287).Īfter the collapse of society, Mark wanders around the Connecticut region trying to survive. This nickname also relates to the dynamics of race depicted in the novel–Mark is black and he mentions “the black-people can’t swim…stereotype” (p. It is also revealed that Mark Spitz is not his real name but a nickname given to him after he admits that he does not know how to swim (Mark Spitz is an American former Olympic swimmer who once held the record for most medals won in a single games). It is later revealed that on the “Last Night” before society collapsed, Mark was partying in a casino with his friend, and, when he returned home, saw his zombified mother bent over his father “gnawing away with ecstatic fervor on a flap of his intestine” (p. He is still living with his parents and commuting to the city, where he works in “Customer Relationship Management, New Media Department, of a coffee multinational” that resembles Starbucks (p. When the plague begins, Mark has had a number of failed relationships because he “had a habit of making his girlfriends into things that were less than human” (p. Nonetheless, Whitehead reiterates throughout the novel that Mark is an entirely unexceptional character who “had led a mediocre life exceptional only in the magnitude of its unexceptionality” (p. He grew up on Long Island in the suburbs of New York City with his parents but had dreams of moving to the city and studying to become a lawyer. For much of the novel, little is known about Mark however, as the plot progresses, more information is revealed about him in the form of flashbacks to Mark’s memories of life before the plaque. When the novel begins, he is employed as a “sweeper” in downtown Manhattan tasked with killing “stragglers” who have been infected by the plague. While walking, Mark Spitz and Gary discuss the kill fields that Buffalo reported recently: parking lots, malls, and stadiums full of.Mark Spitz is the protagonist of Zone One. Omega Unit woke on Saturday morning and headed to their next sweeper assignment, a residential complex that would take them several days to complete.

These dreams confused Mark Spitz, but he was too busy to analyze them.

The dead were operative, surrounding him and able to talk and comprehend things, but they were dead, with gashes in their necks, bloodless. But now, after the plague, everyone in his dreams were dead. In the dreamworld, Mark Spitz would be running late for an important meeting, or receiving a performance review, or taking a test.

In these dreams, he was back in his old life, where institutional structures reigned supreme, and chaos was contained. Mark Spitz’s dreams recently resembled a “classic anxiety paradigm” (107).

Zone One by Colson Whitehead