by Richard Matheson
1954
It is difficult to say in a single sentence what I am Legend is about. It is in a simple sense a book about a man fighting vampires. Arguably it is also a book about zombies. Certainly it is a book about loneliness. Alcoholism. Science and superstition. The dangers of atomic warfare (see page number . . . er . . . location . . . um . . . it’s in chapter six. Anybody else find it annoying the kindle app doesn’t do page numbers?) I think if I had to summarize how I feel about the book, I would say that Matheson makes some mistakes, but I am willing to forgive him for all of them because of the story.
I am Legend is a study in contradictions for me. Robert Neville is one of the best portrayals of loneliness I think I’ve ever come across. But right along side this brilliant character study are scientific explanations for vampirism that pull me right out of the story. Overall I think Matheson’s description work is amazing, but it is regularly bogged down by the Urge to Explain.
Part one, comprising Neville’s “frenzied” period, is easily my favorite part of the novel. It’s almost entirely description - Neville is a man driven to the brink, and in some ways far past it. The first and last chapters of part one end much the same - with Neville in his bed, mourning his lost wife. His character is static. His inability to explain what is happening is an accepted facet of the situation.
Yet in part two that life changes, somewhat dramatically, in favor of trying to understand what he is facing. The reader gets more and more information about his research and less and less interaction with the vampires. With that change, the menace of the vampires steadily diminishes. Cortman, the ringleader, becomes Oliver Hardy the clown. The vampire antagonists take a back seat to the new conflict - Neville the Scientist versus The Mystery of the Vampires.
Not to say there aren’t saving graces to part two - the flashbacks (the reveal of his former working relationship with Cortman is one of the highlights of the whole book) and the heartbreaking episode with the dog are two examples of Matheson hitting his stride again. The last line of chapter thirteen is one of the most powerful I’ve ever read.
Part three continues the trend, further distancing Neville from his beginnings and more deeply alienating him from his original circumstances. What was once a terrifying struggle for survival is now an almost monastic, peaceful, dull existence. Hunting Cortman is a pastime, not a struggle for survival. The vampires are no longer a threat. Neville has beat his curse, by apathy as much as by anything else. This is, in my opinion, the low-point of the novel - Ruth's character never develops, and Neville’s attitude toward her (particularly his constant assurance that he’s not attracted to her side by side with constant description of her womanly bits) is more annoying than anything.
So why does it work? Part four saves it. Neville only survives by killing the part of himself that made survival difficult, and Matheson makes that the focal point of the story - ironically by explaining it more explicitly than perhaps he needed to. Neville, in a very literal sense, becomes a monster by abandoning his humanity - we don't like him as much by this part of the story because he's the monster now. The vampires are even painted sympathetically - he has more in common with them than he does with the new society.
I've mentioned what I consider to be instances of over explanation - let’s look at some specific examples of what I am referring to. In chapter 8 Neville begins experimenting by driving the stakes into different parts of the vampires’ bodies. He finds one woman and the stake causes a “sudden dissolution”, reducing her to a pile of powder in moments. Initially it is explained away by the probable age of the vampire, and Neville ponders the dreadful implication that his own wife might look the same way in her coffin. All well and good - there is nice balance to the scene. The scene serves a purpose for the narrative and, taken on its own, does not leave me with any real questions about how or why it happened.
Skip to chapter 17, where Neville explains everything there is to know about vampires and revisits the scene. She dissolved, we discover, because air was introduced into the body via the insertion of the stake. The bacillus responsible for vampirism is a “facultative saprophyte” that creates impenetrable “body glue”, causes abnormal growth in the canines, and turns “violently parasitic” when exposed to air.
It’s worth noting that this and the various other explanations of vampire behavior takes up almost the entire chapter - it's far too much at once. Going into scientific detail at that level really just robs the monsters of their immediacy - I could no longer suspend disbelief. Instead of explaining away the lingering questions about the vampires in the story, he has drawn attention to them, and left me unsatisfied.
I think the moral of the story is that even great writers can be the source of their own undoing sometimes. If we learned anything from Alien and Jaws, it’s that sometimes it’s better if we leave the monster in the shadows. Resist the urge to explain.
