I Am Legend: Chapter 20 Summary & Analysis

Late at night, Neville looks out of the peephole in his door and sees “them” coming. Then he sees “dark-suited men” attacking the vampires. They drive “razor-tipped pikes” into the vampires’ bodies, and blood spurts everywhere. Neville realizes that he’s looking at the “new society” Ruth described in her letter. The people of the new society attack dead vampires in the middle of the night. He hates the new society’s “methodical butchery”—he prefers his own method of killing vampires, silently and in the middle of the day.

Neville realizes that the new society is going to kill Ben Cortman, sooner or later—somehow, he doesn’t want Cortman to “perish like that.” Suddenly, he sees Cortman on the roof of the house across the street, and Neville realizes that Cortman has been hiding in the chimney all these years. The men in dark suits fire guns at Cortman, but Cortman continues to crawl across the roof. Neville finds himself weeping at the “ungainly form of his old friend.” The dark-suited men open machinegun fire on Cortman, ripping his head apart.

It occurs to Neville that the dark-suited men are going to call for him to come outside and “surrender.” Neville realizes he has no choice but to come outside—he’s outmanned and outgunned. However, the dark-suited men never call out for him. Suddenly he realizes the truth: the men aren’t going to call him outside, they’re just going to kill him. The men shoot open the lock on the front door, and Neville runs away from the door. Neville crawls to his room and retrieves his pistol. As the men push their way into his house, he opens fire, and shoots one. Suddenly, a man hits Neville in the chest with a club. Neville falls to the floor and whispers, “Virge.” The dark-suited men drag Neville’s “lifeless body” out of the house, “into the world that was theirs and no longer his.”