I Am Legend Analysis

In I am Legend, Richard Matheson depicted Robert Neville as another man in another life before the plague broke out. He was a father as well as a husband. He was just your average-joe working a blue collar job in the 1950's, facts of life that change for him once the plague took hold of humanity. He created a safe-guarded sanctuary for himself within his own home fortified with garlic and crosses to defend against the vampires, whom now dominated the fallen world outside. Solitude was his only companion. Society provided Neville with support, structure, morals, along with a community. With the fall of society, Neville priorities had changed. He had changed. Whilst the novel appears to focus heavily on alienation, Matheson perhaps also meant …show more content…
Although the novel predates the Civil Right Movement, the Brown vs Board of Education was ruled over the same year it was published. Black children were now allowed to attend white schools. With the integration of black and white children there were increases to the black population throughout the years. The neighborhoods changed with the white population diminishing as the new neighbors moved into town. “[T]he black bastards had beaten him”1; throughout the book, subtleties hint that the 'black bastards' who beat Neville are African Americans, as they experience similar prejudices and hardships that vampires did at the time. “Why cannot the vampire live where he chooses?[..] He has no means of support, no measures for proper education[...]” Robert Neville, in this instance, was the last white man on his block, and the vampires were moving in. The traditional values of the dominant white culture were in danger of being replaced by this new vampiric culture as they overrun urban settings whilst spreading their disease/ideas; thus, disrupting Neville's white male (human) reality. Unfortunately for him, the norm was changing and his views growing obsolete with his minority vote. He could not adapt to the change, so the world had no need for …show more content…
An immunity he had attained from a bat attack during the war, and had aided in his survival against the virus that devastated the human population. Nevertheless, as a singular a remnant of a past that had no future, he had no place within this new world as well. “There won't be anyone else like you within our particular society.”2 He did not fit the mold of the new society constructed by Ruth and her people. He was not like them; thus, they could not categorize as one of their own as he was different. Consequently, they could not understand Neville, and did not know how to interact with him. “They're terrified of you, Robert, they hate you. And they want your life.”3 He was their boogey-man for he genuinely terrified them. He witnessed their fear as he looked out from his bars and heard the startled cries. A startling ironic revelation for him. To them, he was possibly far worse than the plague. He's considered as a “harbinger of category crisis”—utilizing Cohen's words—as he posed a threat to the new society being established by the infected-vampiric humans. A fact he comes to term with during his final moments. “Normalcy was a majority concept, the standard of many and not the standard of just one man”4. He was not a part of the majority any longer, the tables had turn and the infected ones roam those streets as they dominated the population and thus creating the general norm with their collective ideas.