1) What creates the monsters in the novel from a scientific standpoint? What about from a superstitious standpoint? How do these two systems intersect, and what do they have to tell us about how monsters are created? 

2) What is the significance of the title? Would the meaning have changed if the book was called "I Am a Legend"? How does Robert Neville become a legend? 

3) Why does the new society in the book decide to kill Robert Neville? What does their decision to kill him reflect about their new society?
4) Robert Neville sees himself as superior to the new society's methods and motives and morals. Is he really? He also sees Ruth as a coldhearted messenger, particularly when she points out some things about himself he would rather not see. Is she really coldhearted? (Look at the final few pages of the novel). 
5) How might we connect the significance of the ending of the novel to Robert Neville's identity as a white male in the 1950s, pre-Civil Rights era?

Pairs Questions II for I Am Legend

1) Describe the vampire-zombies, looking at each and every aspect of their physicality. What do each of their attributes represent, in terms of cultural fears and desires?

2) How does Robert Neville treat women vampires, and women more generally?(This will become important in relationship to the ending of the novel).

3) What happens to the dog? What does this encounter tell us about who Robert Neville is, and what his existential situation is?

Writing Titles: Exercise

It's important to remember that your essay needs a strong title. 

There is a general formula you can follow to create solid academic paper titles, as well as some general guidelines about titles that should give you some clues as to how to craft yours.

Rule 1: Your title should essentially be your thesis statement, albeit condensed to its most essential parts. In other words, your title should give your reader a clue as to what the main purpose of your paper is.

Example:

Yours, Mine, or Ours? Perrault, the Brothers Grimm, and the Ownership of Fairy Tales

Rule 2: If you are writing about a work of literature (or art, or a film, or a scientific phenomenon, or anything really) you should include the name of that work of literature in the title, and most of the time the author as well.

Example:

Poisoned Apples and Mean Mirrors: Reconsidering the Wicked Stepmother in Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarves

Rule 3: This rule goes after Rule 2 for a reason. While it is necessary to include the thing you are focusing your paper on, you should not let that thing alone be your title. The reasons for this should be obvious: if you call your paper "Cinderella" you are basically saying that it is, in fact, Cinderella. It is not. What about Cinderella are you trying to say? The answer to that question should be your title.

Example:

Upward Mobility and the American Dream in Gary Marshall's Pretty Woman

*Remember, Pretty Woman is a Cinderella story

Rule 4: When considering how to "sum up" your paper in your title, try and think of several words or a brief phrase encapsulate the main idea of the paper. You will combine this phrase with your subject (in this case, the fairy tale and it's author).

Example: From Naive Girl to Ferocious Wolf: Little Red as Feminist Hero in Once Upon a Time

For additional support on title creation, I recommend this Wiki How, which is actually pretty solid and helpful. Just don't read the bad title suggestions in the comments.

Now, rewrite the title for your first or second essay, using this formula.

Design a Vampire-Zombie for Today

In order to practice constructing imaginative and critically designed monsters that embody specific cultural fears and desires, we are going to design a vampire/zombie for today.

This exercise is intended to help us work on connecting specific cultural fears and desires to a physical, monstrous embodiment. Creativity with physicality, environment, goals, and prey is the goal here. We don't want to slip into cliches or boring metaphors, but rather to think about how we can make our vampire/zombie truly a unique representation of the present moment.

Something we know about our vampire/zombie:

It is a Whittier College student, so we will want to consider the unique stresses, anxieties, and desires of Whittier College students.

Categories to design:

-Cultural fears/desires it represents

-Prey

-Environment (where it lives and what it's environment looks like, when it wakes and sleeps, etc.)

-Physicality (face, body, skills)

-Attitude/goals

Each of these should uniquely demonstrate the cultural fears/desires the student vampire/zombie represents.

Final Project Proposal

For you final project proposal, which is due next Thursday for workshop, you must write a two page proposal that answers the following questions. Make sure to use complete sentences, and to present your proposal in a clean, neat manner. This should not be rushed through or you will receive a zero.

Please remember that you are choosing one of the following options (fairy tale or monster); you should not answer both prompts.

Make sure to print and bring two copies!

