For my final project I decided to do option B; the creative project. The novel that caught my eye the most this semester was I am Legend. Within the book I found the relationship between Ruth and Robert to be very interesting. It went from hate to love within a couple of chapters. This is why I decided to rewrite this part of the novel in Ruth’s point of view instead of Robert’s. There are many different things I thought about while I was rewriting this part of this story.
The one major thing that I wanted to show by this is the emotional rollercoaster that both Ruth and Robert went through. I begin by having Ruth “think” about how much she hates Robert Neville. I almost write it as if she was writing it in a journal. I write,
I hate him. I hate him so much, all he does is kill. He killed my husband and my friends now it is his turn to be killed. He is the only human left alive so I know what I need to do. I need to get inside his head and inside his life. I need to see how he makes things run so I can some back and tell my people and then we can destroy him. I am so nervous about this. What if he is smart enough to know what I really am? My people try and reassure me that they can make me human and that these pills will work to allow me to walk in daylight. I guess we will find out tomorrow.
I really wanted to show what I thought Ruth was feeling. Show how she hated Robert for killing her husband and could care less about whether he lives or dies. Another thing I did to really accentuate that I was telling the story from her point of view is by using first person. Throughout the story I tried to do other excerpts like this that kind of show the change in Ruth’s feelings for Robert. I placed the change in her feelings right after they had dinner and began just talking. After he had asked her about her husband I had her “think” about how she thought he was too kind to be a killer. I wrote, “It brought out too many emotions. I pictured him staking my husband while he was in a coma, but it is very had to picture him actually doing it. I see a figure but not actually him. Maybe because now that I really know him I think that he is too kind and I don’t want to believe that he really did it.” Then towards the end of the story Ruth falls in love with Robert. I wanted to show that in the end Ruth did not want to leave. She felt bad for having to hurt him. To show this I wrote,
I saw one of his legs give out and as he fell he knocked over the microscope. I feel so bad. I am sorry Robert Neville. I wish it could really work out really I did fall in love with you. He looked up at my fright-twisted face. The mallet came down once again and he cried out in pain. I feel his pain too. If he only hadn’t looked like I asked. He fell to both knees and his palms struck the floor as he toppled forward. I began to sob loudly. I wish that it didn’t have to be this way.
Overall I think that I got my point across pretty well. By just adding a few sentences here and there in the story it helped to point out these feelings and how they changed throughout the story. I honestly think that I could have done better but for whatever reason I did have a little trouble putting these feelings into words without making them overwhelmingly obvious to what I was doing. I wanted it to be written as if it was really part of the story and not just this project.
One thing that I learned in this class that I was able to use in this project is the ability to analyze characters feelings. This had previously been a struggle for me but I think that I have a better hold on it now since I used it several times in this course. I was able to use Ruth’s body language and what she said to kind of add what I thought she was thinking at that time. For example, when they were talking at dinner:
“You still don’t trust me,” I asked.
He shrugs and responds, “It’s…not that.”
“Of course it is. Oh, very well. If you have to check my blood, check it.”
Maybe if I do this he will trust me more. I can get the information I need and then I will let him take my blood and know what I truly am but will run away before he hurts me.
He puts his cup down and says, “Good. Very Good.”
When I read the original text, which was just her offering for him to take the blood, I had to think about what Ruth’s motive behind this was. I also used my knowledge of what happens at the end of the book to come to the conclusion that she was just doing this to try and gain his trust to get the information she needed. Another place where I did something similar was when he was telling Ruth about the different experiments he was doing on these vampires. Since this was sort of the time where I thought Ruth was having a change of heart about Robert I had to make it seem that she was upset by these procedures but at the same time she understood why he did it. I wrote, “. I know this man is cruel. But I can’t but help think of why. He has been alone for three years in this world full of vampires. I would get curious too. He is a very smart man and is just trying to survive in hopes that he can outlive them. I noticed I was still holding my wine glass so I set it down.”
What I like best about my project is how involved I felt while both reading and rewriting it. I really felt the emotions of the characters like I was in the story. That is why I chose to do this project in the first place. I think that there are a couple parts of my project that were especially thought out. For example, at the beginning when Ruth is not too fond of Robert I kind of use little snide comments. For example,
“Get up,” he said. “I am not going to hurt you.”
Yeah right. Once you find out my secret you are going to kill me without even thinking about it like you did my husband.
By using little witty comments like this it helps to show the lack of respect or care that Ruth had for Robert. These little comments started to fade away as Ruth’s feelings for Robert changed. I personally think that the whole concept of what I did was clever, the way that I didn’t change the story, and I just changed which point of view the story was told from.
This project took me a long time to finish. When I was first pre-meditating what I wanted to do, I thought it would be a nice simple project. But when I got into it, it was a lot more difficult to do. The writing wasn’t too hard because a lot of it was just copied straight from the book, and even the comments I added were not to difficult because I was so interested in these two characters. But what was so difficult is that it was so long. I did not do an extensive revision process. Like I said a lot of it was copied straight out of the book. However when I did finish I went back and changed a couple words here and there and also added a few things or deleted a few things that at the end I had realized that I miss-worded.
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