The Influence of I Am Legend on Stephen King´S Cell Bachelor’S Diploma Thesis

Masaryk University Faculty of Arts

Department of English and American Studies

English Language and Literature

Anna Hamzová

The Influence of I Am Legend on Stephen King´s Cell Bachelor’s Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: doc. Michael Matthew Kaylor, PhD.

2016

I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

…………………………………………….. Author’s signature

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank my supervisor, Dr. Kaylor, for his support and immense understanding. This thesis would never have existed without his precious advice. I would also like to thank my mother, who introduced me to the world of literature and Stephen King’s work as well, and who has always had my back. And finally, I would like to thank my partner, who has the strongest nerves and an infinite patience.

Table of Contents

Introduction ...... 5

Chapter 1 – The Authors ...... 8

1.1. Richard Matheson ...... 8

1.2. Stephen King ...... 10

Chapter 2 – Vampire or Zombie? What is the difference? ...... 14

2.1. Vampiric Stereotypes ...... 14

2.2. The Zombie Evolution ...... 17

2.3. Vampires as Portrayed by Matheson ...... 20

2.4. Zombies as Portrayed by King ...... 25

2.5. The Development of the Evil Characters...... 30

Chapter 3 – Analysis of the Main Characters...... 36

Chapter 4 – Narrative Methods ...... 40

Conclusion ...... 44

Works Cited ...... 46

Résumé in English ...... 47

Résumé in Czech ...... 48 Introduction

Stephen King is known for being one of the most prolific writers of the present day. He has published a great number of novels, short stories, and even few screenplays. His career seems to be very much similar to the one of

Richard Matheson. He was also a writer, and wrote both – books and screenplays. Matheson was born earlier than King, and it seems that it was predestined for him to be King’s inspiration.

They both said that their ideas for books come from everyday situations.

As Paul Simpson states in his book A Brief Guide to Stephen King, Stephen King got the idea to write Cell outside of a New York hotel when he saw a woman who was talking on her cell phone, and King asked the magical question –

What-if? In this case, the What-if was: “What if she got a message over the cell phone that she couldn’t resist, and she had to kill people until somebody killed her?” (Simpson 133).

Similarly, Richard Matheson asked the same question, when he got the idea for his novel I Am Legend while watching the 1931 version of Dracula: “If one vampire is scary, what if the whole world is full of vampires?” (TVLEGENDS

7:50)

It took many years before Matheson turned the idea into a book, but when it happened, it was a pivotal moment for the horror genre and literature in general. When Richard Matheson died in 2013, Stephen King wrote on his official website: “Without his I Am Legend, there would have been no Night of the Living Dead; without Night of the Living Dead, there would have been no

Walking Dead, 28 Days Later, or World War Z.”

It is clear that Richard Matheson’s work has influenced many – probably most – writers of horror and science fiction since 1950s. The first moment

Stephen King felt Matheson’s influence was probably in 1961, when King was just a boy. As described in King’s On Writing, young Stephen and his friend

Chris Chesley went to see one of the “Poepictures”, as they called the films based on Edgar Allan Poe’s stories:

( . . . ) [T]he one that affected Chris and me the most deeply

was The Pit and the Pendulum. Written by Richard Matheson and

filmed in both widescreen and Technicolor ( . . . ). It might have

been the last really great studio horror picture before George

Romero’s ( . . . ) The Night of the Living Dead came along and

changed everything forever ( . . . ). (King 41-2)

And it was the very movie, written by his future influence Richard Matheson, that gave him the first idea that he could write something himself.

As Stephen King probably realized many years later, Matheson really did become his inspiration, which, for that matter, was confirmed by himself by stating that exactly in the preface of I Am Legend, and also this in the

“Afterword” to the same book: “When people talk about genre, I guess they mention my name first, but without Richard Matheson, I wouldn’t be around.

He is much my father as Bessie Smith was Elvis Presley’s mother” (162).

However, to narrow the focus of my research just a little bit more, there is one strong connection in particular between King and Matheson – King’s Cell is dedicated to him. Therefore, in this thesis I will concentrate purely on Stephen

King’s Cell and how it was influenced by Matheson’s I Am Legend.

Firstly, the thesis focuses on the lives of the two authors, trying to find any connections or similarities that could be clues to their intertwining. The first chapter also offers few of the King’s insights on Matheson’s writing, which will be useful later in the thesis.

Secondly, the thesis examines the concept of the monsters occurring in both books, the vampires and zombies, respectively. At first, the conventional – or mainstream – perception of both types of the creatures is evaluated, and then it is compared to the particular type of the monster in each book. That is, the conventional vampires are compared to Matheson’s vampires, and conventional zombies are compared to King’s zombies. Also, I will try to explain the reasons for any similarities between King’s zombies and Matheson’s vampires that do not correspond to the usual perception.

In third chapter I will focus on the main characters from both books. I will try to examine their motivation and what social aspects effected their behaviour and therefore their success or failure at the end of the book.

The last chapter will deal with the different narrative approaches used by both authors.

Chapter 1 – The Authors

1.1. Richard Matheson

Richard Burton Matheson was born on 20 February 1926 in Allendale, New

Jersey. He was one of the most influential writers and screenwriters of the middle of the 20th century. As Stephen King says about him in the “Afterword” to I Am Legend, “( . . . ) horror must constantly regenerate and renew itself or die. In the early 1950s, when ( . . . ) the [horror] genre was languishing in the horse attitudes, Richard Matheson came like a bolt of pure ozone lightning”

(161).

In an interview with the Archive of American Television, Matheson says that as a young child, he enjoyed drawing small cartoon stories. He was taught by his mother how to play the piano and when he was older, he started to write his own music. He was also “an avid reader” and his mother took him to the library very often. His talent of storytelling became evident very soon, because at the age of 9, he already had published few of his stories and poems in The

Brooklyn Eagle (TVLEGENDS 4:00).

Although Matheson’s name does not have that famous, recognizable “ring” as Stephen King’s name for many people, his work is firmly embedded into the

American literary and television culture. He not only inspired many of the contemporary blockbusters, such as the 2007 I Am Legend film starring Will

Smith, based on the novel of the same name, or the 2009 The Box starring

Cameron Diaz, based on his short story “Button, Button”, originally published in the Playboy magazine in 1970. This short story also inspired an episode of the television series The Twilight Zone, for which Matheson wrote many other

8 episodes. Also, he turned his short story “Duel” into a screenplay for a young director, Steven Spielberg. It was one of the first feature films Spielberg has ever directed, and its success opened the door for him to the world of professional cinematography (TVLEGENDS).

Movies were always Matheson’s great inspiration, especially bad movies, as he says in the interview. When he was watching a good movie, his brain and attention was absorbed into the movie and “just went along with it”. But when watching a bad movie, he would get distracted - something in the picture would make “his mind drift off to a different area”. Exactly this had happened during the time he watched the 1931 Dracula, although he stresses that the movie was not that bad, and I Am Legend was born (TVLEGENDS 7:08).

