The New Face of the Vampire: Autobiographical

Fiction in Anne Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles

by

Camille L. Cortés López

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS
in
ENGLISH EDUCATION

UNIVERSITY OF PUERTO RICO

MAYAGÜEZ CAMPUS
2007
Approved by:

________________________________ __________________
Linda M. Rodríguez, PhD Date
President, Graduate Committee

________________________________ __________________
José Irizarry, PhD Date
Member, Graduate Committee

________________________________ __________________
Leonardo Flores, MA Date
Member, Graduate Committee

________________________________ __________________
Betsy Morales, PhD Date
Chairperson of the Department

________________________________ __________________
David L. Quiñones Román, PhD Date
Graduate Studies Representative
 Abstract

This thesis studies how particular events in Anne Rice’s life have had

impact in the context of her written work and how she as a writer manages to

influence her works with these experiences from a twice-removed perspective. It

presents how from these events in her life Rice was able to create a respectable

verisimilitude by writing a series of vampire mock autobiographies she called The

Vampire Chronicles. As an author, she revolutionized the genre of Literary Horror

and Vampire Fiction and made an impact in how later works in the genre were

portrayed. This impact being such, that it can be used to show how the mock

narratives in Rice’s Chronicles can be used as metaphors to represent social

minorities struggling to find an identity, solace and redemption in larger social

strata.

ii
 Resumen

Esta tesis estudia de qué manera eventos particulares en la vida de Anne Rice

han tenido alguna influencia en el contexto de su obra literaria y de qué manera

ella, como autora, ha logrado incluirlos en sus escritos desde una perspectiva

apartada. La tesis presenta cómo desde estos eventos Rice proyecta una

veracidad respetable a través de una serie de autobiografías que tituló "Crónicas

de Vampiros." La autora ha revolucionado el género del horror literario y de la

ficción y ha producido un impacto en la forma en que se han presentado

trabajos posteriores en el mismo género literario. El impacto ha sido tal que

demuestra cómo la narrativa en las "Crónicas" de Rice puede usarse como

metáfora para representar a las minorías sociales que luchan por encontrar una

identidad, solaz y redención en una estrata social más amplia.

iii
© Camille L. Cortes López 2007

iv
 To my mother Neysa and Ricardo, my father:

Thank you for you constant support and every opportunity you have
ever given me. I love you both very much!

And to all of my dear friends who stuck by me, believed in me and

cheered me on when I felt like giving up.
You all know who you are.

v
 Acknowledgements

I wish to dedicate this section to recognize the efforts of those who collaborated
with me during my years as a graduate student and made my college experience a
memorable one at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez:
First I want to greatly acknowledge my advisor, Dr. Linda Rodriguez for giving me
the opportunity to work under her guidance and supervision. Her motivation and
encouragement to stand firm during the writing process helped me greatly. Thanks to
her, I got in touch with my inner writer and obtained the courage to venture into the
literary world.
I also want to thank Dr. José Irizarry for his guidance, motivation, inspiration and
support. It was great to have you as a mentor. I will always hold your encouraging advice
and meaningful words close to my heart.
Thank you Leonardo Flores! You took me under your wing at the last minute and
I am extremely grateful that you took some of your time to help me out in the middle of
mid semester madness.
Edgardo: thank you for helping me out to get back in track when I lost my data.
Mariana and Ian: I have no Idea where I would be without your help. Thank you for
putting up with me every time I asked for your help. You REALLY saved me! Thanks to
you both this manuscript finally became possible.
Also, thanks to Dr. Nick Haydock for training me well on how to do extensive
research and writing, skills of extreme value during my studies, especially as I wrote this
thesis.
And I cannot give thanks without thanking my parents for their unconditional love,
support and their constant reassurance and for always finding ways to make my life
better. I love you both.
And last but not least, Arnis, Roxana and Wendell, my closest friends who

believed in me and kept me leveled with encouraging words in times of academic

insanity.

