The Walking Dead Book 2 by Robert Kirkman

After reading The Walking Dead Book One I found myself hooked into this series.  I had never gotten in to the TV show, but there was something about this story that made me want to keep reading.

While book one focuses heavily one the society before and after and how things have changed between the two, book two takes a different path and looks at the extremes people can be pushed to in the right (wrong?) circumstances.  

The rule that really put all of this into focus for me was Rick saying, "You kill, you die."  He yelled this in anger response to a mad man killing off two twin girls, which means he hadn't thought about the meaning of what he was saying.  This is shown very soon when he is forced to kill a man who is kicking them out of their current home.  If he had not done this, then all of his family and friends would have been forced into the outside world and most likely killed quickly.  Rick comes face to face with this face again when his best friend Tyreese kills his daughter's boyfriend Chris after Chris shot her in a mercy killing.  Rick seems to be okay with this murder, just not in the way it was so emotionally done.  He rules by picking and choosing which killing is okay and which is against the rules.  The other murder he doesn't mention in all of this is when his son Carl killed his friend Shane in order to save his own life.  This would have been an interesting topic to add to the comic as Carl and Rick would have both had to face the wrongness of Carl's actions, even if it did save Rick's life.  By the end Rick has changed his tune, because he has realized himself that this rule means nothing.

Rick making these choices for everyone is reminiscent of an old time sheriff in the wild west, and I think the author chose his career as a policeman just to help make this comparison.  Rick follows his own moral compass, but as he is driven out of his humanity that compass may no longer point towards good.  It will be interesting to watch him slip in the future and how that will affect his leadership.

-Amanda