[SPOILER ALERT: The
Walking Dead]
I Am Legend
presents the existential crises that I have found in AMC’s The Walking Dead. In the first few seasons of The Walking Dead, it was interesting because the group’s motivation
to survive was to find a cure, or at the very least, a sanctuary. I found that
it became tiring to watch since after they realized there was no cure, the
reasons they had left for surviving became murky. Every episode ended with a
reminder that there is no hope – there is nothing left to find. The characters
live for each other, but when tensions rise, I keep finding myself asking,
“What’s the point?” Is living in this zombie-ridden truly worth it when there
are no rewards to reap from a day-to-day struggle? In the case of I Am Legend, I find it even harder to
create a reason for survival. In The
Walking Dead, at least the characters keep each other company. Robert
Neville is completely alone – all of his family and friends are dead and yet he
still tries to find a cure. I believe he decides to cling to life for whatever
meek reasons he has, like the characters in The
Walking Dead do. In Neville’s story, after everyone he loves dies, his new
raison d’être becomes learning more about the bacterium. He starts to view the
disease not as an enemy that killed off his loved ones, but as a confusing
puzzle: “You bastard, he thought, almost affectionately, watching the minuscule
protoplasm fluttering on the slide. You dirty little bastard” (89). As his
loneliness grows, Neville’s reasons to survive change. Is death really worse
than this existence of loneliness (as experienced in these two story lines)?
To answer your question, yes I believe there are few things worse than death. In other words, an existential crisis stemmed from loneliness alone is not sufficiently inducive to warrant death by suicide. If one feels that his loneliness, either by his own making or not, can be fixed, he lives on in hope that the table will turn. This is why Neville didn't come out and "play" with Cortman no matter how much the latter begged and pleaded; he wanted to live on to the find the cure, as you said, and this in and by itself reflected his longing for companionship. In other words his reason to survive did not change entirely; it simply took a different shape. He still longs for companionship, just like the characters in Walking Dead.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, when people are pressed against the corner and everywhere they look are merely specters of all things past but never signs of a brighter future, they begin to feel the meaninglessness and emptiness of the vessels that are their bodies. There's no more need to sustain the life force underneath the skin that will eventually decay. There's no more need to live. And wham. Into the light they go.
One character in popular culture I can think of that bears this ill fate is the second Peverell brother in Harry Potter universe. I hope you're a fan cause that would mean you've seen the final movie, which means I wouldn't be THAT GUY who spoiled it all for you. Anyhow, the three Peverell brothers, according to legend, cheated Death. Death played them by pretending to award them gifts. The second brother, whose fiancee was dead before they could ride off into sunset and live happily ever after, chose the Resurrection Stone which resurrects the dead (go figure). And so the fiancee rose from her grave, but she was never the same again (coincidence??? I think NOT). So the second brother killed himself because there was nothing he could do to bring his fiancee truly back to normal. You know what they say, love conquer all things. Even the will to live.