Essay On Duality

The protagonist conceives his world in terms of dualities (inside/outside, black/white, human/monster), the fact that he avoids the temptation of the female vampires standing outside the house during night, is a way to understand the implicit racism of the novel. By avoiding the potential sexual encounter, he avoids the breaking between the boundaries of the dualities previously mentioned, thus preventing the mixture of blood, not only because of the bacteria, but also avoiding the mixture between races and keeping his body uncontaminated and pure. The lust he feels towards the female vampires, if we take into account the metaphor of the differentiation between white and black people, the sexual exploitation of black women carried out by white
In this new society ruled by hybrids, Neville's view of the world is not dominant and he has lost his authoritative position to determinate who is the monster and who is not. The hybrids that Neville had terrified by killing those of their kind, do not consider him as one of them. At the end of the novel, the hybrids attack his house “And the dark men dragged his lifeless body from the house. Into the night. Into the world that was theirs and no longer his.” (91) This statement reflects the racial fears and anxieties of the American society in the 1950s, it is a metaphor of the failure of segregation. Following the metaphor, the old world must stay apart and give way to a new one. Neville, who was once part of a majority, is now a minority that ends up shot. This inversion of the roles is shown by the opposition of colours, the vampires “They all stood looking up at him with their white faces” (95) and Neville “was anathema and black terror to be destroyed” (96). These two races are destroyed, what in the end survives is a hybrid of the two races. At the end of the story, Neville understand that he is the truly monster and a legend for the others: “A new terror born in death, a new superstition entering the unassailable fortress of forever. I am legend.”