Interview with the Vampire

Over the years Rice has been asked why she chose the vampire as her hero. If you were Rice, how would you answer the question?

Why did she write a metaphysical thriller using B-movie motif?

What is postmodernism? How is Interview With The Vampire a postmodern novel?

Discuss in what ways, if any, Rice’s characters transcend gender. Are the characters involved in polymorphous sexuality? Why?

Louis, the brooding, self-reflective, persistent misanthrope, is clearly the Byronic hero of Interview With The Vampire. With the previous discussion of postmodernism, the Nuclear Man, Narcissistic Personality Disorder, discuss the ramifications modernity will play upon the Byronic hero in literature. What has Rice brought to the Byronic hero through her character, Louis?

Elucidate the significance of Louis’ argument to Lestat: “It was only when I became a vampire that I respected for the first time all of life. I never saw a living, pulsing human being until I was a vampire. I never knew what life was until it ran out in a red gush over my lips, my hands!” Rice cites, in theSelected Bibliography section of her website, that one book in particular helped to inspire her Vampire Chronicles, which was Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol. Explain the similarities between the Louis’s argument to Lestat and Jacob Marley’s argument to Ebenezer Scrooge.

After Louis gives Madeleine the dark gift of the vampire, Louis speaks to Claudia of the experience for him. “What died tonight in this room was not that woman... What has died in this room tonight is the last vestige in me of what was human.” Discuss for whom did he let himself die. Why was it necessary that his humanity die?

What is eighteenth century New Orleans like? How is the nineteenth century different? How does Rice describe the city in those times? What appeals to you as a reader?

Daniel and Madeleine both beg the same request from Louis. Madeleine speaks: “If you knew how I long to have your power; I’m ready for it, I hunger for it!” Daniels speaks: “If you were to give me that power... Give it to me... Make me a vampire now!” If Interview With The Vampire were a novel written in the nineteenth century, and by consequence subjugated to those same morals, would their requests be typical of Victorian Era’s norms?

Louis asks Armand if he is the leader of the vampire coven at the Théâtre des Vampires. Armand replies: “Not in the way you mean leader... But if there were a leader here, I would be the one.” What does Armand mean?

Louis noticed the painting The Fall of the Angels by Bruegel and the Triumph of Death as well as he entered Armand’s room in Théâtre des Vampires. What other painters does Rice mention? How does art contribute to a more vivid atmosphere of the narrative? Does the novel prompt the reader to see these works for themselves? Louis likens one painting in particular to Botticelli. Specifically, in what ways is this painting meaningful for him?

The style of Bram Stoker’s Dracula employed a first person epistolary form from several characters, which was atypical of much Romantic literature and it avoided a narration of third person omniscience. Interview With The Vampire chiefly avoids third person omniscience also as Louis tells the story of his vampiric life. Discuss how the internal subjectivity revealed in first person narration creates a successful character. If it were told entirely in the third person, would Interview have been as enjoyable a novel?

There is not one vampire that Louis describes as unattractive: all move with preternatural grace and beauty. Why does Claudia consider herself unprepossessing?

Also in the Selected Bibliography section of her website, Rice cites Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. However, Rice did not read Frankenstein until the 1990’s. She was struck by the similarity of themes between her and Shelley. An alternative title to Frankenstein is The Modern Prometheus. For the Romantics, Prometheus embodied the daemon. Discuss how Interview With the Vampire could, like Frankenstein, also be called Our Modern Prometheus.

In the end Daniel exclaims to Louis, “It was an adventure like I’ll never know in my whole life! You talk about passion, you talk about longing! You talk about things that millions of us won’t ever come to understand.” Discuss which Daniel is pleading for more. Is it vampirism? Or companionship? Why?

What is Louis’ relationship to Babette? Why does he want to help her? What council does he offer her? Does Rice’s treatment of Babette involve anachronism? Could the women of New Orleans pre-Louisiana purchase inherit property? Did Rice make a mistake? Does Rice often make mistakes?

