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Bryan Diaz

Professor Greg McClure

Writing 39B

21 February 2018

The Monster That Resides in Us All:

The Importance of Otherness & Perspective in Richard Matheson’s I am

Legend

In the novel I Am Legend, Richard Matheson tells the story of the last known

surviving human on earth, Robert Neville, and takes the reader on a journey of

discovery into not only his mind but also into the new post-apocalyptic world that he has

been forced to accept as reality. At the end of the story, the author has the audience

bear witness to the moment of self-realization by the main character in which he sees

that “he” was now the monstrous threat to society. Richard Matheson plays on the

expectations of the art-horror genre and utilizes different tools of rhetoric to convey to

the reader how the idea of otherness coupled with a lack of communication and

understanding between two groups of people can lead to disastrous outcomes. It was

during this time period of when the novel was written that the Civil Rights Movement

was just beginning to rise and the Cold War had everyone one edge, and thus the novel

references the types of feelings and attitudes that people in the United States had

through the complex relationship between Neville and the vampires. This is

accomplished by adhering to the expectations of the monster in the art-horror genre

with the use of rhetorical devices such as the point of view of the character, imagery,

syntax, and characterization. In order to show how these various tools of rhetoric as well
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the expectations of the art-horror genre work together in specific parts of the novel, I will

be drawing support from three main sources that include The Nature of Horror by Noel

Carroll, Intro to Dark Night’s Dreaming by Tony Magistrale, and Vampire Apocalypse by

Mathias Clasen.

At the beginning of the story the characteristics of the vampires are told through

the perspective of the main character Neville, and as a result, the reader has no other

choice but to see them as disgusting and impure creatures. I will prove how Matheson

accomplishes this through the use of imagery and syntax in different passages within

the text. Two most notable instances are the scene where Neville’s being chased by the

vampires and “He looked back and saw them gaining, saw their grayish-white faces

approaching, their dark eyes fastened… to him” and when Matheson gives the

description of Neville as “ a tall man… his features undistinguished except for… the

bright blue of his eyes” (2 & 32). The author arranges the sentence depicting the chase

scene in a way that progressively instills fear in the character. The imagery used in both

of these passages conflict with one another and makes it clear to the reader that the

vampires are dangerous monsters. Noel Carroll, an American philosopher and a leading

figure in the philosophy of art, states in his work The Nature of Horror that “ In works of

horror, the humans regard the monsters that they encounter as abnormal, as

disturbances of the natural order” (Carroll 52). Matheson uses the descriptive imagery

when describing the main character as a means to give the audience a baseline to what

should be considered normal, and then later describes the characteristics of the

vampire so that they completely differ from Neville and validates the fact that they are

monsters in the main protagonist's world. This alludes to how white Americans would
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think less of African Americans and be disgusted by them, simply because of the color

of their skin. Neville is originally seen as an innocent man who is forced to defend

himself from the group of vampires that want to get to him, but as the plot continues we

see moments where the line between the vampires and himself is blurred.

The constant killing of the vampires by Neville’s character is shown to take a

mental toll on him and introduces to the reader the possibility that the vampires and

Neville aren’t so different. This is shown in certain parts of the story where the main

character interacts with the vampires while the sun is out and the reader is exposed to

the inner monologue of Robert Neville. Such instances include when Neville sees a

female vampire suffering and justifies his actions by saying “she’s one of them…” or

when he is driving a stake through a vampire and asks himself “what else can I do?”

(Matheson 14 & 28). In both of these instances, the author uses the point of view of

Neville paired with his inner monologue to have the reader see the vampires as actual

former human beings and not just vile monsters. This is supported by Tony Magistrale,

an author and English professor at the University of Vermont, and Michael A. Morrison,

professor at the University of Oklahoma, in their work A Dark Night's Dreaming, when

they write how “horror fiction reveals the complexities of what it means to be human”

and “relies upon core definitions of otherness and exclusionism” (Magistrale & Morrison

2-3). Both of the moments I described in the story are written by Matheson to convey to

the reader how the main character is struggling with his humanity as he witnesses the

suffering of what were once former human beings just like him. This can be seen as a

reflection of how the United State's relationship with the Soviet Union was tense and

close to bringing about another World War even though the U.S. had aided the Soviet
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Union during World War II and were seen as allies. The author also places these

moments in the story to show that even though the vampires might be another “group”

different from Neville, the two are somewhat not so different as noted by how the

suffering of the vampires and their deaths make him question whether or not his actions

were wrong. The struggle of the main character losing his humanity is made worse by

his complete isolation from other human beings or others that are not infected.

