I Am Legend And Oryx And Crake Analysis

Gender Representation in London’s I am Legend and Atwood’s Oryx and Crake That literature reflects life and society is a fact that is widely acknowledged as it mirrors society’s goods and ills. For centuries, human societies have tended to assign different roles, codes of behavior and thoughts for men and women. Moreover, societies have used the biological distinction of sex to construct a social distinction of gender – being masculine and feminine. In the fictional novels, I am Legend by Richard Matheson where Robert Neville, the protagonist tries to survive alone in a world full of vampires and Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood where Snowman struggles to survive in a world where everyone but him has been genetically modified, gender representation is one of the many societal issues that is brought up. While both novels represent traditional gender roles and norms, attributing men to superiority and women to frailty, further subjecting them into sexualization, Matheson’s I am Legend portrays the possibility of role reversal when a large-scale crisis occurs. Regardless of the 50-year difference in publication date, both novels represent the traditional gender roles that society has set upon males and females, associating them based on superiority …show more content…
For instance, in Matheson’s novel, the female vampires’ only role is to pose and do sexually provocative acts to “entice [Neville] out of the house” (Matheson 7). Through this, Matheson shows that women function as merely objects that gratify sexual desires and urges of men. Female vampires are reduced to their bodies and do not have their own identities. Seen as objects of sexualization, they are of lesser value than men as they are denied integrity and identity is limited to their sexual bodies. Matheson associates the female vampires as things – an entity limited to their sexual