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Soto, Areli
Professor McClure
Writing 39B
24 October 2015
Rhetorical Analysis 1st Draft: I Am Legend
In the novel I Am Legend by Richard Matheson, the author introduces the protagonist,
Robert Neville, who is isolated in a world filled with vampires that have been infected by the
bacteria, Bacillus vampiris. Immune to the virus, Matheson takes his audience through the
protagonists struggle of being the only survivor of the virus, and his reach for survival. As
Matheson continues with the novel, he begins to portray the protagonist as his own monster
rather than vampires through his extensive use of horror-art elements such as categorical
contradiction, cognitive and physical dimensions, and genre expectations through his varying
sentence structure and extensive horror genre vocabulary, as stated by the philosopher of horror,
Noel Carroll. The author then constitutes genre expectations of horror to his audience through the
genres intention of moral medium, as stated by award winning American novelists Tony
Magistrale and Michael A. Morrison by introducing Nevilles strongest and unusual battle for
companionship, an overlooked necessity for survival. Then, Mathesons shift in paradigm from
the protagonists battle of survival to the living vampires survival story sets a paradox for the
audience where it seems that protagonist is not the only normal one left, but is now the outsider
in the world, thus othering the protagonist and influencing the genre expectations as well.
Continuing to other Neville, the author concludes the novel by having the protagonist commit
suicide before the vampire society attempts to execute him in response to the involvement of
their own suffering, portraying to the audience how the protagonists own fight for survival lead

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to his death, becoming his own monster that killed himself. Portraying the protagonist as an
impure and threating monster fighting for an everyday survival and how it lead to his own death
and became his own monster allows the author to project to his audience a sense of resemblance
to the protagonist, but most importantly, how one should not just fear the mortal threat of society,
but the threat of oneself.
In Mathesons first pages of the novel, the author is able to quickly portray the
protagonist, Robert Neville, as the actual monster of the novel through his use of short and
declarative sentences to portray a set physical and cognitive dimensions, categorically
contradicting phrases, and extensive use of vocabulary to generate a set of genre expectations for
the audience, thus constituting a strong set of elements needed for an art-horror piece as stated by
the philosopher of horror, Noel Carroll. In the passage described in the novel I Am Legend,
Matheson describes how the protagonist had just escaped the vast amount of vampires that were
following him towards his house, and how he had just escaped them but then notices how they
have destroyed a vast majority of his house, alongside with a vast amount of broken appliances,
which he critically needs to survive (Matheson, 36). The author is quickly able to use a set of
short and declarative sentences to set the ambiance of a frustrated and impatient response
towards the reveal of the broken appliances in the household. The short and declarative sentences
also portray a physical state of the protagonist as he quickly notices several appliances broken
through the shortly structured sentences. Thus, with the combination of both physical and
cognitive dimensions of the protagonist, the author then quickly begins to set an emotional state
between the audience and the protagonist. Concurrently, Matheson also begins to describe the
different set of appliances that were broken in the house, setting a normal, ordinary setting, and
quickly introducing extraordinary elements by implying how it was the vampires who broke all

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of the household appliances, thus implying a set of extraordinary in the ordinary setting. The
author is then able to portray the protagonist as impure as Neville states a categorically
contradicting phrase of a dead house, projecting that the protagonist truly believes that his
house is a dead house and conveying the theory of impurity to the audience. Thus, all of the
elements depicted in the passage of physical and emotional dimensions, categorical
contradiction, and extraordinary in an ordinary world, are all elements needed to constitute an
art-horror piece as stated in the 1984 essay The Nature of Horror by the notable philosopher of
art-horror, Noel Carroll. Carroll then introduces in his essay the implication of several elements
to construct a successful art-horror piece by listing elements such as physical and cognitive
dimensions to a story to further an occurent emotional state between the character of the novel
and the audience, to portray the monster as something extraordinary in an ordinary world to
further enhance the impurity of the monster, and to lastly present the monster as impure and
threating yet again through his theory of impurity by introducing a set of categories such as
setting the monster to be categorically contradictory (Carroll, 52; 54; 55-57).
Likewise, Matheson is able to set a set of human anxiety in the passage as stated by
Danish horror scholar, Mathias Clasen, thus intensifying the cognitive dimensions towards the
audience and allowing the author to increase the genre expectations and portray the protagonist
as an impure and threatening monster. The notable Danish scholar of horror fiction as well as the
author of the article Vampire Apocalypse: A Biocultural Critique of Richard Matheson's I Am
Legend, Mathias Clasen, also states how [i]t is a striking fact of human anxiety that the things
we fear are non-randomly distributed in a horror piece, allowing the audience to portray the sets
of genre expectations, which can be exhibited through the descriptions in the passage seen as
extraordinary acts in the ordinary world (Clasen, 315). Moreover, Matheson continues to

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successfully portray the protagonist as this impure and threating character, and allows the
audience to further question who is the monster in the story, whether it is the vampires, or
Neville himself. Matheson continues this sense of an impure monster as he continues to relate
and introduce further unusual impurities and thoughts to his audience throughout his battle for
survival, and his abnormal ways of surviving.
Then, Matheson begins to portray a sense of a moral medium towards the novel, as stated
by award winning novelists Tony Magistrate and Michael A. Morrison, as he begins to introduce
the basic human need of companionship as stated by Clasen, and how and his unusual
circumstances and tactics to obtain this necessity also begin to lead a sense of impurity from the
protagonist towards the audience.

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Works Cited
Carroll, Nol. "The Nature of Horror." The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 46.1 (1987):
51-59. JSTOR. Web. 25 Oct. 2015.
Clasen,Mathias.VampireApocalypse:ABiculturalCritqueofRichardMathesonsIAm
Legend.PhilosophyandLireature34.2(2010):313328.ProjectMuse.Web.24Oct.
2015.