Fear The Walking Dead, Survival Rule Of The Week: Identity Crises
By Liam O'Leary
3) Never Forget Who You Are
Like I said at the beginning, so much of this week’s episode revolved around this very statement, with Daniel literally forgetting who he was (But, more on that in a little bit), and Strand not wanting to become a person he couldn’t live with…
…And that’s why this is so important.
Even without a zombie apocalypse, people can turn into someone else. They can become someone who the person they were, even only few years earlier, wouldn’t recognize, much less like. I’ve seen it: It’s frightening, honestly, so see a good person you once knew become a shadow of their former selves.
Sadly, it’s far too easy for this to happen in a zombie apocalypse, because, with just how extreme of a circumstance it is — Being forced to do whatever you can to survive, the horrors you’ll be forced to see, the fact you’ll have to resort to violence to defend yourself, the amount of loss you’re likely to suffer – – it’s tough for people to hold on to being a good person, and not allow the apocalypse to warp you.
However, as tough as it is, you need to do it. You will see just how vile people can become once the apocalypse sets in, committing unspeakable evils against others, and, you can’t let yourself become like that. You see, eventually, there will come a day where you will look back on who you’ve become, and what you did to get there, and, there’s a good chance that you will not like the person looking back at you, perhaps, even so much that…you may decide your life isn’t worth living.
Worse still, you may get to a point where you don’t care or even like the person you’ve morphed into, and, that person, is someone who, sooner or later, will find themselves on the bad end of someone else. If you become the sort of person who revels in being terrible, no joke, someone will put you down, whether they’re a person you’re being hostile to, or another person in your group (Who, I’m imagining, is just as bad), probably for a petty or arbitrary reason.
You can’t let yourself become that person. Never forget who you are.