Interview With the Vampire

The pivotal events of these pages concern the creation of Claudia as a vampire and Louis’s growing dissatisfaction with Lestat. Claudia will later observe that Lestat wanted to give her to Louis because he had become aware that he could not offer Louis anything he needed. Lestat does not provide knowledge, he is impulsive and violent, and his usefulness as a companion is mitigated by his cruelty, selfishness, and petulance. It is ironic that his impulsive act of turning Claudia, which was meant to bind Louis to him once again, results in his near-death at her hands. Claudia allows Louis to feel love again. Her presence is a welcome distraction, but he also adores her.

Lestat and Louis continue to debate the realities and exigencies of their respective natures. Lestat believes that much of Louis’s torment is performative. Louis is a vampire, and a vampire must kill, so why would Louis make the irrational choice to fight against his instincts? Lestat also reminds Louis that he made the choice to become a vampire, so he feels that whatever his faults may be, resenting Lestat for a choice Louis made is unfair. It is ironic that Lestat, who is all raging appetite and impulse, is more content and peaceful than Louis, who is contemplative and loving. Lestat exists from moment to moment with little thought of the future. Much of Louis’s suffering could be caused by an inordinate focus on the past and future while neglecting the present moment.

Louis must also admit that he chose to feed on Claudia. He let his appetite drive him to an act his morality did not want, but his nature did. He is also passive while Lestat is all action. He could have stopped Lestat, but he observes Claudia’s transformation instead. Each time Louis avoids responsibility or action, he complicates his life and brings greater suffering into the world, which further complicates the guilt that is an essential part of Louis’s character. Claudia will bring him joy but will also exacerbate his current struggles because Louis feels responsible for all of Claudia’s suffering because whatever suffering she will endure could have been spared if he had not been passive.

As the narrative progresses, Claudia begins to resemble each of her “parents” more. Despite Louis’s influence, she has no hesitation to kill humans. She may not be as vicious as Lestat and never seems inclined to torture her victims, but her detachment is utterly unlike Louis. Claudia’s life before she was a vampire was brief enough that she has little experience in what being human means. She has 60 years of vampire life to only 5 years as a mortal, and her mortal years were spent as a child whose memories were malleable and unreliable to begin with. However, she experienced love. She wept over her mother and knows she was bound to a human at one point, though she can no longer feel why that mattered.

Once Claudia grows older, her relationship with Louis is no longer that of a child and parent. They are not lovers, but their relationship is closer to a romance than to that of unwilling roommates, such as their relationship with Lestat. Claudia only looks like a child, which allows Rice to raise questions about the various forms love can take.

Louis’s growing ease with killing humans is either a positive or negative development, depending on how the reader views the moral questions that have previously tormented him. The plague kills so many people—including Claudia’s mother—that it desensitizes Louis to the reality of mortal death. There is now anonymity to his killings that comforts him, and he can assume that many of his victims would have fallen prey to the plague if not to him.

When Claudia begins wondering about her origins and the differences between humans and vampires, Louis’s moral quandaries resurface. Her constant interrogations have different effects on Louis and Lestat. Louis is somewhat frightened of her commitment to answers because he has accepted that he may never find satisfying answers to his questions. She infuriates Lestat because he does not want to ponder questions that he would never ask to begin with. Her constant pestering is like that of a bored child repeatedly asking, “Are we there yet?” during a long drive.

Louis does not understand the depths of Claudia’s hatred for Lestat until she announces that she will kill him. She is not interested in being bound to a vampire whom she despises. Throughout these pages, Claudia expresses interest in the differences between humans and vampires, with particular emphasis on the human experience of grief. However, Louis worries about the delight with which she intends to murder Lestat. It is not a human joy that he sees in her.

Throughout most of the novel, Louis searches for guidance. His Catholic upbringing promised an unsatisfactory moral compass in religion. Lestat has proven to be a pour guide, as will Armand in the upcoming pages. The priest cannot absolve him of his sins but rather torments Louis by accusing him of being from the devil. Louis did not kill Babette when she said the same thing, but he has changed enough to take his frustrations out by killing the priest.

Louis’s passivity is a result of his hope that God exists because if God exists, Louis does not share the ultimate responsibility for his actions. In the absence of a divine creator and adjudicator, there are no clear definitions of good and evil, so Louis can never be sure of whether he deserves damnation. Without the consequences of an afterlife, Louis cannot find meaning in his immortal life, yet he chooses to remain passive as Claudia attempts to kill Lestat. The thought of losing Claudia is worse for Louis than the potential consequences of killing Lestat. Louis’s nihilism and numbness in relation to his moral quandaries is also evident in that Louis is fully aware of the consequences should they fail to kill Lestat, but he does nothing to stop Claudia. More than anything, as Part 1 ends, Louis wishes for a rebirth. He puts his hopes for a clean slate on Claudia and their journey to Europe. By leaving the city and land of his birth, he hopes he can become better in a new world. However, the fact that Lestat survives creates tension that will follow Louis and Claudia through the rest of the story.