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Alondra Perez
Professor McClure
Writing 39B
4 December 2015
RIP Walkthrough
Throughout the quarter, our main focus has been to fully understand the horror genres
characteristics and tropes. For this project, specifically, the purpose was to showcase that overall
understanding through our own means of communication. As groups, we were given the power
to create our own rhetorical situation. In other words, we were given the responsibility to choose
our own: purpose, audience as well as set expectations, the genre in which it was composed, and
the desired medium in which it was to be delivered in. This project, essentially, was a place for
us to demonstrate what we learned about how rhetoric works and how different texts are shaped
due to their own, distinct rhetorical situations. As the author of The Anteaters Guide to Writing
and Rhetoric, Hayden McNeil states, Because different genres respond to different rhetorical
situations, these tools will also enhance your ability to perform rhetorical analysis (20).
Therefore, after the completion of several assignments, my group and I came to the final
agreement that we would be showcasing our own understanding of the horror genre through the
creation of an informative power point that focused on zombies, the audience expectations that
come with that genre, as well the metaphor behind the genre that ultimately lead to their grown
popularity.
Our own rhetorical situation consisted of presenting to another 39B class from the UCI
campus, our own controlled idea with a live scholarly presentation, to not only inform the class
about zombies and their popularity, but as well demonstrate our own rhetorical knowledge in the

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process, while keeping the historical context in mind. Given the differences in assigned class
themes, our intention was to not simply be informative, but engaging with our particular zombie
context. We did our best to avoid following our mediums bad reputation of being too mundane
or uninteresting and remembered to get straight to the point. Because our goal was to
demonstrate our knowledge of the characteristics and tropes of the horror genre, we did not fail
to communicate the set expectations that come with zombies, such as the apocalyptic, societal
breakdown aspect of it. Recently, over the years, zombie popularity has been seen to skyrocket
because of societys underlying fear to the very possible likelihood of there ever occurring such
systematic, worldwide breakdown. This particular piece of information that we deliberately
included, served as our opportunity to better clarify the metaphor behind a zombie apocalypse
and relate it to the historical context of society today, in order to further persuade the audience to
try and see the idea of a zombie apocalypse under a new perspective.
Given our goal to persuade the audience to perceive the horror genre and zombies under a
new standpoint, as rhetors, we had to make certain rhetorical decisions, such as what pieces of
information were necessary to include in our presentation to better solidify our purpose, while
keeping the specific references in mind that would help towards our appeal to our audience in the
process. For this reason, we chose to avoid condensing our slides with mundane historical facts
that described the evolution of the zombies, but really considered what pieces of information
would lead to creating more effective bridges between our subject and the audience. In order to
relate these new ideas to what the audience may find significant, we decided that our two main
focuses would be describing the metaphor a zombie apocalypse represents, along with the
expected tropes. Detailing the metaphor that a zombie apocalypse essentially represents, proved
to be successful because it allowed for the other scholars to gain better insight and understanding

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behind the persisting usage of the monster in several works and genres. The audience was able to
understand that the zombie apocalypse trope illustrates the worst fear and anxieties of any
society or person if such chaos was to ever occur. Again, this specific element helped appeal to
the audiences interest because it allowed for us to spark an innate wonder to a possible, what if,
within their own setting or environment.
It was our goal for the audience to understand that zombies arent just a depiction of
mindless bodies; but serve as representations of disorder. As Max Brooks points out in The New
York Times Magazine, many folks cant cope with real-life dangers; they (like him) would
prefer to metabolize their anxiety through science fiction. It is for this reason, that we decided to
include the trope that zombies arent the ones to fear, but the humans themselves because of the
violence they are willing and capable enough to fabricate. In order for the audience to better
understand and retain this idea, we included a current and popular television show like, AMCs
The Walking Dead, to make it easier for the audience to relate to. In this show, the zombies arent
seen to be the the most threatening enemies that the survivors will face, but other survivors as
well. The humans are seen to be just as deadly as the zombies because of their own willingness
to slaughter another individual if it means that their own survival will be preserved.
Aside from the group effort that went into creating our rhetorical situation and
presentation, my individual contribution to the project was performing the appropriate amount of
research necessary to build upon my knowledge of the most common genre expectations there
are when zombies are situated in a text. When presenting, I touched base on the idea that
zombies are targeted as the cause for societal breakdown. I specifically mentioned how modern
television shows depict humans to be just as deadly and threatening as zombies are because of
humans own anxiety and fear to disorder. I stated that AMCs The Walking Dead, subverts this

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expectation of what to fear, as humans are seen to be just as willing and capable enough to
slaughter another man if they feel like their own survival is at stake. My individual role
contributed to my groups overall success because of the fact that I provided a foundation to
reflect back on when my other group member followed by explaining the tropes contribution to
the overall metaphor that a zombie apocalypse creates for a society. Stating that I as well was
responsible for including visuals seems a bit needless to say, but if it wasnt for this inclusion,
my audiences attention span would have dwindled fairly quickly because of my lack of visualaids. My contribution strengthened as well our groups overall credibility because of my
noticeable preparation.
I was not only responsible for the creation of the genre expectations slide in the
PowerPoint, I was as well responsible for my own preparation to memorize the main points I
wished to express. Reviewing the material I was termed to present beforehand, allowed for my
presenting skills to avoid seeming mediocre. According to best-selling author and speaker, Garr
Reynolds, The biggest item that separates mediocre presenters from world class ones is the
ability to connect with an audience in an honest and exciting way. Confidence is what I was
striving for, therefore my passion was only going to be visible if my preparation was visible as
well. Knowing and accepting the fact that delivering speeches isnt of second nature to me, only
increased my willingness to practice and rehearse more. I found myself to be at more of an ease,
not only because of the more personal environment we found ourselves in, but because of my
preparation. I was grateful that my mind did not go blank once up there and that I completely
avoided reading right from the screen.
Realizing that this project has almost, finally come to an end, has left me feeling a bit
guilty in confessing, but I am relieved with the fact that we are finally done with all group

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assignments. I say this in the most polite and sincere way because group work almost always
tends to create this higher sense of stress and anxiety for certain people, due to the unavoidable
dependence on other people to finish their own contribution. This, however, was not the total
case with my group. I sincerely have no complaints with them as I felt extremely comfortable
working with them all throughout the quarter. I believe we understood each other well, and
shared about the same amount of ideas when analyzing a certain text. But given this assignment,
communication was seen to fall short on a certain occasion because certain deadlines were
ignored of when we had all agreed our presentation was to be completed. It was not left at the
last minute, but it surely was not completed within the first week it was assigned. I believe that if
we had all inputted all of our information on the presentation, on time, we would have had a
greater chance in possibly integrating music or a video to our presentation to add that extra wow
factor. But overall, I believe that as a class, we successfully showcased our individual
understandings regarding the power of rhetoric, as well as the horror genre.

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Works Cited
Brodesser-akner, Taffy. "Max Brooks Is Not Kidding About the Zombie Apocalypse."
The New York Times. The New York Times, 22 June 2013. Web. 02 Dec. 2015.
McNeil, Hayden. The Anteater's Guide to Writing and Rhetoric. 5th ed. Plymouth: HaydenMcNeil, 2015. Print.
"Top Ten Delivery Tips." Garr Reynolds Official Site. GarrReynolds.com, n.d. Web. 02 Dec.
2015.