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Nico Barrack
Analysis of:
“The Interview with The Vampire” by Anne Rice
This was a book I have read a 100 times over, yet never thought of to do an analysis of until I realized it was on my old school’s Banned Book List, humorously enough the rest of The Vampire Chronicles were not listed, I assume that the staff was unaware of their existence. The Interview with the Vampire, is about, you guessed it, Vampires. However, I feel it is crucial to mention that the novel was written well before the vampire craze that every single writer went on after Twilight was written.
The book was written by the queen of horror, Anne Rice. It was originally published, April 12th, 1976. Anne Rice was born in Louisiana (Which ironically is where the school I went to that banned it is) She gained notoriety as a writer of erotica and vampire novels. Rice returned to her Catholic faith in 1998 (shortly after the Interview with a vampire landed itself a movie), which had a tremendous impact on her work. She soon renounced her vampire novels, choosing to focus on subjects more in line with her renewed beliefs. However, around 10 years’ latter Rice distanced herself from organized religion. She wrote on her Facebook page that "Today I quit being a Christian. I'm out. I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being 'Christian' or to being part of Christianity. It's simply impossible for me to 'belong' to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I've tried. I've failed. I'm an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else." She then went back to writing horror and continued The Vampire Chronicles.
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Continuing the previously stated irony, The Interview with the vampire beings in the crescent city, New Orleans. This is where the novel starts and where it ends. The story also has settings in Paris, France and Eastern Europe. The tale the main character recites begins in the 1700’s and plows forward to modern day times. The narration is a testy subject when it comes to this novel. Now Technically, Louis, the main character, is telling the story from his point of view. However, it’s not in 1rst person, at no point in this novel are we able to tell what Louis is thinking. The Interview with the vampire is, well, an interview. Daniel Molloy, a young reporter meets Louis and interviews him. All of the descriptions of Louis’ life is told by him, so it seems like it's told in the first person, but it’s actually all a very long dialog, which is about 98% of the whole book is in quotation marks. This leads to the interesting question of, Is Louis lying about his life or is it all fact? More on that latter.
Speaking of our main character, Louis was the head of his family, born in 179, and owner of the Pointe du Lac plantation in Louisiana, before being turned into a vampire at the age of twenty-five, after the tragic death of his brother. Most young adults find them self very conflicted, which is why a certain someone should have waited to turn him into a vampire. Why? Well, because now he’s conflicted till the end of time. There is not a subject that Louis does not conflict about. I’m being dead serious here. "I don't believe I want to give simple answers", he tells his interviewer early on, and he doesn't. Louis is conflicted about everything. He's a man of principles, yet he is constantly questioning just what his principles are. He wants to hold high morals but at the same time finds distaste in them. Louis has also conflicted about God. An event that colors his life forever is the death of his brother. His brother said he was having visions,
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visions that told him to sell the plantation and send the money to France to do gods work, Louis laughs at him, and his brother falls down the stairs, seemingly pushed by an invisible force. This event forces Louis to question the existence of God. On top of that, Louis himself is a vampire. Is he a creature of the devil? Is there a devil? Is there a God? As I said very conflicted person.
Recall that certain someone who should have waited for Louis to be less conflicted about life before deciding to turn him into a vampire. Well, may I introduce you to the main character of The Vampire Chronicles, Lestat, The vampire Lestat. This character comes with many titles from The wolf killer to The brat prince, however, the one that I have found suiting him the most is one I saw online “Little Mister Codependent” Lestat is lonely. So naturally, he wants an eternal partner. So, he stalks Louis and turns him into a vampire, cause that’s how you show affection. Louis is so afraid to be alone that he'll do anything to keep people with him. We first see this with his poor father. The old man is a crusty shell of a human being, and Lestat keeps him around even though he hates his guts. Even Louis likes Lestat's dad more than Lestat does, and Louis wished he would just die already (which he does). Lestat goes even as far as creating a “child” for him and Louis to take care of, ensuring Louis will have to stay with him or feel guilty for leaving a child behind with Lestat. What’s so wrong with leaving a child with Lestat? Well, Lestat is also extraordinarily selfish, manipulative, and cruel. Lestat plays with and tortures his victims because he believes in "vampire nature, which is killing". So yeah he might not be the best choice to leave a little girl with.
