My personal interpretation of the story in S1
I have a tendency to fixate on any form of art that resonates with my personal experiences, and I've always thought that the story in TWD was unique in its kind since it combines the topic of innocence or childhood with "monsters". This kind of plot instinctively tells me that the "monsters" are really a metaphor for the kinds of people who surround a disadvantaged child as he or she is growing up, and the way that they each influence him or her for the worse during their crucial formative years.
In short, the story of the first season is really a metaphor for childhood and how it becomes corrupted or the loss of innocence; the "walkers" are a representation of all the individuals who have had a negative influence on our lives while growing up, regardless of how small - which is why there are so many of them around, and have grown to outnumber those of us who are still "alive" in many places. In the ending of the first season when Lee tells Clementine "You don't want to see me like one of them" after she begs in vain "Please don't become one of them" - to me, it was symbolic of a real life scenario where an individual is on the verge of losing someone extremely close to them as a result of negative influences in their life, such as drugs or hanging around the wrong crowd. The individual in question tells themselves that they have to leave the relationship before it gets any worse and they can no longer recognize the person who they once cared for; hence, "There is only one thing you can do. You know that."
I have personally had the misfortune of being surrounded by countless "walkers" throughout my childhood and have continued to encounter the occasional in adulthood, although I am fortunately much better equipped to deal with them nowadays. "You're going to see bad stuff, but it's OK" - pretty much summarizes all of my early life experiences.
Comments
Interesting take you have here. But sometimes things are more straight forward than one would think
Interesting analysis. But I personally only saw it as a zombie story and not much else.
My interpretation seems unnecessarily elaborate because I tend to read far too much into any story that resonates with me personally, and I know it's most likely way off the mark from what the writer had originally intended. I am still pretty sure that the core of the story is about childhood, however.
I think it's a testament to how good S1 was that someone can pull something that deep from it