Robert Neville In Richard Matheson's I Am Legend

Maybe Killing Vampire-Zombies Isn’t As Cool As It Seems
In Richard Matheson’s novel, I Am Legend, Robert Neville is portrayed as, and believes that he is, a hero. As what may be the last known, non-infected human left on the planet, Robert Neville does what he thinks needs to happen; he single-handedly kills Vampire-Zombies one by one in order to stay alive and to hopefully find other survivors. Although these actions may seem heroic; in the end, Robert Neville realized he had become the ultimate plague in the eyes of the rest of the remaining world (i.e. the living infected Vampire-Zombies). Matheson wants readers to know, even if you are acting in such a way you consider morally right, it may not agree with the rest of society’s morals. For the duration of the novel, readers become sympathetic for Neville and understand his actions for a person in such a dire situation.
Robert Neville was forced into his own anti-social lifestyle because the “Vampiris bacillus” germ had either killed or infected anyone left in the world. Neville was in a world where he had no one to talk
The remaining majority of the world now hated and feared Robert Neville. He thought he was the “good guy” after the old society collapsed, but he never knew there was a new society that was being built that made him and his morals the minority. Before he took the pills given to him by Ruth, Robert Neville finally realized that the morals he developed from his forced “anti-social” life were hurting many people even though they were one of “them”. He never stopped to think that the Vampire-Zombies were in control now and the morals he had lived by were completely different from that of the infected vampire society that would soon consume the