Fixing Ground Zero: Race and Religion in Francis Lawrence’s I Am Legend (original) (raw)

Race and religion are critical components in both Richard Matheson's I Am Legend (1954) and the later film versions of the novel. In Matheson's novel, the main character, Robert Neville, struggles against a vampiric threat to his existence, while frequently musing on his inability to believe in anything greater than himself. Reflecting racial tensions in the United States of the 1950s, Neville is eventually revealed to be the "last of the old race,"1 executed by a new society of vampires who he once mused had "no means of support, no measures for proper education,... [nor] the voting franchise."2 Conversely, both Ubaldo Ragona and Sidney Salkow's The Last Man on Earth (1964) and Boris Sagal's The Omega Man (1971) reframe the character of Robert Neville as a Christ-figure who would heal the world with his blood and defeat a race of communist sympathizers (in the case of The Last Man on Earth) or Manson-family clones (The Omega Man), thinly veiled a...