An Analysis Of Richard Matherson 's ' I Am Legend '

When one hears the title I Am Legend being mentioned, they usually associate it with Will Smith and the terrific job he did in portraying the protagonist of the story Robert Neville. However, what they typically leave out is the equally terrific job done by author Richard Matheson coming up with the storyline and writing the original book version. While Richard Matheson’s post-apocalyptic science fiction book, I Am Legend, and Francis Lawrence’s post-apocalyptic science fiction movie, I Am Legend, both have similarities and differences, in the end, the original book version prevails mainly because the movie version alters the original storyline too much.

The myth of the vampire existed in a multitude of civilizations and cultures under various names such is strigoi (for the Romanian territory), Apotamkin, etc. But no matter the name, vampires will always refer to gothic creatures that drain the blood of humans, thus being monstrous.

Chris ventured off into the wild and away from his course of life for one reason, to escape his problems and society. Chris was brought up in a privileged household,, but not everything in his childhood was perfect. Jon Krakauer, the author of Into the Wild, interviewed Chris’s sister who said, “‘We learned to count on each other when Mom and Dad weren’t getting along’”(75). He had problems that he could no longer endure and his only solution was to permanently run away. But in Robert Neville’s case in the movie I Am Legend, he had problems with zombies, or Darkseekers, and there was no society to run away from. He believed he was the only person and

Vampires have been around for centuries, they represent the fear of many things such as sexuality, race, gender, etc. and above all, they stand for the fear of diseases. Vampires have once been the symbol of horror due to their terrific depictions and were described as a threat to the humanity. Throughout time, the image of vampire has changed dramatically from a monstrous, inhumanely creature that doesn’t belong to human society to such an attractive and adaptive figure that expresses more of the human side than the evil. They developed human feelings, senses, and live within our society. Modern vampire movies are often more romantic and “sympathetic” comparing to the past. Vampires have abandoned their horror and evolved to a more

Dracula is of mixed racial heritage and blood “in the whirlpool of European races,” a concept which would have been fearful to the novel’s white, upper-class English audience. This widespread xenophobia, a fear and hatred of foreigners, was a reaction by Victorian England to the perceived threat of outsiders to white genetic purity. Dracula’s real threat is not in the physical destruction of Western Europe, but in the assimilation, reproduction, and infestation caused by the literal and figurative mixing of his barbarian animal blood with that of the “superior” English race. The concept of eugenics, the “qualitative and quantitative improvement of the human genome” (Galton 99), gained widespread popularity during Stoker’s lifetime and became a prevalent theme in the works of many authors aiming to make a social commentary or criticism on the invasion of England by foreign peoples. Adolph Hitler would later adopt eugenic ideals in the intended creation of a “master race,” one which victimized many of the same groups and relied upon almost identical anti-Semitic imagery as the earlier Victorian proponents (Hauner 15).

“Jack London is King” this was carved in to a block of wood found at the bus where Chris McCandless’s body was found. Chris McCandless admired Jack London as a man and a writer. Chris went into the wild’s of Alaska to prove that he could live off the land, with no modern conveniences, and no human contact. Jack London wrote stories about men and animals experiences against the environment, and survival against hardships, which were written from his own life. His works included individualism and the study of the laws of nature. Chris wanted to explore his own individualism, who he was, and how he was to live the rest of his life.

“But afterward the townspeople, theretofore sufficiently unfearful of each other to seldom trouble to lock their doors, found fantasy re-creating them over and over again—those somber explosions that stimulated fires of mistrust in the glare of which many old neighbors viewed each other strangely, and as strangers.”

Douglas Light said that our imagination is better than any answer to a question. Light distinguished between two genres: fantasy from fiction. He described how fantasy stimulates one’s imagination, which is more appealing, but fiction can just be a relatable story and results in being less entertaining. In the short parable Doubt, the readers are lured in to the possibility of a scandalous relationship between a pastor and an alter boy. Their curiosity is ignited because they are not given all the details. Therefore, their mind wanders further than the plot to create a story and characters that acted on one’s imagination; thus, the story became entertaining- flooded by the questions of what? Who? How? By which the reader can only answer.

I Am Legend depicts morality as derived from the beliefs of one man. The novel takes place following the end of society caused by war, drought, and widespread disease. In the pre-apocalyptic society morals are formed through a general consensus reinforced through traditions that are centuries old. However, the society that once was no longer remains in I Am Legend. Following the collapse of human civilization and the death of almost every human, morality becomes a completely egocentric principle. Robert Neville is the only human to be immune to the vampiric disease. As such, he believes that he is the only sentient being. He is the last surviving person, the last relic of an era. With a loss of society, there is no one

To begin with, the message “evilness is an infection” is evident which is conveyed through the use of narrative conventions. A narrative convention used is the plot which is the events that make up the story. The convention is used as the plot of “Dracula” is summarized as a story of a group of friends attempt to destroy the evil Dracula who threatens the living and the good. In this way it is comparable to scientists striving to end a plague carrier. In this case, the vampires (Dracula and Lucy) are the plague carrier in addition to feeding upon humans and infecting his victims with “vampirism”. The group of friends are associated with scientists task with the control, prevention of the plague and the extermination of the infected which in their case, the vampires. This is proven in Act 2, Scene 7 as the group of friends track down now vampire Lucy and executed her to prevent further deaths. A plausible counterpart of “vampirism” is

By presenting Count Dracula as an evil, demonic being, the story is therefore laid out as a fight between good and evil. Contrastively, the vampires in I Am Legend are not physically described in as much detail, but rather the details and attention are focused on their behaviour and their origin. The horror aspects of these vampires are pushed to the side and the readers are made to focus solely on their threatening presence as they prowl around at night and hunt for Neville while he, in turn, tries to discover what the specific virus that infected the world and caused the vampire epidemic. These differences are key in setting up how the readers respond to the novels’ plot and themes.

By Amanda Podonsky, “The Count seems to be an exaggerated representation of the concept concerning ‘evils’ of abnormality and how it can spread and infect.” This says how Dracula represents the fear of Victorians at that time of something abnormal, in this case homosexuality. Bram Stoker writes the Count in the existence of that fear. He is a poison looking to infect all of England, “Through them I have

Richard Matheson, the most prominent American author in the horror genre, who published the preeminent horror novel, I Am Legend in 1954, renders Robert Neville as the hero of the novel as he struggles to overcome a constant battle against the vampires and his subconscious mind. At the end of the novel, Robert Neville can be interpreted to finally have the ability to see the world through the perspective of the vampires which, ultimately, leads him to be able to understand them. Matheson reveals the true monster to be not the vampires nor Robert Neville, but prejudice. However, Matheson first establishes a connection between Robert Neville and the audience. This connection allows the message, that prejudice is capable of being the darkest

Different depictions of vampires are commonly exhibited in vampire folklore in past and present literature and film. The diversity of different variations of vampire legends are prominently seen in most literature, but the main ideas and attributes are generally the same. This is not that case when focusing on specific novels discussed in class. The novels I Am Legend by Richard Matheson and Fledgling by Octavia Butler are two contrasting works of vampire folklore. The novels are about different societies of vampires. They both emerged in different ways, the survive and feed in contrasting ways, and they both represent completely different forms of vampires. This essay will examine the characterizations of the contrasting the vampire species in both I Am Legend and Fledgling, as well as, investigating how these different species of vampires relate to human species.

This section of I am Legend is about a boy named Neville who is scared and does not want to execute what the man is telling him to do and feels pressured to do it. Richard Matheson uses the rhetorical devices: simile and personification, along with his sentence structure to reinforce the scary, dark, and overwhelmed emotions of Neville throughout his writing.