Character Spotlight: Carol Peletier 

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Character Spotlight: \'The Walking Dead\'s Carol Peletier

‘The Walking Dead’ does not ask, “will you survive the zombie apocalypse?” but “

Initially, my answer was that you don’t. That the average person doesn’t have the stamina for something like this. But as the show progresses the situation seems less hopeless. This isn’t to say that happy endings will abound by the end but it does lend to the idea that the zombie apocalypse pushed some people to become who they were all along. Enter Carol Peletier.

I have always been drawn to the characters that people like to underestimate. Seeing an underdog come out on top is always satisfying but for me there is a deeper connection. No genre-based character is going to be entirely you because these shows aren’t telling your personal story. But they are tapping into personal aspects of who we are and who want to be.

Carol comes into the scene as nothing more than a peripheral character. She has a daughter and a husband and she’s clearly not in the best type of situations and that has nothing to do with the circumstances around the apocalypse. For a lot of reasons from the moment I met Carol I wondered what her story was.

The first season is short yet Carol gets several standout moments. The first is when Shane takes out his aggression on Ed. We learn everything we need about pre-apocalypse Carol. In a show that doesn’t rely on flashbacks to make it’s point, who throws it’s core group into the middle of a hoard of zombies, literally and figuratively, we have to learn about these characters through what we see them do now, not what they would have done before.

And while that first defining moment ends with Carol cradling Ed’s head sobbing her apologies there is a definitive shift in her. Of course the results of that shift are not seen clearly until she picks up the ax after Ed’s death. The moment is gratifying because Carol not only gets all her anger out with that ax but because moments earlier she didn’t even look capable of picking something like that up and swinging it over and over and over. It should be considered that this is probably the first time Carol is holding a weapon of any sort. Even in the initial days of the zombie apocalypse all we saw her do was wash clothes. But here she is not just holding a weapon but swinging at her husband so that he can’t comeback and hurt her and Sophia ever again.

Carol in the zombie apocalypse effectively ends the very personal terror she was living. It’s an interesting micro-plot juxtaposed against a larger more deadly threat. What is exceptionally striking about Carol’s initial but very permanent shift is that these defining moments happened after she made a much subtler decision.

Laundry was the only thing that made Carol feel useful in those early days. In a world where everyone has a job to do, not everyone was as bold as Andrea about asking to learn how to shoot. Lori was too busy immersed in a love triangle and doing a rather terrible job of keeping track of Carl and Jacqui wasn’t around the series long enough for us to really know her. But living under Ed’s thumb Carol did the laundry. And it made her feel useful. But it also gave her a grenade. Literally.

She found the grenade in Rick’s shirt pocket and kept it herself in case they’d need it. She didn’t show the grenade to Ed, she held it. Close to her. That moment is a catalyst for Carol. She realizes she can be more than Ed let’s her and after his death she does that. Carol saves the group at the CDC. Yes, the credit goes to Rick because he threw the grenade but Carol gave it to him. She saved it because she thought it might save them one day. She didn’t leave it in Rick’s shirt and hope he would keep it safe himself, she took that upon herself. Carol decided long before Ed’s death that because she made it this far despite her life with him, she wasn’t going to let some zombies do her in much less a crazy CDC scientist.

In season two Carol is once again put in the forefront. Sophia goes missing and she doesn’t even have the skills to go and find her herself. Nevermind the failure she feels from not being able to protect her from running into the woods in the first place. She clings to things that she thinks make her who she is lie trying to cook for Hershel and his family. She cleans Dale’s RV. All while contesting with the questions that would haunt any parent like w

ho is she without Sophia? Is she still a mom? Who is meant for this new world? 

(or “The moment I lost my mind and welcomed Caryl into my heart” shhhh this isn’t about them but I included it anyway for reasons) and on and on those thoughts went. I could make an excuse for the pacing of season two and say it mimics the agony Carol experienced hoping, waiting, wishing Sophia would be found safe, but that’s a whole other issue.

When we do finally get to the gut wrenching barn scene, the shock and distress that the search is over, that there was no search necessary to begin with settles in. It is from this moment on that Carol decides exactly who you have to be to survive. She could have taken on the attitude that nothing mattered anymore, except that could not be more untrue. She mattered. For the first time in a long time, maybe ever, Carol realized she mattered.

From this moment on she becomes an asset to the group. Her personality begins to shine (with inappropriate sex jokes) and we see her take on new roles. In a scene in season three that doesn’t a get a whole lot of attention, Carol knows that Hershel will no longer be able to deliver Lori’s baby and she needed a C-section the first time with Carl so Carol decides that she could be the one to do it. This leads to her catching a walker in order to practice on.

The moment itself is mostly quiet, but there’s a delicateness that Carol has throughout it. The walker she chooses was obviously a young women and as Carol gets to work you can’t help but notice how gentle she’s being. How delicate this situation is not just because it’s success will involve two living people but because in that moment that walker is realized to have once been a person. Perhaps the scene isn’t as important as when Carol outright tells Merle not to underestimate her but to me it’s the moment that Carol once and for all separates herself from who she was: she once was Ed’s battered wife, she once was Sophia’s mom. Now she’s just Carol. Just like the walkers were once someone.

