Within the pages of I Am Legend lies a scenario in which Robert Neville finds himself, as he believes, to be the last person exhibiting standard human intelligence on earth due to a viral pandemic. The lonely lifestyle that the protagonist falls into brings with it many advantages and disadvantages that appear to him periodically throughout the book. Consequently, as Neville commits multiple homicides to prolong his lifespan, one must wonder whether these acts are ethical or, due to the relative nature of ethics, if right and wrong even exist. Finally, the probability of such an apocalyptic situation may have some merit; every day viruses mutate, infect, and mutate again. While it is highly unlikely that this exact situation may occur, the possibility of a similar pandemic is possible and maybe even probable.

Throughout the existence of man, he has experienced endless adversity. War, death, illness, destruction, anger, and sorrow have all ravaged him throughout time. However, no war, no illness, no amount of destruction has ever challenged man with the affliction experienced in I Am Legend; total singularity. Robert Neville, a former power plant employee, is the only survivor of a terrible pandemic which has not killed, but transformed every single living person into a vampire. With the loss of his daughter and wife, Neville must adapt and survive while he attempts to understand that virus that has destroyed everything he ever knew.

Thus, Neville’s new life begins. As the last man on earth, he must find a way to survive. He encounters adversity, but also receives small blessings. Faced with challenges, victories, and defeats, Neville attempts to search for truth regarding the origin of the infection itself. In this quest, Neville gives little thought to ethics. However, the morals that he dismisses are still worth examining. Finally, the plausibility of Neville’s situation will be scrutinized to determine whether the entirety of Richard Matheson’s message is immaterial or of the utmost importance.

To explore the advantages and disadvantages of Neville’s situation, we must examine his routine. Neville’s daily life begins with maintenance of the house that he has converted into a makeshift fortress. Modifications include boarded windows, a generator, a greenhouse, and a stockpile of various foodstuffs. During nightly raids by the infected population, portions of the house become damaged. Neville spends part of his morning repairing damage and fashioning wooden stakes from any wood he may have access to. He then uses these stakes to eliminate mass quantities of sleeping vampires, the ethics of which will be visited later. Before nightfall, Neville returns to his home to await the hoard of infected people that congregate outside his abode. Once he is sure that they will be unable to breach his defenses, he usually drinks himself to sleep.

The advantages of such a situation may seem few and far between to some. However, many positive possibilities exist in an unpopulated world. Factors such as pollution, crime, war, terrorism, and general stupidity cease to exist. Neville is free to better himself by acquiring new skills, educating himself, and exercising his body and mind. Unfortunately for Robert Neville, he does not realize the possibilities until shortly before his demise.

Most overlook that Neville has acquired something many people today are in short supply of; time. Neville suddenly has a surplus of time to use as he sees fit. The availability of time allows him to pursue such endeavors as searching for the origin of the viral disease that has plagued the earth. Following two years of simply surviving, Neville makes use of his gift of time by educating himself on such studies as biology and pathology. Using this knowledge, he acquires a microscope and begins to analyze blood samples collected from infected individuals. The direct result of this action is Neville’s biggest personal victory; the discovery of the Vampiris virus.

An advantage that Neville gains as a side effect to his singular life is the elimination of stress due to social stimuli. Every day people are exposed to a variety of social occurrences. Words, body language, and physical contact all create different forms of stress within ourselves. According to one article, “Stress can trigger potentially deadly over-activity by the immune system.”(BBC News, online) Neville, the last surviving human, is free from this stress put on his mental and emotional well-being. However, every night this is interrupted by the congregation forming outside his home. He later rectifies this situation by soundproofing the entire house. Thus, Neville is released from the distress administered by constant social contact.

Most disadvantages associated with complete loneliness are obvious. Aside from the distress created by social interaction, Neville is also deprived of the eustress of life with people. He is doomed to an existence without a friendly handshake, reassuring pat on the back, or loving touch. Conversely, Neville lives in a cold, isolated world where he will never again experience another human being. In a world of hostility, he is alone.