Lord Byron’s Childe Harold's Pilgrimage is regarded as the introduction of the Byronic hero in literature. Some examples of the Byronic hero are Rochester from Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Heathcliff from Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. Discuss how Louis the Byronic hero ofInterview with the Vampire.

The middle of the twentieth century witnessed the rise of propagandism through media, the atomic bomb, democracy as a global power; in effect, a Nuclear Age. Henri Nouwen in his book, The Wounded Healer, referred to humanity’s transition from the Pre-Nuclear to the Nuclear Age as one of the “Nuclear Man”, whose optimism for human future has shifted into meaninglessness, with strong emphasis on a carpe diem attitude; the generational tie, patrimony, lineage, these are no longer existential motivators, thus the Nuclear Man has shifted from parent to peer to better understand his directional purpose in life. Recall the second dialogue between Armand and Louis. Armand: “You are the spirit [of the age].” Louis: “I’m not the spirit of any age. I’m at odds with everything and always have been! I have never belonged anywhere with anyone at any time!” Armand: “This is the very spirit of your age... You reflect its broken heart.” Has Rice suffused vampiric lore, and consequently gothic fiction with this notion of the Nuclear Man?

Modernist literature sought for existential meaning through ontological subjectivism and rejected that pursuit through epistemological objectivism, which ended the sense of realism and its tendency toward spiritual rhapsodies in Romantic literature. Postmodernism ceased the literary search for meaning in a Nuclear Age of seeming chaos, focusing instead on the question of meaning alone. In Interview With The Vampire, the vampire, Louis, concludes the interview by saying: “I wanted to be where there was nothing familiar to me. And nothing mattered. And that’s the end. There’s nothing else.” Louis’ interview is the tale of his life as a vampire. Discuss the questions Louis posits to Lestat and to Armand. Do these questions reflect the modernist’s search of meaning of the postmodernist’s doubt? Why? Is Louis the transition from modernist to postmodern literature? Does Rice employ Romantic, Modernist and Postmodern styles of writing inInterview?

Joseph Sheridan LeFanu’s Carmella predates much gothic romance and is even considered as having a strong influence over Bram Stoker’s Dracula. However, unlike Dracula, the book’s titular hero, Carmella, can be considered the prototype of lesbianism in gothic fiction. Set as a contemporary novella for its time, Carmella also reflects the sexual attitudes and morality of the Victorian Era. In contrast, the sexuality throughout Interview With The Vampire hints at homoeroticism. In an interview with Salon on September 16, 1996, Rice stated, “On the homoerotic content of my novels... It is difficult for me to see the characters in terms of gender. I have written individuals who can fall in love with men and women. Obviously, my attitudes toward androgyny and erotic love of all kinds influence all of my novels.” With Rice being a postmodern author of gothic fiction, discuss the sexual morality and literary expression of our postmodernism as distinct from the Victorian Era.

Lestat posits this question to Louis: “What do you think a vampire is?” He answers his own question by saying: “Vampires are killers... Predators. Whose all seeing eyes... see a human life in its entirety, not with any mawkish sorrow but with a thrilling satisfaction in being the end of that life, in having a hand in the divine plan.” Later, during the first meeting between Armand and Louis, after Louis had witnessed the performance at Théâtre des Vampires where “Gentleman Death” drained the lifeblood of a young woman on stage, Armand says to Louis, “I saw you in the theater, your suffering, your sympathy with that girl... you die when you kill, as if you feel you deserve to die.” Armand declares this Louis’ passion and sense of justice. In the early 1970s, Heinz Kohut coined the term Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Individuals of NPD manifest attitudes of authoritarianism and self-absorption. They are intolerant of reversals and criticism. They find empathy alien. Individuals of NPD are oblivious to the needs of others and ignorant of the effect their behavior causes others. Discuss why Louis is the hero ofInterview With The Vampire. Would Louis see himself as the hero? What characteristics set him apart from other vampires? Which other vampires exhibit personalities of NPD?