vi
 Table of Contents
Abstract............................................................................................................................ ii
Resumen ......................................................................................................................... iii
Acknowledgements ....................................................................................................... vi
Introduction: Relevance of Autobiography to an Understanding of The Vampire
Chronicles........................................................................................................................ 9
1.1 Chapter Introduction................................................................................................ 9
1.2 The Reader-Writer Connection ............................................................................. 11
1.3 Characters and Mock Biography........................................................................... 18
1.4 Rice’s Style and Literary Devices.......................................................................... 20
1.5 Thesis Subject Matter and Methodology............................................................... 27
Chapter II Review of the Literature.............................................................................. 31
2.1 Chapter Introduction.............................................................................................. 31
2.2 Review of the Literature ........................................................................................ 32
2.3 Chapter Overview ................................................................................................. 51
Chapter III The Rice Legacy ......................................................................................... 53
3.1 Chapter Introduction.............................................................................................. 53
3.2 The Re-birth of Popular Vampire Fiction: Rice’s Influence in Contemporary
Literature .....................................................................................................................54
3.3. New Orleans’ Influence on Anne Rice’s Fiction ................................................... 59
3.4. Autobiographical Influence................................................................................... 66
3.5 Religion and Morality............................................................................................. 76
3.6 Vampire Types: Breaking the Stereotype of the Old-School Vampire .................. 83
3.7 The World Seen Through Vampire Eyes .............................................................. 90
3.8 Academic Appreciation: Literary Impact in Rice’s Works...................................... 93
3.9 Literary Inspiration for Rice’s Vampire Fiction and Style....................................... 97
3.10 Chapter Overview ............................................................................................. 105
Chapter IV Rules, Secrets, Lies and the Quest for Truth in Anne Rice's Vampire
Chronicles.................................................................................................................... 108
4.1 Chapter Introduction............................................................................................ 108
4.2 Vampires: Origin and Adaptation to an Alternate Lifestyle.................................. 110
4.3 The Laws of the Lawless: Unwritten Rules and Codes of Conduct in The Vampire
Chronicles ................................................................................................................. 117
4.4 Relationships, Maturity, Submission and Psychological Change........................ 123
4.5 The Urgency of Secrecy...................................................................................... 128
4.6 Mentoring and Life Lessons: Guidelines for Vampires in a Struggling Subculture
.................................................................................................................................. 131
4.7 The Vampire’s Kiss: Link to Knowledge and the Vampire Legacy ...................... 139
4.8 Importance of the Storytelling Outlaw Vampire in the Development of The Vampire
Chronicles ................................................................................................................. 143
4.9 Chapter Overview ............................................................................................... 150
Chapter V Conclusion: The Vampire as a Metaphor................................................ 152
5.1 Chapter Introduction............................................................................................ 152
5.2 The Vampire Metaphor ....................................................................................... 154

vii
 5.3 Current Events: Minorities, Illness and the Connections to Anne Rice’s Vampires.
.................................................................................................................................. 156
5.4 Vampires: Metaphor for Identity and Fitting in a Diverse World .......................... 165
5.5 Vampires: Metaphor for a Minority Struggling with Assimilation ......................... 168
5.6 Chapter Overview: Final Thoughts...................................................................... 173
5.5 Final Thoughts .................................................................................................... 174
Appendix...................................................................................................................... 180
Bibliography ................................................................................................................ 181

viii
 9

Chapter I

Introduction

Relevance of Autobiography to an Understanding of

The Vampire Chronicles

Don’t seek to link the past events of my life in one coherent

chain like Rosary beads. I have not done so. The scenes
come forth in bursts and disorder, as beads tossed helter-
skelter to the light. And where they strung together, to make
a Rosary—and my years are the very same as the beads in
the Rosary… my past would not make a set of mysteries, not
the Sorrowful, nor the Joyful or the Glorious. No crucifix at
the end redeems those … years. So I give you the flashing
moments that matter here.
Anne Rice, Violin

1.1 Chapter Introduction

One of Anne Rice’s most recognized works of fiction is her collection of

vampire novels entitled The Vampire Chronicles. These novels are mock

autobiographical narratives about a series of vampires. In order to understand

the process and motivations needed to create them, it is first necessary to have a

better understanding on what it takes to write an autobiographical work, even if it

is to create a mock autobiography.

