Driven on despite already created
dreads, [ ] could have acquired an intense mental loathing, and this
self-hatred could have set up a block in [the] weakened minds causing [] to be
blind to their own abhorred image. It could make them lonely … afraid to approach
anyone, living a solitary existence… struggling to gain a sense of communion
with something, with anything. (116)
I replaced the word “vampires” with a pair of brackets to
draw attention to how, at the final moment of his life, Neville has seemingly
become similar to the creatures he once loathed. Starting off longing for his
own community while constantly having ambivalent feelings towards both the
undead and living vampires/ injected, Neville ended up becoming a legend
himself, finding a resting place in the terror-driven minds of these legendary
creatures. Just like how children hear from their parents that running water
was witches’ weakness, the future generations of the infected would soon begin
to hear of the legend of Robert Neville and the superstition that an envelope
of pill can kill him (My guess is that these are the same pills that keep the
living infected alive, which would then elevate the significance of these pills
to sacredness). Anyhow, he had found his community. He had joined the ranks of
terror and entered the “unassailable fortress of forever.” And in Neville’s own
words, he had come “full circle.”
For a time, this realization nailed it for me. But somehow,
as I re-read the ending, there was something that bugged me though I’m not sure
what exactly. Somehow I felt like Neville talked his way into another delusion to
feel good about himself, just like how he shut himself in and listened to Roger
Lei, Rachmanioff, and the like to feel human during the nightly attacks. There’s
just something about him using big words and big arguments that makes me think
he was a small and insecure man even in his death. He’s like the Great Gatsby
of sci-fi novels. He’s legendary, sure, but not really. I don’t know. I could
be very very wrong.
Of course Neville is delusional! There is cognitive bias that plays a central role in the last line "I am legend." Neville is insignificant, his death is comparable to another being's death. By saying "I am legend," he just elevated himself to a status of greatness that seem unfitting for the new society. Yes it was a downfall for Neville's little inhabitant area, but there is a possibility of other human existence elsewhere. Claiming he is legend only creating an image of bigotry rather than humility. By removing the phrase I am legend, Neville would have been viewed by the new society as "a creature that knows when his time has come."
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