Matheson’s parents got divorced when he was only 8 years old and he grew up only with his mother and siblings. His mother influenced him very much, she guided him towards music and literature. As a teenager, he managed to read a vast selection of novels by Kenneth Roberts, who was a writer of a historical fiction (TVLEGENDS 5:00). Matheson graduated from

Brooklyn Technical High School, which he says was a “mistake” to go to in the first place, because he ended doing things he knew he had never wanted to do

(TVLEGENDS 5:50). He then joined the U. S. Army and served in Germany during the World War II. Because he went to the technical high school, he joined up an “army specialized training programme to become an engineer.”

However, the programme was ended halfway through and Matheson was assigned to the infantry. The novel The Beardless Warrior was later written based on his battle experience. The war was a very painful experience, as he

9 says, it constantly rained and it was cold. After he returned, and got his degree in journalism, he moved to the warm California (TVLEGENDS 13:23).

He then started to work on his writing career, while also having a job at the Douglas Aircraft Company in Santa Monica. His stories were published magazines, for instance in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, or in

Playboy, but that had not given him the income he needed to only live from the writing. In 1954 he wrote I Am Legend, which became his first published novel.

However, it was the 1956 novel The Shrinking Man, which allowed him to transfer his writing from a hobby to a career. It was so popular, that it was made into a movie a year later (The Incredible Shrinking Man), and Matheson was the one who adapted the script for the movie.

After this huge success, he wrote many more novels and even more short stories, many of which were adapted to a movie. It is undeniable that his legacy is omnipresent in this industry, even though not always visible.

1.2. Stephen King

Stephen Edwin King was born on 21 September 1947 in Portland, Maine.

He is one of the most famous contemporary writers, and who is also commercially successful.

He was the second son of his parents, his older brother David was adopted. The father left the family when Stephen was only 2 years old. Their mother dedicated her life to her children, making sure “that they never went to bed hungry” (Simpson 5). This is similar to what happened to Matheson, as his family was also left by his father at a very young age. This might suggest, that

10 the fact that they were both heavily influenced and encouraged by their mothers also influenced their way they took in life. When both writers were young, women were usually the gentle and delicate ones. This might strengthen both writer’s creativity and artistic skills in general, because those were the skills usually associated with women, after all.

In his book On Writing, which is a partial autobiography, King states that his earliest memory comes from the age of around 3, and it is about him imagining to be someone else (4-5). This suggests, that ever since he was a child, he was a very creative individual with strong imaginative abilities. These abilities were later boosted even more; during the year, which should have been King’s first grade at school, he suffered from a lengthy series of illnesses and subsequently missed most of the school because of that. As he describes himself: “Most of that year I spent either in bed or house-bound. I read my way through approximately six tons of comic books. ( . . . ) At some point I began to write my own stories. Imitation preceded creation ( . . . )” (On Writing 16).

Nevertheless, thanks to his mother, King was encouraged to invent his own stories, which brought to him a very new “immense feeling of possibility [sic] at the idea” (On Writing 17). He then made up four original stories about Mr

Rabbit Trick and successfully sold it - to his mother – for a quarter apiece (On

Writing 18-19).

King often drew the inspiration from the everyday life. His family moved a lot when he was younger, and when they lived in Connecticut, his brother and he discovered “a huge tangled wilderness area with a junkyard on the far side and a train track running through the middle” (On Writing 19). They called the

11 place “the jungle”, and he used it as a basis for many places about which he wrote later, for example the Barrens in It (On Writing 20). Finally, in 1965, his first original story was published under a name “In a Half-World of Terror” in a horror fanzine Comics Review, although King’s original title was “I Was a Teen-

Age Grave-robber”, about which he personally thinks is much better than the other name (On Writing 27). Still, this was the first published story, not the first story he was paid for. The first paid published story, as is stated in his biography section on his official website, was “The Glass Floor”, which came out in Starling Mystery Stories magazine in 1967. He had trouble finding a job after finishing school, and so “he continued to sell stories to men's magazines. Many of these were later gathered into the Night Shift collection or appeared in other anthologies”.

When he found a job as a high school teacher in Hampden, Maine in

1971, he had already been working on Carrie, which would become his first sold and published novel. His experience as a teacher might help him in writing

Carrie, because the novel deals with a teenage girl who possesses psychic abilities. He had an insight into a behaviour of the children of that age, which helped him to the convincing description of the characters in the novel (On

Writing 74). Carrie was published in 1974 and allowed King to quit teaching and pursue his full-time writing career.

As was stated in the Introduction to this thesis, Stephen King, just as

Richard Matheson, often gets the idea for a book from everyday situations and asking the What-if question subsequently. King himself gives a few examples of when this happened, specifically for ‘Salem’s Lot¸ Desperation, Dolores

Claiborne, and Cujo. For instance, the What-if question behind ‘Salem’s Lot was

“What if vampires invaded a small New England village?” (On Writing 196).

Chapter 2 – Vampire or Zombie? What is the difference?

In this chapter, I want to research the standard concept of vampires and zombies. Both creatures are deeply rooted in contemporary culture, and one might say that they are not much different from each other. However, there are few distinctive elements that are connected only with one or the other, and I would like to highlight those. Then, in each of the subchapters, I will examine the concrete type of monster from the description given in the respective book, and compare the author’s approach to the standardized one.

2.1. Vampiric Stereotypes

Vampires have become very popular both in literature and television. The full definition of a “vampire” as listed in the Merriam-Webster dictionary is: “the reanimated body of a dead person believed to come from the grave at night and suck the blood of persons asleep.” The Vampires were always associated with the horror and gothic genres, but its popularity has been growing in the last years. From the first “proper” vampire, Count Dracula in the novel of the same name by Bram Stoker (1897), it has changed so much in some cases, that Mr. Stoker might be appalled. As a matter of fact, its popularity has grown so immensely, that the poor creature can be found as a transformed form of a new “domesticated” vampire, for instance in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight book series. Some might even argue if those “monsters” are still worthy of calling themselves vampires. Therefore, it is sometimes hard to categorize such a popular monster, because the more writers have borrowed its concept into their

14 work, the more they change the monster’s personality and abilities according to their needs.

Still, it might be possible to find a few staple characteristics of a vampire.

Most of the horror writers still base their monsters on Bram Stoker’s Dracula. In fact, Matheson’s main character Robert Neville has been also consulting this book to find advice on how to fight the vampires.

The biggest strength of a vampire, as Dr. Van Helsing says and Neville confirms, is that nobody really believes in them: “Our toil must be in silence, and our efforts all in secret; for in this enlightened age, when men believe not even what they see, the doubting of wise men would be his greatest strength.”

Neville also adds from his own experience, that “[h]is father had died denying the vampire violently to the last” (Matheson 15).

Other facts borrowed from Dracula are as follows: they are immortal –

“The vampire ( . . . ) cannot die by mere passing of the time”. They feed on

“the blood of the living” but also “he cannot flourish without this diet”.

