Nearly ten years ago Interview with the Vampire hit theaters mesmerizing some and boring others. Many of the disappointed had been expecting the standard bats and stakes and flaming crucifixes. They were uncomfortable with the focus on dialogue and the homoeroticism.
Those who liked the movie saw Tom Cruise's final performance as anything but Tom Cruise. They saw costumes and lighting, heard music and became enmeshed in this tale that brought them into the lives of three vampires. While the movie didn't lack in action or blood it's main purpose was to give life to the main characters.
Some of us hadn't already read the book but rushed to get it after the movie. The film had been mostly faithful to the original, and after reading it we learned some extra facts that didn't make the final cut and had some confusions answered. Sometimes Anne Rice (or Louis, depending on your point of view) takes forever to get to a point but all in all it's an excellent read.
More than most books of fiction, Interview with the Vampire is a deeply personal story for Anne Rice. Prior to writing it Anne lost her daughter at age five to leukemia. The pain and despair of watching a child that young, your child, contract an illness and die of it is unimaginable. The extremities of all emotions runs roughshod during a trial such as this. Like most parents tortured with this Anne must have questioned God's motives in allowing this to happen. She must have questioned what the purpose of her daughter's brief existence was, and ultimately she must have questioned if her daughter was in fact in a better place after she passed.
The character of Claudia, age five in the book but aged to ten in the movie and played to excellence by Kirstin Dunst, represents Rice's daughter. Louis, the vampire giving the story of his life to the interviewer, is Anne herself. It's simple enough to give an outline or synopsis of the story. Fact is, most people reading this will have seen the movie already, and those who've had a mind to will have read the book as well. I want to focus more on what a vampire is according to this book. I won't be including facets of White Wolf's Masquerade or standard vampire myth's not included in Interview.
A vampire is an animated dead body with a functioning mind. It contains no bodily fluids save for blood after it's fed. A vampire has no sex drive and would not be able to perform anyways. It can not eat or drink except for blood. (doing so would cause severe pain as its mortal innards have atrophied.)
A vampire is immortal from disease and most violence. The heat of the sun is intense enough to kill it. Complete destruction of the body (fire or dismemberment) is the only other valid method of death. Poisoned, drugged or alcohol-laden blood will have effect on a vampire. Injuries suffered heal on their own while a vampire sleeps. Stakes through the heart merely hurts a vampire (and one does not want to incur a vampire's wrath.) Holy Water and Crucifixes have no power. A vampire's own perogative may include a distaste for garlic but it's power otherwise holds no sway.
Vampire's do not turn into bats or wolves. They do not dissipate into mist. What they have is superhuman strength and speed. Their quickness is such that humans don't see them at top speed. Some older vampires have mastered a form of mental domination over lesser vampires and mortals.
Vampires must feed, and when they're hungry the urge for sustenance may overpower all reason. The price for their immortality is the drinking of blood which almost always means taking a human life. Most vampires upon being turned experience a detachment that allows them their feedings without remorse. For some reason our narrator Louis retained his humanity and most of the story focuses on his guilt and his quest to seek answers.
The man who sired him, Lestat (as I've said earlier, Tom Cruise's last great performance), already detached is unable to understand Louis' wish to limit himself to animal blood. He rightfully tells him that he'll never experience true happiness except when he feeds. The ecstacy a vampire feels during feeding is thousands of times that of the greatest sex which should more than make up for the physiological emasculation. In trying to explain it to him Lestat has one of the best lines of the book for explaining who they are:
Evil is a point of view...We are immortal. And what we have before us are the rich feasts that consciense cannot appreciate and mortal men cannot know without regret. God kills, and so shall we; indiscriminately He takes the richest and the poorest, and so shall we; for no creatures under God are as we are, none so like Him as ourselves, dark angels not confined to the stinking limits of hell but wandering His earth and all its kingdoms. I want a child tonight. I am like a mother...I want a child!
The arguments presented by the vampires throughout the book would make for some great theological debates, provided experts in theology would be willing to speak on hypothetical vampyric issues. If a Being's only source of satiation and survival is the drinking of human blood, how can he be called evil for taking this action? A man-eating lion in Africa, grizzly bear in America or great white shark of the Sea isn't thought of as evil on those rare occasions a human is killed. Of course action is taken to prevent these feasts from happening and to remove those creatures which have acquired the taste, but to call them evil?
Louis had been given a choice between death and immortality, knowing full well what would be required of him. Louis may be right in thinking himself evil, especially after he killed and fed from a priest on the altar. One of the few bits of history concerning Lestat informs us that he didn't have a choice in his conversion (a more thorough explanation isn't given in this first book.) And the child Claudia wasn't given any choice as well, and would have been taken advantage of regardless as she was five years old, starving and feverish.
To label Claudia as anything is difficult. Since vampires never age Claudia lived her first century confined to her pixie-like physique. She gained the knowledge and wisdom of many years yet found it difficult to be taken seriously by Louis and Lestat. Having been young when she was turned she has no remembrance of her mortal life, and her detachment is as pure as it can get, not tainted by the morals of her previous life. She enjoys the kill more than Lestat if that's possible.
A great portion of the book concerns Louis' wish to know more about their kind and to find the reason for their existence. His search takes him and Claudia on the Grand Tour of Europe with an extended stop in Paris where they finally find other vampires. Not only are they not welcomed but Claudia is killed in retaliation for a crime which Louis' mind reasons is the penalty they all should suffer. Louis' last vision of his "daughter" is of her vague shape in ashes, encircled by the charred remains of a woman Louis had reluctantly sired to be her mother. It is Anne Rice's final look at her young daughter, whose body cursed her and who died anything but peacefully. The ashen statue falling to pieces and blowing in the wind is her life blowing like chaff in the wind.
Louis is convinced there is no God and no afterworld, and as such is more convinced that life is only what we make of it during the short time we're here, and to rob anyone else of it is the only sin there is.
While the character of Louis is representative of Anne Rice trying to come to terms with the meaning of her daughter's life, it's interesting to note that she considers Lestat "her baby" and made him the focus of the sequels. Lestat is also bar none her public's favorite character. Anne has sometimes been vague in her answers, but it's any person's right to change their view on things after living life a bit. One bit of information given in the first sequel The Vampire Lestat appears on first glance to be an inconsistancy. It's now known that this tidbit (minor as it is) is Louis lying during his interview. Perhaps Anne is telling us that while her gloomy feelings were genuine, not to take everything she's said as the absolute Gospel Truth.
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