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Jake Tulley
McClure
Writing 39B
25, October 2015
Alienation in the Prison System via the lenses of I Am Legend
Alienation within a vast society creates a substantial gap between groups
of people today. Particularly in the prison system, the prisoners themselves have
become subject to isolation from the rest of the countrys free and interactive
people, as well as its new ideas and cultural developments. In Theoretical
Perspectives on Alienation in the Prison Society: An Empirical Test, author
Charles W. Thomas describes how alienation within the prison environment
decimates fundamental social skills humans associate with humanity. Deprivation
of basic Social necessities, and the predisposition of lives prior to isolation,
decimates the essence of humanity. Thomas explains that the prisoners face
numerous pressures associated with confinement and isolation such as the
deprivation of heterosexual contacts, freedom of movement, necessarily learning
to live in individuals, loss of self-esteem, and feelings of rejection and isolation,
all factors that require accommodation that the prisoners are ill-equipped to
resolve on their own, yet are forced to do so. In Richard Mathesons I Am
Legend, Robert Nevilles alienation and isolation parallels that of people
incarcerated in the prison system. Matheson accomplishes this through the
description of the world Neville finds himself in. He characterizes those
surrounding Neville as non-equals to illustrate his isolation. With the virus
transforming everyone except him into vampires, Neville is forced to remain in his

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small house apart from the hordes of beings that are seeking to kill him, which is
considerably similar to a prisoner sentenced to a jail cell, hated by the society
they are exiled from. The author forces the audience to be exposed to isolation
via the lenses of I Am Legend.
The prison system does an exemplary job of ruining the very few social
skills that most inmates have. Thomas describes the profound effects that
isolation causes on the human-prisoner by stating, the alienation of the inmate
population appears to be a particularly salient influence which promotes high
levels of assimilation into what has generally been described as an antisocial
subcultural system. This is also commonly known as prisonization. This is the
process of learning, adapting, and reaffirming to prison culture. An example of
prisonization is a new inmate adapting to the savage ways of prisoners and
potentially joining a gang and being initiated. In Mathesons I Am Legend, Neville
is assimilated into his own antisocial subculture by being the only human being
left in a world of ravenous vampires caused by a bacterium that he is immune to.
He adapts to this cruel world he is forced to live in, and over time, it erodes many
parts of his humanity.
When a human is deprived of basic social necessities, they have no
choice but to strengthen the ideas that only bare negative connotations. Thomas
has two models to describe the variables of alienation and isolation, the
deprivation model, and the importation model. In the deprivation model, he
explains that, The basic assertions of this model are that inmates enter prison
organizations having already been exposed to the degradations associated with

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arrest, trial, and conviction. On their entry into the prison they are exposed to still
another set of experiences which tend to reaffirm their status as rejected
members of a larger society. This shows that as a whole, the prison system does
little to no work with rehabilitation. In I Am Legend, Neville is forced to face these
same obstacles. Throughout the whole book, Neville struggles with his sexual
urges. Mathesons description of his sexual struggles gives Neville a sense of
monstrosity. In the scene where he is taking a blood sample from a dead female
vampire in a house down the street from him, he stands there and watches her
for an eerie amount of time. Matheson hints that he is contemplating raping her,
but doesnt act upon his urges. This sexual struggle parallels that of a prisoner
deprived of heterosexual contact. This breaks down human empathy and gives
an inmate a clear way to view fellow inmates not as humans, but as objects. This
leads to a serious issue of rape within the prison system and it all stems back to
the deprivation of heterosexual contact.
Neville is constrained within the confines of his home as soon as the sun
goes down which causes psychological problems similar to inmates in prison. He
has a reoccurring battle every night with the temptations brought to him by the
vampiric horde. The female vampires tempt him with sexuality, and his neighbor
Ben Cortman always screams for him to come out. He even stopped looking
through his peephole at the vampires because he knew the sexual temptation
would be too much. Neville gets very drunk one night and lets his emotions go
wild, leading him to almost goes outside to give himself up. Unfortunately, Neville
does not have the adequate space to distance himself from these temptations.