Therefore, one knows what to be afraid of, that is being sucked dry, but also, one knows that when a vampire does not feed for a longer time, he might grow weaker. Other ways of discovering a vampire are that a vampire “throws no shadow” and “make[s] in the mirror no reflect”. They can also be very pale, and have smaller or larger fangs. As far as his abilities are concerned, he is very strong and can transform himself into animals. This part depends on the writer, but in Dracula, it is possible to find a vampire transformed into a wolf, a bat, or even a different person. Sometimes vampires can possess psychic powers such as telepathy, telekinesis (moving objects without touching them), or pyrokinesis

(ability to create and control fire), and almost all vampires are described as very smart or cunning. He can see very well in the dark, which is very useful, because “[h]is power ceases, as does that of all evil things, at the coming of the day”. Which brings this small list to the disadvantages of being a vampire.

His movement capabilities are quite limited, because he cannot enter any household unless someone who is in charge in the household invites him in.

However, he can – and would - trick people into inviting him, because after the invitation is uttered, the vampire can come and go as he pleases. He can change into animals only when he is in his place of rest, otherwise “he can only change himself at noon or at exact sunrise or sunset.” Some vampires can find ways of protecting themselves against the sunlight, for example wear protective jewellery or drink a special potion. In Dracula, the Count even grows stronger precisely at noon. A vampire has also a problem with running water, which he can cross only when the water is in a slack state. And of course, probably the most famous weaknesses of all, the garlic makes his powers disappear.

Because the vampire is a creature of the night, and thus a creature of evil, sacred objects affect him as well. The degree of influence of such things again depends on the writer’s consideration, Bram Stoker decided, that crucifix does not deprive the vampire of his powers, but does not allow him to approach the possessor.

The ways of killing a vampire irretrievably are not many. The first is to run a stake through him, the second is to cut off his head, third is to drown the vampire, the next is to set him on fire (which probably will not be possible if the

16 vampire masters pyrokinesis), and the last is to shoot him with a silver bullet.

Any contact with silver usually causes the vampire’s skin to burn.

There are many other attributes connected with vampires, but they are usually described differently by various authors and therefore they will not be mentioned in this thesis.

2.2. The Zombie Evolution

There are two, even though very similar, definitions of a “zombie” in the

Merriam-Webster dictionary: “a dead person who is able to move because of magic according to some religions and in stories, movies, etc.” and “a will-less and speechless human in the West Indies capable only of automatic movement who is held to have died and been supernaturally reanimated”.

These definitions suggest, that zombie does not possess a will of its own, but usually acts on the commands of its master. Up to this point all definitions and portrayals are mostly in agreement, but the creation of a zombie is where the opinions start to diverge. According to Brad Steiger’s Real Zombies, the

Living Dead, and Creatures of the Apocalypse, the original zombies come from

Voodoo rituals: “Originating in West Africa as the worship of the python deity,

Voodoo was brought to Haiti and the southern United States, particularly the

New Orleans area” (6) The theory is, that the master – a witch or a sorcerer, usually – performs an act of necromancy, and revives a dead body. The dead body, or a zombie, then serves its master as a slave, who does not have any will of its own. Furthermore, it seems that there is more than one type of zombie, “the undead and those who died of violence” and the third type, a

17 zombie “of a woman who died a virgin.” It is then important for the master to bite off a tip of the zombie’s tongue (or a whole tongue, depending on beliefs).

The person who possesses the tongue is the one person that the zombie obeys.

The safest way is therefore to swallow the tongue, the master will not have to worry about losing it. The master can also order the zombie to obey a different person, but the person will never be its true master. So, to sum this up – the traditional, original zombies are considered to be dead bodies without a soul or their will and serve only as slaves to their masters.

This idea has slightly changed since Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was published. It is basically also a zombie novel – a scientist revives a dead (or many dead people sewn into one) person. Then, H. P. Lovecraft got inspired by this story and wrote zombie-themed short stories (“Cool Air”, “In the Vault”, or

“Herbert West-Reanimator”). The last mentioned is considered one of the first stories, where zombies are scientifically reanimated and also characterized as violent creatures. The biggest change in the perception of zombies, however, came in the 1950s, when the zombie comic books started to be issued. They were full of vengeful undead in a Lovecraftian tradition and later, along with

Matheson’s I Am Legend, inspired George A. Romero to direct his 1968 movie

Night of the Living Dead, which changed the concept of zombies completely.

Zombies rise from their graves as bloodthirsty monsters, and their only purpose is to either kill all the people in the world or infect them with the “zombie disease” so that they become one of them. Since then, zombies, like vampires, have gained on their popularity. They have started to appear in all of the cultural genres from literature, through music, to social events.

Many books have been written and movies filmed in the nature of the zombie genre. The plot is usually quite simple – one person or a group of people find themselves in a strange situation or place – for instance, in a dark cellar or a cemetery at night. They are then attacked by monsters, who kill some of the people. Then the people suffer from a shock and disbelief – monsters are not real, are they? When they reconcile themselves with the fact that zombies are real, there are two options of how the story can continue. The first ending is a happy one – people find ways to fight zombies, kill every single one of them and survive. The second is also a happy one, for the zombies – they manage to wipe out all the people and declare the rule over the whole world. Especially popular has become the theory of zombies being not just dead reanimated bodies, but infected living people. The perfect example of this is the

2013 movie World War Z, based on the novel of the same title by Max Brooks.

It is an apocalyptic film about zombie infection that outbreaks around the world. Zombies can infect anyone by biting them. The infected person becomes one of them within seconds. The person does not have to be dead prior to becoming a zombie, as was the tradition before. Because it is caused by an infection, it might be curable and the main characters try to fight it, which they succeed in the end.

As was said, zombies have become really popular, not only in film or literature, but also in music. Michael Jackson’s music video Thriller is full of dancing zombies and the zombie dance is now deeply rooted in the Western cultures. Apart from this, many people are very fond of zombies and they

19 participate in an organized gatherings known as “Zombie walks”, where they dress up in zombie costumes and make-up.

2.3. Vampires as Portrayed by Matheson

In this subchapter I am going to describe the vampires that appear in

Matheson’s novel I Am Legend and then compare them to the standardized vampires described in subchapter 2.1. Matheson calls the creatures in his novel vampires (pp. 6) and therefore, even if they have features usually connected to other type of monsters, the examination’s approach will not change.

The first feature that is mentioned in the novel is that Robert Neville, the main character, has to be in his house by nightfall, which is the “time of their arrival” (Matheson 1). This suggests that the novel will follow the classical vampire as the reader is already familiar with. The vampires would be away during the day and come out during the night.