An autobiographical work, as described by Triana, the main character of

Rice’s Violin, resembles a rosary. Even though the events in the author’s life are

randomly chosen to become part of a narrative, the writer handpicks them to be

connected in a specific sequence. Only the author can decide which will be
 10

written about and which in particular are worthy of disclosing. These events

become a window for the audience to peer into the otherwise mysterious side of

the author’s life and the truth is that they cannot be changed once they have

occurred. The autobiography becomes a confessing chronicle of the author’s life

with the possibility of a lesson for future generations that read it. There are also

mock biographies. These are a “counterfeit or imitative life, using biographical

methods or techniques, but actually fiction. Many novels are make-believe

biographies or autobiographies, as were most early novels” (Winslow)1.

Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles is a collection consisting of eleven novels

that interrelate and narrate the life stories of a series of vampires. These

narratives are the main literary focus of this thesis. In them, Rice as an author

utilizes literary devices, such as framing devices and characters using the

author’s name as a pen name in order to get their narratives across.

To be able to have a better understanding of character development,

books such as The Art of Fiction by Ayn Rand and Ernest Hemingway on Writing,

edited by Larry W. Philips, become useful as guides to decipher the methodology

of creating believable, mock autobiographical narratives for these fictional

characters and storylines. At the same time, these books clarify how an author’s

autobiographical influence can impact their work without making the books

specifically about their lives. Most of Rice’s Chronicles will commonly have a

main character, who is usually male, that begins narrating a retrospective of his

life.

1
Examples of early novels that constitute mock biographies are Robinson Crusoe, Tom Jones
and Virginia Woolfe’s Orlando.
 11

In the Chronicles, the narratives usually begin at a point in the character’s

life before he became a vampire, and will narrate through the transition

culminating at a point in present time that reflects how his life unfolded through

the centuries.

1.2 The Reader-Writer Connection

The element of mystery in the life of a realistic character is one of the

allures that draw people to Rice’s Chronicles. The vampire humanlike

characteristics help audiences connect with their own repressed violent desires

one step removed from actions that would be otherwise rejected by society. The

characters’ actions become more acceptable to the audience that reads her

novels. Violent actions by supernatural characters somehow become morally

acceptable. These actions appear to be fitting and expected from them, thus

allowing the audience to overcome them and admire, even look for spiritual

guidance from characters once considered evil and who live by killing human

beings as part of their everyday life.

Autobiographical works have a way of transcending. Even centuries after

someone’s life has been written, audiences continue to read these works, not

only to celebrate the life of those who are being written about, but also to learn

from their lives and the universal impact their lives have had. This is because “as

autobiographical narrators write their stories, they assign meaning to events,

behaviors, and psychological processes that differ widely over time, place, belief

system, and social position” (Smith and Watson 183). Writing a life narrative

becomes an instrument for authors to reach out to an unspecified audience. Part

 12

of the writing process becomes a pathway for the authors to either find meaning

or acceptance for themselves as they reach out to their audience. In return, their

work becomes a way for the audience to come together and connect with the

author and other audience members that identify with the subject matter being

discussed. This creates a sense of community between the audience that seeks

and identifies with the author’s life and message:

The use of memory, indispensable to autobiography, is a recycling

of memories, both conscious and subconscious aspects of living,

by means in which a life story may be transformed into a personal

myth. Images persistently return in these recycling and typical

scenes or episodes return. These images and patterns reveal the

identity of the writer, to himself first then to a reader (Fowlie 276).

There is also the role and importance of autobiographical narrators:

As subjects of historically and culturally specific understandings of

memory, experience, identity, embodiment, and agency

they…reproduce the various ways in which they have been

culturally read and critique the limits of those cultural modes of self

narrating (Smith and Watson 183).

As a result, in the future, these works will still be adaptable years after

they were written despite the social situations taking place. The audience will

connect to the authors “through reading their lives within and against the terms of
 13

life narrative…shift those terms2 and invite different ways of being read” (Smith

and Watson 183).

In other words, for the audience reading the work the:

Autobiographical subjects register, consciously and unconsciously

their complicity with and resistance to the terms of cultural self-

locating they inherit. In the context of those tensions, they give

shape to alternative modes of address, each with its own defining

characteristics. Established generic modes mutate and new generic

possibilities emerge (Smith and Watson 185).

