I Am Legend
35 pages • 1 hour read
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Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1, Chapters 1-5
Part 2, Chapters 6-10
Part 2, Chapters 11-14
Part 3, Chapters 15-19
Part 4, Chapters 20-21
Character Analysis
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Summary and Study Guide
I Am Legend by Richard Matheson was published in 1954. The novel depicts a post-apocalyptic world in which people infected with a contagious disease behave like vampires . The last human man, Robert Neville , must protect himself as he studies the scientific basis for the disease. I Am Legend discusses moral relativism, the evolution of the horror genre , and loneliness. It has been adapted several times, most recently as the 2007 film I Am Legend starring Will Smith.
This guide is based on the 1995 TOR paperback version.
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Content Warning : I Am Legend depicts death by suicide. There are also mentions of suicidal ideation and sexual assault throughout the novel.
Plot Summary
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In 1976, Robert Neville is the last human man on Earth. He has outfitted his house into a fortress to protect himself from the threat of the Undead—people infected with the vampiris bacteria who died and came back to life exhibiting vampiric behavior. Alongside the Undead are infected humans who have yet to die, who also behave like vampires. Neville’s despair and desperation for a female companion contribute to his alcoholism . It has been months since his wife, Virginia, died; his young daughter Kathy died shortly before her.
Neville lacks purpose and considers why he doesn’t die by suicide by letting the Undead drink his blood at night. During the day, Neville hunts the sleeping Undead in their houses and destroys them using wooden stakes. One day, after a drunken bender, Neville spends too long visiting the crypt that houses his wife’s coffin and does not return home before sunset. He forgot to lock his garage, so the Undead destroy his generator and other supplies; the Undead attack him. He manages to fight his way into the house, but the event disturbs his daily routine. For the next several weeks, Neville must repair the damage done to his house. Working distracts him from drinking, and he begins to think more clearly about his situation, realizing he knows nothing about the physical nature of the Undead nor how the original contagion spread. He resolves to study immunology, bacteriology, anatomy, and psychology. Neville drives to the Los Angeles library and takes the books he needs.
Neville acquires a microscope and begins experimenting on the Undead by bringing them out into the sunlight, injecting them with garlic’s essential oil, and forcing them to confront the cross. Through his studies, he discovers that the vampiris bacteria is responsible for the anatomical symptoms of the Undead and was rapidly spread through mosquitos and dust storms, caused by bombings from another country during an implied wartime. The image of the vampire had been so rampant in the media at the beginning of vampiris’s spread that Neville concludes the Undead and infected aren’t actually vampires. They expect themselves to be, and so create their own weaknesses to garlic, mirrors, crosses, and moving water.
One day, Neville finds a stray dog on his lawn. He becomes hopeful of capturing the dog as his pet. He believes that if a dog has managed to survive, then more humans must be out in the world. Neville spends weeks feeding the dog on his front porch and trying to win his loyalty, until the latter becomes infected with vampiris . He takes the sick dog into his house and nurses him until the latter’s death a week later.
Neville studies the Undead for the next two years, keeping to his house and settling into a routine. He no longer thinks about the past as it causes him to drink; he is fully committed to the present. While out one day, Neville spots a young woman, Ruth . He chases her, then brings her to his house. He is worried that she is infected, but the hope of having a companion is too strong to resist. Over dinner, Neville reveals everything he’s discovered about the nature of the Undead and infected. Ruth vaguely explains her past, as well as the recent death of her husband and children, but much of her story doesn’t add up. Though Neville is suspicious of her, he promises to help her if he can. He takes a sample of her blood to check for infection. Ruth hits him over the head until he is unconscious, then escapes.
The next morning, Neville finds a note from Ruth explaining that she was sent as a spy from a group of evolved infected who plan to establish a new society. She implores him to leave the house before they come for him. However, Neville can’t bring himself to leave the house. When the infected come to capture him, they massacre the Undead of Los Angeles. Neville fights the infected but ends up imprisoned. Ruth provides him with suicide pills to take before his public execution. Neville does so, realizing that his life and death will pass into legend for the new society of infected.
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About the Book
Themes and Analysis
I am legend, by richard matheson.
Richard Matheson utilizes a set of themes that can be examined when analyzing 'I Am Legend.' Some of them include loneliness, science, survival, and violence.
Written by Fave Ehimwenma
B.A. in History and International Studies from University of Ilorin, Kwara State.