Neville would put a mirror on the front door, however, this item is not very helpful. Vampires in this book are also very clever, just as their Gothic ancestors. They throw rocks at the house until the mirror breaks down. What

Neville finds more useful than mirrors, is garlic: “Garlic always worked”

(Matheson 2). Neville lists basic knowledge of vampire’s weaknesses: “( . . . ) their staying inside, their avoidance of garlic, their death by stake, their reputed fear of crosses, their supposed dread of mirrors” (Matheson 16), but immediately he clarifies the real weaknesses that he was able to confirm:

According to legend, they were invisible in mirrors, but he knew

that was untrue. As untrue as the belief that they transformed

themselves into bats. That was a superstition that logic plus

observation had easily disposed of. It was equally foolish to

believe that they could transform themselves into wolves. Without

a doubt there were vampire dogs; he had seen and heard them

outside his house at night. But they were only dogs. (Matheson

16)

Another feature that Matheson used, but changed a little is the attractive look most vampires traditionally possess. They are said to be pale and fanged.

However, vampires are nowhere in the book described as beautiful or charming. However, the main character points out, that the female vampires that are outside his house every night, try to seduce him so that he comes out of the house. When the women outside noticed he was watching them from inside, they started “striking vile postures in order to entice him out of the house” (Matheson 6). Also, he describes their behaviour as “posing like lewd puppets in the night on the possibility that he’d see them and decide to come out” (Matheson 7), and also

( . . . ) their dresses open or taken off, their flesh waiting for his

touch, their lips waiting for-

My blood, my blood! (Matheson 21)

The reason why Matheson described the female vampires as lustful and obscene may result from the development of female behaviour in the history.

While the women in the 19th century were considered virtuous and extremely well-mannered, the women of the 20th century were different – their clothing as well as their behaviour has become more liberal. In Dracula, the female

21 vampires are described as “young women, ladies by their dress and manner”, exceptionally beautiful, with “brilliant white teeth”, which are shining in the contrast “against the ruby of their voluptuous lips”. Their effect on a person is described as a feeling of “a wicked, burning desire that they would kiss me with those red lips”, and their behaviour described merely as “coquettish”. There is no description of naked bodies, who would “strike vile postures”. At that time, sexual topics were much more a taboo subject than in the Matheson’s time. As the literature evolves, writers must adapt their writing style to that. If Matheson wrote about the vampires the same way as Stoker did, the book would have not been believable. The same rule applies to the description of female vampires. Stoker’s maximum is to describe their lips and their manners.

Matheson just takes this pattern and adjusts it to the modern writing.

This leads to another aspect of the research – what exactly are the vampires who appear in I Am Legend? In the 19th century the science was still in its infancy and everything out of the ordinary was labelled as supernatural or magic. In the modern times, it is only natural to try to explain anything untypical with the use of science. In I Am Legend, the thing that caused the outbreak of vampires is described as “plague”. Robert Neville starts to observe the signs of what might be hurting the vampires or causing them to die. For a long time after the plague outbreak, he is just trying to survive – kill the vampires with stakes during the day when they are sleeping, get enough food and get through the night. One thing he notices is that there are two types of vampires – those who rise from the dead as vampires and those who are alive but infected by the plague that turned them into vampires. Both types of

22 vampires sleep during the day in a “coma”. However, one day when he goes to visit his dead wife’s grave in a crypt, he finds a dead vampire inside, not just sleeping during the day, but really dead. This was the first time he actually made the connection: “Something had killed the vampire; something brutally effective. ( . . . ) Of course – the daylight!” (Matheson 27). To confirm this idea, he goes to a house in a residential section and drags the first vampire he finds outside. The vampire dies after a moment of the sun exposure and “already her flesh [is] growing cold” (Matheson 29).

From flashbacks in the book the reader can learn what actually happened to the world. It is thought that the pandemic was caused by war and then spread by sand storms and mosquitoes. In fact, the pandemic was caused by a germ, a bacillus that he started to call the “vampiris bacillus” (Matheson 77).

Neville is immune to the disease, as he says to Ruth, the person he meets later in the book:

( . . . ) while I was stationed in Panama during the war I was

bitten by a vampire bat. And, though I can’t prove it, my theory is

that the bat had previously encountered a true vampire and

acquired the vampiris germ. The germ caused the bat to seek

human rather than animal blood. But, by the time the germ had

passed into my system, it had been weakened in some way by the

bat’s system. It made me terribly ill, of course, but it didn’t kill me,

and as a result, my body built up an immunity to it. (Matheson

132-3)

Furthermore, he wonders why vampires are killed even when he does not stake them straight in the heart. He finds out that the bacillus creates a special environment in the vampire’s blood. When the germ lives inside the vampire, “it is ( . . . ) anaerobic and sets up a symbiosis with the system.” But when the stake goes through vampire’s body, and therefore lets the air inside of the body, the germ reacts to the change: “The germ becomes aerobic and, instead of being symbiotic, it becomes virulently parasitic. ( . . . ) It eats the host”

(Matheson 133-4). Still, there is a difference between killing a living vampire and a dead vampire. The living vampire still has blood circulation, and therefore, even if the germ becomes parasitic, the vampire usually sooner dies of haemorrhage. The dead vampire does not have any blood circulation, the blood the vampire drinks is consumed by the germ who then transforms the blood into vampire’s energy. Therefore, when the hole is made into a vampire’s body, there is no blood to be spilled, and the body simply dissolves:

( . . . ) when he drove in the stake, the dissolution was ( . . . )

sudden. ( . . . ) he saw on the bedspread what looked like a row

of salt and pepper mixed; just about as long as the woman had

been. It was the first time he’s ever seen such a thing. (Matheson

56)

Vampires have significantly changed their nature over the past two hundred years. Earlier they were considered supernatural, dark, diabolic beings, who were dangerous, but lived in the darkness and secrecy. They did not reveal their true nature to anyone except their own kind and did not incorporate themselves into people’s society, always lived on its edge. In the modern,

24 contemporary times, vampires are portrayed differently. The twentieth century was the century of science and people inclined towards the scientific approach when it came to explaining unnatural matters. The same pattern is followed by

Matheson in his novel I Am Legend. His main character fights the vampires with the help of the clever books and his brain. Also, the modern vampires no longer hide from people because they outnumber them. They even force the people to hide from them and try to take over the world. One thing stayed similar, and that is the presence of a “leader villain”. In Dracula there is Count Dracula, in I

Am Legend, there is Robert Neville’s former colleague from work, Ben Cortman.

Other evil characters stay usually nameless, unless they would serve another purpose. An example of such character is Ruth, the woman Neville meets at the end of the book. Her purpose in the book is to spy on Neville on behalf of the vampire society. The reason why Matheson chose this scientific approach towards his writing might originate from the fact that he was technically educated. He graduated from Brooklyn Technical High School, when he was close to modern technologies and science. If he had studied journalism or arts from the beginning, the resulting book might have looked completely different.

2.4. Zombies as Portrayed by King

In his novel Cell, Stephen King deals with similar issue just as Richard

Matheson in his I Am Legend. However, the evil characters are not vampires, but zombies. The term zombie is almost nowhere used in the book, it is first mentioned in the first third of the book: “`Christ, it’s zombie heaven,’ Tom said”

(King 131). Actually, there are only two other occurrences of the word

“zombie”. Otherwise, the creatures in Cell are called the “phone-crazies” or simply “phoners”. Still, the scarce but present term “zombie” might be just as purposeful as many other things in King’s work. He might have written the term for the readers to perceive the creatures just as he wanted, that is “zombie- like”, but not completely.