Therefore, in the future, as different audiences read the autobiographical

work, they will not only adapt the autobiographical subjects to the categories of

autobiography that exist, but will also accommodate these subjects into new

categories that have emerged since the work was written. The author’s work will

also become adaptable to different situations related to the universal qualities

posessed by the subjects he chose to include in his work. This is what makes a

work ageless even if the author lived centuries before.

In the article “On Writing Autobiography” Wallace Fowlie looks back upon

his own experience of writing memoirs. He describes his writing process as:

Becoming familiar with an emotion that seems to takeover when …

writing of an episode in my life, or a portrait of an eminent person I

may have encountered, or the portrait of an obscured person who I

know and like (273-274).

2
The terms are the historically and culturally specific understandings of memory, experience,
identity and embodiment.
 14

Many people find a need to search for guidance in their lives and they find

ways to do so by reading other people’s memoirs or life narratives. Wallace

Fowlie makes a point of this need in his article. He analyzed the impulse he felt

to write his memoirs and wondered what it was that drove him to do so while

contemplating what drove people in general to write about their lives and to read

about other people’s. He came to a conclusion:

Every life is mysterious. No one can really see anyone else’s life

unless perhaps it is written about. But when it is being written about

and then possibly read later, it turns into allegory, into some form of

figurative plausibility. It is not quite fiction, but it is not very far from

fiction (275).

He considers that the structure of autobiography, even if its not fiction it

becomes similar to it because: “As the events in autobiography form a pattern, it

may appear to be prose fiction. At least it uses all the devices a novel does:

characters and the chronicle of a family, maxims and lyric passages, confessions

and narrative” (Fowlie 276). To further establish these characteristics of literary

fiction in an autobiography’s non-fiction format, he points out how “in trying to

trace its history, critics claim that St. Augustine invented the form, and Rosseau

made it into a modern type of literary expression” (Fowlie 276).

As a writer, Rice opens a small window into the life of characters that have

intrigued people over the years. This window allows a view into the vulnerable

side of a once horrific monster. Even if vampires are fictional characters, Rice’s

way of depicting them makes them feel real to the reader. The audience not only
 15

wants to learn about who they are, but at the same time wants to learn from

them. They find ways to identify with them in order to hopefully find some type of

life lesson that will give their own lives more meaning.

Fowlie gives insight into this argument as he further expands his analysis

of autobiography:

Through my life I have been attached deeply to very few people.

But I have been interested in and attracted to many because of

whom and through whom I have tried to understand my own

feelings, hopes, and motivations. In my meetings with famous

people or almost famous people, I have learned very little. I have

learned a great deal from their work—but that is something else. In

their role of human beings they tend to be (and perhaps have to be)

masks… The use of memory, indispensable to autobiography, is a

recycling of memories …by means of which a life story may be

transformed into a personal myth. Images persistently return…and

typical senses or episodes return. These images and patterns

reveal the identity of the writer, to himself first, and then to a reader

(275-276).

He acknowledges that having to interact with people has not taught him

the life lessons he wanted to know because person-to-person interaction can

sometimes mean very little towards obtaining these lessons. The relevance of an

autobiography is that an autobiography records some of the mysteries that go

inside the author’s minds and usually brings to light details that his audience
 16

might otherwise never get to see. Those mysteries, the memories and feelings

that other people can relate to, hold the key to enlightenment.

Then there is also the problem of acceptance and acknowledgment of the

credibility of works written by women such as Anne Rice, even if they are

legitimate works of fiction or mock biographies narrated by a male voice, as is the

case of the vampires she writes about.

Germaine Brée, in the article “Autogynography” addresses the subject of

autobiography written by a female author. She approaches the subject by

discussing her confusion when asked to write about women’s autobiography. Her

partial concern was “Did the title imply that autobiographies written by women

constituted a sub-genre?” (Bree 223). She writes from a feminist point of view

describing how women’s autobiography has been sentenced in the past as falling

all within a similar category; a struggle that Anne Rice as an author had to face

because she was writing the life narrative of a specific male character and also,

because the majority of her characters are male.

