Matheson’s work isn’t your usual Vampire story—it is much better —and it bares nearly no resemblance to the substandard movie of the same name. It is very much worth your time.
I am Legend was written by Richard Matheson and published in 1954. Drawing from the themes of Dracula, but with a much bleaker treatment, in I am Legend Matheson pits his hero (unassumingly called Robert Neville) against the hordes of the undead in a post apocalyptic universe. This is a frightening place, one in which Robert has had to bury his own wife (and see her rise again), and one that has pushed him to the limits of despair - but has not quite taken him over the edge. He is, as far as he knows, the last human. And throughout the book, he begins to make peace with that fact.
There are also some interesting themes and social commentary on offer if you look a bit further past the (admittedly compelling) survivalist plot.
If you’re concerned that the prospect of a savage reality sounds too close to Cormack McCarthy’s The Road - rest assured, it’s not quite so foreboding as that. It is softer, even, than The Walking Dead and its later TV series. True, our hero Robert spends a lot of his time getting drunk, damaging his own property, and lamenting his lot. But ultimately he finds he wants to live, and even thrive.
Make no mistake, though, I am Legend is largely an introspective, solo hero’s journey. Whereas Stoker’s protagonist Jonathan Harker and his wife could ultimately draw on Van Helsing and his band of vampire hunting friends to come to his rescue and slay Dracula, I am Legend’s own Robert is utterly alone.
It is in his isolation that Robert starts to found his own legend, and we will return to that topic shortly.
I am Legend is often labeled a sci-fi novel. Given that Stoker’s classic Dracula is more often classed as a gothic horror, it is difficult at first blush to see why I am Legend falls into this category. True, its treatment is different, and certainly there is very little on offer in the romance department (a feature of classic gothic horror) But its theme is the same. We are talking of the semi mythical Vampire, after all. And this much is obvious from pretty much the first chapter.
What makes I am Legend more a sci-fi novel is a midway reveal, where Robert has managed to establish himself as a garage scientist of sorts and analyse why the vampires are the way they are. Putting their blood under slides in his home laboratory and analysing them using microscopes he has acquired, he is able to engage in some homespun Doc Brown/Professor Farnsworth/Rick Sanchez science to deduct that Vampires are the work of bacterial infection rather than anything more mystical.
It transpires that some of the fashioned cures for vampires (garlic, sunlight) work on the vampires because they interact negatively with the bacteria. As to why mirrors and crosses work, well, Robert attempts to traverse this mytery, but is not able to resolve it.
Robert isn’t quite the labcoat wearing eccentric that the tropes of the sci-fi genre are though. He is, on his / the narrative’s account (free indirect discourse occurs quite a bit throughout), a strong, thick-handed and practical man. He is prone to fits of violence, and at times oozes testosterone, getting preoccupied with his apparently insatiable sexual desires in a way that has the potential to become quite disturbing, although, it turns out, does not manifest in any way more pronounced than pruriently dark thoughts.
One of the few things this novel has in common with the awful movie of the same name starring Will Smith (incidentally, do not be put off due to the film connection, the book is vastly superior, and the plot is nearly entirely different) is that when the sun goes down, Robert must be back in the fortress he has created out of his suburban house, otherwise the vampires will get him.
They know he is there, and they are after him.
A slight tangent at this point. One of the vampires is Ben Cortman, an erstwhile colleague of Robert’s before his infection. Every night Cortman stands outside Robert’s house yelling for him to come out (to be set upon by him and his vampire brethren). The repeated use of this device is excellent. It doesn’t wear the reader out through overuse, and it adds some personality to the more mundane and unnamed horror that lurks outside Robert’s house. This occurs to such an extent that the reader, and even Robert (who at one point made it his mission to destroy Cortman) even starts to root for Cortman somewhat as the story progresses.
Throughout I am Legend Robert’s primary goal is survival. He spends his days fortifying his home, scavenging for supplies, and researching the nature of the pandemic, and obliterating vampires in an attempt to find a cure, and curtail the ever present threat he faces at nighttime. His resourcefulness and resilience are tested repeatedly as he faces numerous challenges in this desolate world.
As the last man standing, he grapples with questions of identity, and what it means to be human. He reflects on his own humanity and questions whether the infected, whom he considers monsters, are still human in any meaningful sense. This raises some philosophical questions about the nature of identity and morality, to which we will return shortly.