The name “phoners” is derived from the cause of the apocalypse, which is a mobile phone signal, or The Pulse, as it is called in the book’s first sentence

(King 3). This corresponds with one of the basic concepts of zombie that their existence is caused by some other power, and it is infectious. Just as Matheson changed and modernized his vampires, King does the same with the phoners.

Their infection and its source is very much relatable to the modern age, where almost everyone owns a piece of technology. So, instead of creating the zombies from potions, herbs or magic, he creates them by wiping people’s brains with phone signal: “Everyone who heard it . . . [sic] they got their hard drives wiped” (King 215). The brain is called the human hard drive, where everything is stored. Many of the events or situations that come up in the book are compared to computers. When everything people have learned – their manners, their beliefs – are wiped out, it is believed by many philosophers, that only the core necessary for survival is contained, a “single line of written code which cannot be stripped” (King 217). And as one of the main characters,

Charles Ardai says,

[o]ur core is madness. The prime directive is murder. What

Darwin was too polite to say, my friends, is that we came to rule

the earth not because we were the smartest, or even the

meanest, but because we have always been the craziest, most

murderous motherfuckers in the jungle. And that is what the Pulse

exposed ( . . . ). (King 217)

As it later turns out, their brains were wiped out, but only to be rebooted again.

Also, the important fact is that the phoners are not dead, revived people, which is common with normal zombies. The phoners are created from normal living people, and they can also be killed as any other living being.

To describe the phoners and compare them to the traditional zombies, it is necessary to go back to the first day of the apocalypse. Clayton Riddell, the main character of the novel, is on a business trip in Boston, when the apocalypse starts. He is standing on a street, when suddenly, he hears screams of what he thinks at first is joy, but very soon finds out they are screams of horror. He witnesses a woman in a suit and a girl with a pixie haircut, who make a telephone call, all of them standing in a line for ice-cream. After the woman makes her call, she tries to attack an ice-cream seller. The girl, also after she makes her call, attacks the woman, and bites the woman’s neck:

“There was an enormous jet of blood. The pixie-girl stuck her face in it, appeared to bathe in it, perhaps even drank from it (Clay was almost sure she did), then shook Power Suit Woman back and forth like a doll” (King 10-11).

Similar incidents happen for the rest of the day – people screaming, running, attacking each other. Everyone gets crazy after using their cell phones.

The woman-in-suit’s look also changed, as Clay noticed, after she made the call: “The closed-off, well-bred, out-in-public look on her face ( . . . ) had been replaced by a convulsive snarl that shrank her eyes to slits and exposed both

27 sets of teeth. Her upper lip had turned completely inside out ( . . . )” (King 9).

Other features of the new phoners include shouting and screaming inarticulate sounds, such as “Rast!” (9), “Gluh!” (15), or more sophisticated “Eeelah- eyelaha-babbalah naz! A-babbalah why? A-bunnaloo coy? Kazzalah! Kazzalah-

CAN! Fie! SHY-fie!” (24) and “Blet ky-yam doe-ram kazzalah ababbalah!” (26).

This suggests that their intelligence has dropped to a zero for real. Another confirmation that the fresh phoners are really silly is the situation where one of them runs from a street directly in front of Clay and his new companion, Tom

McCourt, but does not notice them at all (King 39).

All of these incidents prove that King in fact based this opening scene on the usual zombie apocalypses, although he made one important change. The zombies attacked everything and everyone, normal people, other zombies, animals. This is seen very rarely in other zombie-themed pieces of work, where the zombies usually work in a team and attack only the normal people, not each other. What King managed to do was a scene of a complete chaos. And he might be as well inspired by I Am Legend. Although the vampires do not attack each other in this crazy way, they have no problem with eating one of their kind when the opportunity arises or they just need to feed. When Neville does a simple experiment on one vampire woman with a cross, he decides to get rid of her afterwards: “( . . . ) he threw her body out the front door and slammed it again in their faces. Then he stood there against the door breathing heavily. Faintly he heard through the soundproofing the sound of them fighting like jackals for the spoils” (Matheson 51).

Other signs of a phoner are ragged clothes and all kinds of injuries:

The woman in the pants suit had been wearing a green blouse

that now hung in tatters, revealing the cups of a pale green bra

beneath. The elderly man was limping badly, throwing his elbows

out in a kind of buck-and-wing with each step to keep his balance.

His scrawny left leg was caked with dried blood, and that foot was

missing its running shoe. (King 125)

The next day after the chaos started Clay and his friends watched the zombies in Tom’s garden from the house. Clay realized that the zombies are no longer as aggressive as the preceding day, but they became smarter – one phoner uses as a tool a wheelbarrow in the garden to break open a pumpkin to eat it.

Also, he tricks another phoner man into coming near him, and breaks the man’s neck (King 127). The development of their behaviour will be discussed further in the thesis.

One attribute that has probably never been portrayed in any work is the zombies’ sleeping habits. In Cell, zombies disappear for the night – they hide and “restart” their “hard drives”. This causes that the main characters are forced to switch to a night life. Such thing is significantly different from other zombie-themed movies or novels, because in none of them has their daily regime been discussed. This is one of the instances, where King drew inspiration from Matheson’s novel, only proceeding the other way around.

Matheson’s vampires sleep during the day, King’s zombies sleep during the night. Both approaches allow the main characters to act in the meantime. As

Clay thinks one night: “( . . . ) this is our time now. ( . . . ) The phone crazies

29 own the days; when the stars come out, that’s us. We’re like vampires. We’ve been banished to the night [sic]” (King 169).

Another similarity with Matheson’s novel, but not with the zombie genre, is the presence of the main villain, the Raggedy Man. He, as Ben Cortman in I

Am Legend, speaks for the phoners and seems to be smarter than the rest of them. He is always the one representing the phoners and the first one that develops a new skill.

2.5. The Development of the Evil Characters

Both of the monsters, vampires and zombies, are portrayed in some way which has just been described in the previous parts of this thesis. But the way they are described in the beginning of the novels does not mean they stay like this the whole story. In fact, they do not. Both undergo a series of important changes.

Matheson’s vampires are portrayed as non-organized groups that sleep during the day and at night they hunt, feed, and try to kill Robert Neville or any other living people. The important thing is, and Neville practically has no idea until the end of the novel, that they are actually becoming organized. The reason for this is that their source of vampirism, the germ, is mutating. This is quite normal with diseases. Influenza, for example, has mutated so many times that scientists can hardly keep up with it. The germ mutation causes that the vampires become more resistant, for instance to the sun: “It was such an incredible sight after three years that his mind could not assimilate it. ( . . . ) A woman. Alive. In the daylight [sic]” (Matheson 110). Also, probably after the

30 initial shock, the vampires start to form a new society, researching their infection themselves. Ruth, the vampire woman, writes in her letter to Robert,

“we’re going to set up society again slowly but surely. We’re going to do away with all those wretched creatures whom death has cheated” (Matheson 144).

