preview

Movie Analysis : ' The Lepidcotor ' And Richard From I Am Legend

Good Essays

Hero’s in literature are arguably “someone who is willing to sacrifice his own needs on behalf of others” (Vogler, 2007, pp. 29), for example Christopher from The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time (Haddon, 2003). However there are examples of those who subvert this notion, Baxter from ‘The Lepidcotor’ (Jackson, 2005) for example and Richard from I Am Legend (Matheson, 2010) who does it for his own gain. A characters traits, attributions, motivations and desires take part in their ability to become a strong heroic figure, these character aspects will affect the journey of the narrative and story.
Writers of fiction will use a mixture of common and individual traits when writing their characters, this is to enable audience identification. Vogler argues that “Storytellers do this by giving their Hero’s a combination of qualities, a mix of universal and unique characteristics” (Vogler, 2007, pp.30). When reading ‘The Lepidoctor’ readers are most likely to understand and empathise with Baxter’s need to rescue the helpless butterflies from their almost catatonic and captive state. And as Vogler writes, this enables the readers to “become a Hero for a while” (Vogler, 2007, pp30) if only through the medium of fictional characters. In I Am Legend Robert Neville has an intense need to cleanse the world of vampires even if the task becomes too much for him, for example, Neville cannot reuse the stakes he kills the vampires with and must continue to make dozens at a time.

Get Access