This zombie-vampire apocalypse book mainly focuses on the sole protagonist, not the series of events that ensued in the wider world as the plague tore through the planet. ‘I Am Legend’ is a story that shows the depths of loneliness, pain, monotony, and despair a human being can go through when they alone survive and are surrounded by dreadful creatures.
‘I Am Legend’ encompasses vital concepts that reveal Richard Matheson’s thoughts on science, identity, and human survival.
A theme in Richard Matheson’s ‘I Am Legend’ is loneliness. Robert Neville was an average American man before the epidemic struck. As the lone survivor of this plague, he becomes the last human being on earth. His daily routine changes as he includes experiments and workouts. Surrounded by vampiric people who only crave to kill him, he learns to cope with alienation. Since he can no longer have physical relations with people, he takes comfort in the memory of other people that he has. He constantly thinks about his wife and daughter killed during the pandemic.
After living for months without association with another human being, Robert experiences a severe need for human interaction with no hope of this need getting met. His sexual urges are one of the most challenging of his experiences. He describes it as a burning heat in his lower abdomen. Sometimes, he gets tempted to succumb to the seductions of the female vampires gathered outside his house. He also tries different ways to diminish his loneliness, but they are not fruitful. He turns to alcohol, researching vampirism, and killing vampires during the day.
When he finds a dog in April 1976, he is hopeful and believes his lonely days have ended. This strengthens his resolve to bring it home with him. Unfortunately, the dog gives in to the vampiric infection and dies. In this book, Neville does not escape his loneliness because even when he meets Ruth, a conscious vampire, she is not who she appears to be. Also, their physical interaction lasts for a short period.
In this novel, Robert Neville finds himself surrounded by vampires at night and travels around Los Angeles during the day murdering vampires in their sleep. As the last man uninfected by the vampire germ, Robert quickly accepts that the vampires will kill him if he refuses to protect himself. For this reason, he spends his days fixing damages they made in the night, hanging garlic to repel the terrifying creatures, and researching ways to kill the vampiric germ.
In ‘I Am Legend ,’ Richard Matheson explores the extent of violence humans will descend to in other to survive. Matheson examines how the struggle to live can isolate an individual from his humanity. At different stages in the novel, Robert feels sorry about killing vampires, but he quickly assures himself that he is doing the right thing by defending himself from getting killed.
The vampires, on the other hand, have lost every iota of logic and emotions. They do not feel sorrow or shame. When they gather at Robert’s house at night, they do it because they want to feed. They do not contend with principles as the protagonist does. When Virginia returns from the dead to have Robert’s blood, it is because her need for survival supersedes her memory of Robert.
When Robert meets Ruth, his compassion for the vampires is so numb he is amazed when she flinches in fright at his idea of slaying vampires. The group of conscious vampires where Ruth belongs also intends to eradicate the populace of the existing world to construct a new society that is convenient for their survival.
In Robert Neville’s flashbacks, there was a war between the United States, where the protagonist lives, and another world power. This world war continued for several years and ended with both countries using nuclear weapons to prove their superiority. These acts of violence possibly created the basis of the social and environmental violence that Robert faces throughout the book. The vampires attack Robert’s house at night, trying to get in. During the day, he attacks them when they are asleep. He plunges a stake through their hearts or drags them into the sun to die. The community of conscious vampires also fiercely assault the dead vampires in front of Robert’s house and capture him for execution.
The disastrous and philanthropic strength of science is another theme in this book. When Robert realizes he is unaffected by the vampiric germ and all his loved ones have been killed by the disaster, Robert Neville studies the science of vampirism to understand the cause and cure of the plague. In the library, he researches bacteriology, physiology, blood, and so on. While he studies, the protagonist’s fear of vampires is conquered. He discovers the vampires are people suffering from a chronic disease, and not demons. He also realizes that the vampires are victims themselves because they did not choose to be infected by the germ. Neville goes on to carry out several experiments to understand the way vampiric germ works.
In ‘I Am Legend, ‘ Matheson posits that apprehension and panic often advance from ignorance of the situation. When Neville learns of the infection leading to the population of blood-sucking zombies, he is less frightened of them. He sleeps better at night and looks forward to solving the catastrophe.
Enlightenment is not the only thing the study of science brings to Neville. He also identifies more destructive ways to kill the vampires. Flashbacks even pointed to the fact that the plague may have started from the nuclear fallout from a recent world war. The living vampires like Ruth also consume pills that contain defibrinated blood and a drug. These pills help control the terrifying effects of vampirism.
