This review is part of the Literature World Tour.
The vampire myth has been a popular topic throughout literary history, from Stoker’s definitive, influential depiction to Stephenie Meyer’s teenage-pop-culture installations to the genre.
Though it has been described as the ‘scientific vampire novel’, Richard Matheson’s I am Legend is more horror than sci-fi (there are some truly spine-chilling moments), but above all it is a total inversion of the legend that has evolved through literature and cultural mythology. Matheson has created a chilling portrayal of post-apocalyptic North American society which questions views of what is ‘normal’ and what isn’t, where society’s boundaries lie, and the meaning of legend itself.
Robert Neville is the apparent (immune) lone survivor of a deadly pandemic disease which has swept the world. Armed with many a wooden stake, he systematically hunts down and dispatches (for good) the not-so-fortunate undead, those ravaged by the disease and displaying all the usual vampiric traits – aversion to the cross, garlic, etc. There is a palpable sense of utter loneliness and despair in Neville, who is forced by the nightly taunts of the gathering crowds of creatures outside his fortress-like house to seek inadequate distraction at the bottom of a bottle. There is also a long episode during which Neville, crippled in his solitude, becomes attached to the shy, curious, non-infected dog who is a regular visitor on his front lawn. Neville tries to coax him further and further each day, eventually with heartbreaking consquences.
Neville’s thirst for knowledge gets the better of him (or serves to mask his grief) and we start to discover alongside him the causes and effects of the ‘germ’ which has mutated to effect both the living infected and the true, dead vampires who are simply brought back to a state of half-life by the virus. Neville’s fate is bound to his failure to distinguish between the two, however, as he continues his daily scouring of the neighbourhood to weed out and kill more of these inhuman creatures.
It isn’t until Ruth appears on the scene – another ‘survivor’ from afar – that his routine is broken. The two become close, but he has become a determined, solitary man, set in his ways and unused to human company. His suspicions of her infection prove to be founded, and that’s when it all comes out: Ruth is not another survivor, but a spy for the infected humans who have found ways to adapt and survive despite their condition. This new breed are beginning to rebuild society – a society to which Neville, as chief vampire hunter of the neighbourhood, poses a tangible threat. Suddenly the positions are reversed – Neville was the sole survivor trying to preserve the old ways, now he is a barbaric savage, the last vestige of the old world in a new society with new values. He has become to the new infected race what they were to him: a vicious threat to the social order, for many a terrible menace that exists but that they had never seen – a legend.
His realisation of this comes at the end of the novel, after his capture and arrest by the infected militia. Ruth has slipped him a suicide pill as they intend to publicly execute him, and he observes them from his cell:
"Robert Neville looked out over the new people of the earth. He knew he did not belong to them; he knew that, like the vampires, he was anathema and black terror to be destroyed. And, abruptly, the concept came, amusing to him even in his pain. A coughing chuckle filled his throat. He turned and leaned against the wall while he swallowed the pills. Full circle, he thought while the final lethargy crept into his limbs. Full circle. A new terror born in death, a new susperstition entering the unassailable fortress of forever. I am legend."
Previously in North America: Jim Murdoch's review of Time Out of Joint
Next in North America: Anne Brooke's review of Brokeback Mountain
Next stop on the Literature World Tour: South/Central America and the Caribbean!
