Week 1: I Am Legend

Of the books I’ve read so far for my Reading in the Genre: Monsters class, I Am Legend was the most thought-provoking. It’s not a hard read—I finished it in less than a day—but it left me wondering how I would react if I was the only human left on earth.

Protagonist Robert Neville is the only human survivor on earth. His home is boarded up and covered in mirrors and garlic. This detail first got my interest: Matheson never directly says who or what Neville is hiding from. The word “vampire” is used sparingly throughout the novel, yet the reader knows from page three that the threat is vampires because of the details.

Now what helps Matheson with this endeavor is that he doesn’t stray too far away from well-known vampire tropes, such as aversion to garlic and crosses and the inability to remain in sunlight. Later in the story, Matheson does spin these tropes to give them a scientific bend, which I thought was clever and believable. Vampirism in this novel is a pandemic caused by war and spread by dust storms and mosquitoes. I'm not ashamed to admit that the scientific terminology slowed me down (I’m not science-slanted at all) but the main thing I found interesting wasn't that vampirism was caused by a germ. I’ve read other vampire stories with this explanation and accepted them willingly enough. What I found more interesting was the “hysterical blindness” that caused the infected to exhibit specific vampiric symptoms. On pages 105-106 of the 2007 second Tor edition of I Am Legend, the narrator explains, “And, driven on despite already created dreads, the vampire could have acquired an intense mental loathing, and this self-hatred could have set up a block in their weakened minds causing them to be blind to their own abhorred image.” The infected, believing in their weakened mental state that they were actually vampires, adopted vampiric traits. The physical symptoms alone were caused by the germ.

I believe that if readers will accept anything remotely fantastical in a book, it has to be well explained in such a way that is easily believable without distracting from the story. Now, Matheson’s lengthy explanation of why his vampires are vampires does take some time to plough through, but by this point Neville has already dedicated his time to discovering the cause of the pandemic. The explanation complements the plot.

This psychological symptom of adopting vampiric traits contrasts Neville’s immunity to the disease. While Neville is physically immune to the germ, he notices that not all vampires have the disease, rather they simply adopt the psychological symptoms. In this way, Matheson illustrates that Neville is truly alone in this brave new world, constantly rejecting his old friend Ben Cortman call “Come out, Neville!” to join him and the other vampires.

This theme of man alone is ultimately what sustains the story. I had to reflect on the novel to come to the above understanding, but alone-ness for lack of a better word is apparent throughout the novel. Through Neville’s reactions to the vampire women, the idea of isolation from human kind is highlighted from the beginning. Despite how repulsed he is by the vampires—this disease stole both his wife and child from him after all—he can’t fully control his sexual desires for the vampire women at the beginning of the novel. This sexual desire for what he considers monsters is an example of how alone he is. He is completely deprived of human contact, and this desire for this contact becomes perverted. He doesn't fully gain control over his libido until near the end of the book after a forced several years of celibacy. To be celibate is not to deny one’s sexuality, but to repress it for some other purpose; for Neville, it was to find a cure. Sexuality in all of its forms is unanimously human, and Neville is forced to first project then suppress this aspect of his humanity because there are no more humans.

Psychology and sex aside, what really solidified this theme of man alone for me was the dog. I’d heard about this dog from friends who’d seen the Will Smith movie when it first came out—they said it was the saddest part of the movie. In the novel, the dog represents just how desperate Neville is for so-called normal contact of any kind. The time and patience he puts into getting the dog to trust him for it to become a vampire is almost tragic. The dog was Neville’s last chance at contact with a creature that survived the pandemic. When Neville learns that the vampires are banding together to form a new community, to live with the germ rather than fight it, the tables turn. The entire novel he believed he was the only normal one alive, when he was actually a freak of nature. He alone was immune, and while the dog was a false hope that others had and could survive.

Overall, I found this book to be thought provoking. A piece of great literature? I’m not sure if it will ever be adopted into the Canon. But I Am Legend is truly horrifying. Not because of the monsters, but because of the idea left in the reader’s mind of what if? What if I was the last human on earth, a pariah in a society of monsters? Happy thoughts.

(http://www.moviesmackdown.com/2007/12/legend-omega-lastman.html)