Interview With the Vampire
Anne Rice

“People who cease to believe in God or goodness altogether still believe in the devil. I don’t know why. No, I do indeed know why. Evil is always possible. And goodness is eternally difficult.”

This book has an amazing story that is very entertaining while also spooky and gothic, surprising, it is about an interviewer sitting down with a vampire and interviewing him. We are not told the name of the interviewer, he is simply referred to as “The boy”. Already from this point there are aspects of gothic fiction in this text. The fact that the interviewer isn’t even given a name other than ‘the boy’ and that we know nothing else about him at all accept for the fact that he is likely young due to the title he is given and male immediately create a sense of mystery and curiosity that surounds him, It makes you want to know how this boy has gotten in to the situation of interviewing a vampire and wonder if he is there willingly. Later on in the book some of his body language and questions suggest that he may not want to be there “The boy’s face was tense with a mixture of confusion and fare”
Something i thought to myself quite often after reading chapters of this book is what i would like to ask a vampire of his or her life and what i would do if i were to be having a conversation with such a super natural creature

The vampire, Louis, recalls his 200 year life starting at early childhood and how he became a vampire in 1791. A vampire sucked his blood leaving him to die but later came back transforming Louis into a vampire all the way to the year before this interview takes place when he brutally murdered a girl called Claudia.
“I did things I could not have done in perfect health. The scene is confused, pale, fantastical now. But I do remember that I drove her out of the back doors of the house, across the courtyard, and against the brick wall of the kitchen, where I pounded her head until I nearly every drop of blood in her scull had poured out, trickling down the seams of the brick work and pooling on the hard wood flooring.”
The vampire admitted to being crazy as he was doing something her couldn’t have done is he was perfectly healthy, this again frightened the boy ‘The boy recoiled in disgust and fare’. Again this made me imagine how tense the situation would be if i were in the boys place

“Evil is a point of view. We are immortal. And what we have before us are the rich feasts that conscience 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.”
In this extract the vampire compares him self to god in a sense, he defiantly believes that he is far greater than humans and the his life is worth more than ours. One of the ideas behind Gothic fiction is to explore the morals that we have, The vampire believes that his is like god a and he morally should be able to kill regardless of innocences of guilt with no consequences. He is a dark angel exempt from the eternity of hell on earth to rule.

This book explores many facets of gothic fiction and is truly awesome. It makes you think about the different forces the dictate nature and how it effects us all as a whole, It makes you consider how our society would function with these “dark angels” wondering our earth and how we would overcome theme.
“The only power that exists is inside ourselves.”

 

Devlin Lynden

Join the conversation! 1 Comment

  1. Devlin,

    Thank you for getting your response in on time to receive feedback.

    You clearly know the story well and have begun to identify some features of the gothic protagonist in the text.

    You have some good pieces of evidence in here. Make sure you are using them to demonstrate how the protagonist of the story could be considered a gothic protagonist.

    Look to develop your response to the use of the gothic elements further. Can you make comments about how and why the author creates a gothic protagonist in this particular text?

    Mrs. P

    Reply

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