Beneath the southern surface of the University of Mississippi Medical Center, 7000 bodies were found. According to “Up To 7,000 Bodies Found Buried Beneath University Of Mississippi Medical Center” about 80 years ago, the State Lunatic Asylum had shut down due to constant causes of death such as “tuberculosis, strokes, heart attack, and occasional epidemics of yellow fever and influenza.”
This article correlates with Zone One by Colson Whitehead because in the novel there are dead bodies everywhere either walking zombies or dead bodies outspread everywhere. The University of Mississippi Medical Center is dealing with a similar situation in that they have discovered what I imagine to be the same amount of bodies as in Zone One. As all of the deaths in the Asylum were from painful diseases, I would imagine that the zombies too went through a painful process to become who they’ve become in Zone One.
Despite the fact that the dead bodies are about 80 years old now, the correlation between the two situations is that regardless of the way you die, it is painful. Not only is it painful for the person dying, its painful for others around them to watch them torture others as zombies or for others to finally find out where the people related to them who lived in the Asylum have been buried all this time.
Although many may not know those who were found beneath the Medical Center, the story is still unfortunate. There were probably family members worried sick after the Asylum shut down about where their relatives were buried.
The quote “People fear death even more than pain. It’s strange that they fear death. Life hurts a lot more than death. At the point of death, the pain is over” by Jim Morrison helps me conclude the idea that death for both the zombies and the people who died in the Asylum was painful while they were living. Once they died the only pain left was for those who cared about them or the people today finding out the devastating story of the conditions in which those people were left to die under.