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In her article A Zombie is a Slave Forever, Amy Wilentz raises awareness of the concept of zombies as it is used today and its origins in the past several decades. The author begins the article by describing zombies as they are currently perceived: the walking dead and a being without a soul and free will, as rendered by CGI in Hollywood films (Wilentz, 2012). Wilentz concedes that this description is not far from the truth, but she notes that the concept originated in a religious context during Haiti’s enslavement under French rule.
According to the author, enslaved people serving under the French government in Haiti lacked bodily autonomy because they were the property of the whites; consequently, they lacked free will. Death, primarily by means of suicide, was viewed as freedom and the sole means of escaping servitude. People feared becoming zombies if they were unable to transition to “Ian guine” or freedom due to Voodoo beliefs; consequently, the majority of enslaved people remained zombies and were subject to French rule.
In Politics and the English Language, George Orwell demonstrates how the English language is “misused” in political writing by failing to express the political significance of events, inadvertently saying the opposite of what is intended or being indifferent as to whether certain words have any meaning. Orwell illustrates how euphemism is employed in political writing to conceal political truths that may provoke public revulsion. According to the author, euphemism is “pure cloudy vagueness and question-begging” (Orwell, 2021, p. 356). In other words, euphemism is a form of political writing that leaves many questions unanswered or fails to describe particular political events precisely. One example of euphemism in the article is using the term “pacification” in political writing to replace the defenseless destruction of villages and the expulsion of their inhabitants…