This confirms, that at the beginning of the novel, they were all the same to

Neville, but as the time went, the group outside his house became smaller. This was not, as he thought the whole time, because he managed to kill most of them, but because the living type of vampires decided to move on, while the dead type did not develop and stayed in the original state from the start of the novel. Ruth also reveals in the letter, that the reason why they are able to stay in the sun and live with the germ is a pill the vampires developed.

Also, from the start the vampires and their behaviour seemed to be animal-like and coarse. At the end of the novel, when the new vampires come to kidnap Robert, the come in “( . . . ) their dark cars with their spotlights and their guns and their axes and pikes” (Matheson 147). As the new society forms, their manners and behaviour also improves.

Stephen King’s Cell tells a similar story in a way. There is a new species, the phoners. In the beginning, they are wild, bloodthirsty and ruthless. Each day, as the story develops, their behaviour changes a little. The biggest distinction was probably between the first and second day of the apocalypse. As was already mentioned above, on the second day, Clay and his friends watch the phoners in Tom’s garden. They realize, that they are starting to think for themselves, even show the signs of basic communication skills. As Clay describes, “[t]he aggression they had witnessed yesterday had been a blind,

31 forward-rushing thing” (King 125). Compared to that, the situation in the garden was planned. Even stranger is the thing they witness afterwards – in the morning, they see thousands of the phoners going in the same direction, to the city centre. Not attacking one another, simple walking. Alice, a teenage girl and one of Clay’s friends, points out that the phoners look like “a flock of birds”, which then turns out to be a very important information. Birds, similarly as ants and bees, have an ability called “flocking”. This is a phenomenon, which describes for example the capability of flying in one big flock, birds close to each other, and not hitting each other. Also, ants are “all going out from a hill or bees from a hive” (King 132). Simply groups of animals, being able to act as one being in certain situations. Still, a single bird or a single bee still has its own will and is capable of making its own decisions.

Later it is revealed, that the phoners really have only one mind in common. This sounds similar to the original zombies from West Africa, who did not have a will of their own. But this is true for the phoners only partially and the term “flocking” is much more fitting. The phoners act as one entity only to a certain extent, such as travelling certain distances together (just as birds migrate) or doing group decisions, or their adherence to their daily regime.

Just as the vampires in I Am Legend formed a new society, the phoners in

Cell show similar signs of social development. For instance, Clay’s group witnesses the phoners helping one another, although they leave the heavily injured or dead (King 144). When they see the phoners later, they seem to have developed again a little further. They are all carrying radios, CD-players or other similar devices. This behaviour does not seem to be random at all, which

32 concerns the main characters. It is after seeing this that Clay says: “They are getting smarter. Not on their own, but because they’re thinking together” (King

166).

The group meets one man on their journey north, Roscoe Handt, who tells them, that he saw how the phoners caught a normal woman, because she was outside during the day. She met a group of phoners in the morning before she was able to find a shelter. “She tried to act like one of them”, but it did not work. As Alice and Tom point out:

‘( . . . ) [they] maybe touched her thoughts,’ Tom said.

‘Or couldn’t touch them [sic],’ Alice said. (King 173-5)

This observation supports the theory of developing a “hive-mind”, which is based on “telepathic group thinking” (King 167). This is then confirmed, when they discover the flocks sleeping during the night at Gaiten Academy’s football field. The flock has tens of CD players placed around the field, each playing the same music. When they examine the phoners closer, they find out that the CD players are not connected by any wires, but they are connected through the

“sleeping” phoners.

As the story continues, the phoners really develop psychic abilities, such as telepathy, or levitation. They can enter normal people’s dreams and can use the dreams as broadcasting device to inform the dreamer about anything that is necessary. As one of the other guys they meet along the way says: “But they ain’t dreams. If you don’t know, it ain’t no fuckin good telling ya. They’re fuckin broadcasts. Broadcasts in our sleep” (King 311). But these broadcasts are a double-edged weapon, because just as the normal people can see the phoners’

33 broadcasts, the phoners can pick things from their mind. When Clay’s group destroys the flock at Gaiten Academy, the phoners then came to tell them that they know who destroyed them: “I bet they knew it was us even before they got here. Picked it out of our dreams the way we picked [Raggedy man’s] face out of our dreams (King 277).

The phoners, under the Raggedy Man’s leadership, form a plan to take over the world. The way they want to do it is, however, different from

Matheson’s vampires’ plan. While the vampires decided to wipe out everyone but their kind, the phoners plan to convert all the “normies” into the phoners.

This decision is probably the most intelligent one among all the monsters, because they would kill two birds with one stone that way. They would wipe out the normal people and at the same time get reinforcements to their ranks.

Even though their plan is probably the best-thought out, it is not successful.

Just as in Cell the main characters manage to defeat the phoners because they are not alone, help each other and support each other’s ideas, the vampires in I Am Legend manage to defeat Robert Neville, from the same reason. He is alone and they are the new society, he is “the abnormal one now.

Normalcy was a majority concept, the standard of many and not the standard of just one man” (Matheson 159). He understands, that he could not join them even if he wanted to, because he is immune to the germ that has become inseparable part of their substance.

King was clearly inspired by Matheson’s novel when he created his phoners. He also employed the scientific approach to his writing, even though it is highly unusual in such genres. He created zombie-inspired monsters with

34 many abilities that are usually attributed to vampires – telepathy, levitation, cleverness. He managed to produce an original type of a monster, which might inspire many other writers in the future.

Chapter 3 – Analysis of the Main Characters

In this chapter, I am going to examine the development of the main characters in both novels, I Am Legend and Cell. I will explain what their behaviour is like and what might have caused it.

In I Am Legend, Robert Neville’s character development is harder to observe, because he interacts only with his own thoughts or with his enemies.

As the reader understands from the flashbacks, he lost his wife and his daughter to the plague. Every single person he lived near to or knew is dead or turned into a vampire.

It is extremely hard for him to find any motivation in his life. The only thing that entertains him is his music and drinking. It brings him into a different world and makes him forget about the terrible reality. Here is a short description of his regular evening:

He sat in the living room, trying to read. He’d make himself a

whisky and soda at his small bar and he held the cold glass as he

read a physiology text. From the speaker over the hallway door,

the music of Schönberg was playing loudly. (Matheson 6)

During the day, he works around the house – repairs what the vampires destroyed the previous night, looks after his garlic plants, or drives around the city to gather food. It seems, that he has no plan what to do with his new life, the only thing he tries is to survive day after day.

Because he never met any other people during the first month after the vampire pandemic outbreak, he concluded the situation with a fact, that there are no other people left but him. He decides to make a fortress out of his

36 house, furnish it to his comfort and never leave it. Although he makes that decision deliberately, it also makes him constantly depressed which leads to even more drinking to escape the real world. His depression could be summed up by this passage:

[He] lit another cigarette and had his midmorning drink.

