Evidence and Structure

He straightened up and looked down at her still body sewn up in the blanket. For the last time,
he thought. No more, no more loving. Eleven wonderful years ending in a filled-in trench. He
began to tremble. No, he ordered himself, theres no time for that.
It was no use. The world shimmered through endless distorting tears while he pressed back
the hot earth, patting it around her still body with nerveless fingers.

In Richard Mathesons I Am Legend, Neville is consciously fighting his inner battles, and
losing his wife is the biggest one: Mathesons select syntax and diction effectively reveal
Nevilles emotional struggle and last few moments of humanity as he buries his wife. By
analyzing the paragraphs sentence structure and taking into account Nevilles present actions,
the readers are ultimately introduced to Nevilles forming monstrosity. In this excerpt, Neville
tries to overcome the emotions of burying his wife, but even with all of his effort, he is too
overwhelmed. Mathesons diction highlights Nevilles grief: Last time, No more, wonderful
years, all describe Nevilles reminiscence and heartache. The fact that Neville breaks down in
the second paragraph emphasizes his inability to hold his emotions back, as shown in the first.
Meanwhile, this also displays Nevilles contradictory interstitiality: he goes back and forth
between telling himself to stay strong, and not being able to help himself from breaking down.
He continues the struggle of constantly being at war with himself. It is when Neville loses his
wife that he no longer has reason -- those few remaining emotions defined his empathy, grief,
and love for his wife at its peak-- but with her gone, Neville falls into American Philosopher Nol
Carrolls interpretation of a monster, which is written in his article, The Nature of Horror. He is
extraordinary in the ordinary world being the lone survivor, threatening to the vampire race,
and his abundant conflictions within himself make him not only contradictory, but also impure
(Carroll 52 - 55). This flashback is a contrast -- Matheson throws in this scene to make it
apparent that Neville was once human too, far from what hes come to be. This whole idea of
Neville being the monster but also the hero is a defining contrast to the typical horror genre.

Citations

Carroll, Nol. "The nature of horror." The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 46.1 (1987): 51-
59.