I Am Legend

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1954

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapters 1-5

Part 2, Chapters 6-10

Part 2, Chapters 11-14

Part 3, Chapters 15-19

Part 4, Chapters 20-21

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Part 4, Chapters 20-21Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 4: “January 1979”

Chapter 20 Summary

Content Warning: The Chapter 21 Summary includes a suicide.

Six months later, Ruth’s group of infected come to take Robert Neville from his home. Since meeting Ruth, Neville has considered leaving the house—but is unable to leave the memories associated with it. He watches the infected drive into Los Angeles and shoot the Undead outside from his peephole. Ben Cortman tries to escape by climbing into the chimney of a house across the street, but the infected shoot him. Neville finds himself sympathizing with the Undead, as the infected are particularly violent in killing them. He grieves Ben Cortman’s murder.

The infected begin shooting Neville’s house and breaking through the doors with axes. Though he decided to allow the infected to take him prisoner, Neville still finds himself readying his pistols. When some of the men break into his house, he starts shooting. The former club Neville in the chest, then drag him outside the house.

Chapter 21 Summary

Neville is held prisoner in a room at an undisclosed location. His chest and ribs ache from the infected attack. When he wakes, he realizes he is going to die, though struggles to accept it: “Personal death still was a thing beyond comprehension” (153). Ruth enters the room and offers Neville water. She speaks tenderly, asking him why he didn’t leave the house despite her warning. Neville reiterates that he had grown attached to his home.

Ruth then asks why Neville fought back, as he would have been left unharmed if he hadn’t resisted. He calls Ruth’s fellow infected “gangsters,” admonishing them for their violence and supposed enjoyment of their violence. Ruth argues for the necessity of violence in creating a new society without the Undead; furthermore, the infected plan to execute Neville because he fought back. Ruth tells Neville that he is brave and kisses him, before giving him two suicide pills to end his life before his scheduled public execution. She leaves.

Neville looks out the window at the group of infected gathered in front of his prison. When they notice him, they are visibly frightened. Neville realizes that he is “the abnormal one now” (159) and that, like the vampires of legend, he will become a legend in this new society. Neville swallows the pills and ends his life.

Part 4, Chapters 20-21 Analysis

Robert Neville’s capture and death are caused less by Ruth and the infected than they are by his own inability to truly let go of the past. Rather than existing in the present as he managed to do for years, Ruth’s arrival disrupts his comforting mundanity by forcing him to acknowledge his attachment to his home. In terms of genre expectations, the horror genre is rooted in Victorian Gothic tradition in which one house, castle, or otherwise frightening building remains the central setting of the novel. A heroine is generally locked inside this building by circumstance or the absence of (male) friends willing to protect her, a symbol for the fear of domestic imprisonment through marriage and childbirth. I Am Legend subverts this gendered expectation by having Neville lock himself in his own house. Though he is essentially imprisoned in the same way as a Gothic heroine (like Catherine Earnshaw from Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights), because Neville is a man, he ultimately chooses to be trapped, whereas women in the Gothic and horror traditions are often controlled or kidnapped (through marriage).

In the final chapters of I Am Legend, the morality of the infected’s new society is presented through a lens of violence. Neville sympathizes with the Undead as he watches their extermination by the infected, questioning “Is this the new society?” (147). Acceptable violence is discussed between Neville and Ruth, the latter believing in the necessity of violence to secure the majority’s version of morality, not dissimilar to imperialistic war (156). The infected parallel invading troops, reinforcing the novel’s theme of Moral Relativism and War.

As the last human alive, Neville has become a legend for the new society of infected. He recognizes how he himself will eventually become a legend of which the infected tell each other and future generations. Legend functions as a form of memory, a protection against a threat that may no longer exist. This is illustrated in the Undead’s initial presentation as vampires weak to garlic, mirrors, crosses, and moving water. Furthermore, Neville’s status as a legend will preserve pre-infected society.