I Am Legend!

I first stumbled across Richard Matheson's classic 1954 novel I Am Legend when I got it through the Scholastic paperback program at my school. I think my first version of the book was the Omega Man tie-in with Charlton Heston on the cover. The book blew me away. Neville's characters is so specifically developed and the secrets of the vampires are uncovered with meticulous detail. It's a book that rewards careful reading and re-reading. 

As I read it again this time, I was struck how different Neville is from any of the film versions which have popped up over the decades. (I'll have more to say about specific movies in a later post.) For all of the adaptations, one even using the original title, none of them effectively transmit Neville's complex character. He's not crazy because he is taking sensible precautions to protect himself from mobs of vampires who descend upon him every night. 

The story begins five months after the fall of society generally in 1975. (Ironically, about the same time I was reading the book for the first time.) Neville is still adapting to his isolation and depending much too much on liquor to medicate his stress. He is a modern-day Robinson Crusoe who lives alone in the middle of a once well populated region, but who now must spend his days working to keep himself alive and simultaneously seeking to kill the vampires which plague him. 

We follow Neville across three years (with some jumps) as he deals with the threats to his safety, his sanity and his memories of those he loved. We see him open his heart when he finds another living creature, we see him fight hard to keep his heart closed when he might have found another living person. Neville is not an easy man, but rather a hard man who comes to late to value the things which life gives us today in abundance. But in a world overrun by vampires and the undead, these things become ever more valuable. 

Tomorrow, I take a look at the comic book adaptation. 

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