Going for the Kill

In the beginning, Lestat tells Louis that vampires are extremely difficult to kill. This would be especially true in this novel because both crosses and stakes are ineffective. However, Lestat does not tell Louis how vampires can be killed; most likely for fear that this information may eventually be used against him.

In the blog before last, I mentioned that Louis nearly kills a young girl, Claudia, from thirst. Later on, Lestat and Louis find her in an orphanage. Lestat decides that he wants a daughter and he transforms Claudia into a vampire. The three vampires live together for many years and Claudia, being bitten when she was about five years old, only grows up in mind and not in body. Claudia becomes close to both Lestat, for his feeding techniques, and Louis, for his intelligent, cultured mind.

After many years, Claudia talks to Louis about Lestat. She feels that Lestat is keeping them like slaves. She becomes insistent of killing Lestat. Louis protests because he doesn’t believe that she is capable of killing him. One night, Lestat comes home to find that there are two seven-year-old boys sleeping on the floor. Claudia tells him that she got them drunk on brandy; one for each of them. Lestat is very pleased and she watches as he drinks from one of the boys. Eventually he realizes, too late, that Claudia poisoned the boys and, therefore she has poisoned him. Then Claudia slashes Lestat’s throat and sinks the knife into his chest.

Louis and Claudia watch as Lestat “ceased to move. He lay now on his back. And his entire body was shriveling, drying up, the skin thick and wrinkled, and so white that all the tiny veins showed through it” (137). Lestat seems to be dead. Louis and Claudia wrap the body in a sheet and dump it in the swamp.

They then make plans to travel to Europe to search for other vampires. A few days before they leave, a young boy, who was a friend of Lestat, comes by to ask where he went. Louis lies, saying that Lestat is away on business and that he left him money. Louis also notices puncture wounds on the boy’s neck. The boy leaves and Claudia and Louis debate what exactly happened.

The night before they leave for Europe, Claudia tells Lestat that the boy followed her home. They look out the window and the boy is across the street with Lestat.

So, the vampires of this text are not at all easy to kill. Claudia poisoned Lestat and stabbed him. He appeared to be very much dead. However, he came back. If they can’t be killed that way, how does this book propose that they are killed?

Going for the Kill

In the beginning, Lestat tells Louis that vampires are extremely difficult to kill. This would be especially true in this novel because both crosses and stakes are ineffective. However, Lestat does not tell Louis how vampires can be killed; most likely for fear that this information may eventually be used against him.

In the blog before last, I mentioned that Louis nearly kills a young girl, Claudia, from thirst. Later on, Lestat and Louis find her in an orphanage. Lestat decides that he wants a daughter and he transforms Claudia into a vampire. The three vampires live together for many years and Claudia, being bitten when she was about five years old, only grows up in mind and not in body. Claudia becomes close to both Lestat, for his feeding techniques, and Louis, for his intelligent, cultured mind.

After many years, Claudia talks to Louis about Lestat. She feels that Lestat is keeping them like slaves. She becomes insistent of killing Lestat. Louis protests because he doesn’t believe that she is capable of killing him. One night, Lestat comes home to find that there are two seven-year-old boys sleeping on the floor. Claudia tells him that she got them drunk on brandy; one for each of them. Lestat is very pleased and she watches as he drinks from one of the boys. Eventually he realizes, too late, that Claudia poisoned the boys and, therefore she has poisoned him. Then Claudia slashes Lestat’s throat and sinks the knife into his chest.

Louis and Claudia watch as Lestat “ceased to move. He lay now on his back. And his entire body was shriveling, drying up, the skin thick and wrinkled, and so white that all the tiny veins showed through it” (137). Lestat seems to be dead. Louis and Claudia wrap the body in a sheet and dump it in the swamp.

They then make plans to travel to Europe to search for other vampires. A few days before they leave, a young boy, who was a friend of Lestat, comes by to ask where he went. Louis lies, saying that Lestat is away on business and that he left him money. Louis also notices puncture wounds on the boy’s neck. The boy leaves and Claudia and Louis debate what exactly happened.

The night before they leave for Europe, Claudia tells Lestat that the boy followed her home. They look out the window and the boy is across the street with Lestat.
So, the vampires of this text are not at all easy to kill. Claudia poisoned Lestat and stabbed him. He appeared to be very much dead. However, he came back. If they can’t be killed that way, how does this book propose that they are killed?

Warm and Cold Blood

I’ve read more than one vampire novel in which the vampires can survive by feeding on animal blood. I have noticed that when this happens, they drink the blood of animals like bears, deer, and rats but never any reptiles or fish. Just yesterday I started to wonder why that is.

After a little thought, I realized that these animals are warm-blooded mammals and the others are cold-blooded. From elementary science classes, I remember that cold-blooded animals will sleep or be otherwise inactive if their environment is too cold. Warm-blooded animals have to eat more to produce a constant, higher body temperature in order to counteract against the environment. From this information, I have developed a few theories as to why vampires would choose warm-blooded animals over cold-blooded ones.

One possibility is the activity of the different animals. Reptiles and fish aren’t always active; their liveliness depends on the temperature of their surroundings. Mammals, however, will generally always have the same level of activeness, independent of fluctuations of outer temperature. One could say that vampires live off the life of other creatures. Because mammals have a higher level of “liveliness” (best word I could think of) they would make better food for vampires.

Another possibility relates more to evolution than to the warm/cold-blooded issue. Humans are naturally related more closely to other mammals than to lizards or fish. Vampires may be created to feed off of humans, but bears, deer, etc. are adequate substitutes because they are closer on the tree of evolution than, say, an iguana. One could compare it to vegetarians and tofu (tofu isn’t related to meat, but it’s on the same idea).