Fairy Tale Project Proposal

What is the fairy tale you will re-write? State its primary title or titles. EX. Beauty and the Beast

What is the earliest iteration of this fairy tale? (Culture, time, place) EX. The Story of Grandmother, oral folk tale, medieval Europe

What is the essential tale type to the story? Remember, the tale type is the basic plot structure that remains the same in most re-tellings.

What changes do you plan to make to the fairy tale, to update it for today? Or, alternately, which cultural problems or issues do you plan to apply to the tale type? Why do they fit the tale type?

What inspired you in particular to write a story that deals with these cultural issues? Where did you "find" them? (i.e. news article, library research, etc). *Please note that you must not "guess" at what the issues are; they must reflect some real world cultural problem, condition, or set of beliefs held by a group of people.

Where will your story be set, and how will the setting reflect these cultural issues?

What will happen in your story (the plot), in order to best reflect these cultural issues while staying true to the tale type?

Which other aspects of the tale type do you see connecting to your story? What is their relationship?

Ex. Famine in Hansel and Gretel will connect to the high cost of living in NYC, absent parents will be overworked just as the parents in the older version were starved so could not care for their children, the witch who lures the children will be an online catfisher.

What changes will you make to the characters to best reflect these updated cultural values or issues?

Include as well a bibliography with three outside sources you plan to use for your analytical essay. These must be library-based research about either the fairy tale itself, or the cultural values/problems your fairy tale analyzes.

Monster Project Proposal

What cultural fears and desires does your monster represent? These should be as specific as possible, and you must connect them to a particular time and place. The "problem" that your monster reflects should be as specific as student loan debt in the US or pollution in the rivers of the Midwest; it should not be something vague and unrefined like "fear of the unknown" or "fear of death." Look for a real world problem--news articles are a good place to start--that is happening in our world today and use that as a jumping off point.

What is the time and place your monster represents? This should be as specific as Whittier, CA in 2018. (Please note your time must be contemporary).

How does your monster's physical body represent the cultural fears/desires? Be as specific as possible, and discuss multiple elements of its body.

How does the monster's powers (skills) represent the cultural fears/desires?

How does the monster's habitat (home) represent the cultural fears/desires?

What inspired you to focus on these cultural fears and desires? Where did you "find" them? (i.e. news article, library research, etc). *Please note that you must not "guess" at what the cultural fears and desires are; they must reflect some real world cultural problem or condition such as the imminent threat of a twitter-induced nuclear war, or the death of the polar bears due to the arctic ice melting.

What form will your creative component take? How does this form best reflect the cultural fears and desires your monster embodies?

Were you inspired by any other monsters when creating yours? If so, which ones and why?

Include as well an annotated bibliography with three outside sources you plan to use for your analytical essay. These must be library-based research about the cultural fears/desires your monster represents. Discuss how you will utilize each in your paper.

Pairs Questions

1) This novel is considered to be a precursor to many zombie films. What is zombie like about the monsters?  

What aspects of human nature might zombies represent more generally? 

2) What other monsters have we encountered that remind you of these vampire/zombies?

3) How might our understanding of the monsters shift if the POV of the novel was not Neville's?

4) What kind of person is Robert Neville? How does his personality and identity possibly affect our view of the monsters in the novel?

 

5) What is the relationship between beliefs/perception and monsters?  Please re-read page 17 and then respond.

 

“Fear is probably the key word in Matheson’s work, and the defining affective feature of horror fiction. It is a striking fact of human anxiety that the things we fear are non-randomly distributed: humans acquire fear not just of any old thing, but of things dangerous in our evolutionary past. That does not mean that we are born pre-programmed with a completely inflexible fear system. Like so many other human capacities (such as language), the innate fear system depends on interaction with the environment for its development and optimal functioning."

Notes Allowance

For your in-class essay, you may have one page of notes, double-sided. These notes may be quotations from the book Frankenstein, and brief ideas, may not consist of elaborate ideas or analysis or arguments. You may type or hand write them, and you will turn them in with your essay. Please note that you may not share notes or use another person's notes.You will also not be allowed to use your book during the exam.

What should you cull quotes on?

I recommend culling quotes on the female companion for the monster. That is the only clue I can give you, but it's a big one!

Good luck.