Vampire Apocalypse

Richard Matheson’s 1954 horror novel I Am Legend depicts the sole survivor of a vampire pandemic in his attempts to find companionship and meaning in a blasted apocalyptic world. Most literary critics engaging with the novel have interpreted the vampires as social or psychological symbols. They’ve overlooked their literal resonance as disease-bearing, unnatural predators well designed to activate evolved fears of predation and contagion. The chapter argues that the novel’s lasting power comes from the way Matheson taps into basic human anxieties—over predation, isolation, and a total loss of meaning—in his psychologically nuanced depiction of a flawed but sympathetic man’s struggles to survive and find fellow survivors after the apocalypse, and to find meaning in a secular antagonistic world. Matheson adapted the ancient vampire figure in his evocative exploration of one man’s psychological development in response to a hostile and meaningless world.