To be honest, I was a bit disappointed by I Am Legend. (I realize I'm in the minority here.) I'm not sure if it's because I've read a ton of other books that I've loved recently and this book just wasn't as good, or if it just wasn't my kind of thing. I can put a finger on what I didn't like about it, though.
I'm not picky about point of view most of the time, but I really thought the POV in this story was distancing. We don't get too many of the main character's thoughts, and for the first couple of chapters, he's referred to as either "he" or his full name, "Robert Neville." The full name thing gave me the impression that this book was very formal. However, most of the tension here has to come from the internal conflict - the loneliness, the fear, the frustration, the boredom. And that doesn't come across so strongly in third person, in my opinion. Are the vampires scary? Yes, but they are stuck outside until he accidentally forgets to wind his watch and leaves the garage open. And a monster that can't even break in a window because of a string of garlic isn't all that intimidating. If he wasn't alone, if he had company (especially female company), I'm willing to bet he could ignore the cat calls every now and then. So again, it all comes down to the internal stuff, and I wanted more of it. I wanted to be closer to it, and that was the job of the POV. That isn't to say I didn't see how pained Robert Neville was, but I didn't feel the impact as strongly as I would have had it been first person. Had Robert Neville been directly showing me how he felt by letting me straight into his head.
Having that distance kept me from really becoming absorbed in the text. And without that absorption, I kept stumbling upon author mistakes. For example, in chapter one he falls asleep with earplugs in, earplugs good enough to block out the noise of a hoard of vampires calling his name and throwing rocks at his house. Chapter two opens with his alarm waking him up the next morning. But the earplugs are in still, that's not something you normally take out in your sleep. So how does he hear the alarm? That's a nitpicky thing that I'm sure many readers could clarify (maybe the earplugs fell out in the night?), but the fact that I caught that really tells me how unabsorbed I was in this story. Ordinarily, when I love a book, I'll read it in a day and won't even notice if the author changed the main character's name halfway through. With I Am Legend, I found myself struggling from chapter two until chapter six.
However, I will say that once I made it past part 1, there were moments I did enjoy. The heart wrenching parts where he relives the last days of his family really reached me. Finally the emotional/internal side I was looking for! Perhaps I liked this section more because he's interacting with people, too, just as I like the section where he's winning over the dog. It gives him another living thing to interact with, and the way he lures the dog in with burgers in garlic rings is kind of endearing, if only because he's trying to make sure the dog gets the food, not the vampires. Toward the end, I enjoyed how he became the enemy in a way. He goes out to hunt Cortman as a relaxing hobby, which really says something about his place in this new, vampire-ridden world. It was an interesting twist that elevates this over other vampire stories.
My final thoughts: although I couldn't get into this story the way other readers have, I'm very glad it was different from the movie. I was incredibly nervous about reading this it all because the movie was such a "Hollywood makeover" of an apocalyptic world. On screen, I didn't know that there were vampires. I had no idea what the other people had become. At least in the book I had some sense of what was going on, some deeper understanding of what Neville was up against. And while I would have liked to have been more inside his head, I can appreciate what Richard Mattheson achieved with this story (and mourn what Hollywood destroyed).
Kari, I enjoyed reading about your failure to identify fully with Neville in this book. I definitely see all your points, and I, too, felt a bit more distant from this protagonist than I'm accustomed to enjoying. Is it possible that Matheson intended this? Is Neville distanced from himself, too? Is the numbing of Neville's inner life one way to illustrate how soul-destroying it is to become a "hunter"? So much of our identity comes from our interactions with others. Perhaps he barely knows himself anymore. The distance doesn't seem to come from the author's having skimped on characterization. We learned lots of little details about Neville (his preference for certain foods, cigarettes and classical music), but, as you pointed out, it is only when we look back and see him interacting with his wife that he finally seems real and accessible. Doesn't change the fact that you didn't ultimately care as much as you might have, but perhaps it was a calculated risk rather than bad aim.
ReplyDeleteGood point about the lack of any real threat from the vampires. I felt the same way. They didn't really frighten me (unless Neville was somehow stuck outside too late to get home before dark -- then I got worried). For me, though, this only added to my feeling about the conclusion. When he found that the vampires were just another community like his, I realized how non-threatening they actually were (well, most of them). They were just an angry mob coming to destroy the true monster.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you about the vampires being total wimps. If they wanted him gone, why not just lob a molotov through his window? It's kind of a shame that we don't get the vamps POV on the situation, it might've been interesting to know why they left him around. I guess it goes to show that even when they're changed into the undead, people don't necessarily get any smarter. Then again, for the story to come to the conclusion it did, Robert had to remain the monster. If they'd attacked him outright, then it would've been a different tale altogteher.
ReplyDeleteThe movies of this story are all disappointing in that none of them capture the feel of the text, although I think the Will Smith version did a good job in showing his isolation and loneliness if not any other.
He did armor his windows, though...
ReplyDeleteAnd I think the changes that Hollywood made to this story completely neutered it. The ending of the book was powerful, but the movie was like "hey look! Will Smith is going to save the day again!"
After reading your response it made me wonder about our perspectives and expectations of horror and other genres. Whether or not we like it the film industry heavily influences what our expectations are of the various genres.
ReplyDeleteWhile it was on the cover of the book, I had been unaware of the movie that had been made and had not seen it, or many other movies as well.
Not because I don't want to, but due to lack of time.
When i first began to read this story I felt like the time frame for it was off. I had briefly looked at the publication date of 1997 and it fit with the film version depicted. But a closer look to the next page indicated it was from 1954. This immediately changed my perception to the story. Since I was born in 1959 and was familiar with the time near the writing of "I Am Legend" and I saw it through a different set of eyes. Eyes that understood the capabilities of the time frame this was created in as opposed to what I have been subjected to over the past fifty years. I had quite a different reading at that time. It was relative to reading something historical and putting yourself in a time frame that projected the reality of that period instead of the current time frame that produced a film barely close to the original story. Something that I have learned from this reading is that we have to be open minded to what we are reading and aware of two things; first, when was the story written, and second for what time frame was the story written. Then we must attempt to put ourselves in that time frame, much like you would do with a Greek myth, or something from the dark ages or even a time frame that involves the future and things that are unknown to us. In other words, we have to strip away the prejudices that we have all been brainwashed with and attempt to read, not from a tabula rasa but from the world into which the story is intended to take place.
Happy reading.
For some reason, I don't think I felt that distance at the beginning. I totally see what you're saying, I just looked at it differently. I saw the character's isolation as drawing me in. Kind of like it was just me and Neville...and I get a close up view of what it's like to live in this world.
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