The Influence of I Am Legend on Stephen King´S Cell Bachelor’S Diploma Thesis
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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.” 5 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. 6 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. 7 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.