Week 2: All things are intertwined (my thoughts on "Interview with the Vampire")

After the in-class discussion, I found clarity in regards the motivation for the narrative of “Interview with the Vampire”. The conversation was especially helpful to my understanding of the relationships of the core characters. 

Much of the novel is clearly lead by Anne Rice’s grief from the loss of her daughter. This is seen most acutely through Louis’s relationship with his brother and Claudia.

There is a theme of preserving youthful purity. A frozen image of childhood that is reflected not only in Claudia but also in the dolls that Madeleine creates. There’s also a preserved image of Louis’s brother that haunts him. “my brother, blond and young and sweet as he had been in life, as real and warm to me now as he'd been. . .” (p. 116)

His brother’s death shapes the way that Louis interacts with all other character’s throughout the novel. Louis fears becoming close with Armand, “I could not conceivably satisfy him. I could not satisfy Claudia. I'd never been able to satisfy Lestat. And my own mortal brother, Paul: how dismally, mortally I had disappointed him!” (p. 227) While he fears closeness, he is constantly driven by the need for belonging and he strives to find any form of family. This creates internal conflict.

Most of Louis’s relationships seem blurred and undefined to me. This might be due to the separation from the same kind of physical affection I’m used to defining romantic/sexual relationships. By taking away the sexual elements, at times the story totally blurs what the meaning of a romantic relationship is. Louis has special feelings for Armand and Babette, repressed feelings for Lestat, and an odd mixture of love for Claudia as he is her caretaker, but he also describes them as lovers. There seems to be sexual tension between them at times. I felt this dissipated as the story went on but there were still strong feelings of love that I found difficult to comprehend or label.

In class, we also talked about the communication that defined Lestat and Louis’s relationship. From this, I found it interesting how Armand and Louis interacted. Armand took on the position of the listener. “He did not start forward to seize on my slightest pause, to assert an understanding of something before the thought was finished, or to argue with a swift, irresistible impulse-the things which often make dialogue impossible.” (p. 223) Louis sought him out to learn from him, but instead, he found someone who wanted to listen. That element of listening was the defining factor of their relationship when it flourished. 

When Louis stopped talking, it killed Armand. “`I am dying!' "And I, watching him, hearing him, the only creature under God who heard him, knowing completely that it was true, said nothing.” (p. 263) Even with the continual murder throughout the story, I found this to be one of the grimmest and most emotional moments in the entire novel.

This same lack of conversation drove Lestat into his decline. The isolation that is created through living on, past the deaths of loved ones, is focused on in the story. But it’s all the more devastating when the living chooses to leave; when someone decides they no longer what to have any communication with you. The need for conversation was exalted through being compared to the need for blood. Their source of life.

Louis rejected Lestat when he just wanted to talk, yet he goes on to talk to a stranger about everything; after rejecting the last of his company. What made it so important for him to share his story with this boy?

            Another connection to the author's life that I found interesting was the struggle with religion and falling away from it. The way I perceived it, Lestat replaced a higher power/god for a while in Louis’s life. He acknowledged him as someone greater. He became frustrated with Lestat when he withheld information. mirrored the frustrations of someone falling away from religion. In my own life, I felt that I was blindly following a religion I had simply been told to believe since I was little. I had questions that the church couldn’t answer. And that drove me away. I clearly saw this reflected in how Louis felt about Lestat. “Once fallen from grace, I had confidence in nothing." (p. 119)

            The character also struggled with ideas of a god and demons. This guided his sense of good and evil. Once he stopped believing, he lost his moral foundation. Along with this, he had already lost the security of Lestat, causing Louis to totally lose his identity, “`I don't know whether I come from the devil or not! I don't know what I am!'” (p. 58) This internal struggle is the foundation for a lot of Louis’s internal struggling. Close to the begining of the narrative he’s accused of being “of the devil” like his brother. Throughout the rest of the story, he struggles with this. He strives to maintain humanity, while at the same time, loathing his remaining human nature.

            One of the ways that he maintains this sense of human feeling is not just in avoiding “evil” acts. But also in the way that he selects when he will turn against his moral code. He turned a human into a vampire for Claudia. While Armand admits he had a hand in this, I still believe this is a reflection of Louis’s nature. I think it’s very human to choose to make another happy, even when it means betraying one’s own morals. It's the deepest expression of his feelings for Claudia.

           I found the differences in the depictions of vampires interesting between this novel, and the other media I looked at for class. In Byzantium, the vampires appeared fully human. They lacked a lot of the supernatural elements included in most other versions of vampires. These vampires didn’t even have fangs but instead had easily retractable nails. It was evident that Eleanor didn’t possess supernatural strength when she couldn’t break free of the elevator close to the end of the movie.

Once again, in this film, the longing for companionship was often a motivating factor for the protagonists. They fought against the curse of immortality: loneliness.

Also, it reflected the style of the novel through the retelling of the story from the protagonist's perspective of past events. In the movie, this was done through Eleanor's letter to Frank which replaced the cassette tapes of Anne Rice's story. This device imitates the epistolary style of both Frankenstein and Dracula.

My favorite quote from the movie was "A pearl stays pure forever while the oyster’s flesh rots around it." (Saoirse Ronan in Byzantium, 2012) This was a clear way to describe the idea of nature. And in the case of vampires, their flesh remains pure for an unnatural amount of time, while their soul/ humanity rots. It created a clear picture in my head that related these ideas.

            In class, we watched portions of “A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night”. There was an eerie contrast with its lack of conversation that reflected closer to the silent style of Nosferatu.

            With conversation being such a central part of Anne Rice’s novel, it’s no surprise that the story is told mostly through dialogue.  However, beyond that, I was continually impressed with how well the dialogue was written. It wasn’t hard to follow and it read very naturally.

            The narrative voice was fascinating. Just like Frankenstein, the story was limited to how someone retold a story. Adding an element of subjectivity. There were aspects of stories that Louis emphasized or minimalized. There were things he would not allow himself to realize during the events. It was a consistently personal view of the narrative.

            Anne Rice used the story as a way to sort through that which haunted her. At points, the vampires seemed more like ghosts: remaining after images of life. Claudia acted almost as a vengeful spirit at points in the story.

            Through all of these various elements coming together, the author brought focus to grief and memories. She went further by highlighting how these things can affect relationships. By writing honesty and drawing from her life to create a fantastical story, she created this unique window of insight into her own thoughts. She dealt with pain through expression, by using her art form.