Hungry zombie invasions have always been a problem for mankind. There was a serious threat of invasion as far back as Sumerian times, when hordes of howling, hungry zombies almost broke out of the Gates of Gades during the famous Ishtar incident.
But the problem became particularly acute after the zombie epidemic of 1068, which swept through Eastern Europe. Throughout the Middle Ages, zombie epidemics continued to spread around the world.
It is not surprising, then, that these great epidemics had an enormous impact on the classical literature of Britain and the United States. Here are two interesting extracts from Great Expectations of Zombie (written by Charles Dickens) and The Zombie Dick (written by Herman Melville).
Great Expectations of Zombie
My father's family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.
I give Pirrip as my father's family name, on the authority of his tombstone and my sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery, who married the local blacksmith and famous zombie hunter. As I never saw my father or my mother, and never saw any likeness of either of them (for they were killed and eaten to the bone by hungry zombies when I was just a newborn), my first fancies regarding what they were like were unreasonably derived from their tombstones.
To five little stone lozenges, each about a foot and a half long, which were arranged in a neat row beside their grave, and were sacred to the memory of five little brothers of mine, -- who soon gave up trying to escape from the aforementioned zombies -- I am indebted for a belief I religiously entertained that they had all been born on their backs with their hands in their trousers-pockets, and had never taken them out in this state of existence.
Ours was the marsh and zombie-infested country, down by the river, within, as the river wound, twenty miles of the sea. My first most vivid and broad impression of the identity of things seems to me to have been gained on a memorable raw afternoon towards evening. At such a time I found out for certain that this bleak place overgrown with nettles was the churchyard where there was a serious danger of zombies just crawling out of the swampy ground; and that Philip Pirrip, late of this parish, and also Georgiana wife of the above, had been killed by zombie; and that Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias, and Roger, infant children of the aforesaid, had also been killed and buried; and that the dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard, intersected with dikes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it, was the marshes; and that the low leaden line beyond was the river; and that the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing was the sea; and that the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry, was Pip.
"Hold your noise!" cried a terrible voice, as a hungry-looking zombie rose from the grave at the side of the church porch. "Keep still, you little devil, or I'll eat your bloody brains!"
The Zombie Dick
Call me Ishmael. Some years ago --never mind how long precisely – having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, where herds of hungry zombies roamed free, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world that hasn't overrun by bloody zombies. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and the fear towards the undead. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever I listen zombies howling outside my windows; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before stopping in front of the mountains of rotting corpses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever a random zombie barks his or her yellow teeth at me, and it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking the zombie out -- then I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword when he couldn't defeat an army of zombies in battle; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, in some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the zombie with me.
!