Matheson’s science fiction was written during the Cold War era and presents science as empowering yet dangerous.
When the 1975 plague strikes, it wipes out humankind and replaces it with something more sinister. The germ responsible for the victim’s death wipes out every trace of humanity and replaces it with bizarre features. Later, a new breed that is neither human nor vampire is created. The three main identities: the dead, the human, and the hybrid presents the question of who the villain truly is. Easily, Robert Neville points to the vampires hunting him as the monsters, but as the story reaches its peak, he realizes he is just as horrible as the vampires. The new world gravely transforms his identity and humanity, and although he is faintly aware, his humanity is erased by the need to survive in a dangerous society.
Virginia and Ben belong to the group who die and return as thoughtless zombies. Even though Robert constantly ruminates on his relationship with Virginia before the pandemic strikes, she cannot remember any of it. Her new identity is one that only yearns for blood. Her humanity has been erased, and the only remnant of her intellect is the ability to remember Robert’s house and name.
The final group on earth are the people infected by the germ but possess pills that help them control the effects of the vampiric germ. This group retained their memory and human attributes. They can stay in the sun for a short period, eat food, and look healthy. Yet, they joyfully tear down the population of existing vampires and plan to execute Robert Neville to begin a new society. This final breed of vampires has similar features to the old community of human beings, yet it is overrun by people who believe viciousness is the standard of living. As he slowly dies at the end of the book, Robert Neville implores Ruth, a ranking officer in the new society to prevent it from getting too brutal.
Analysis of Key Moments
- Robert walks around his house fixing damages from the previous night’s vampire attack.
- Robert deals with sexual frustration and is disgusted with himself because of the sexual urges aroused within him when he thinks about the female vampires.
- Robert picks up two bodies of vampires killed in the night by other vampires to dispose of in the city’s fire pit on his way to Sears. He reminisces about his dead daughter, Kathy.
- Robert thinks of how hard it is for him to kill vampires, especially females. He asks himself why they all looked like his dead daughter. He struggles with the morality of his actions but reminds himself he is doing the right thing.
- Robert wonders why he always seems to hit the vampires in the heart without missing, even though he has no anatomical knowledge. He is irritated with this line of thought but promises to think more about it later.
- Robert reads Bram Stoker’s vampire novel, Dracula, and begins his tentative research into vampirism.
- Robert hears Ben Cortman shouts, “Come out, Neville,” and it throws him into a frenzy.
- Overwhelmed by despair, loneliness, and pain, Robert blindly drives to the crypt where he buried Virginia in search of solace without knowing he was heading there.
- Robert notices that the vampire he dragged out into the sun on his way into Virginia’s crypt has died. He finally figures out that the vampire was killed by the sun. He berates himself for not thinking of the sun killing vampires all along.
- Robert experiments on this new finding to confirm it. He drags a vampire out of hiding into the sun and watches her die. He experiences guilt but waves them off by reminding himself that the vampire would have readily killed him.
- Robert plans to conduct further experiments with the vampire but realizes, to his dismay, that his watch has stopped. He races home, hoping that he gets home before sundown. He prays that the vampires don’t beat him to his house.
- The vampires gather around his house when Robert arrives. Seeing that there is no way to get into his house directly, he leads them on a wild chase around the block before making a try for his door. He fights off several vampires, gets bitten, then finally makes it inside after great difficulty.
- Robert repairs the damages done by the vampires after the attack. He gets a new station wagon and washing machine.
- Robert experiments with garlic by isolating the active ingredient and injecting it into a vampire. He also tests the effects of a crucifix on a vampire.
- Robert discovers the bacteria causing the vampiric plague.
- Robert discovers a dog in his front yard.
- Robert spends the following weeks trying to befriend the dog and get it to feel safe around him. He manages to get the dog to his room and tries to treat its vampire infection. Finally, the dog dies.
- While hunting Ben Cortman, Robert sees a woman in the field and calls out to her. Seeing him, she tries to run away, but he catches up to her and takes her home.
- Robert familiarizes himself with the woman named Ruth but is still suspicious, so he decides to test her blood for the infection the next day. When he puts her blood under the microscope and discovers she is infected, she knocks him out and leaves.