The pictures above are examples to help show the difference between hot and cold blooded animals. The colors in the pictures signify differences in temperatures. Higher temperatures are yellow to white while cooler temperatures are more towards purple. The gecko on the human hand is cold-blooded and therefore, the same temperature as the background. In the other picture, it is easy to see that the child is much warmer than his surroundings.

Source:
http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/image_galleries/ir_zoo/coldwarm.html

Animal Fare

Generally when people think of vampires, they think of creatures that feed off of the blood of humans. However, there is a side expressed in “Interview with a Vampire” that isn’t seen in the older books. Are vampires able to survive off of animal blood? According to Louis, they can.

When he first became a vampire, Louis was uncomfortable with living off of the lives of others. After a while, Lestat is looking at some of the beautiful drinking glasses on the plantation and reflecting on how he misses them. Then he shows Louis “a little trick” (32). Lestat finds a rat, cuts its throat and “filled the glass rapidly with blood” (33). While sipping the blood from the crystal, he tells Louis that in certain places, like ships, he may have to live off rats and other animals.

Reluctant to kill people, Louis sees another option here. He begins to drink the blood of animals instead of that of humans. However, not too long later (for a vampire, anyway) he starts to wander the streets of New Orleans thinking about where vampires came from. Were they the devil’s servants? This question bothered him and he forgot how hungry he was. Then he came upon a young girl, crying by her mother’s bed. Her mother had died and she didn’t realize it. Hunger overcame Louis and he left the girl nearly dead.

Is it possible for a vampire to solely survive off of the blood of animals? I have recently read another vampire novel called “Twilight”. This series of novels is about a teenager named Bella who falls in love with Edward, a vampire. Edward and his family of vampires are very different from others of their kind because they can establish permanent settlements among humans. They are able to do this because they only kill animals. In the older novels I’ve studied, this doesn’t even appear to occur to the vampires. They are nearly obsessed with human victims. Modern-day vampires seem to have more of a conscience than the ones from books such as “Dracula”.

Through the Eyes of a Vampire

The books I’ve read all have their own descriptions of a vampire’s strengths. However, I found the description in “Interview with the Vampire” to be much more in depth and interesting. This is most likely because, unlike many other novels, the entire story is told from a vampire’s point of view.

When Louis wakes up after dying (as a human, anyway) he is awakened as a vampire immediately. He feels detachment from human emotions. Louis also sees things in a new way. As a vampire, all details and colors seem more vivid and alive. All sights and sounds have new details and he says the experience was “as if I had only just been able to see colors and shapes for the first time” (21). Lestat pays very little attention as Louis makes this transformation. In the weeks and months following, Lestat tells him that there is much that he doesn’t know and that only he can tell him, but Louis suspects this is only to keep him from leaving.

Compared to other novels I’ve read, the vampires in “Interview with the Vampire” have many fewer weaknesses. Louis mentions Lestat gave his father a rosary and the boy asks about crosses (because rosaries have crosses). Louis tells the boy that this rumor is “sheer nonsense” (23). He then goes on to say that stakes have no effect and that they aren’t able to go through keyholes by turning into steam. The vampires of this story have “no magical powers whatsoever” (24). However, they are unable to go into the sunlight like most traditional vampires. Just as a note of interest, they also sleep in coffins. Louis and Lestat have to drink blood every night to survive.

The vampires of this book are quite different from those in other book. They are monsters in the sense that they kill people and have to do so to survive. However, they are capable of interacting with humans and having intelligent conversations. These vampires aren’t mindless monsters whose sole purpose is to scare people and kill them. They live like people but on a different diet and time schedule. Maybe they just seem different because they are the ones telling the story and not mortals.

Tale of a Transformation

Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire is about a boy who is interviewing a vampire, Louis. The interviewer is only called boy and the reader knows nothing about him except that he is recording the interview on cassette tapes and that he is apparently not a vampire. The boy is listening intently as Louis tells him his life story, which, as one can imagine, goes back a very long time.

Louis was born in Paris and his family moved to New Orleans when he was quite young, but his story really starts when he was 25 (in 1791). At this time, Louis was moderately wealthy and living on a plantation with his brother, sister, and mother. His brother was religious and Louis encouraged his brother to follow what he loved. One night, however, he tells Louis that he had visions and they get into an argument. His brother walks out of the room and falls down the stairs and dies.

Louis feels guilty and, unable to cope with the loss, starts to roam the New Orleans streets after dark. Wanting to die, he nearly gets his wish when a vampire, Lestat, feeds off him until he is almost dead. Back at the plantation, Louis lays down while he confesses to his sister and a priest about the argument he had. When the others fall asleep, Lestat comes into the room and offers Louis immortality as a vampire in exchange for the plantation.

A few nights later, after all the necessary financial happenings were arranged, Lestat changes Louis into a vampire. Before proceeding, he tells Louis to “Be still. I am going to drain you now to the very threshold of death, and I want you to be quiet… It is your consciousness, your will, which must keep you alive” (19). With Louis weakened, Lestat bites his own wrist and has Louis drink from the wound. As Louis drinks he hears the pounding of two drums and when Lestat takes his wrist away, he realizes that it was the beating of their hearts. Lestat then sends him out to rid his body of waste as the human part of him dies and the vampire takes hold.

This is the type of transformation that I find is typical of most vampire novels. In Dracula, Dracula forces Mina to drink from him after he drank from her multiple times. Here, Lestat has Louis drink from him as part of the conversion. It doesn’t necessarily seem to be the bite alone that causes the change in many of the books I’ve read, but the exchange of blood.