Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion | Teen Ink

Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion

December 16, 2013
By Hiilei Wong Yuen BRONZE, Keaau, Hawaii
Hiilei Wong Yuen BRONZE, Keaau, Hawaii
4 articles 0 photos 0 comments

Warm Bodies

The book is called Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion. It’s about a zombie who forgot his name because he can’t remember any of his memories; all he remembers is that his name started with an R. Now his so called best friend M calls him that too. He lives in an airport with other corpse. All they do is groan and shuffle slowly around each other. The corpse eats humans because they’re dead and want life and who has more life than humans. Their favorite part is the human’s brain because it allows them to see some of their memories and makes them feel alive. Well one day when going to get their food, R eats a teenage boy named Perry and he sees in his memories how much he loves this girl named Julie.
R decides to take Julie back to the airport and disguise her as a corpse so they wouldn’t eat her. Corpse can only smell them and that’s how they find their food, so R smeared blood all over Julies face to make her smell like them. Even though R is a zombie he’s the most attractive and young one, so Julie starts warming up to R’s good differences than the other corpse like he’s is now having feelings. Julie doesn’t fit well with them because she has too much life and some corpses are beginning to suspect something. R doesn’t want to try and make them believe that she is trying to help, so he takes her back to where the rest of the living is with the help of M.
They stop and rest at an abandoned house, but Julie can’t wait any longer to leave. She then leaves R and heads to where the living is by herself. R starts to head back to the airport but is stopped by M. He said that the Boneys (the corps who have shed their skin and have no control over themselves) pushed all the “changing” zombies out of town. The “changing” zombies are now having dreams and want to live. They think it’s because of Julie and R goes to get her to help all the zombies be alive again. He sneaks into the stadium and goes to find Julie. Julie and her best friend Nora show R what daily life is. He thinks it’s lacking interest just like groaning in an airport all day.






Julie shows R her mother’s grave and R finds Perry’s grave. R falls in and starts daydreaming about talking to Perry. R gets drunk and knocks out two guys who were hitting on Julie. He runs away and comes across a guard. It started to rain, so the makeup was coming off his face and then he had to kill the guard before the guard killed him. He remembered that he wanted to change, so he didn’t kill the guard and the guard became a corpse like him. Julie wants to protect R, so she decides to take R back to the airport before her dad (the general) finds out. They run into M who got a whole group of “changing” zombies and want to help fight with the humans against the corpse who have decided to take over. Then R and Julie head back to the stadium. They think the guards are armed, but actually the guards are outnumbered and innocent people are getting killed. R and Julie are thinking all is well and hang out at the top of the stadium, but Julie’s dad ruins everything and walks in on R and Julie kissing.
Her dad thinks that she is now a zombie and has to shoot her. Her friend, Colonel Rosso, comes to the rescue and stabs Julie’s dad in the ankle. He falls off the top of the stadium and a skeleton corpse comes and eats him. Everything is over because the skeleton corpse stop attacking and they went back to the airport. R and Julie think they were the reason the zombies were changing because of their love story. R is now alive because his heart is working normally and now is bleeding. With R’s new life he made a promise to find a cure for the death to be able to live again.











The characters in the movie and the book are R a guy who only remembers the first letter of his name while spending his days groaning and eating humans. Julie Grigio is a girl who was raised without knowing what the normal world is like and makes a huge change in R and his fellow zombies. M is R’s friend in the airport and respects R’s hopes and dreams. Perry Kelvin is a boy who fell in love with Julie, but their love was dying when Perry started to leave hope. R killed Perry when R and Julie meet. General Grigio is Julie’s dad and is in charge of making sure the zombies stay away from the humans especially his daughter. Nora Greene is Julie’s best friend and she helps Julie keep R hidden and safe. They didn’t add any characters in the book and the movie. The director stayed faithful to the book.








An event that happened in the book that didn’t happen to the movie is when R knocked out two guys and turned a guard into a corpse. The director probably made this change because it was too deadly to make into a scene. Another event is when Julie’s dad gets stabbed in the leg and falls off the stadium then gets eaten by a skeleton corpse. The director probably left that out because the story would change because Julie would then have no parents at all. Last event is when Julie showed R her mother’s grave. Nora thought R meant a lot to Julie because she didn’t show Perry the grave until 3 months in since they started dating. The director probably made this change because he couldn’t get the right props and perfect setting for the scene.





“I mean, I know it's really hard to meet guys right now, with the apocalypse and stuff. Trust me. And like I know that you miss Perry. But Julie, this is just weird. Like, I wish the internet was still working so I could just look up what whatever it is that's wrong with you”, Nora said this in the movie. I thought that this was humorous and cute because Julie really loved R even though he’s a zombie and it showed how Nora’s personality is. “This is my best friend. By best friend, I mean we occasionally grunt and stare awkwardly at each other. We even have almost conversations sometimes.” That quote shares R and M’s relationship because they’re zombies. They can only talk up to four syllables and mostly just groan to each other.











An important setting in the movie and the book is R’s home an abandoned 747 jet in an airport. R likes to be there because it lets him have privacy and it’s the most isolated place. The city is important because that’s where the zombie gets their food. Every time they go into the city R brings back one thing that catches his eye like a puzzle or a magazine. An actor that played differently in the movie compared to the book is Perry because in the book he was a big jerk. He took Julie for granted and everything she loved about him changed. Also in the book it said that Perry cheated on her with Julie’s best friend. It made the movie worse because people would of liked R more and would want them to have a forever love story.


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