Wei Lin
Writing 39B
Professor Greg McClure
February 7, 2017
Rhetorical Analysis Inner Fear In Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend, as the only survivor of the calamity that has wiped out the entire civilization, Robert Neville is the only hope of human civilization and human species. For some reason, the virus that has mutated every human being doesn’t have any effect on Neville which is a bit ironic. Before the plague, he is just a normal person who lives a normal life. All of sudden, he becomes the chosen one. I Am Legend demonstrate his mental condition breaking down along with his human sanity fading away. After finish reading the book, my direct feeling is fear. The fear is not …show more content…
The true fear originates from the anxiety of being isolated from the rest of the world. Unlike the typical horror stories that use horrifying and threatening monster to inspire the reader’s fear, the monster is pushed somewhat to the rear. Even though the vampires howl and prowl in the periphery every night, dying to capture Neville and suck his blood, Richard doesn’t tell us a lot of information about the vampires. The description that we got from the book is that “that the vampires are cold and that they have white fangs and bad breath” (Matheson, p. 34). It is obvious that Richard is not trying to use the traditional horror stories factors: bloody image and terrifying monster. Instead, the loneliness is the tool that Richard uses to bring in the deepest fear in people’s mind. To be specific, it is human impulse for us to pursue companionship, which is why we are living in a society with social interaction instead of single individual life. The webmaster of Clinefantastique online, Steve Biodrowski says in his review of I Am Legend, “The real horror in the book is not the vampires per se; it is the existential dread of being alone, of realizing that one’s culture – the beliefs and assumptions that are an almost unconscious part of daily living – is ephemeral, a construct held in place by society, and if that society disappears, everything else disappears with it …show more content…
The deep human psychology need for art can be considered as the substitution of the companionship. It says in the book that “After a particularly violent attack on his house, Neville sets about fixing the broken generator and, significantly, putting up a mural on his living room wall, and then, when the work is done, sits down to listen to Mozart” (Matheson, p. 39). The vampire is making brutal attacks while Neville listening to the music and watching motion pictures on his home projector, which is quite contrasting. By reading this, we can feel and image Neville’s loneliness and need for companionship. The music doesn’t possess the power to satisfy him, but the actions including listening to music and watching motion pictures that he normally does with his family can remind him of family’s companionship and delude himself to the illusion that he is not the only one left. For member of social specie like us, the fear of isolation is real and rational. Solitary isolation in the criminal justice system is used as a severe form of punishment. Mathias Clasen, a Danish scholar of horror fiction says in his journal Vampire Apocalypse :A Biocultural Critique of Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend , “sociality is and has been crucial to human ontogenetic and phylogenetic development. We depend on other people not just for reproduction and survival, but for