Neville’s complete isolation for so long eventually drives him to begin working on a way

to find a cure to the vampire disease and is meant to be seen by the audience as an

attempt to revert the vampires to a state of normality that the character is used to and to

get rid of those who don’t look like him. It is when the Robert Neville is on the brink of

completely losing whatever humanity he still has, that Matheson tries to appeal to the

reader using pathos. This is evidenced when Matheson writes “ How could he ever

hope to cure those still living?... Well, I will know! He raged inside. And forced himself to

study” (Matheson 76). In this short passage, the reader is meant to feel the struggles

and loneliness that Neville is going through. Another moment where the author tries to

appeal to the audience’s ethos is when Neville sees the dog for the first time and the

author describes how “ he had clung to the hope that someday he would find someone

like himself- a man, a woman, a child, it didn’t matter” (Matheson 90). Mathias Clasen,

a Danish scholar of horror fiction and professor in literature and media at Aarhus

University, states in his work Vampire Apocalypse that “ Predation is a central theme in

horror fiction” and “ Being threatened by powerful forces… is a powerful motif” (Clasen

318). Neville is presented by Matheson to be shown as a lonely man that is being driven

mad because he has no one. The author intends to make the reader believe that Neville
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will be “saved” from loneliness and belong to a group once more. The reason this is

critical to the story is that the author uses genre expectations to show the reader how

the character not having someone else like him makes him that much more determined

to get rid of the vampires.

The introduction of Ruth’s character causes a complete shift in the tone of the

story and forces the reader to view Robert Neville and the vampires in an objective

manner in which both parties are no longer dynamically different. Matheson

accomplishes through the characterization of Ruth and the activity of different dialogues

between the two characters. This can be seen when Neville criticizes the killings of the

new society to Ruth to which she responds that he is no different and what they were

doing had to be done in order to survive (Matheson 155). In this scene, Ruth and Neville

are having a conversation about how the new society of vampires is really not much

different than Neville and how he must be executed for the murders he has committed.

Another notable piece of evidence is when Ruth leaves a letter to Neville explaining her

true identity and how she has come to “understand” the reasoning behind his killings of

the vampires (Matheson 143-144). In these passages, the reader learns that because of

the communication between Ruth and Neville, she was able to understand him and no

longer aimed to kill him. Matheson’s choice to include the perspective of Ruth and the

other vampires of the new society can explained by the expectations of the horror genre

highlighted in A Dark Night’s Dreaming by Tony Magistrale and Michael A. Morrison ,

where they mention that “A distinguishing trait of horror art is the existence of a being

that emerges to disrupt the personal and personal relationships of the status quo”

(Magistrale & Morrison 4). Matheson has Neville and the reader undergo a self-
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realization, that he has actually become the monster in a world full of vampires and just

as they had to be killed to protect the human world, Neville too must be sacrificed for

the good of the new society. Because Neville is now the minority and is outnumbered by

the vampires, he is the one that is in the way of a “normal” and peaceful world.

There were many examples in the story that aligned with the emotions and fears

that most Americans were feeling during this era and the vampires themselves can be

seen as a metaphor for the way white Americans were viewing African Americans or

how people in the West viewed those in the East. In both cases, there were two

different groups of people in which one either feared or hated the other due to differing

ideologies or physical appearances. Just as how Neville was used to only humans

being in the world and was disgusted when the vampires replaced them all, the white

Americans also felt threatened and disgusted when their sense of what was “normal”

was changing due to desegregation and being forced to view them as fellow Americans.

The messages found in the novel including that of the value of perspective will continue

to remain relevant regardless of the time period.

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Works Cited

Carroll, Noel. “The Nature of Horror.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol.

46, no. 1, 1987, p. 51., doi:10.2307/431308.

Clasen, Mathias. “Vampire Apocalypse.” Oxford Scholarship Online, 2017,

doi:10.1093/oso/9780190666507.003.0007.

“Introduction.” A Dark Night's Dreaming: Contemporary American Horror Fiction, by

Tony Magistrale, University of South Carolina Press, 1999.

Matheson, Richard. I Am Legend. Eclipse Books, 1991.