- Robert wakes to a letter left by Ruth explaining that she is a part of a society of evolved and conscious vampires who want to wipe out the zombie vampires and surviving humans. She advises him to leave his house and seek refuge in the mountains, but Robert decides to stay.
- The conscious vampires attack, killing the vampires in front of Robert’s house, then storm his house to capture him. He is shot in the process and then taken away.
- Robert is taken to the vampires’ camp, where he meets Ruth again. She gives him poison to ease his suffering. As he is dying, he realizes that he is a legendary creature in the eyes of the vampires instead of a human.
Style, Tone, and Figurative Language
‘I Am Legend ‘ is regarded as one of Richard Matheson’s best books because of its exceptional storyline and excellent language. With a subtle narrative tone, the storyline unfolds with the tale of Robert Neville and his struggles for survival. Using the third-person point of view narration, ‘I Am Legend’ maintains a consistent level of thrill and captivation.
Richard Matheson’s adoption of rich figurative language made his book resonate with pop culture and society, influencing authors and moviemakers alike.
Analysis of Key Symbols
In ‘I Am Legend ,’ Robert Neville entertains himself by listening to classical music. Classical music offers Neville some level of comfort during the period the vampires roam the streets at night. He plays them loud enough to overcome the screams and howls of the zombie vampires. Robert’s music symbolizes the swiftly disappearing human civilization.
The vampires symbolize disparity. They represent the impulsive nature of people to fear, suspect, and destroy people who are different from them.
The dog in ‘I Am Legend’ represents Robert’s last hope of companionship. To his astonishment, Neville finds himself praying for the dog’s survival. He admits that he needs the dog and when it eventually dies, he becomes resigned to fate.
The Library
The library also symbolizes the human civilization that the plague has dislocated. Even though it contains books with diverse and profound knowledge, those books could not prevent humankind from being wiped out by the vampiric germ.
After the plague strikes and he loses all his loved ones, alcohol becomes a coping mechanism for Robert Neville. Drinking heavily symbolizes the depth of Neville’s depression, loneliness, and resignation.
What is a notable theme in the ‘I Am Legend’ novel?
A notable theme in Richard Matheson’s ‘I Am Legend’ is the theme of loneliness. Following the outbreak of the vampiric plague, Robert Neville has to live alone. The protagonist’s struggle against depression and loneliness is exposed as the story climaxes. Sometimes, he remembers his family before the plague struck and killed them.
How does science help Robert Neville?
Initially, Robert is ignorant about the reason for the existence of the vampires. But as he studies science, he gains more knowledge. It gives him a sense of purpose as there is something to look forward to every day. Also, he realizes that the vampires are victims of the vampiric germ.
What effect does the dog’s death have on Robert Neville?
When Robert Neville finds the sick puppy, he is already half mad with grief, depression, and loneliness. He pours his hope for companionship into taming the dog and making it comfortable with being close to a human. When he discovers it is sick and dying, his hope and energy go into trying to cure and help it recover. After the dog dies, Robert chooses to hold himself together and come to terms with the fact that he will die alone. As a consequence, he deadens his emotions.
How did the vampiric plague spread in ‘ I Am Legend ?’
Robert Neville theorizes that the bacteria causing the vampiric infection and disease is spread by the apocalyptic dust storms blowing across the world as a result of the nuclear war that occurred years before the novel begins.
About Fave Ehimwenma
Fave Ehimwenma is a proficient writer, researcher, and content creator whose love for art and books drives her passion for literature analysis.
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Ehimwenma, Fave " I Am Legend Themes and Analysis 📖 " Book Analysis , https://bookanalysis.com/richard-matheson/i-am-legend/themes-analysis/ . Accessed 18 March 2024.