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This gives him an uphill battle that he has been forced to adapt to, similar to the
pressures bestowed upon inmates when deprived of the proper space of living.
Neville is forced to see the negative connotations and tropes associated with
living in the apocalypse just like a prisoner is reaffirmed that they are a rejected,
hated, and deemed a lower status human being in the society they are exiled
from.
Neville is cursed into a position where he has no choice but to rely on
himself. He literally has no outside help due to the fact that to his knowledge, he
is the last human being left on the planet that is not infected with the bacterium.
He relies on his own mind to solve the numerous problems he faces within the
book. Given Nevilles advanced form of isolation, he trusts only his own thought
and wit. Neville uses what Matheson describes as the remnants of human
intellect, or the public library, to gain the knowledge he needs to try and stop the
bacterium. This is consonant to the lifestyle of an inmate in the way that they are
pushed into feeling that they are cannot gain any help from prison staff. Thomas
explains that given the coercive structure of the prison organization, it fails to
provide the opportunity for problems to be resolved with the cooperation of the
prison staff. This makes the inmate swiftly learn that he has been effectively
isolated from most supportive contacts other than the ones provided by fellow
inmates. This is why it is so easy for prisoners, once institutionalized, to dive into
the prison subculture, like Neville assimilating to his own isolated subculture in a
post apocalyptic world. Throughout the novel, Neville slowly loses his humanity
until near the end. At one point, one could describe him as a monstrous being.

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Matheson shows Nevilles loss of his sense of humanity and orchestrates this in
the scene where he chases Ruth through the field. Not once does he stop to
think that what he is doing would cause any human terror, and that he is
essentially stepping into the shoes of the monsters that he despises. Matheson
also emphasizes this idea in Nevilles daily life by his completely desensitized
killings of vampires. He no longer sees that these creatures used to be human.
Like Neville viewing the vampires with hated, prisoners view other inmates
on such a low stature that they lose all human empathy and assimilate into the
prison subculture. This all roots back to the issues that they face with self-esteem
caused by rejection and isolation. Inmates view themselves only in the way that
society presents them to be. If one is treated like an animal, eventually they will
become one. This rejection and isolation perpetuates the prison subculture, just
like Nevilles isolation from humanity perpetuates his own lonely subculture.
These forms of deprivation of basic human necessity can exterminate ones
humanity.
A humans life prior to isolation gives heavy factors that weigh in on life
during isolation. Thomas touches upon this idea in his interpretation of the
importation model. He describes the importation model by stating it, suggests
that the form of adaptations made to confinement is conditioned by the pre-prison
socialization of the of the inmates and mediated by both the quality of their
contacts with the larger society during the period of their confinement and by
their perceived post release life chances. This is basically stating that a
particular way that a person behaved in their society outside of the prison has

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contributing factors to the way that they behave within incarceration. This
matches the way Matheson describes Neville throughout I Am Legend. Neville
has a family prior to the world wide spread of the bacterium. He loses them, but
never forgets the feelings he associates with them. Throughout the novel, he
flashes back to memories with his wife and daughter. Matheson shows that this
has a bearing on his personality during the apocalypse in the way that when he
finds Ruth, he eventually feels genuine emotions of love and care. This brings
back parts of his humanity from his past life. He also shows this when he finds
the dog. He takes care of the dog in way that is similar to taking care of a child.
Matheson shows obvious associations to the feeling of family and hope which is
yet another example of the importation model.
Alienation and isolation are two factors that can truly hinder ones mental
stability. Deprivation of basic human necessity via isolation of the prison system,
and the predisposition of ones life before isolation in the prison system, washes
away the core essences of humanity. Humans can solve this problem by using
Mathesons I Am Legend as a great liturgical learning example at which we can
bring awareness to the problem. Only time will tell if we can ever stop this
problem.

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Works Cited
Thomas,CharlesW."TheoreticalPerspectivesonAlienationinthePrisonSociety:An
EmpiricalTest."ThePacificSociologicalReview18.4(1975):48399.
Web.
Matheson,Richard.IAmLegend.London:Transworld,1962.Print.