At first glance, HBO’s The Last of Us might seem like just another story in a long line of zombie apocalypse tales. We see the familiar ingredients: a mysterious pandemic, desperate survivors, and a grueling fight against the undead. The plot follows a hardened smuggler, Joel, and a resilient 14-year-old, Ellie, on a treacherous trek across a ruined America, their goal to find a cure for the devastating Cordyceps fungal infection.

It would be easy to dismiss it as a rehashing of 28 Days Later or I Am Legend. Yet, beneath the surface of this well-trodden genre, the series unearths something far more profound. It isn’t truly a story about zombies; it’s a story about us. It's an exploration of power, society, and the difficult choices people must make when the world collapses, forcing us to confront what it truly means to be human.

The Loss of Self: What Is a Zombie?

The horror of the Cordyceps infection isn't just in its gruesome physical transformation; it's in the complete erasure of the person within. Philosophy has long grappled with the question of what defines a person, a "subject." René Descartes famously argued that a subject is a being capable of thought. To think is to exist as a self. In this light, one who loses the capacity for higher thought is stripped of their subjectivity, becoming something less than human, even if their body continues to move and consume.

This is the grim reality for the infected. The fungus annihilates the central nervous system, leading to what sociologist Erving Goffman called a “loss of self.” The transition from human to “non-human” is total, wiping away social identity, personal values, and even biological humanity. This is what makes zombies so radically different from other classic monsters like vampires, who often retain their personality and individuality. The infected in The Last of Us lose everything. This process of dehumanization is not just a plot device; it’s a terrifying look at the stripping away of the soul.

Bare Life and the Right to Kill

In the brutal world of the apocalypse, a new social order emerges, one built on a chilling philosophical distinction. The modern Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben wrote about the difference between “bare life”—the simple biological fact of breathing, moving, and eating—and a politically and socially recognized life. A socially approved life is one that follows norms, shares values, and participates in the order of a society.

Those who are merely existing as "bare life" are not considered full members of the human community. Consequently, they can be killed without consequence. This is why the infected evoke no sympathy from the survivors. They are seen as violators of all social order, pure biological threats. They represent the raw, untamed existence that humanity has spent millennia trying to distance itself from through culture, medicine, and law. The apocalypse forces everyone to confront this bare life head-on.

The Plague Is Met with Order

The series powerfully reflects a modern social fear, amplified by recent global events: the fear of losing control over our own bodies and lives. The French philosopher Michel Foucault introduced the concept of “biopolitics” to describe how the state increasingly intervenes in matters of public health. Under the guise of care and protection, systems of power begin to manage populations as a biological species, focusing on statistics like population size, life expectancy, and infection rates.

As Foucault wrote in his book Discipline and Punish, the great plagues of history helped forge the disciplinary society we live in today. When faced with an epidemic, social institutions adapt, developing strict rules to manage the chaos. As Foucault put it, “the plague is met with order.” In the series, this is embodied by the military dictatorship of FEDRA, which maintains control within the quarantine zones. Their methods are a case study in Foucault’s theories: a rigid system of assigned duties, constant surveillance, and public punishments. Work, such as cleaning streets or making repairs, becomes a tool of control. While people are working, they are less likely to cause trouble. The quarantine zone feels less like a sanctuary and more like a prison, where the threat of infection is used to justify the erosion of freedom.

This creates what Foucault called a "regime of the reigning disease," where the epidemic dictates all aspects of social life—politics, economics, and human interaction. We don't have to look far to see parallels in our own world, with concepts like lockdowns and social distancing becoming part of our collective vocabulary.

The Fight for More Than Survival

Not everyone accepts this new order. The Fireflies, a rebel group, rise up against FEDRA’s tyranny, demanding the restoration of a democratic government. But they understand that they cannot truly defeat the military regime until the underlying disease is conquered. Their hope rests on Ellie, a girl who is inexplicably immune.

While the story contains familiar archetypes—the long, perilous quest and the "chosen one" who holds the key to salvation—the series places its true focus elsewhere. The real heart of the narrative lies in the evolving relationship between the characters. It is about their feelings, their trauma, and their desperate search for connection in a world that has taken everything from them.

Ultimately, The Last of Us uses the backdrop of a zombie apocalypse to ask timeless questions about what we value most. It is a story about humanity’s resilience, the complex relationship between power and society, and the enduring importance of freedom and individuality. It challenges us to consider what lines we would cross to survive, and more importantly, what we would fight to save.

References:

• Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated by Alan Sheridan, Vintage Books, 1995.

  This work provides the foundational concepts of disciplinary societies and biopolitics discussed in the article. The chapter "Panopticism" (pp. 195-228) is particularly relevant, as it details how surveillance and control are used to manage populations, drawing a direct parallel between the control of a plague-stricken town and the mechanisms of power in institutions like prisons and, by extension, the quarantine zones in The Last of Us.

• Agamben, Giorgio. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen, Stanford University Press, 1998.

  This book introduces the key concepts of "bare life" (zoē) and "politically qualified life" (bios). The introduction and first part of the book (pp. 1-11) clearly define how sovereign power operates by creating a class of people who can be killed without it being considered murder. This directly relates to the article's analysis of why the infected are treated as disposable beings outside the protection of human law or sympathy.

• Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. "Monster Culture (Seven Theses)." Monster Theory: Reading Culture, edited by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, University of Minnesota Press, 1996, pp. 3-25.

  Cohen's essay argues that monsters are cultural creations that signify societal anxieties and fears. Thesis I ("The Monster's Body Is a Cultural Body") and Thesis II ("The Monster Always Escapes") are especially pertinent. They support the idea that zombies in The Last of Us are not just physical threats but embody deeper fears about loss of individuality, contagion, and the collapse of social order, as explored in the article.