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Abnormality and Legend: an analysis of 'I am Legend'
Related Papers
jamil khader
Journal of Religion and Popular Culture
Christopher Moreman
Kolson Schlosser
What makes the speculative fiction of Richard Matheson important and worthy of critical attention? Dust jacket quotes from luminaries like Ray Bradbury: "Richard Matheson is worth our time, attention, and great affection" (Button, Button: Uncanny Stories) and Stephen King: “When people talk about the genre, I guess they mention my name first, but without Richard Matheson, I wouldn’t be around” (Duel: Terror Stories), can easily be consigned to the bin of publishing hype, in which many a prominent author can be found recommending another; but supposing there is substance in their claims, how should one assess Matheson’s merit? As a writer whose career began in the 1950s, Matheson is at once shaped by and helped to shape the times in which he wrote. Both the burgeoning mass-suburbanisation and the bland conformism of the times are used in Matheson’s fiction as sites for the creation of disquiet and as horrific settings in themselves. Existential crises in masculinity and the construction of the individual are in evidence, which gained Matheson a dedicated readership and which also influenced succeeding generations of writers. Close reading rewards the attentive reader when assessing the Matheson corpus. What makes other writers take notice is his economy of style and his masterful narratives, but hidden beneath the layers of plain language are several levels of engagement with the reader. I will deal with three such layers. The first is the background of science fiction and fantasy fiction that Matheson first published in as an emerging writer and the techniques he uses to engage and horrify the reader. Much of Matheson’s writing technique relies upon the subversion of expectations. In his first published story, for example, ‘Born of Man and Woman’, the reader is led to feel sympathy for the narrator until the reason for him/it being chained in the cellar is revealed. Often these subversions involve simple role-reversal: nominative last man on earth and vampire hunter, Robert Neville in I Am Legend metamorphoses into a predatory monster, feared by an adapted new humanity by the novel’s end; The Shrinking Man, Scott Carey fears losing potency, masculinity and even existence until he realizes that “[i]f nature exist[s] on endless levels, so also might intelligence." On the theme of losing masculinity I will examine how masculinity is represented in Matheson and to what extent this can be construed as misogynistic. Second, I address in Chapter Two the role of Matheson in the development of what Bernice Murray terms the Suburban Gothic. Murray’s term encapsulates the anxieties and concerns of post-war mass suburbanization and tract housing developments. As the phenomenon was only a few years old when Matheson wrote his third novel I Am Legend, it is remarkable how deeply seated the suburban neurosis is in Matheson. Within that critique I will elucidate my analysis of Matheson’s bland horror/fantasy, an assertion based on the observation that Matheson’s protagonists and other denizens of the middle-American milieu he creates are domestic versions of Arendt’s banality of evil. In her series of essays in The New Yorker, and her subsequent publication of the collection in the book Eichmann in Jerusalem: a report on the banality of evil, Arendt portrays the man responsible for transporting millions of Jews to the Nazi death camps as a petty official whose rise through ranks of the Waffen S.S. was as implacable as his mediocrity. Arendt describes Eichmann as only dimly self-aware. She reports him apologising to the court for his nondescript way of expressing himself, pleading: “’Officialese [Amtssprache] is my only language.’… the point here is that officialese became his language because he was genuinely incapable of uttering a single sentence that was not a cliché” (43-44). As I demonstrate, the Mathesonian protagonist is moribund in the bland, the conventional and the ordinary. Some, like Robert Neville, strive to uphold their stultifying routines as a way of maintaining their grip on what they perceive to be reality, when all the evidence that surrounds them shrieks that the ordinary is irretrievably shattered beyond recognition. Attempting to recreate the blandness of “before” is misguided, and ultimately horrific. Neville’s trap, indeed Wallace’s and many other Mathesonian characters’ traps, lies in the familiar and its deceptively shallow shoals. An important essay on horror by Freud, ‘The Uncanny’ (Der Unheimlich) (1919) defines the horror of the familiar in terms useful to my discussion of this second level of engagement. Freud describes a horrific sensation in recognising the Self at one remove, via the doppelgänger and the automaton, citing instances in European literature and folklore where this occurs. The recognition of the Self is accompanied by feelings of unease, even nausea, as, according to Freud, we see repressed childhood experiences played out in front of us. Whatever the source of this queasy recognition may be, I argue that the familiar in Matheson is the horrific, and the settings and characters alike look and act not as they purport to be, but at this critical Freudian remove of defamiliarization. Finally, my survey will critique Matheson’s settings, characters and narratives as existentialist. I use terms defined by Sartre in Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology (1943). In the works considered to this point, I highlight key moments of the realisation of Sartre’s The Look. As Spade remarks, at the moment one realises there is another point of view that is not yours, and, worse, not controlled by you: “[t]he world is now the other person's world, a foreign world that no longer comes from the self, but from the other” (Jean-Paul Sartre's "Being and Nothingness" 213). However, Matheson does not let his readers off with that horror alone. It is repeated and repeated and repeated, magnifying the effect of The Look, which brings me to Camus. In Camus’ collection of essays under the title, The Myth of Sisyphus (1943), we see that as humans we sooner or later face the reality that life is absurd. Confronted with this, the wonder, according to Camus, is that people do not simply kill themselves. That most people do not is what lies at the heart of his examination of Sisyphus, who, for holding death captive and for other acts of defiance towards the gods, is condemned to roll an enormous rock to the top of a mountain, only to have it roll back to the mountain’s foot where he must begin to labour again. As noted above, Matheson’s protagonists as well as his readers are put into this Sisyphean condition. Matheson is aware that his work has the over-riding theme of a man alone fighting insuperable opposition. My argument in this instance is that this characterization stems from Matheson’s own experience as a combat soldier in Germany in 1944, and will be examined in the final chapter in the light of the novel The Beardless Warriors. Hackermeyer, the protagonist of The Beardless Warriors, is repeatedly subject to both friendly and enemy fire over ten days during the Allied assault on Saarbach. His orders are a constant repetition of running, digging in and firing. Casualties around him occur as random events, having nothing to do with soldiering ability, following orders or common sense. Soldiers are killed or wounded or neither with no obvious causality. This existentialist crisis recurs constantly through already alien terrain that is further ill-defined due to rain, fog, smoke, shrapnel, shell and gunfire. Each day is more or less identical to the previous day, setting a tone that is Sisyphean. It is this crucial aspect of Matheson’s biography that sets the theme for all his writing.
