Warm Bodies Identity

A zombie is a zombie is a zombie, right? Sure, some of them are crustier than others. Some don't have legs, some are missing half their face, but they're all basically the same. They want your brain, you want to blow their heads off. Easy.

Ah, but Warm Bodies complicates things a bit. These zombies not only have their own personalities, they have names. Well, they have the first letters of names and they're desperately trying to remember the rest. There's something about a name that makes them seem more like people, and that just makes it harder to want to kill them.

Questions About Identity

1. What aspects of R's personality are him, and which parts did he inherit from Perry?
2. At the end of the novel, why does R no longer want to remember his name?
3. Why are names so important to the Dead?

Chew on This

R spends a lot of time early on trying to figure out what his fellow zombies were before they died. By the end of the novel, R realizes that it doesn't matter—they can build a new identity and start fresh.

R's quest for identity isn't that much different from the untold story of the orphans he visits. Neither knows their parents, or what they've inherited from them. When finding themselves, they're kind of on their own.