The Walking Dead: Theories about poor Sam

Why weren’t people more upset about poor Sam’s death on The Walking Dead? How could they want a cute little boy to be killed?

Sophia coming out of the barn. Mika being killed by her sister. Lizzie looking at the flowers. All beautiful scenes and sad, horrible deaths. Little Sam Anderson gets eaten by zombies and people are cheering?

I don’t get it. But I do have some theories. I liked little Sam. He was an abused child who was terrorized yet again by Carol telling him a zombie fairy tale to get him to keep secret her theft of guns from the armory.

Then he becomes enthralled by Carol’s strength and straightforward talk. He made a friend. Carol talked to him. It wasn’t quiet like in his house. His mixed emotions weren’t locked up in the closet of his mind.

He didn’t have enough Carol training though before the walkers started threatening. People were annoyed that he locked himself in his room upstairs, but that’s what he had been trained to do. When his monster dad was on a rampage, his mom taught him to lock himself in the closet until things got better.

So when these monsters came he locked himself upstairs to wait until things got better. It’s not that stupid. Carol’s story obviously stuck with him. He drew it. It went through his mind when the monsters he heard of in stories came to life all around him.

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Audience members sometimes forget these things and just have their gut emotional reaction of annoyance with kid behavior. And when it’s kid behavior you can’t change, frustration sets in. Like the frustration with a crying baby even when you know you love the baby and the baby isn’t trying to frustrate you.

Zombie apocalypse logic has trained us to be annoyed with people who are considered liabilities for some reason. People that are perceived as having the potential to get others killed. When we left all those months ago with Sam calling for his mom, that thought got stuck in people’s heads. The idea that Sam was going to get people killed.

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So negative connections built with Sam. Sam equaled annoying, weird kid from Alexandria who is going to get one of our people killed. Then all those weeks passed with the notion that Sam was probably going to die. So people had time to grieve in their own way. With any grief behind them, people were free to reach for other emotions like joy and enjoyment of the zombie effects when it actually happened.

I’ll miss you little Sam. You can rest now without being afraid all the time.

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