A Modern Vampire In Reverse: The Legend Of Robert Neville By Matheson

A Modern Vampire in Reverse:
The Legend of Robert Neville

The last five paragraphs of Matheson’s novella I Am Legend turns the perception the main character has of the world on its head (Matheson 169-170). He goes from seeing himself as something of a tragic hero, a human remnant in a world descended into monstrous savagery, to understanding that to an emergent society of medicated vampires, he is a murderous terror stalking them when they are at their most vulnerable. The monster is not who he thought it was. He is the thing that will feature in frightening tales of tomorrow. However, with the new perspective that places Robert Neville in the role of the monster, the novel takes on an aspect found in later Vampire Fiction. Robert Neville

is kin to modern vampires: dangerous, sympathetic and, not least, a remnant of a time gone by.
One of the special things about I Am Legend is how it blends typical traits of zombies and vampires.

While there are “true vampires; the living dead” (Matheson 38) there are also people infected with the vampire germ, who actually are alive. Both types of vampires act akin to zombies. They fit into Tenga and Zimmerman’s description: “Today’s zombies typically come in hordes, but generally still lack will, consciousness, and individuality; they constitute a collective body that acts without thought or understanding,” (Tenga and Zimmerman 80). They are not topical vampires. They are not solitary hunters stalking the night. The solitary hunter is instead Neville. He is the odd one out. While Neville does not thirst for blood, Brite shows in the novel Lost Souls that vampires can hunger for other things and still be vampires. In her novel, there is a pair of twins who sucks all life, the souls, from their victims to sustain themselves. Clasen says that it is “the hope of finding a companion it is what sustains Neville throughout the narrative,” (320). It can be translated as Neville’s equivalent of blood. He is as desperate for companionship as the vampires are for blood. All he does in the search of it. He tries to find a cure (Matheson 87) so that people will once more be people with whom he can interact. His toil with learning about medicine is only interrupted at a sign of life in a stray dog: “The eagerness he'd felt upon seeing the germ in his microscope was nothing

compared with what he felt about the dog,” (Matheson 98).
Neville is only a vampire compared to the infected people, living somewhat normal lives with the vampire germs controlled by medication.

Ruth explains in her letter that sky was spying on him, that her people will kill Neville once they are better organised because he has killed many of their numbers, Ruth’s husband among them (Matheson 154-155). Ruth thought like the people who sent her. She thought that Neville was a dangerous terror that had to be understood to latter be exterminated. Upon meeting Neville, however, she discovers that he is not a mindless monster, only someone operating with a set of instructions that are dated. This makes Neville kin to the modern vampires who have a strong connection to the past, hold within them history and past cultures (Tenga and Zimmerman 84). Because Ruth says “When we were together in the darkness, close to each other, I wasn’t spying on you. I was loving you,” (Matheson 155) to Neville in her letter, urges him to flee and latter comforts him before his execution their relationship is a mild version of the modern vampire love story. “The sympathetic vampire incites desire,” (Tenga and Zimmerman 77), and that is what Neville is and does. He is undoubtedly dangerous for her kind, yet he is sympathetic, trying to comfort Ruth and be kind to her all through their brief association, inciting, if not desire, then at least

compassion.
In not following Ruth’s plea of fleeing from his home and accepting that he will be taken in by her people, Neville slots into another of the characteristics of modern vampires presented by Tenga and Zimmerman: “today’s ‘new’ vampire obeys human laws, respects Western society’s norms, and shares its values,” (77). He accepts the new justice system that is in place even if it is different from the one he knew. While hardly any time has gone by between the vampire outbreak and the end of the novel – three years - the monumental differences in how the world functions is comparable to the decades, centuries and even millennia that comprise a traditional vampire’s span of existence. Neville is alienated from the world, yet obeys the laws of the people, agreeing that he has to face the consequences of killing people who were not true monsters, only victims of a disease. “He’d throw himself upon the justice of their new society. Then they called to him he would go out and surrender; it was his decision,” (Matheson 160).
In conclusion, while he is not a vampire, Robert Neville shares many traits with them, especially with their modern incarnations. He is the dangerous thing that strikes and kills when his victims are vulnerable. He hungers desperately for something that he needs to survive, same as a vampire, even if it is companionship he craves and not blood. He follows the societal rules, submitting it its justice, and he is a being that belongs to the past in body and mind. Through being different and dangerous, yet sympathetic and kind he wins the affection of one of the people belonging to the majority. He does all these things that are similar to modern vampires, and he declares himself their equal in stating his legacy. He is the historical figure that in time will become mythological, giving rise to a legend.