Hamed Faizi
Based on the theories of Mikhail Bakhtin, a dialogue can necessarily take place only in a two-sided communication. But if a party creates a hierarchical situation for the domination of its voice in the context, the communication will no longer be dialogic. In I Am Legend, Richard Matheson depicts a post-apocalyptic world that is destroyed due to the spread of a disease which metamorphoses people into bugs. The bacterium of this disease is denotatively and symbolically the aftermath of a war in which every party attempts to suppress the other parties to establish a monologue to its own advantage. But Robert Neville, Matheson’s main character, tries to find a cure for this exasperation. As he kills the new creatures, his attempt is a measure to delete the factors which make the “other” intolerable for him. When the new nonhuman race is ultimately at the threshold of creating another society, they look upon him in the same way he used to look upon them. However, the new society finally decides to execute him. A Bakhtinian reading of the novel shows that almost all the position-holders try to erase the dialogue and establish their own authority. It causes disastrous consequences like violent exclusions. The present research takes it to analyze the attempts in the novel which want to destroy dialogue, and to expose the disastrous results of each participant’s efforts to exclude the other party. These efforts lead each party, especially the marginalized one, to an alienation where they have to spend their times in violence and frustration.
End of Days: Essays on the Apocalypse from …
Rikk Mulligan
Language and Literature 24(1): 23–39.
Louise Nuttall
For Palmer (2004, 2010), and other proponents of a cognitive narratology, research into real-world minds in the cognitive sciences provides insights into readers’ experiences of fictional minds. In this article, I explore the application of such research to the minds constructed for the vampire characters in Richard Matheson’s 1954 science fiction/horror novel I Am Legend. I draw upon empirical research into ‘mind attribution’ in social psychology, and apply Cognitive Grammar (Langacker, 2008), and its notion of ‘construal’, as a framework for the application of such findings to narrative. In my analysis, I suggest that readers’ attribution of mental-states to the vampires in Matheson’s novel is strategically limited through a number of choices in their linguistic construal. Drawing on online reader responses to the novel, I argue that readers’ understanding of these other minds plays an important role in their empathetic experience and ethical judgement of the novel’s main character and focaliser, Robert Neville. Finally, I suggest that the limited mind attribution for the vampires invited through their construal contributes to the presentation of a ‘mind style’ (Fowler, 1977) for this character.
Mathias Clasen
The vampire apocalypse is a fairly unlikely event, but it makes for great storytelling. Richard Matheson's 1954 I Am Legend is a milestone in modern Gothic literature; it tells the bleak story of Robert Neville, sole survivor of a vampire plague. I employ the concepts of evolved human nature, cultural ecology, and authorial identity as my main analytical tools for understanding the appeal, the power, and the significance of Matheson's classic novel, which is basically an extrapolation on peculiar yet common anxieties and a meditation on what happens when basic adaptive needs are frustrated.