Later he forced himself into the kitchen to grind up the five-day

accumulation of garbage in the sink. He knew he should burn up

the paper plates and utensils too, and dust the furniture and wash

out the sinks and the bathtub and toilet, and change the sheets

and pillowcase on his bed; but he didn’t feel like it.

For he was a man and he was alone and these things had no

importance to him. (Matheson 2).

Compared to Robert Neville, Clayton Riddell’s life is much more exciting.

He knows from the beginning that he is not alone – immediately as the apocalypse takes place, he forms a friendship with Tom. Everything is better when people can count on each other. Later, their group extends a teenage girl, Alice. Although Clay does not know what happened to his family, he sees many people around him who survived and holds on a hope that they are alive and well. The company of other people distracts his thoughts in the moments, when Robert Neville surrenders to his depressions. Also, when there are more people in the group, there are more ideas and opinions. And when one person comes with a good idea and another develops it, it is much more effective than one person alone with his thoughts. As an example can serve the situation

37 when Clayton suggests he wants to leave the hotel in Boston, where they spend the first night and go north to Maine and look for his son and wife. Tom instantly says “he [is] crazy to want to leave” (King 56).

This type of thinking is exactly the one that got Robert Neville into building a fortress out of his house. But because Tom is not alone, other people persuade him to do what is best – leave the city. It is possible that King was inspired to write this scene based on Matheson’s novel, maybe he thought, again, the What-if mentioned in the beginning of this thesis - “What if Robert

Neville decided to leave his house and look for other people?”.

It is a question, if King had an agenda, when he created as Clay’s companions basically a mirror of his family who may or may not be dead. Tom

McCourt serves kind of as a motherly figure – he is always the one who comforts Alice when something happens, for example a bad dream:

Clay caught one of [the words], nightmare. Tom’s voice went on

and on, telling lies in a reassuring drone: everything was all right,

she would see, things would look better in the morning. Clay could

picture them sitting side by side on the guestroom bed, each

dressed in a pair of pajamas with TM monograms on the breast

pockets. (King 119-20)

Just as Tom could be the mother of their family, Alice could be their child.

Clay’s son was twelve years old, and Alice was fifteen. Each character’s destiny could therefore be intertwined with the one of Clay’s family. Alice gets killed in the course of the events, which might suggest that Clay actually finds his son and he will not need Alice as a replacement for him. The same thing could work

38 with Tom. Clay finds out, that his wife Sharon is irreversibly transformed into one of the phoners and that could be the reason why Tom does not die - his role is to replace Clay’s wife.

The biggest difference between the characters in Cell and Robert Neville from I Am Legend is that the former set a purpose to their life – travel somewhere, find someone, do something. Neville just tries to survive, and sometimes he gets excited about finding a cure for the plague. His biggest loss is that he does not have anyone to talk to and therefore expand on his ideas and thoughts. Compared to the Cell characters, it takes him incredibly long after the pandemic starts to come up with any idea, apart from the essential things to survive. “A bolt of self-accusation struck him. To know for five months that they remained indoors by day and never once to make the connection! He closed his eyes, appalled by his own stupidity” (Matheson 27). Five months is really a slow progress, even for a man who lives separated from the world.

Maybe this is also what King thought when he encountered the book.

Maybe that is the reason, why everything in his novel happens in the course of days, while Matheson’s novel takes years. King might have wanted to emphasize the importance of group thinking. The group thinking helped the phoners to get smarter, and when normal people do the same thing, they can be even better than them.

This might be the one thing that Robert Neville was missing, and the reason for his failure.

Chapter 4 – Narrative Methods

Just from the first glance at the novels lying next to each other, it is clear that they are going to be different. Matheson’s novel is a mere 160 pages long, while King’s work is the entire 473 pages long (at least the editions I worked with). At the first sight, the reader might assume that the King’s novel will be lengthy, or sluggish and Matheson’s will be a quick story. The truth is, it is exactly the opposite way.

Stephen King pays a lot of attention to Richard Matheson and his work in his book Danse Macabre, where he explores the horror genre in movies, television, and fiction, and elaborates on it. Although he does not mention many examples on I Am Legend, he offers quite a lot of facts on Matheson’s other famous work, The Shrinking Man. As I noticed, and King later confirms, many of the facts said about the latter novel are as well as applicable to the one of my focuses:

I haven't discussed I Am Legend, but if you should be intrigued

enough to read The Shrinking Man as a result of what I've said

here, you'll probably get to it, and find Matheson's unmistakable

trademarks on that book as well: his interest in restricting

character to a single person under pressure so that character can

be fully examined, his emphasis on courage in adversity, his

mastery of terror against what appears to be a normal, everyday

backdrop. (Danse Macabre, Kindle edition)

The first big difference between the books is the point where they open the story. Matheson starts the first chapter when it has already been a few

40 months since the pandemic started. King states, that Matheson stated about the book’s structure: “( . . . ) I originally ( . . . ) start[ed] with the beginning ( .

. . ). That didn’t work as it took too long to get to the ‘good stuff’. So I recast the storyline to get the reader into [it] immediately” (Danse Macabre, Kindle edition).

Although Matheson calls it “the good stuff”, some readers (and I must admit that I count myself among them) find this procedure unnatural, even confusing. Readers are introduced to a world where something is happening, but they have to wonder what exactly it is and what caused it for quite a long time. Only later in the book, as the readers put the jigsaw piece by piece (or a flashback by flashback) carefully together, is clear what is happening. It might be recommended to re-read the book then, with all the knowledge about it, because it will shed a different light on the whole story.

Stephen King might have had the same thoughts: “We can understand

Matheson's decision to use flashbacks in order to get to "the good stuff" early on, but one wonders what might have happened if he had given us the story in a straight line” (Danse Macabre, Kindle edition).

And that is precisely what King does in his story. It can be said, that he

“gives us the story in a straight line”, because he truly starts at the start of everything. And yet the book maintains the feeling that the reader immediately gets to “the good stuff”.

Interestingly, the reader knows immediately what is happening in the story, even though it is not labelled right from the start. As is the life of the

41 main characters followed, the reader might have a feeling that the story develops more naturally than in I Am Legend.

Furthermore, King admits that “Matheson excels at the depiction of one man alone, locked in a desperate struggle against a force or forces bigger than himself” (Danse Macabre, Kindle edition). Just as he realizes Matheson’s qualities as a storyteller, he manages to demonstrate his as well.

Matheson’s narrative style is very descriptive, because he has only one character, alone with his thoughts. He uses proper direct speech and dialogues only towards the end of his book, when Neville talks to Ruth. Before, most of the talking does Robert’s former colleague from work, Ben Cortman, when he shouts his “Come out, Neville!” (Matheson 6).

In contrast, apart from being equally and excellently descriptive, King builds story on dialogues, action, and interaction between the characters. The characters are very believable, because they are not perfect. The reader can easily relate to them.

