Monday, October 25, 2010

I AM LEGEND

Please read up to page 163 of I Am Legend. Below are a few questions we'll be exploring this week. Feel free to draw from them, or to develop your own questions. You should also feel free to respond to another student's post.

Your blogs will be due on Wednesday at 11:59 pm.

Your comments on other student blogs will be due by FRIDAY at 11:59.

In addition to your blogs and comments, you also must post in one or more of the discussion forums on my blog by Friday at 11:59 pm. You do NOT have to post in all of the forums, but I will be assessing you on how well you are able to respond to the various prompts and each others' ideas. Remember that Forum C is an open forum, so if there is something you would like to discuss that hasn't been addressed by me or another student, please post there.

1) Last week we briefly discussed Arata’s claim that vampires in fiction are a sign of a troubled society riddled with anxiety about its possible decline. Given that Matheson’s novel was written in 1954, what sort of social anxieties do you think this novel reflects? Provide passages to defend your answer.

2) What do you think of Robert Neville as our “hero”? Is he a hero at all?

3) In this novel, we move from the conception of vampires as something supernatural and mystical to something biological. What is the role of science in this novel? What does this novel say about the promises, limitations, and dangers of modern technology?

4) How are these vampires different from other vampires we’ve seen and why do you think this is the case? What is Matheson’s vampire saying about the culture in which he wrote this novel?

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