Neville's worldview is never challenged in a meaningful way. In comparison, the movie makes things way too easy. The world had moved beyond humans, and that wasn't even necessarily a bad thing. There was no hope of rebuilding human society, because humans were no longer the dominant species on Earth. He spent the whole book killing living, sentient creatures capable of kindness and rational thought, and dies with the understanding that the last few years of his life were spent pursuing a pointless goal. It's a far cry from the book's ending, in which Neville thinks to himself in his final moments, 'I am legend.' The book's ending is haunting not just because it ends with the hero's death, but because he dies with the realization that he was never really the hero in the first place. But because Neville hasn't known about the difference, he's been killing both types of vampires indiscriminately throughout the novel, and one of those vampires was Ruth's husband.

The former are violent and irrational, but the latter are still as smart as regular humans and have built a new society together. She knocks him out before he can look at the results and runs away, but not before leaving a note explaining that yes, she is in fact a vampire.Īs it turns out, there are two types of vampires in the novels: those who died when they were infected and turned into vampires afterward, and those who stayed alive the whole time. (In the book, the fact that she can speak isn't enough to prove she's not infected.) Their relationship is tense but then slowly turns romantic, right until Neville convinces her to let him test her blood.

There's only Ruth, a woman who shows up nearly two-thirds of the way through, and who Neville instantly suspects of being one of the vampires. In the book, however, there is no Anna or Ethan.

I am legend i am the monster