Anna Trzcińska
eunju hwang
This essay attempts to place I Am Legend (2007) in the context of American nationalism and aggressive enforcement of the immigration laws after 9/11. The apocalyptic world of I Am Legend reflects the post-9/11 American society that is driven by the urge to make America “one nation” and haunted by the fear of people who might harm the “unity.” The film tries to draw a clear boundary between “us” and “them” by completely othering the infected, but in the context of American homeland security after 9/11, it becomes a complex issue to decide where to draw the line. The shifty boundary between “us” and “them” reflects the post-9/11 American dilemma: the United States has to close its border while maintaining its identity as a nation of immigrants. This essay also discusses how geographical markers, instead of racial markers, are utilized to symbolize the infected as the stateless people within the United States.
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The opening scenes of "I Am Legend" have special effects so good that they just about compensate for some later special effects that are dicey. We see Manhattan three years after a deadly virus has killed every healthy human on the island, except one. The streets are overgrown with weeds, cars are abandoned, the infrastructure is beginning to collapse. Down one street, a sports car races, driven by Robert Neville ( Will Smith ), who is trying to get a good shot at one of the deer roaming the city. He has worse luck than a lioness who competes with him.
Neville has only his dog to keep him company. He lives barricaded inside a house in Greenwich Village, its doors and windows sealed every night by heavy steel shutters. That's because after dark the streets are ruled by bands of predatory zombies -- hairless creatures who were once human but have changed into savage, speechless killers with fangs for teeth. In his basement, Neville has a laboratory where he is desperately seeking a vaccine against the virus, which mutated from a cure for cancer.
The story is adapted from a 1954 sci-fi novel by Richard Matheson , which has been filmed twice before, as "The Last Man on Earth" (1964) starring Vincent Price , and " The Omega Man " (1971) starring Charlton Heston . In the original novel, which Stephen King says influenced him more than any other, Neville cultivated garlic and used mirrors, crosses and sharpened stakes against his enemies, who were like traditional vampires, not super-strong zombies. I am not sure it is an advance to make him a scientist, arm him and change the nature of the creatures; Matheson developed a kind of low-key realism that was doubly effective.
In "I Am Legend," the situation raises questions of logic. If Neville firmly believes he is the last healthy man alive, who is the vaccine for? Only himself, I guess. Fair enough, although he faces a future of despair, no matter how long his cans of Spam and Dinty Moore beef stew hold out; dogs don't live forever. And how, I always wonder, do human beings in all their infinite shapes and sizes mutate into identical pale zombies with infinite speed and strength?
Never mind. Given its setup, "I Am Legend" is well-constructed to involve us with Dr. Neville and his campaign to survive. There is, however, an event which breaks his spirit and he cracks up -- driving out at night to try to mow down as many zombies with his car as he can before they kill him. He is saved (I'm not sure how) by a young woman named Anna ( Alice Braga ), who is traveling with a boy named Ethan ( Charlie Tahan ).
He takes them home, and she explains they are trying to get to a colony of survivors in Vermont. Neville doubts that such a colony exists. I doubt that she and the boy would venture through Manhattan to get there. Yes, she has doubtless heard his nonstop taped voice on all AM frequencies, asking to be contacted by any other survivors. But we have seen every bridge into Manhattan blown up as part of a quarantine of the island, so how did they get there? Boat? Why go to the risk?
Never mind, again, because Anna and the boy import dramatic interest into the story when it needs it. And director Francis Lawrence generates suspense effectively, even though it largely comes down to the monster movie staple of creatures leaping out of the dark, gnashing their fangs and hammering at things. The special effects generating the zombies are not nearly as effective as the other effects in the film; they all look like creatures created for the sole purpose of providing the film with menace and have no logic other than serving that purpose.
"I Am Legend" does contain memorable scenes, as when the island is being evacuated, and when Neville says goodbye to his wife and daughter ( Salli Richardson and Willow Smith ), and when he confides in his dog (who is not computer-generated, most of the time, anyway). And if it is true that mankind has 100 years to live before we destroy our planet, it provides an enlightening vision of how Manhattan will look when it lives on without us. The movie works well while it's running, although it raises questions that later only mutate in our minds.
Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.
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Film credits.
I Am Legend (2007)
Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi action and violence
101 minutes
Will Smith as Robert Neville
Alice Braga as Anna
Charlie Tahan as Ethan
Salli Richardson as Zoe
Willow Smith as Marley
- Mark Protosevich
- Akiva Goldsman
Based on the novel by
- Richard Matheson
Directed by
- Francis Lawrence
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I Am Legend: Comparative Analysis Of The Book And The Movie
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