Speaking of said little girl, it’s time to introduce Claudia. Claudia is a complex character, mainly because she was turned into a vampire by Lestat at only the age of five. since Louis and Lestat are basically her two parents, she develops a few characteristics from both. She has
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Louis's desire for knowledge coupled with Lestat's brutal cruelty and her cruelty might even exceed Lestat's. Louis fears that she is "less human than either of us, less human than either of us might have dreamed". Claudia's eternal frustration comes from her desire to be treated as an adult, even though she's trapped in a child's body. Due to the fact that she's always being treated as a child, she's often the subject of manipulation. She was created out of manipulation: Lestat only turned her in order to keep Louis on board. Lestat even tells Claudia this, "[Louis] was going to go away. But now he's not. Because he wants to stay and take care of you and make you happy" Claudia grows to hate Lestat as she falls in love with Louis. Louis only sees her as a daughter despite her romantic feelings, she blames this on Lestat, as she sees that Louis not only hates but also loves the vampire that birthed them into the world of the undead. Despite Claudia's best efforts, Lestat gets to her first. He apparently lives by, the I brought you into this world, so I can take you out method of parenting (just like my mother), and he takes her out in an act of revenge. She tries to kill him—twice—and he returns the favor, introducing her to the sun. which in case you somehow didn’t know, kills vampires.
While I don’t personally know Anne Rice, I’m pretty certain she likes symbolism, which is great because I like picking it apart like a rabid vulture looking for food. Throughout the story, a lot of things get burned down by Louis. Pointe du Lac, the NOLA flat, Madeleine's doll shop, Théâtre des Vampire along with all the vampires inside. In the book, Louis says, “fire merely destroys”. Yet Louis burns down more things than anybody else in this book. (Could have been named Interview with The Arsonist, really). Perhaps Louis’ habit of fire, is symbolism for his vampiric nature, which he is of course, very conflicted about. Lestat says vampires are killers and that they destroy, Louis wants to be anything but this, but every time he starts his “life” over,
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he begins it with flames, mayhap because it is in his nature and cannot be helped. Fire also represents rebirth, which is clearly an important subject for a book about the undead. Each time Louis sets a building on fire he is leaving behind that life and moving forward with his life, he’s being born again, starting over.
No matter what we may wish, every book has an ending. In this case, it has two. The end to Louis’ tale, the interview he was giving, and the actual end of the book. Louis’ story ends a depressing point in time. He has lost everything he loved; Claudia, Armand, Lestat, his entire faith in humanity, his religion, his brother, his human life, his happiness. All is lost. However, the book doesn’t end with the interview, there are still pages left to read. The boy doing the interview requests that Louis makes him a vampire, Louis becomes enraged, he just spent hours telling this mortal how terrible being a vampire, yet that’s what he wishes for. The Reporter leaves and heads to Lestat’s estate, and that is how the book ends. The two endings show us a sad truth. Louis seems to be telling us that eternal life is a terrible idea, but mortals will do anything to achieve eternal life, no matter the what the consequences are.
So why was this book banned from my Christian school? Oh, that should be obvious by now, but I’ll go through it anyway. The Interview with The Vampire is a romance, horror, tragedy novel. It deals with the questioning of faith as Louis struggles with his religion after the death of his brother and his turning into a vampire. The romance in the novel is an unhealthy violent relationship, not to mention a homoerotic one at that (I’m sure my school would haven’t had frown on such an unhealthy relationship if Louis had been a woman, honestly homophobia will never make sense to me. Love is Love guys.) Finally, the main characters are supernatural beings with god-like powers who feast on the innocent.
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Why should you read this book? Well, it’s an emotional roller-coaster that will have you on the edge of your seat, eagerly turning pages till your thumbs bleed, and still you will want to read more. If Louis has one skill, it’s the ability to talk and talk and talk, and you will want to read and read and read, as he jumps into descriptions of New Orleans that will make you want to visit the crescent city yourself, as he leaves out no detail in any bodies faces (or buttons, you’ll understand later). It was one of the first LGBTQ romance novels and it deals with abusive relationships, something many writers tend to run away from when they write as if neither of them exists. It hopes right into controversial issues (especially for when it was written) and always leaves you thinking, and that’s what makes a book great.
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