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“Zombie is a mythical character archetype of modern mass culture. Under the zombies, it is understood as a rule, or a fantastic way to busy corpse, or a living person, completely lost control of himself and his body or someone else's subordinate commands. In a figurative sense, the word can mean a person who is under the strong influence of something - usually no convictions or hobbies” (Ackermann, H. W.; Gauthier, J.)
The concept of zombies back to the West African voodoo religious cults, cultivating the idea of powerful magicians who can resurrect the dead people and turn them into slavery. Prototypes of zombies in Japanese mythology, perhaps, are spirits bosc, eating human flesh, which arise from people dying of hunger. They prowl through the dark streets at night in search of their victims have virtually no intelligence, are capable of thinking about food and look like corpses begin to decompose. According to K.W. Bishop, “the archetype of the modern zombie - foolish, but purposeful man-eating undead acting, usually in large groups” - in popular culture was largely determined by George Romero film "Night of the Living Dead." In subsequent years, films and books about zombies stood in separate sub-genres of horror movies and horror literature, as a rule, telling about the destruction of human civilization and a small group of people trying to survive surrounded by a number of aggressive zombies - a zombie apocalypse.
Origin of the Term
The origin of the concept of "zombie " remains unclear until the end. It got to Haiti through the slaves exported to the beginning of the XVII century, the West African state of Dahomey (modern Benin and Nigeria). The exact origin of the word is unknown so far. In one version of this distorted "Nzambi " that the African Bantu language means "minor deity " or " dead man's soul." On the other - it is a modified West African dialect "Jamba", which means "ghost". There is also a theory that the word "zombie" was once called a huge black snake from African beliefs, the eternal enemy of the sun, light and joy.
Zombie and Voodoo
The term "Zombie" is firmly linked to voodoo - mystical practices of the islanders the Caribbean (Haiti, Jamaica, Trinidad, Cuba). The roots of voodoo go to West Africa (Benin), from which slaves were brought to Haiti.
The first mention of a zombie refers to 1929. It was then that the famous reporter, "The New York Times” William Seabrook published the book "Magic Island", published in the series "Journey without getting up from the chair”. In "Island Magic" Seabrook described his life in Haiti in general and separately - in the Haitian jungle in the house Maman landed, the famous witch. Thanks to its credibility Seabrook able to personally attend many voodoo ceremonies. The book described the Seabrook voodoo as a complex mixture of Catholicism and West African beliefs, including the magic and witchcraft. However, in the book, which consists of four parts, magic is concerned only one. It's called "Dead Men work on sugar plantations" and devoted primarily to the zombies.
During the year, the book has generated a surge of interest in America to a zombie. Already in 1932, the production company of Victor Halperin released feature film "White Zombie" with the White Lugosi in the title role, which takes place in Haiti where the master of horror, have lost the will and mind of beings working in the cane plantations, a white gentleman with secular manners.
In some African tribes have long existed certain rituals, making that the local shamans working on human substance and plunging it into a state like that of death. Then the sorcerer raised the victim and turned her into a slave, which is mechanically followed orders and showed unquestioning obedience.
The origin of the word " zombie" is not precisely defined. According to one of the various versions of the so called giant black snake, who personified evil in African mythology. This term was first used by William Siburuk in a book called "Island Magic", the theme of which is vuduizm in Haiti. The author tells of some "living dead" who worked on the sugar plantations and zombiing people on the island.
The issue has also studied Russian researcher of anomalous phenomena A. Gorbovskii. The author of the book "Other Worlds", suggests that the practice of making a zombie man was brought to the island of Haiti's voodoo shaman and the descendants of black slaves.
How was the process? The victim is mixed into the food tetrodotoxin - the poison with paralyzing actions derived from fish - pronged. The consequences of poisoning were similar with respect to their external characteristics of dying. The man was blue skin, the eyes become fixed and frozen, breathing is not listening. There is a funeral ceremony, and after a couple of days " dead " kidnap from the grave. Then the victim "animates", but after the manipulations, the person does not remember who he was, thinking he braked, he cannot say where he was.
But history knows cases when the victim was returning zombie memory. The case occurred with Klavdius Narcissus is one of a number of such. The man pleaded with their relatives because of the right to own land and unexpectedly died of an unknown disease in a hospital in Haiti's capital Port -au-Prince in the not too distant 1962. Narcissus was buried, but, as it later turned out, did not die but was taken to the unfamiliar farm. There were working people who are in some kind of mixed into food substances, poisoned their brains.
But one day, by chance, to add the drug to the food simply forgotten, after which hundreds of slaves fled. Klavdius Narcissus managed to preserve the memory and know that his brothers had a hand in this case. Therefore, a man afraid to go back to the village where he lived before. But he found out and told the family the news. This occurred on the expiration of eighteen years after the date of the official death Klavdius. The family found him, though refused to accept. So he went to a local hospital. Many publications are interested in this story and printed a photograph depicting Klavdius Narcissus, sitting alone on his own grave.
Works Cited
Ackermann, H. W.; Gauthier, J. (1991). "The Ways and Nature of the Zombi". The Journal of American Folklore 104 (414): 466–494. doi:10.2307/541551. JSTOR 541551. edit
Bishop, Kyle William (2010) American Zombie Gothic: The rise and fall (and rise) of the walking dead in popular culture McFarland, Jefferson, North Carolina, ISBN 978-0-7864-4806-7
Black, J. Anderson (2000) The Dead Walk Noir Publishing, Hereford, Herefordshire, ISBN 0-9536564-2-X
Christie, Deborah and Sarah Juliet Lauro, eds. (2011). Better Off Dead: The Evolution of the Zombie as Post-Human. Fordham Univ Press. p. 169. ISBN 0-8232-3447-9
Curran, Bob (2006) Encyclopedia of the Undead: A field guide to creatures that cannot rest in peace New Page Books, Franklin Lakes, New Jersey, ISBN 1-56414-841-6
Davis, E. W. (1983). "The ethnobiology of the Haitian zombi". Journal of Ethnopharmacology 9 (1): 85–104. doi:10.1016/0378-8741(83)90029-6. PMID 6668953. edit
