I Am Legend and So Can You!

Readings in the Genre – Week 1 – I Am Legend

Really I am…

Finally a real vampire book… be-gone you sparkly skinned teenage wankers!  Here be vampires.  Considering I’d always thought I Am Legend was more about mutants than vampires it was a pleasant surprise.  From the films I’d always gotten the impression that they were more the straight up mutant with just a couple vampire tendencies thrown in.

However, I think Richard Matheson uses a couple techniques that are really quite interesting and usable for those of us even outside the genre.

Our Vampires Are Different

You can thank tvtropes for that one, but the basics of the technique are thus.  No matter what the monster in question is (or alien or nightmare or what have you…) you can make it your own by changing a couple facets, removing or adding weaknesses and other such things.  Vampires and werewolves have been so heavily used that in order for them to be interesting they have to be tweaked to be different.  I Am Legend has vampires that are more traditional then some we see these days but they’re still quite separate from the mythical basis.

I say he almost comes up with a scientific approach to the vampirism (though they are vampires despite the science).  He has taken the myth and modernized it while giving the narrator enough intelligence to think about the differences.  Mirrors and light cause fear instead of the traditional (impossible to see and death), and other mythical facts that he plays straight are even lamp-shaded.  “Why does it have to be wooden stakes?” and the talk about the garlic’s smell.  It gives a lot more life to the masses of blood sucking monsters banging on his door every night.

The Human Monster 

There is something indelibly frightening about some mythical creatures, but it seems to me that it is often those that are most like us that are the most frightening.  In a lot of ways the Vampire and Werewolf are examples of carnal desires, base instincts, and an inner ‘beast’ being let lose upon the world, but fundamentally… they are or were people.

Matheson plays this up incredibly with his rendition of the vampires and how Neville responds to them.  Their leader is ‘Benny’, they are the only women he’s seen in months, and he’s completely alone.  They throw rocks, yell and scream, and the women dance naked in front of his house all to get him to come out while Benny keeps calling on him to give up.

It’s not what you expect from a mob of vampires.  What’s worse is that Neville’s isolation and baser needs act almost like a monster… the women tempt him, sometimes he almost loses control and rushes out to them.  The whole idea of a monster inside that is desperate to escape seems to be a major thematic element of the Horror Genre.  In a lot of ways the monsters we encounter are renditions of our own demons lying in wait inside our own heads.  The killing animal that our civilized selves constantly strive to suppress.