Interview With A Vampire

I always think of vampire novels as being a different flavor of romance novels, and since I’m not very interested in romance, I tend to look past them. It’s true that vampires and sexuality are usually very closely linked. There’s just something very intimate about someone’s teeth sinking into your neck.  Having said that, I’m really not very familiar with the genre at all.

Interview With A Vampire surprised me. While there was a certain amount of eroticism to the vampires, it was more about dealing with their immortality and the unusual problems of ethics they faced. Each of the vampires breaks down in their own way in time. Lestat is childlike in attitude and concerned primarily with self-gratification. He’s entirely selfish and self-serving. However, he’s lonely and needy, and gradually devolves from a powerful, frightening character in the beginning, to a pathetic figure by the end. Claudia, meanwhile, is childlike in appearance even as she matures mentally, and therein lies her problem. Although she takes advantage of her appearance, she becomes increasingly frustrated with her inability to age, and with the way the others continue to treat her as the young girl she appears to be instead of the woman she is.

Louis, meanwhile, is an idealist. He enjoys the heightened senses of being a vampire, but finds killing to be distasteful. He can never enjoy it the way Lestat and Claudia do. He still holds onto his morals. The only reason he stays in Lestat’s company is to protect Claudia. While lonely and unhappy, he has not lost all remnants of his humanity, which is what attracts the vampire Armand, who wishes to have an anchor to this age.

In the end, of course, Louis is broken by the deaths of Claudia and the vampire he created to be her caretaker. He becomes apathetic and loses the passion that attracted Armand to him. The whole story is narrated by Louis to a young reporter, who completely misses the point. Louis is tired of his long life and all the suffering he’s endured, but the reporter believes the life of vampires to be ideal.