"Interview with a Vampire" - Response

“Interview with a Vampire” is a 1976 novel written by author Anne Rice. The book is often credited with being a part of the cultural shift in mindset of vampires from perhaps silly Halloween monsters, to something more humanizing, sinister, and sympathetic to the average reader. The relationship between two of the lead characters in the novel, Louis de Pointe du Loc and Lestat de Lioncourt, is of notable interest to the reader, as it presents wildly different interpretations of the moral dilemma of immortality. For instance, Louis is a character who is only turned into a Vampire at the start of the novel, and from the beginning of his journey, he realizes he has made a terrible choice. To Louis, all life around him is precious and he won’t seem to let go of what Lestat refers to as his “romance with mortal life”. Anytime he kills another human to feed himself, he feels extreme guilt to the point of driving himself to sickness. Letstat, on the other hand, serves as a direct foil to Louis’ character. Lestat takes great joy in killing, and to the reader, he seemingly makes an art of it. He is fully enthralled in the life of the Vampire, and since Louis has no one else to turn to at the start of his life as a vampire, Lestat uses the power dynamic of his and Louis’ relationship to torment Louis at every possible opportunity. Ultimately, it is Louis’ mindset towards human life that is privileged by the author. Louis is assigned the role of a sort of omnipresent narrator the events that are unfolding, the reader spends the most time with his character and thus is able to relate to his thoughts with more insight. To Louis, the Vampire represents corruption, an evil inside himself that he must strive to defeat, but ultimately is unable to resist giving into time and time again.

 As we follow Louis through his journey, we realize that this unhappiness he feels towards himself will never truly leave him. This feeling of guilt is what propels him through each of his relationships to the rest of the cast. He raises Claudia and keeps her by his side because he truly does have a fondness for her, but also due to the guilt of being the inciting incident for the rest of her tortured life, being a woman trapped inside a child’s body. He enjoys her company but also feels he cannot leave her alone, and thus when she is killed by the members of the Théâtre des Vampires, he flies into a rage, brutally killing each of the Vampires involved. After ridding himself of these attachments, he is able to being living his new life with Armand, however this relationship is not long lasting. Now that these attachments that have caused so much grief and turmoil for Louis have dissipated, he finds he is no longer himself. Gone is the fire and passion that made him such an enigmatic force, he is now simply dead inside. Armand senses this as well, and cannot bear to stay with him any longer, leaving him alone. The book introduces vampires as creatures with a complex moral code through the character of Louis, he understands that in order to survive himself he must kill, but cannot bring himself to do so indiscriminately. It is at the peak of Louis’ denial and hunger that he makes the most irrational decisions, (feeding on Claudia in the first place), yet again none of these events would have been happening to Louis had he not chosen to become a vampire in the first place. The work seemingly says that simply denying the consequences of your actions and running from them will prove fruitless, causing you to fall deeper into the pit you have created for yourself, redemption can only be found by facing your consequences and learning from one’s mistakes.