This plays right into the Carol we see in season four. We know her now. We know she cares deeply for these people she calls family. Some even get cute nicknames. She’s a natural nurturer and she’s apart of the council of people who run the prison. In a way all these things are to be expected. Carol may not be the first choice for a leader but she learned to use that to her advantage. Story time with the kids is everything but that. She never wants to see what happened to Sophia happen to another child if she can prevent it. Teaching the kids how to use knives gives Carol an opportunity to show these tiny humans that they are capable of protecting themselves. Similarly to how she learned she could protect herself and others. No one has ever told these children that they can, until Carol.

The starkest change in her comes during her conversation with Lizzie and Mika after their father’s death. Telling Lizzie she was weak was blunt but necessary. Carol carries that bluntness all the way through the season. She no longer tiptoes around what she wants or what people may or may not need to do. She kills Karen and David because she thinks it’ll protect everyone. She then fixes the water hose out of guilt without Rick because she knew she could do that too. Even more importantly, she doesn’t fight Rick on his decision to banish her. She actually remains justified in that decision and she doesn’t hold it against Rick when Judith ends up in her charge.

This is because Carol isn’t spiteful about his decision. He did what he felt he had to, just like she did what she felt she had to. She has learned the rules of this world, not just how it is but how it has to be. Carol has learned that she’s okay because she’s “gotta be” no matter what the emotional toll.

This philosophy is tested to it’s limits in “The Grove”. It’s hard not to watch that episode and wonder what Carol would have been able to do under normal circumstances. She has gone from someone who can care for people by feeding them and washing their clothes to someone people look to for protection.

I’m fascinated by the use of flowers in the episode not from an anti-anxiety standpoint but because flowers were a part of Carol’s development. The Cherokee Rose is directly associated with not just what Carol loses but how that loss forces her to blossom, to change into something new.

“The Grove” is not a turning point for Carol, this episode does not expose a new Carol. It’s brings forth all the emotional baggage that Carol has thought she shed away. I believe she wants to forget what happened, but I also believe that she doesn’t think she has anyone who can understand it. I think The Grove is a reminder that after all this time, it’s not Ed who was capable of doing the most abuse, though his physical marks left their emotional scars, it’s that Carol decides that no one could possibly understand her situation that no one would care. That if Rick can banish her for killing two sick people in the hopes of protecting everyone else, what would he do if he knew what she

to do to protect Judith and everyone else again? This is why she told Tyreese the truth. Carol was starting to believe that she was worthless again.

Thankfully season five proves Carol’s own assumption completely wrong. While some would say everything Carol has done prepared her for this moment, I truly think that comes later. Carol’s swift and calculating take down of Terminus is nothing to minimize but even she just does what she has to to get her people to safety. And the reunion with the group is all the more earned. Quickly moving on so I resist all my instincts to talk about the hug excessively.

Carol’s attempt to maybe leave the group proves that those worthless feelings from “The Grove” have not been resolved. She may not want to talk about what happened but I also don’t think she wants to talk about how low it has her feeling. She returned to an old space in her head and ironically she returns to an old space in Atlanta she had gone to get away from Ed. While not enough is said here because the whole episode involves Carol who is trying to close herself off emotionally and Daryl is wants to open up but doesn’t know how it is what is done that counts. Carol’s feelings of worthlessness dissipate when she wakes up to see Daryl burning the mother/daughter walkers that he told her she didn’t have to kill.

Melissa McBride & Norman Reedus in The Walking Dead. Photo: AMC

She realizes that the Carol who lives in that worthless space in her head is not who she is anymore. She also realizes that while she can’t talk about what happened yet she can’t pretend she has no feelings either. And then she gets hit by a car.

Of all the things wrong with “Coda” and there are a lot, there are some small moments that were handled exceptionally. As much as I would like to leave my OTP out of this (let’s pretend that’s true) I have to point out that Carol and Daryl have switched roles after he shoots Dawn. When Sophia walks out of the barn, Daryl protects her. And then in the hospital it is Carol’s hand that stays Daryl.

Now, once the Atlanta gang gets to Alexandria this is the moment that the world has prepared Carol for. Upon entering the safe zone gates she goes from tough as nails leader to self-proclaimed den mother who doesn’t know how to lift a gun. Carol assumes the hapless domestic role because she knows she’s being underestimated. She takes on Alexandria like she took on teaching the children at the prison, with stories.

Seeing her in a cardigan frightens me more than almost anything else I have ever seen on this show, Carol is not the person she was way back when it would have made sense to dress like that. She threatens Sam, which is a defense mechanism more than anything else. It’s not just that she doesn’t want to get close to anymore children, it’s that she doesn’t want to get close to anyone in Alexandria in case they need to take drastic measures. Despite all of that she does end up helping Sam. She outright tells Rick what he will need to do and she even looks for an excuse to do it herself.

If Carol brings a casserole, you better hope it’s a treat and not a threat. When she stares Pete down, Carol is facing one of her biggest and most pervasive monsters. Ed might be long dead now but she never did get to stand up to him. The moment is so silently powerful that her words resonate long after she puts her disguise back on as she walks out the door. Her smile says cookies but her eyes say “Come at me, no one will believe you.”

Finally, when the group assembles to defend Rick, Carol speaks up. This seems like something simple. Something she has been doing for quite some time now, but not in this place, not with these people. To these people she loved her husband, misses him even. To these people she was protected by the group and credits them to making it this long on the outside.

I can’t speak for season 6 since it has not premiered yet but after seeing the trailer I spent most of it wondering why she was doing that or what lead to her being there? While I don’t expect anything ground breaking like we’ve seen over the last five seasons for carol, I know better than to underestimate her.

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