In Interview with the Vampire the time is now, Louis the vampire comes in and narrates his story to a boy. Louis a two hundred year old vampire wants to tell his story. The story begins with the death of his younger brother, for which he blames himself believing he could of done more to prevent. He lives in turmoil, drinking to ease the pain of his past until he meets a vampire, Lestat. Lestat has been observing Louis from a distance watching his guilt overflow; Lestat drains his blood until he is almost dead; he is given the choice whether to live as a vampire or die. Disgusted at his blind decision to become a vampire, Louis attempts to denounce vampirism and rejects a desperate Lestat who wants him as a companion. Louis refuses to drink from the blood of humans using animals as his only food source, until he finds Claudia. Claudia a lost child who’s mother has just died of the plague, Louis bites her but instead of killing her he turns her into a vampire trapping her forever in the body of a child. Louis and Claudia form an inseparable bond living in the French Quarter of New Orleans with Lestat, Claudia soon begins to question her existence, resenting her child like body as she mature emotionally and mentally. When she discovers that Louis made her a vampire she is angry but forgives him channelling all her anger towards Lestat, she achieves her revenge by poisoning him and stabbing him to death. Both Louis and Claudia travel to Europe searching for the truth about who and what they are, on arriving at Paris they find the “Theatre des Vampires” here they meet Armand who introduces them to the society of vampires, Louis forms a bond with Armand. Danger strikes when Lestat who has followed them from America informs the society of what they did to him, they seek revenge for this crime. Claudia is killed but Louis escapes with Armand, the twp travel together until Louis feels the need to return to New Orleans to find Lestat where he finds him with a child for a companion. Louis journey gives him no answers except that he is a vampire and needs to preserve himself on human life, the boy unhappy with the ending to the tale asks to be made a vampire, a disappointed Louis did not get the outcome he hoped and the boy leaves unsatisfied.
Louis does not conform to the typical conventions of vampire fiction in a number of ways, he refuses to feed off the blood of other human beings choosing animals such as rats, birds and dogs to get the nourishment he needs. Typical vampires feel no remorse towards their victims but Louis is repulsed by the thought of taking the life of a human.
“Then it was necessary to get rid of the overseer’s body, I was almost sick from this.”
“Lestat was laughing, telling me callously that I would feel so different once I was a vampire that I would laugh, too. He was wrong about that. I never laugh at death, no matter how often and regularly I am the cause of it.”
Louis still has some traditional qualities such as he cannot venture out into daylight as he would turn into ash, he sleeps in a coffin during the day and his appearance is that of the typical vampires we have heard of in the past such as the very famous “Dracula” with the pale almost transparent skin the big green eyes. The novel begins in the third person but Louis takes over to narrate the story making him the protagonist. Rice makes Louis the narrator to make us feel closer to his feelings and relate to him more. Even though he is a vampire he still has human qualities and is a very moral person, troubles by overwhelming grief and guilt over the death of his brother. He explains his guilt by saying “I felt like I’d killed him. I sat in the parlour beside his coffin for two whole days thinking, I’ve killed him.”
Louis is perceived by others in the novel as just a typical human being, he can mix in society without being know as a vampire, he is very well spoken and very polite, quite the opposite to Lestat who has just as much of Louis charisma but lives his life in a very different way, treating humans as bate not caring or feeling remorse towards them. Lestat is manipulative and tries to make Louis give in to the fact of what he is and to stop denying the truth about his existence. Lestat is very charismatic Louis feels enticed by his beauty, he is very suave and is irresistible to some including Louis at some point, but Louis makes it clear by the end of the extract of his feelings towards Lestat, “I felt cold towards him, I had no contempt in superiority”. Anne Rice plays on the themes of inner turmoil, regret, isolation, power and acceptance. Sex and seduction are what runs throughout the novel and usually this theme comes with vampires as the way they lure their victims. The vampire is charming seductive and powerful. Drinking blood represents a sexual exchange. In “Dracula” for example, which was written in 1897, Dracula only ever attacks females, comes from the east and is an outsider. When the novel was written there were fears that eastern immigrants who would pollute the culture and seduce women.
