Kill the Zombies!...And Your Girlfriend?!

Seven medical students embark on a journey to a small vacation cabin in Oksfjord, Norway and meet a stranger on the way who recounts a cautionary tale. He tells them about World War II Nazis soldiers who tortured and abused the local people for years until the natives were finally able to carry out a surprise attack and ambush the soldiers. They were chased down the mountains and reportedly froze to death. He warns the students that the area is still haunted and a few hours later, he's murdered...by zombies! The Nazis soldiers have risen from the dead and they're mad! They begin to kill--starting with a group of girls that go skiing!

When the main characters, Vegard, Martin, and Roy, realize that they are up against Nazi zombies, they equip themselves with guns, chainsaws, hammers, and axes. The zombies attack and everyone starts hitting, stabbing, chopping, swinging and....oops!! All of a sudden, Martin realizes that he just killed his girlfriend, Hanna, with his hatchet! How do you fix the situation?! He just murdered an innocent person!

Nazi zombies ready to attack

From the moment Martin starts swinging his weapon and brutally kills his girlfriend, his intentions prove to be self interested and misguided because, "one must be motivated from duty, seeking to do what is right because it is right, and not from self-interest or sympathy" (Salazar 1392). One could argue, from a Kantian perspective, that even though the zombies were after this group of college kids, they should have never equipped themselves to kill. Violent action is unnecessary and, in this case, leads to the slaughter of innocent people; instead, they should have holed up in the cabin and waited for help to arrive.

Seeing that his friends are dead and that he's clearly outnumbered, the logical and rational thing to do next, would be to get to his car and seek outside help. Instead, he chooses to fight to the end in hopes of succeeding. His actions imply that his intentions were to glorify his victory; therefore, are self-interested and lead to his eventual demise.

From a Utilitarian perspective, Martin's actions seem to be geared towards achieving a greater good. In spite of killing an innocent person accidentally, a Utilitarian could argue that he did the right thing in trying to kill all the zombies himself--one accident can be made up when you consider the big picture. However, this theory doesn't apply to Martin's cause. In his blind effort to kill the zombies and maximize goodness, he loses sight of the reality or, in Kantian terms, the rationality to realize that he should have just taken his chances at getting more outside help and let go of his self-interested intentions. Martin disregards the safety of the entire group and pursues the zombies without realizing that he is jeopardizing everyone's lives! This blatant ignorance goes against the main principles of Kantian ethics and highlights the fact that he acted immorally and without regard to the people he is with. In other words:

The crux of Kant’s ethics resides in his startling claim that the only thing that is intrinsically good, or good-in-itself, is  the good will…The will is the rational part of each person, and the good will is rationality which chooses to do what is right for the reason that it is good. This is why all members of humanity, or all rational beings, have value, and this is also the reason why these beings are the only thing of true value. (Salazar 4)

Martin action's show that he did not possess the basic "good-will rationale" that constitutes Kant's ethical theory. He lacks rational thinking and good will when he chooses to ignore that he's outnumbered and can't win the fight and jeopardizes everyone's safety by clearly not valuing his friend's lives. Ironically, Martin's violence is the very thing that kills his girlfriend, not the zombies. Fighting the zombies proves to be a disastrous mistake that leads to grave consequences that could have been avoided had he realized that such violence is unnecessary and other options were available. 

 

References:

Salazar, Heather. “Self-Interest,” The New Catholic Encyclopedia, Series on Ethics and Morality, ed. by Robert  Fastiggi. Gale Cengage Learning, 2013

Salazar, Heather.“Kantian Business Ethics,” in Business in Ethical Focus, ed. Fritz Allhoff and Anand J. Vaidya. Broadview Press, 2008