During the daytime, Robert also hunts down vampires in his neighbourhood, finding them where they sleep. He ‘stakes’ the majority, banging a wooden stake through their heart, and turning them into dust. One gripping scene occurs where he has located a sleeping vampire, and instead of staking them, decides to commence an experiment. Dragging them into the sunlight, he becomes so absorbed in the exercise, he forgets what time it is. At sundown, the vampires pursue him home; a narrow escape, as they evidently have the power to run almost as fast as his own vehicle does.
At night he notices that at night his house is frequented by two types of vampire. One is brainless, unintelligent, and seemingly dead. They can be dispatched with gunfire and pose little real threat to him. The others that attend are cunning, and seemingly immune to gunfire. They have retained their human personalities. They are not entirely ‘dead’.
One day, some years in to his solo wonderings, having half attempted to kill himself with drinking and self-abuse, he encounters another survivor: a dog. The dog will die in short order after his contact with Robert. But what Matheson handles cleverly about the encounter with the dog is that it serves to program the reader for the late stage encounter to follow.
Robert is able to win the trust of the dog, and coax it home. He tries to nurse it back to health but is unable to do so. Far from sending him into despair, this encounter appears to bring new life into Robert, as he realises existence itself is capable of some degree of meaning. He is, essentially, his own legend.
And that’s when, three years after the plague turned everyone he loved into vampires, Robert meets Ruth. Ruth is a survivor it seems, who has also made it. She is like him. Except Ruth is more than she seems.
What follows is best read for oneself, but suffice to say the race of Vampires that are ‘intelligent’ have not been affected by the bacteria in the same way their ‘undead’ cohort have. They are still alive. And they do not like this mass killer who has been going around dispatching them. In their view, they have been the subject of a one man genocide, perpetrated by Robert. They want justice. And while they are indifferent to the point of hostility to their brethren who are seemingly ‘dead’ (they show no compunction in dispatching them), they have rebuilt some form of society from the ashes of the old, and Robert is an obstacle to its success.
To the intelligent vampires, Robert is the devil himself, who for years has killed hundreds of their number. To him, he is their nemesis. Their scourge. He is their legend.
Recalling that I am Legend was written in the 1950s, and set in the 1970s (a future in which digital watches, to monitor sunsets, had evidently not been invented) we should not be surprised to see a social commentary of the moment emanating from the page. And in I am Legend it is difficult not to see some allegory of segregation in the novel. We have on the one hand, Robert, who lives reasonably well in his suburbian fortress. He demonises and persecutes the ‘others’. They have no choice but to be ‘others’ in his eyes, just as they had no choice but to be infected by the bacteria in the first place. Neither side is capable of seeing things from the other’s position. What does that say about a fair society?
One should be cautious in taking the above analysis too far. You will recall that the vampires showed no compunction in dispatching their fellows who were ‘unintelligent’. And what’s more, the Vampires do try and warn Robert to leave, lest they come for him. But something does stand out as social commentary: the unknowability of the ‘other’, and the disasters that befall us when we are incapable of seeing things from other people’s viewpoints. In that respect, I am Legend is a very fair book, painting both sides as saviour and villain alike.
Overall
I Am Legend is a thought-provoking exploration of loneliness, survival and morality. The breakdown of civilization and the emergence of a new order dominated by the infected raise questions about the fragility of societal norms and the darker aspects of human behavior.
The vampire backdrop is the vessel by which these questions are raised. Who is sinner, and who saviour, is itself an endemic question within our culture, and rears its head every day in global conflicts. Telling the difference, as Matheson illustrates, is extremely difficult.
Remembering our shared humanity is, perhaps, the first step to empathy that forging your own legend requires.
Before you go…
Horror fans will not want to ‘ghoul’ past our reviews of:
Henry James’ Gothic Horror Classic, The Turn of The Screw
Iris Murdoch’s moody, suspenseful and introspective The Sea, The Sea
Iris Murdoch’s triangular, and spiritual The Bell
Fulfil your bloodlust for good books with our Latent Book Club finds:
Azar Nafisi’s brave Reading Lolita in Tehran
Ann Tyler’s cosily familial Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant
Jane Austen’s incomparable Pride and Prejudice
John Updike’s tale of selfishness, dissolution and frustration, Rabbit, Run
Joseph Heller’s masterwork novel Catch-22
Or see of our full range of literary criticism in our archive.
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Or read our entire back catalogue in our poetry archive.
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