The creature has qualities of both traditional gothic fiction and non-gothic fiction. His appearance is horrific, even though he is what you call a human he is perceived as a monster because of the way he looks. The creature lives in isolation, with places in the novel traditional to gothic fiction like mountains, darkness and forests; he is an outsider to the rest of society even though all he longs for is to be accepted. The way the creature deviates from gothic fiction is that he is kind and not totally evil, even though by the end of the novel we do feel that he has become evil by his actions. He has human emotions and is made from human parts, the creature evokes sympathy on the reader, we get his point of view and we can relate more to him as he becomes the narrator when he tells his story to Victor. At this point we sympathise with him a lot and it becomes how much me is rejected from society and how much this has hurt him.
“ My person was hideous and my stature gigantic. What did this mean? Who was I? What was I? Whence did I come? What was my destination? These questions continually recurred, but I was unable to solve them.”
It is not in his nature to kill humans but wants revenge so much because of the way he is treated and the way he feels self-hatred at his appearance. When the creature becomes the narrator he tells Victor how he learned his human like ways by observing a family from a far,
“Such was the history of my beloved cottagers. It impressed me deeply. I learned, from the views of social life which it develop, to admire their virtues, and to deprecate the vices on mankind.”
He reacts to different situations just like a human, being rejected shows his emotions, as he cried when they showed disgust towards him and anger evokes violence as he feels he wants revenge for being made and not being accepted. He claims
“I am solitary and abhorred.”
When this novel was wrote in the 19th century and the reader at that time would be disgusted at the appearance of the creature, because the text is very descriptive it paints a picture of the creature quite clear in your head. The parts of dead villains constructed the body of the creature, he knows this as he found Victors journal, and he describes himself as,
“Evil stitched to evil.”
He thinks that because his body is made up of evil parts that, that is why he has evil ways. Mary Shelley conforms to the themes of gothic tradition because the story is set in isolated places; the themes she includes are murder, isolation and revenge.
Even though these two characters are from different novels, from different genres and were written by two different people, the two main characters have quite a lot in common. Both Louis and the creature don’t like to kill other human beings as it is not in their nature, Louis needing to survive and it being a necessity to him, but where the creature is concerned he does it to get revenge, he does it because he is angry with himself being one and his creator the other. They are both rejected by society, the creature more than Louis, as Louis can go out and be accepted as a normal human because his appearance is ordinary. He only socialises at night as he can’t go out during the day, the creature is not accepted at all, his tall stature and monstrous looks divide him from society casting him out from everyone else. When they both realise that they are different they both seek revenge on their creators, Victor and Lestat and both achieve this, the creature killing Victors family and friend, whereas Louis attacks at Lestat with the help of Claudia. Anne Rice and Mary Shelley make the readers sympathise with the characters by having them tell the story, being the narrators and getting their perspective. The creature longs to be accepted and to know what love feels like he tells Victor,
“The more I saw of them, the greater became my desire to claim their protection and kindness, my heart yearned to be known and loved by these amiable creatures to see their sweetness directed towards me with affection was the up most limit of my ambition.”
All the way through Interview with the Vampire we sympathise with Louis and we do with the creature for a short time until he starts murdering people.
In my essay I have explored both characters in detail looking at their emotions and lifestyles, I have found that the two experience similar feelings about their existence, that they were both forced into a life they found it hard to adjust to. Both feel sadness and despair towards life and its something they can’t get out of, they try very hard to fit into their way of life but struggle to cope with the way they are. Self-acceptance is the hardest thing to do. Being the narrator of the story is the best way to get the feelings of the characters over and both authors have achieved this, as we feel we can relate to the characters.
Written by CarlyTurnbull