Prior to widespread death due to the pandemic, Robert Neville was married with one infantile daughter. Obviously, both became infected. Shortly after his wife’s death, Neville buried her, causing severe emotional trauma. However, his sorrow does not end thee. Due to the vampiric nature of the infection, Neville’s wife was resurrected and appeared in their home. With no other choice, Neville proceeded to kill her. Of course, this event left terrible emotional scars. It can be assumed that throughout the duration of the book, Neville is suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD. According to the National Institute for Mental Health, “People with PTSD have persistent frightening thoughts and memories of their ordeal and feel emotionally numb. They may experience sleep problems, feel detached or numb, or be easily startled.”(NIMH, online) Robert Neville regularly flashes back to the murder and burial of his wife. He also suffers from sleep problems, usually resulting in drinking himself to sleep.

Another disadvantage associated with isolation is monotony. For years at a time, Neville falls into a life of routine. While some may argue that this is necessary to survive, others may argue that he is not really living, and therefore not really surviving. Daily, Neville performs the same tasks to ensure he awakes the next morning. One of theses tasks is the murdering of large masses of sleeping vampires. While initially this seems to be a worthwhile task, one must realize the grand picture-there are billions of them, and one of him. Thus, Neville is caught into a life of standard routine until he discovers another way to spend his time.

Advantages and disadvantages aside, Neville may only utilize any opportunities by making decisions. With these decisions come serious ethical concerns. While Neville tends to make most of his decisions without second thought, he does seem to think deeply about a select few of his actions. One would think that he does so to avoid serious consequences. One would then realize that thee are no consequences.

“Questions about how people act towards themselves and others are dealt with in a field of study called “ethics”.”(Compton’s Encyclopedia, 309) Throughout I Am Legend, Neville finds himself in various predicaments where he must make ethical decisions. These events include mass murder of the infected population, the capture of some infected persons for experimental use, and the murdering of an infected canine. While analyzing Neville’s decisions, one must also analyze whether ethics even play a role in a world without people. Are or are ethics not totally relative? If so, without people to relate to, do ethics even exist?

Robert Neville is a daily murderer. He routinely scours his surrounding neighborhood in an effort to locate infected individuals that slumber during the day. Initially, he insets a stake into their heart. His method eventually evolves into slitting the wrists of the sleeping. At any rate, Neville murders thousands of vampires over the course of a few short years. Many argue that Neville is performing these actions to survive. However, are the vampires not surviving themselves? These creatures are involved in a collective effort to obtain one of the things they require most; food. Does Neville have any more right to survive than they? Is he not the minority, and they the majority? According to Chares Darwin and Herbert Spencer, Neville does have the right to survive, as he is the fittest. By staying in his defenses at night and performing attacks during the day, Robert Neville continues to out-survive the vampires until the very end of the story.

In his quest to understand the Vampiris virus, Neville performs a small number of simple experiments on captured vampires. After successfully retrieving Ben Cortman, one of Neville’s former coworkers, Neville attempts to fund out why the infected fear the Christian cross. To his surprise, Cortman laughs at the cross. However, when faced with a Star of David, Cortman recoils in fear. Neville concludes that this occurs because once the being realizes that he or she is in fact a vampire, he or she is predisposed to fear symbols of his or her religion. When analyzed ethically, however, this seems to be a sort of torture. Again, Neville is working towards his own survival, but at what cost? He does so by causing fear and terrible emotional pain to another creature, however unearthly it may be.

As Neville peruses the neighborhood killing off dozens of vampires, he eventually comes upon a dog. This being the first dog he has seen, Neville is overrun with excitement. Neville puts food out for the dog, eventually seducing him, over a period of weeks, to trust Neville. One day, Neville follows the dog back to wherever he may be staying. Neville finds him under a house infested with infected individuals. Realizing that the dog is in fact infected, Neville murders the dog. Some humans tend to put a high moral price on the life of animals. Many cringe at the thought of killing a dog, as they are predisposed to thinking of it as a household pet. Neville is no different. When he murders the dog, it becomes apparent that he has lost much of his humanity. Most morals that he lived by in the past are now immaterial to him and his lonesome life.

