Zone One Reaction Post Two

I'm still really enjoying Zone One, I liked hearing a little bit about Mark's Last Night before the apocalypse, I feel like that was a story we'd been waiting to hear since the beginning and it's nice to finally have it. I'm still wondering what his real name is, and why they call him Mark Spitz. I'm naively hoping that his uncle is still alive and just hasn't found him due to his name change. I go back and forth between thinking that that's why Whitehead has drawn attention to the name change so much, and thinking that it's more an issue of identity, and how much he lost after Last Night. I thought it was really interesting reading his Last Night story, seeing the parallels between zombies and normal people who were just going through the motions. The parts that struck me the most were where he was talking about the slot machines "maintain[ing] their sturdy population of glassy-eyed defectives" (on page 82) and the section where he sees zombies for the first time but doesn't recognize them as such, and instead identifies them as people who have "that deflated curve of the shoulders that marked Sunday night's recurring epidemic: back to work" (on page 84). I'm not sure how much his memory of that night is affected by what came after, and what he realized after, but I found the second image in particular very ironic, and appreciated that parallel. I also really like the parts where he discussed the strategies of the new world, where he talked about rebranding and about creating new slang and using military language to separate their new selves, who're accustomed to the new reality, from their old selves, who weren't. The last thing that I found pretty interesting was how mundane parts of our reality still exist so much in their post-apocalyptic world. It's hard to imagine that fighting over an easy assignment would be something that would be worth it to people who've experienced what they all have, but I think he's right that it would be. When the big battle is as formidable and seemingly unwinnable as that one, the tiny battles seem to matter so much more. I also really hope that the Lieutenant makes a few more appearances. I really liked his character.