This paper analyzes narrative ethics in a collection of Tibetan stories known as Zombie Tales (Tib. ro sgrung) and George Saunders' 2022 short story "Liberation Day." Both works explore a central tension: narratives can simultaneously function as mechanisms of control and as vehicles for liberation.
The Zombie Tales are part of a popular Tibetan folkloric tradition. They center on a prince who becomes obsessed with dark magic and incurs a terrible karmic burden. Seeking to redeem himself, he follows a guru's orders to capture a zombie from India and bring it back to Tibet. All the while, he must maintain total silence, lest the zombie magically escape. However, the zombie is cunning, and tells captivating stories designed to provoke a response. Repeatedly, the prince catches the zombie and tries to carry it back to Tibet, but despite his best efforts the prince repeatedly loses focus and responds to the zombie's tales.
"Liberation Day" is the title story from George Saunders' 2022 story collection. In Saunders' dystopian world, certain humans have had their memories wiped so that they can serve as "Speakers," who are physically "pinioned" and motivated by electronic "pulses" so they can tell stories to entertain their wealthy owners. "Liberation Day" centers on Jeremy, who–lacking any memory–is perfectly happy to speak about whatever topic he is pulsed by his owner Mr. U. One day, terrorists break in to free Jeremy, but he is in the middle of Speaking the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Confused between the story and the present conflict unfolding around him, he defends Mr. U and kills the terrorists who were trying to free him. In the aftermath, he realizes what has actually happened: "whatever Mr. U. may in the future give me to Speak, I will never enjoy it again, any more than would a puppet, picked up off the floor, enjoy the suddenly manipulating hand."
Both works employ speculative fiction elements to present protagonists caught in narrative systems designed to control them. In both cases, the stories that the prince and Jeremy get lost in are good stories that exemplify ethical norms. The Zombie tells the prince stories about the workings of karma that promote compassion. Upon hearing these stories, the prince is so "wrapped up in the story" that he involuntarily engages in sympathetic joy and praises the morally good actions of the characters. In Speaking the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Jeremy is engaged in empathetic attention to the various people present at the battle. He notes that he has a tendency to "fall under the sway" of his own stories because of a desire to "always be feeling more." Both the prince and Jeremy empathically identify with the characters in the story to the extent that they misunderstand the larger frame around that story. In other words, precisely when and precisely because the prince and Jeremy are ethically responsive, they fail. The zombie flies back to India and Jeremy is not freed by the terrorists.
The two works diverge after this failure. Fortunately for the prince, after many instances where he loses focus and responds to the zombie's tales, he finally manages to stay silent and delivers the zombie to his teacher, thus securing his own liberation. Jeremy is not so lucky. After the failed liberation day, Jeremy understands what he is–a memory-wiped slave programmed to entertain Mr. U with stories. He ends the story in some sense freer than he once was–he has a nascent self-awareness–but for that same reason also even more trapped than when the story started.
Both works can teach us about Buddhism. The Zombie Tales, though the genre is shared among Indian religious traditions, is clearly located within the Buddhist tradition in Tibet. George Saunders is less overtly religious, but practices in the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism, and describes writing as part of his Buddhist practice. Though the two works thus come from different backgrounds and pursue speculative fiction in different ways, they share fundamental concerns about how best to act in this confusing world.
More specifically, I argue that these stories illustrate something important about Buddhist ethics.
First, the Buddhist ethical tradition both advocates general moral virtues such as compassion and sympathetic joy, but also undermines any assumption that these virtues can function as universally-applicable rules. Charles Hallisey has called this the ethical particularism of Buddhist ethics. That is, while Buddhism advocates for a range of moral values, principles, and goods, Buddhist ethical literature insists on the "rich particularity of each situation before us without holding ourselves to a standard of moral consistency" (Hallisey 1996, 42). The fact that both the Zombie Tales and "Liberation Day" feature protagonists who fail precisely because they are led by stories to engage in ostensibly positive moral virtues–compassion, sympathetic joy–highlights the limits of those virtues.
Second, understanding Buddhist ethics requires engaging with its deeply narrative flavor. While these works might initially appear to warn against the danger of narrative, they actually demonstrate narrative's fundamental power to hold apparently contradictory truths together. By using stories-within-stories, the Zombie Tales and "Liberation Day" can maintain both that it is good for the prince and Jeremy to be ethically responsive, and also, that they were wrong to do so. In narrative, both can be true at once.
This paper thus contributes to multiple fields by showing the metaethical significance of a piece of Tibetan literature often assumed to be "mere" popular folklore, engaging with Saunders' contemporary Buddhist-influenced fiction, and highlights the rich possibilities of speculative fiction.
Works Cited
Burke, D., & Saunders, G. (2021). George Saunders on What Buddhists Can Offer the World Right Now. Tricycle: The Buddhist Review. https://tricycle.org/article/george-saunders/
Hallisey, C. (1996). Ethical Particularism in Theravāda Buddhism. Journal of Buddhist Ethics, 3, 32–43.
Nāgārjuna. (2002). Ro sgrung (Par thengs gsum pa). Shes rig par khang. http://purl.bdrc.io/resource/MW8CZ88 [BDRC bdr:MW8CZ88]
Saunders, G. (2022). Liberation Day: Stories. Random House.
Wangmo, T. (2015). The Prince and the Zombie: Tibetan Tales of Karma. Shambhala.
This paper examines narrative control and agency through a comparative analysis of the Tibetan collection of "Zombie Tales" (ro sgrung) and George Saunders' 2022 dystopian short story "Liberation Day." Both works employ speculative fiction to present protagonists who become so engrossed in narratives that they forget themselves and fail to achieve their goals. In the Zombie Tales, a prince repeatedly responds to a captive zombie's stories about karma, compromising his mission. In Saunders' dystopia, a memory-wiped "Speaker" named Jeremy kills his would-be liberators while absorbed in narrating a historical battle. Both works thus explore a central tension: narratives can be vehicles of both control and liberation. This comparative reading highlights a salient feature of Buddhist ethics–though they espouse general moral virtues, they also insist on the irreducibly particularist nature of ethical action.