The Walking Dead, Survival Rule Of The Week: The Monsters Within
By Liam O'Leary
2) Your Anger Can Get You Into Trouble.
As we learned in this week’s Walking Dead, Negan’s backstory was actually rather…tragic. Some time before the outbreak hit, Negan got into a fight with some obnoxious douche at a bar for interrupting he and Lucille’s favorite song and promptly beat him senseless.
Naturally, the guy, being a douche, not only pressed charges against Negan, sued him for damages but also whined to the local school board and got Negan fired from his teaching job, which, along with the charges, guaranteed he’d never teach again. This then started a downward spiral, where he and Lucille couldn’t afford improvements on their home, and, with Negan unable to get a job in his profession, Lucille was forced to pay the douchebag’s medical fees.
The hard lesson that Negan had learned was that letting his anger loose hurt not only him but the people he cared about.
While Negan’s problem obviously happened before the outbreak, that doesn’t mean that the lesson doesn’t have merit after a zombie outbreak. If you’d like an example, look at Daryl; By attacking Negan after he killed Abraham, it prompted Negan to kill Glenn, too, as a means of trying to discourage such violent outbursts.
Though we might want to go ape on every scumbag, we encounter in the zombie apocalypse, that isn’t always the best course of action. If you find yourself grossly outnumbered or without any tactical advantage, cutting loose on hostiles would be a terrible idea, and more than likely get you killed.
Of course, there’s the simple fact that just going into a rage can cause you to (As it did Negan) lose control, resulting in you losing awareness of your surroundings, meaning you can get ambushed by enemies that you can’t see. Rampaging on a zombie won’t do you any good if it means you’re not looking out for zombies coming up behind you.
As we’ve seen at various times in The Walking Dead, anger can be useful, but it’s all in the timing. You can’t just be a raging maniac all the time; It can alienate you from potential friends and allies, it can cause you to become blind to what’s around you, and worst of all, do it at the wrong time, and you are the one it winds up killing.