Interview With the Vampire

Lestat is Louis’s maker. He is violent, brash, arrogant, and enjoys cruelty. He also loves Louis, though he is never comfortable expressing it. He tells Louis:

Vampires are killers. Predators. Whose all-seeing eyes were meant to give them detachment. The ability to 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 (83).

This self-aggrandizement is characteristic of most of his worldview.

Lestat is the ultimate, lethal example of living for the moment. Louis describes him as “[a] person who preferred not to think or talk about his motives or beliefs, even to himself. One of those people who must act” (95). Lestat gives no thought to the future or the past, indulging his whims, appetites, and impulses as soon as they appear. He is the Freudian id to Louis’s superego. However, Louis comes to realize that many of Lestat’s actions and attitudes arise from a need for vengeance. The world enrages Lestat, and every kill becomes an act of revenge for his own unhappiness. Lestat’s talent for manipulation backfires after Claudia’s death. He finally gets Louis to embrace his vampiric nature, but by doing so, Louis becomes a version of himself that can easily abandon Lestat. At the end of Lestat’s story—at least, in this novel—he is decrepit and wretched. His ignorance and disdain for knowledge cost him as the modern age accelerates too quickly for him to keep pace. As the novel ends, Lestat is seen as pitiful and thinking of suicide.

Claudia is five years old when Lestat makes her a vampire. She is the surrogate child of Lestat and Louis, but she has more in common with Lestat than with Louis. She enjoys killing and is utterly unsentimental about human life. Claudia represents a unique type of vampire: She was human for such a brief period that she has little chance to cling to her humanity. What few memories she has of her mortal life are the hazy, memories of a child that are uninformed by context or experience.

Claudia entertains herself with artistic ambitions. Where Lestat plays the piano without passion, Claudia reads and paints and plays music with genuine artistry. She enjoys learning for its own sake but is also driven to study the occult in hopes of acquiring knowledge about the origins of vampires. Initially, Claudia is characterized by her childlike wonder. As she matures and grows wise, she becomes a symbol of Louis’s guilt. Not only has he introduced a new killer into the world, but he has also confined the new vampire to the body of a child. Even to Louis, she remains a cipher for much of the novel: “Claudia was mystery. It was not possible to know what she knew or did not know” (100). Once she reaches her sixties, her primary role is to lament her situation. Claudia is interested in sexuality and passion but will never have a woman’s body. She is capable of deep love but also of deep hatred.

When she realizes that Louis wishes to leave her for Armand, she insists that he make a companion of Madeleine for her. However, even Madeleine’s presence is a reminder of Claudia’s insecurities. Madeleine possesses physical features and experiences—such as motherhood and physical love— that Claudia can never know. Ultimately, Claudia’s overconfidence about Lestat’s death proves to be the error that dooms her.

Armand claims to be the oldest living vampire that he is aware of. He has a power the other vampires do not: He can control the mind of other vampires, or at least exert a coercive influence over them. For instance, Armand mentally convinces Louis to change Madeleine into a vampire, so Louis will feel free to leave Claudia. He loves Louis instantly, but Armand is selfish. He is drawn to Louis, but a large part of his desire comes from the fact that Louis is a curious, empathetic vampire who is not being crushed by the endurance that immortality requires. Louis inspires optimism in Armand, whose temperament defaults to apathy and weariness. Armand’s 400 years have made him feel that he is obsolete and out of touch with the coming age, and he hopes that Louis can connect his past to the world’s present and future.

Armand represents a cold, rhetorical approach to immortality, as evidenced by his dismantling of Louis’s theological worries. When he tells Louis the only power that exists is inside ourselves” (253), he encourages Louis to elevate himself and accept his nature. His shows at the Theatre des Vampires are the ultimate manifestation of Armand’s detachment. He kills humans, in front of humans who applaud him, and gets little enjoyment from it. He is constantly entertaining mortals but feels a suffocating weariness with his eternal life.

Like Lestat, Armand’s attraction to Louis sabotages his goals. Armand kills Claudia so Louis will make room for him, but this makes Louis even more detached already than he is. At the conclusion of the novel, Armand is gripped by despair, and Louis feels that Armand will not survive much longer.