Week 4: Richard Matheson - I am Legend

Monsters, Contemporary Horror & the New Weird

I am Legend can be described as a narrative that takes place within the context of human history with some sense of having miraculous parameters. A legend, essentially, is just a tale that is historicized, and passed down verbally throughout the generations. It’s that definition of what makes a legend that opens up the conversation for the novel “I am Legend” by Richard Matheson. Written in 1954, this book presents the story of a man faced with an interesting predicament. Robert Neville is a man that happens to be the seemingly sole survivor of a pandemic that renders its victims to vampire like symptoms. The story explains that the seeming cause of the disease is a war that has caused various dust storms that have helped spread the disease.

Robert Neville’s story is one that follows him on his quest to figure out what exactly causes the disease and how to stop it. Through a series of flashbacks, we as the reader find out more about Neville’s past, for instance we learn of how his wife and child fell victim to the disease that has seemingly ravaged the entire nation. It goes on to explain how he had to kill his own wife and has lived barricaded in his house in an attempt to avoid the creatures everyone else has now become. At the beginning of the novel he lives out his morning scavenging for supplies and driving stakes through the hearts of the weakened vampires while at night he boards up his house and shrouds it in mirrors, crucifixes and garlic to ward off the horde of vampires, led by his neighbor, who surround his house at night, searching for a way to get in. Neville not only has to conquer his nights with the vampires, but also he has to deal with his constant depression and alcoholism, making for an interesting and complex character. Later on in the novel, Neville decides to take his fate into his own hands, which sets him on the path to researching this new brand of vampire like humans and the disease that caused it.

With the knowledge he has obtained in hand, Robert Neville goes on to try and destroy the vampire creatures, leading up to a climactic clash between himself and this new vampire like civilization. I think “I am Legend” was a good read, the character development was interesting to see play out especially since he is a character that is alone for the majority of this novel. It was an interesting read and the end result of Neville’s realization that he is now a legend in his own right in this new civilization’s folklore was an interesting insight into the way a legend is born.