space which
returns as surely as his suffering, that is the hour of consciousness. At each of those moments,
. . . he is superior to his fate. He is stronger than his rock” (407). Amid the zombie apocalypse,
Rick and his group have been plunged into an eternity of “futile and hopeless labor.” All their
striving can gain them now is the chance to go on breathing another day, but that striving will
always have to be reenacted tomorrow. Rick, like Sisyphus, becomes conscious of this new
reality. Before Hershel’s farm gets overrun, Rick goes to Carl, hands him a gun, and tells him
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“no more kid stuff” (WD, S2, E12, “Better Angels”). He goes on to tell his son, “I’m gonna die,”
and he explains that the best any of them can do now is to avoid death “as long as we can.” Rick
resigns himself not only to the inevitability of death, which was the case even before the
apocalypse, but also to the fact that all any of them can do anymore is struggle to postpone their
own violent deaths another day. Camus calls Sisyphus “the absurd hero” (407) because Sisyphus
is conscious of his fate but carries it out anyway and, in doing so, defies the gods (407-8). In this
light, Rick becomes a fitting post-apocalyptic hero insofar as he resolutely rolls the boulder of
his own existence up its hill, knowing it will inevitably roll back down on him someday.
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