Jake Forster

Prewriting and Exploration

Oh. She thought a moment. We had it boarded up, of course. And we used crosses.
They dont always work, he said quietly, after a moment of looking at her.
She looked blank. They dont?
Why should a Jew fear the cross? he said. Why should a vampire who had been a Jew
fear it? Most people were afraid of becoming vampires. Most of them suffer from hysterical
blindness before mirrors. But as far as the cross goeswell, neither a Jew nor a Hindu nor
a Mohammedan nor an atheist, for that matter, would fear the cross.(pg. 119 -120)
In Matheson's version of the vampire in I Am Legend, many of the classic conventions of
the vampire are reimagined to give the story a more realistic feel. While he completely does
away with a few of the traits that may seem too magical such as vampires being able to turn into
bats, he does keep many others and simply finds scientific ways to explain them. This is a
brilliant twist on the author's part because by increasing the believability of the possibility of a
threat, the threat in turn becomes much more terrifying. In Nol Carroll's essay titled the Nature
of Horror, he mentions that out of the many theories for why people are horrified by fiction, the
most supported one is the thought theory. This theory states that people are scared by works of
fictional not because they believe the scenes depicted are actually occurring, but because the
mere thought that they could is terrifying. If this theory is interpreted in another way however, it
means that horrors that do have some basis in reality become that much more frightening
because after the initial shock, the lingering possibility will continue to remain. While people can
reassure themselves that the possibility that they will ever encounter a fire-breathing dragon is
minimal, the same technique will not have equal effects on the thought of them being taken out
be a random virus.
Out of all of the revisions Matheson did for his vampires, the one that is possibility the
most interesting is the one done to the fiend's classic weakness of the cross. The cross' power on
the vampire ties directly with its religious and impure beginning but precisely because of this,
many might have predicted it as one of the qualities Matheson chooses to do away with due to it
having very unscientific origins. Matheson however did the exact opposite and unexpectedly
used the weakness' religious connections to give its power scientific backing. The story's
protagonist explains that the cross does work, but only on people who were Christian before their
death. The symbols powerful connection with their religion forcefully reminds the vampire of
what they have become and causes extreme amounts of fear and despair to fill the undead. For
the ones of other faiths however, Neville states the next logical point in the simple line on page
120: Why should a Jew fear the cross? This subversion of the story's own previously set

expectations causes the surprising, but still logical revelation to have a much bigger impact.
While doing the opposite of common standards is obviously against the norm and will lead to the
audience becoming more interest, the talent required to subvert the expectations the book already
sets up is vastly more difficult. In turn though, the pay off gained from such a turn of events is
equally amplified and will lead to an even greater results.
Works Citied
Carroll, Noele. "The Nature of Horror." The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 46, No.
1. (Autumn, 1987): 51-59. The American Society for Aesthetics. Web. 18 Oct. 2015.