Brée also writes of how the autobiographies written by women have been

considered as lacking elements that will make them equal to those works written

by male authors. Because some writers are female, their works, fiction or non-

fiction, are set aside into a whole subcategory; sometimes subtracting

importance from the work itself based on the author’s gender and not on the

quality of it in part because women’s works are considered to be “fragmented

and circular” (Brée 224).

 17

She includes in her essay observations on the essay “Women’s

Autobiographical Selves, Theory and Practice” written by Susan Friedman, a

critic from the University of Wisconsin. Friedman’s work: “scrutinizes the

predominant generic models of autobiography in relation to a corpus of

autobiographical works by women” (Brée 224). The essay notes how:

Both Freud and Lacan…though differently, think of the process of

individualization as story. For them self-realization takes place

within an internalized nexus of family relations developing in stages

and in terms of conflict, power, separation, dominance. Friedman

argues that these structures of the developing self are “male” and

not applicable to women’s autobiographical writings. Thence the

absence of these from the critical corpus (Brée 225).

This relates to Rice because as a female author, some critics may

question the credibility and seriousness of her work. Nonetheless, as a female

author she manages to create a credible male narrative voice as her characters

unravel their mock autobiographies. What makes these critical observations

more debatable when applied to Rice’s work is how even with the strong male

narrative voice she uses as her characters narrate their lives, Rice’s characters

still manage to embrace some of Rice’s autobiographical elements and make

them their own even if the story she is writing does not reflect her life. How her

feelings permeate her characters’ state of mind allow a female perspective to

come forth in a believable manner through the voice of a fictional male character.
 18

1.3 Characters and Mock Biography

One thing that authors and critics seem to particularly focus on is the

development of the characters that tell their stories when narrating their

autobiographies. Whether they are fictional characters or real people;

verisimilitude is crucial when writing a convincing storyline. Ernest Hemingway

once wrote:

You know that fiction, prose rather is possibly the roughest trade of

all in writing…You have to take what is not palpable and make it

completely palpable and also have it seem normal and so that it

can become a part of the experience of the person who reads it

(Hemingway 16).

Hemingway is not the only one who focuses on the importance of the

construction of plot in a narrative. Leonard Peikoff in The Art of Fiction suggests

that “the extent to which abstract issues—such as the mind body question or the

free will determinism controversy or the advocacy of reason vs. faith—actually

influence a writer of fiction shaping his selection of events3, his method of

characterization and even his way of combining words into a sentence” (Rand ix).

These aspects discussed by Rand in her lectures are clearly seen in

Ramsland’s Prism of the Night, Rice’s biography proves to be a clear reflection of

Rand’s observations on philosophical detection. The reason for this is that it

3
Events such as Anne Rice’s strict Roman Catholic upbringing, her falling in love with Stan Rice,
the death of her daughter Michele and her moving from New Orleans to San Francisco and back
are some of the examples that create the framework to her Vampire Chronicles. The emotions
that are linked to these events create the framework for the creation of many vampires that are
presented in her tales. Each character has the influence of Rice’s personal life and the different
emotions she felt throughout her life as she wrote her books.
 19

described the life of Anne Rice and her writing process, thus discussing how her

vampires within the Chronicles deal with their struggles with faith when they

realize they will never go through the transition from life to death that mortals go

through.

As the names The Vampire Chronicles and The New Tales of the

Vampires would suggest, each book is a tale or chronicle narrated by the

characters themselves. Some of the narratives are almost complete

autobiographies of the characters starting before their transformation and tracing

the story of the two lives each character has before and after they became

vampires. The characters consider their transformation as a rebirth. And after

this entrance into the world of The Children of the Night or The Children of

Darkness they will cross paths with each other, in some cases with The Children

of the Millennia, which are the oldest vampires; therefore, each book will have

storylines intertwined with each other because every character in these

Chronicles is connected in one way or another.