The ending of both novels is also alike in a way. Both novels can be interpreted as novels with loose endings. However, both writers suggest what might come. Apart from these facts, the endings are completely different. In I

Am Legend, it is not clear what happens exactly after Neville takes the pills. The first option is that it kills him, as he thinks. The other option might be, that the pills were specially invented for him, and might be wiping that germ immunity in his system, thus making it possible for him to stay alive and become one of them. In Cell, Clay finds his son, which is on the one hand a success, however his son is a half phoner. As another member of their group suggested, it might

42 be cancelled out by repeated exposure to The Pulse. And precisely there is the reader left, not knowing if the experiment is successful. But based on other previous character’s fates, it is quite likely that it was successful.

Although both books seem to be very different, there are existing elements that connect them. King refers to Matheson’s narrative procedures and uses them himself in his work. Both writers pay a lot of attention to the description of the surroundings and their characters, which then creates very colourful worlds.

Conclusion

This thesis dealt with the writers Stephen King, Richard Matheson and the impact Richard Matheson had on Stephen Kings writing. Especially the novels I

Am Legend and Cell were inspected.

The thesis provides a biographical background of both writers and succeeds in finding a few aspects, which both men had in common, such as growing up in a single-parent family ran by their mothers, or their shared interest of writing since their childhood. Also, both started their career by selling their short stories to magazines, and had their breakthrough when they published their first novel while being very young.

The second chapter offers a historical evolution of the two creatures that both writers their novels focused on, the vampires and the zombies. It examines the vampires in literature and their usual features as portrayed in classic literary works, for example in Dracula. Zombies are researched similarly, the focus is aimed to the actual origin of the cult and then its gradual spreading as a phenomenon into modern culture. Both monsters are then compared to the ones portrayed in both novels, finding the similarities and the differences, such as in their appearance or abilities.

Chapter three then shifts its focus from the villains to the main characters, and examines their development. The attention is paid to King’s different approach compared to Matheson’s and comes to a conclusion about what caused the characters’ success or failure.

The last chapter provides the research of the narrative methods both writers use and includes some of the King’s insights on Matheson’s writing style.

The thesis is also working with King’s deductions and applies them onto his own novel.

All things considered, the thesis has reached several results. Stephen

King’s and Richard Matheson’s lives were in many aspects very similar, which might have caused the indicated similarities in their works. From their statements about how they get inspired to create, it is clear that their minds work in a similar way. They both let their imagination wander off and are curious about what the story brings and into what it transforms. Just as

Matheson got his idea for his novel I Am Legend by watching a movie that he thought might have been done differently, it seems as if King had the same thinking process while reading the Matheson’s novel.

Works Cited

Herman, Karen. “Richard Matheson Interview Part 1 of 7 –

EMMYTVLEGENDS.ORG.” Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 31 Aug

2009. Web. 12 Apr 2016.

King, Stephen. Cell. 2006. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2011. Print.

---. Danse Macabre. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2006. Kindle Edition.

---. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. 2000. London: Hodder & Stoughton,

2012. Print.

---. “Tribute to Richard Matheson.” StephenKing.com. StephenKing.com, 25 Jun

2013. Web. 1 Apr 2016.

King, Tabitha. “The Author.” StephenKing.com. StephenKing.com, n.d. Web. 30

Mar 2016. .

Matheson, Richard. I Am Legend. 1954. London: Orion Publishing Group Ltd,

2010. Print.

Simpson, Paul. A Brief Guide to Stephen King. London: Constable & Robinson,

2014. Print.

Steiger, Brad. Real Zombies, the Living Dead, and Creatures of the Apocalypse.

Canton, MI: Visible Ink Press, 2010. Print.

Stoker, Bram. Dracula. 1897. Project Gutenberg. 16 Aug, 2013. Project

Gutenberg. Web. 25 Mar 2016.

"Vampire." Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 12 Apr 2016.

"Zombie." Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 12 Apr 2016.

Résumé in English

This thesis deals with Richard Matheson’s influence on Stephen King’s writing, namely Matheson’s novel I Am Legend and King’s novel Cell. Both novels deal with apocalyptic themes. The first one deals with an apocalypse caused by vampires, the other with an apocalypse caused by zombies. The aim of this work is to prove that Stephen King’s novel is, at least partially inspired and connected to the novel by Richard Matheson.

The first part of this thesis offers a biographical background on both authors, examining if and how their lives and upbringing later affected their work and creation. The reader finds out that they both lived and grew up in similar conditions and that the beginnings of their careers were also alike.

The second chapter provides an overview of the historical evolution of both monsters in the focus, the vampires and the zombies. Both monsters are described according to the notions deeply rooted in the culture, and then both are compared to the corresponding novel, that means the vampires and I Am

Legend, and the zombies and Cell. The analysis also points to the similarities or differences.

The third chapter deals with the analysis of the main characters in both stories and their potential purpose, if there is some. Also, it offers the analysis of how the characters’ environment and surroundings might have influenced their succession or failure in their goals.

The last chapter compares the narrative methods of both writers and also it is accompanied by King’s personal insights about Matheson’s writing style.

Résumé in Czech

Tato diplomová práce se zabývá vlivem spisovatele Richarda Mathesona na dílo spisovatele Stephena Kinga. Konkrétně jsou zkoumány romány Já,

Legenda (I Am Legend) od R. Mathesona, a Puls (Cell) od S. Kinga. Oba romány se zaměřují na apokalyptickou tématiku, při čemž první z románů se soustřeďuje na apokalypsu způsobenou upíry, druhý z nich na apokalypsu za

účasti zombií. Cílem této práce je prokázat, že Stephen King a jeho román jsou, alespoň částečně, ovlivněni a inspirováni zmíněným románem od Richarda

Mathesona.

První část práce se nabízí náhled do životů obou spisovatelů a snaží se objasnit, jestli a případně jak se jejich životy a výchova podobaly a ovlivnily tak jejich následnou tvorbu. Čtenář této práce se může dozvědět, že oba žili a vyrůstali v podobných podmínkách a počátek jejich kariér byl rovněž podobný.

Druhá kapitola poskytuje přehled historického vývoje obou příšer, na které se tato práce zaměřuje, tedy upírů a zombií. Oba netvoři jsou nejprve popsáni podle představ hluboce zakořeněných v současné kultuře a následovně jsou každý srovnáni s příslušným románem. Tato analýza pak vyzdvihuje vzájemné podobnosti i rozdíly.

Ve třetí kapitole se nachází rozbor hlavních postav obou příběhů a také se tato práce zamýšlí nad jejich případným účelem v knize. Práce také zkoumá, jak jsou hlavní postavy ovlivněny svým okolím a jaký má následovně tento vliv dopad na výsledek jejich snažení a cíle.

Poslední kapitola porovnává narativní metody a postupy obou autorů, které jsou doplněny osobním náhledem S. Kinga na styl psaní R. Mathesona.