I Am Legend: A Virus

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.

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.

Villarreal, Luis P. “Are Viruses Alive?” Scientific American, December 2004. In the article “Are Viruses Alive?,” Luis P. Villarreal discusses the effects of viruses on life, while presenting different angles as to whether or not they are alive themselves and arguing about the impact viruses have had on evolution. Through a

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

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

Richard Matheson’s, I Am Legend, focuses on a dark, haunting dystopian society highlighted using an array of rhetorical devices to create suspenseful and thrilling action

In the science fiction thriller, I Am Legend, Richard Matheson uses the idea of survival to demonstrate the changes that can happen inside a person when put in a life or death situation. Robert Neville is the main character in Matheson’s novel. Matheson uses Neville to walk readers through the life of a person who has gone through a nation-wide crisis. After surviving for a few years by barricading his house and fighting off vampires, Neville gets curious and turns to science for answers, “Then he got a specimen of blood from a woman” (86). In order to stay sane, Neville turns to science. His survival skills he already possesses aren’t enough for him-- he needs to understand the virus so he could better defend himself. After being alone for so long, Neville learns how to survive alone; he learns how to

I recently read an article written in The NEWYORKER called The Deadliest Virus by Michael Specter. The article talked about the Avian Flu virus, also known as “bird flu”. In the article, Specter interviewed many people, but the most important person, in my opinion, is a virologist who conducted research on the Avian Flu, Ron Fouchier. This article raised many ethical questions. The questions are as followed: Should research be conducted on this virus? Does Fouchier’s research pose a threat? Does the risk of the work outweigh the benefits of the research?

I Am Legend and Life of Pi are two dramatic tragedies that center around the main characters Dr. Robert Neville and Piscine “Pi” Patel while they attempt to survive in the devastating world around them. In I Am Legend, Dr. Krippin finds a cure for Cancer by modifying the measles virus into a vaccine. For years, one hundred percent of the patients are cancer-free, thankful that they get a second chance at life. All of a sudden, the cure rapidly mutates into an extremely deadly virus that is equivalent to the highest level of rabies, the KV virus. Dr. Robert Neville devotes himself to finding a cure for the devastation of humanity and must make the ultimate sacrifice for its sake. Piscine Patel lives with his family in a small town in India. While visiting his family’s zoo, Pi falls in love with a beautiful bengal tiger that he names Richard Parker. As Pi grows, he falls in love and fascinates himself with many different religions. The extreme political unrest in his country forces Pi and his family to depart from the place they call home. This event begins the unfortunate, dreadful adventure that causes Pi to lose his entire family. While viewing, evaluating, and juxtaposing I Am Legend and Life of Pi, there is a vast array of emotions, logical and illogical circumstances, and vivid imagery through memories, graphics, imagination, and utter desperation.

I Am Legend addresses cultural anxieties that were occurring during the 1950s when Matheson wrote the novel. Neville is the last man on Earth and sees everybody around him as Others, causing him to become misogynistic and indirectly racist. He descends into a mental state in which everybody around him

The film, I Am Legend is a post-apocalyptic science fiction film directed by Francis Lawrence and starring Will Smith. It was released on December 14th, 2007. This film is actually the third adaptation of Richard Matheson’s novel of the same name from 1954. Smith plays virologist Robert Neville, who lives in New York City in 2012, which is inhabited by animalistic victims of the virus. He is immune to a vicious man-made virus originally created to cure cancer and works to

Dayue Bai Professor Greg McClure Writing 39B 23 October 2016 A Hero or A Monster? As Noel Carroll states in his essay, The Nature of Horror, horror is one of the genres “in which ideally the emotive responses of the audience run parallel to the emotion of characters” (Carroll 52). It is also true in Matheson’s novel I Am Legend. By showing the protagonist’s tragic experience, the author deftly engenders the audience’s sympathetic emotion to the main character, which initially makes the audience believe the main character will be a hero to heal the world. However, the emergence of Ruth is the turning point of the novel. The relation and difference between Ruth and the main character add doubts on the main character’s humanity, because the main character is living in a world where creatures like Ruth is the predominant type, rather than someone like him who is immune to the plague. The main character initially sees himself as a hero who tries to do biological experiments to save the world. However, after Ruth’s emergence, he knows that he is as supernatural monster immune to the bacteria in the other creatures’ eyes. The author manipulates the expectation of the audience by initially shaping the character as a hero and finally subverting the expectation of the horror genre - suggesting the main character is the monster. As Tony Magistrale and Michael A. Morrison states in their essay, Introduction to Dark Night’s Dreaming, “The horror monster sometimes embodies the worst

Ugh, this pesky human bounces around to much. I just wish she would eat or drink something already, I'm starving and my mouth is dry. I guess my host has not noticed me yet, or she wouldn't be at gymnastics. Soon enough I will be making her feel tired, gassy, nauseous, in pain, and even have a rash. Yesterday a virus came in and tried to infect my host, but I told the immune system that someone stuck in now the virus is gone and the host is healthy (which is great for me considering the host expenses in my benefit). I am much like roundworm and tapeworm but not as severe. I was transmitting to my host Emily by her dog, he was eating raw meat. I was not getting enough food from her dog. Uh oh, we at the doctors and they just prescribed her

The antagonist of this story is unlike the villains we know. In fact, they can’t even be seen with the naked eye. They are viruses. Viruses are non-cellular genetic elements that hijack a host cell in order to use their molecular machinery to reproduce and cause infection. Therefore, by definition, viruses cause a reduction in the fitness of their host. Because viruses harm their host, natural selection favors host genes that make them resistant to viruses. Consequently, this places a selection pressure on the virus to overcome the hosts’ resistance. Simultaneous mutations between the two species enters them into an evolutionary arms race, with the host developing resistance in order to overcome the virus and the virus developing new ways to overcome this resistance – typically though mutation – in order to persist and reproduce. This cycle is known as antagonistic coevolution.

Matheson’s book tells a story of Robert Neville who, after a majority of the Earth’s population have been killed due to a new plague, is the last living man actively searching for a cure that mutated all the other inhabitants of the planet into vampiric forms of their former selves. The earlier film The Last Man on Earth implores a relatively sentimental plot and stays the most true to the book of which it is based upon, while I Am Legend takes on a charismatically different approach tailored specifically to do well in box offices for a modern audience, completely ignoring the original message behind the