In isolation

I've got a thing about zombie movies. I saw both I Am Legend and 28 Weeks Later multiple times. Even I admit it was too many. Sometimes these movies have subtle, insightful messages and themes; other times the themes are boring and obvious. The premise of 28 Weeks Later was that an U.S. led NATO occupational force comes to zombie ravaged Britain to re-civilize the land. But then all hell breaks loose because the army can't keep control.
Subtle.
I Am Legend didn't get nearly as much credit for hidden meaning. Still, after the movie I really sympathized with our hero, Lt. Col/Dr.Robert Neville (Will Smith), a soldier and virologist and the last human in New York City. Neville lives a regimented day. He researches a cure, exercises, visits an abandoned video store to get out of the house, and scavenges. Neville's only sentient companion is his dog, Sam. She's a sweetheart but not much for conversation.
Neville's life isn't perfect of course. He's lonely. He's always alone. His core obsession has been finding a cure to the zombie virus. Neville is clearly frustrated but can't extinguish this frustration no matter what he does. The cure to everything is finding an anti-virus.
But Neville chose to live in diseased New York early on, at the risk of dying. He shut himself off from civilization.
These are all jumbled up themes of Barack Obama's first book Dreams from My Father. It's a funny relation to make: mediocre action-drama to brilliant politician's early autobiography, but that's the connection I made.
Obama writes about the anger he felt as a youth, the frustration and confusion about his mixed heritage. Obama writes:

"Following this maddening logic, the only thing you could choose as your own was withdrawal into a smaller and smaller coil of rage, until being black meant only the knowledge of your own powerlessness, of your own defeat. And the final irony: Should you refuse this defeat and lash out at your captors, they would have a name for that too, a name that could cage you just as good. Paranoid. Militant. Violent. Nigger."

And concerning solitude, Obama recalls that much of his hermitage was self imposed:

"I enjoyed such moments—but only in brief. If the talk began to wander or cross the border into familiarity, I would soon find reason to excuse myself. I had grown too comfortable in my solitude, the safest place I knew."

The emotions that Obama describes may have shifted location a bit in I Am Legend but they're similar. For me, both book and movie depicted an important and familiar scenario; a feeling of loneliness, somewhat brought upon by me. And from that solitude, a suppressed anger at being alone, at feeling better alone. Seeing pale bodies all around you and knowing you're different.
In Dreams from My Father, Obama writes about kind white people and racist white people. He also writes about kind black people, and equally mean black people. In I Am Legend, all the zombies are rather ghostly in color. I think I Am Legend unintentionally set a scenario familiar to me and perhaps others: The loneliness and isolation about being different, the desire to interact with others but a preference to being alone because of the exhaustion other people, nice or mean, can make you feel.
Even acknowledging that doesn't get rid of the frustration or isolationism.