When examining the ethical implications of Neville’s actions, the only significant point is if ethics even still exist. Ethics are moral principles agreed on by society. Without society, ethics become nothing more than the morality held by the person themselves. Neville, of course, no longer resides in society. As the lone man living on the vast expanse of the earth, his ethics are just that-his ethics.

The only morality Neville has to use as a standard is the morality of the world that once was. However, with the lack of outside influence, Neville is fee to accept or reject these morals. He exemplifies this in various events, such as murdering the dog and drinking himself into a nightly stupor. The only consequence to his otherwise horrid behavior is among the worst consequences of all; guilt. Prior to soundproofing his home, Neville is subject to lewd and seductive advances made by the female portion of the infected that congregate outside his abode every night. While Neville may easily capture one of these women while they sleep to satisfy his physical cravings, he resolves to instead murder them systematically. One may argue that he does this to avoid the horrible guilt he would experience due to infidelity to his deceased wife.

Eventually of course, guilt can be forgotten and even eliminated. As Neville experiences the lasting effects of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, he feels one symptom above all others; numbness. As time passes following the loss of humanity, Neville loses his personal humanity. His witness, causing, and acceptance of death eventually leave him a cold shell of a man. Despite his best efforts to remain human, Neville is little more than the creatures who simply live to feed.

While advantages, disadvantages, and ethics are all addressed in I Am Legend, the most prominent theme in the book still stands to be analyzed. The plausibility of the story may seem nonexistent, but worldwide epidemics are entirely possible and maybe even likely. Billions of people may be wiped out by a single virus or antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Frighteningly enough, “New viruses and bacteria are discovered daily.”(Biology, 334). The possibility exists that one of these pathogens may be powerful enough to wipe out humanity definitely exists.

Transmission methods of such a pathogen are seemingly endless. Transmission through physical contact is simple and extremely effective, as demonstrated by the Spanish Flu, or “Influenza”, outbreak in the early 1900s. “A large factor of worldwide flu prevalence was increased travel. The modern transportation systems made it easier for soldiers, sailors, and travelers to spread the disease quickly and to communities worldwide.”(Wikipedia, online) A pathogen similar to Influenza could ravage populations of today. With the modern ease of world travelling, the transmission may know no limits.

Another possible transmission scenario is biological warfare. It is ignorant to say that no county has the capability to destroy the entire population on earth. Terrible strains of varying diseases are easily available to be let loose on any target the bearer so pleases. Availability, means, and eccentric political leaders are recipes for disaster. After the initial exposure, physical transmission will do the rest of the work.

When speaking of disease transmission, nothing gets around like AIDS. Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome has torn its way through most of the earth. AIDS works on one of mankind’s greatest desires; sex. It reproduces using the one thing universal to almost every man and woman on earth. A pathogen with the characteristics of AIDS with a higher mortality rate and a shorter incubation period could theoretically destroy the world. Of course, mankind would have no problem transmitting the disease though its own reproductive acts. To say the disease would thrive would be a dramatic understatement.

After the initial destruction of the human population, would any single man survive? Why should one man live an others die? Immunities appear in subjects in a variety of ways. One man out of the billions on earth may have experienced a genetic mutation which blocks off the offending pathogen. Another possibility is that one man was somehow prematurely exposed to a weaker stain of the pathogen, thus allowing his body to build up an immunity to the actual virus. This man, of course, would be able to thrive in such circumstances. Unfortunately for Robert Neville, he is not under these circumstances.

In the final pages of I Am Legend, Robert Matheson brings Robert Neville’s life to a public and timely end. However, this man that is moving ever closer to death has survived miraculously under his own efforts. He has felt uncertainty, terror, victory, and guilt. Amongst all of these things he has managed to stay somewhat sane by societal standards. However futile his existence may have been, Robert Neville never resigned himself to the inevitable. He continued to fight with tenacious enthusiasm even as the future turned ever bleaker. He was a hero. He was a survivor. He was legend.