Even when new characters are introduced to Rice’s storylines, she

manages to find a connection for them with someone else in her chain of

characters and the events in those characters’ lives. If not, she as a writer sets a

series of events that justify the reasons why it is inevitable for these characters to

meet. Her writing evokes the philosophy of Determinism, which states that every

event, including human cognition and human behavior are determined by

connected series of events that have happened before. According to

Determinism, everything happens for a reason and no action is random,

 20

spontaneous, mysterious or a miracle. This philosophy can be directly applied to

the series of events that led to the meeting of Louis and the vampire Lestat.

The way that Louis’s mortal life is described in the novel demonstrates

how Rice as a writer utilizes a deterministic approach as she connects a series of

tragic events that would lead to the intense feelings of despair. These feelings

drew Lestat directly to Louis. Because of Louis’s indifferent attitude towards life

and death during the time of the encounter with Lestat, added to his attraction to

Lestat’s personality, he accept Lestat’s offering of eternal life through death, thus

delivering his own fate of becoming a vampire.

1.4 Rice’s Style and Literary Devices

Authors have their own particular style when writing. Through the use of

an autobiographical device Rice as an author created a series of characters and

then made those characters write their own autobiographies. As part of the

personal influence to her writing process, Rice added some elements of her own

life, included as feelings that her characters experienced thus reflecting her own

life through from a twice-removed perspective. The Chronicles are in no way the

story of her life, although some of the dramatic elements that are portrayed are

linked to emotional situations that Rice lived through.

Anne Rice wrote two groups of vampire novels. One is The Vampire

Chronicles and it is the most extensive one. Although the first Chronicle narrates

the life of Louis the vampire, The Chronicles in general centralize around the

character of Lestat de Lioncourt and his life. In this collection, he becomes the

main narrative voice on most of the books. New characters that become crucial
 21

to the crossover between the Mayfair Witches Trilogy and Rice’s vampire tales

are also introduced in the latter Chronicles novels and given their own narrative

voices to allow the merging between witches and vampires and create the

conclusion of this collection of vampire tales. The other group of novels is The

New Tales of the Vampires, which were written by Rice as she wrote the

Vampire Chronicles. It consists of two novels. Pandora and Vittorio the Vampire.

Each book on the series has its own style and particular framing devices to

create an acceptable verisimilitude between the characters and the real world.

Sometimes the same author can use several framing devices4 in their

books to help their narratives. In Rice’s Chronicles, some characters, such as the

vampire Armand, refer to themselves in third person. They do this before they

inform the reader that the voice they are being subjected to is, in fact, the

narrative voice of the main character. As he begins to narrate his story, Armand

does not introduce himself, he narrates using a first person point of view what

surrounds him and discloses the setting of the opening scene presented in the

novel, while at the same time giving a brief introduction of his life and his past.

Finally, upon his encounter with his Master, they interact and Marius his master

replies: “I have them, Armand” (“Armand” 6). Here, the audience finally knows

the identity of the narrator.

Rice is not the only writer who used more than one literary device in her

novels, writers of earlier vampire novels that precede her, such as Bram Stoker,

for example, utilized an epistolary format consisting of letters, a diary and journal

4
This is traditional in Gothic Literature. Also Gothic is a story of the inner self.
 22

entries as part of the narrative of his novel Dracula. The reason why these are

used is to present the reader with the background necessary to help the plotline

develop and the characters evolve into real people within the context of the

writing. Anne Rice uses this technique when writing The Vampire Chronicles and

The New Tales of the Vampires. In her novels, she develops the use of several

types of framing devices, some of which have been used in other literary works

of years past, works that now belong to the literary canon.

Each novel of the old and new series of the Chronicles has a specific

framing device that sets the groundwork for the narrative. Some of the framing

devices include the handing over of manuscripts from the main character to the

author, the allegation that the main character utilized Rice’s name as a pen name

in order to be published, and the use of narrative through letters.

An example of a first person narrative as a framing device can be used by

observing the literary style in some of the books that portray the vampire Lestat

as a primary character. These usually include an introduction in which Lestat

himself addresses the audience in first person. Another example of a framing

device is the novel Pandora where the main character of the same name begins

writing a letter to David Talbot. Talbot is a fictional character with a crucial role in

several of Rice’s novels. David’s “quest is to crack the secrets of the universe”

(“Vampire Companion” 448) as part of a secret society known as The

Talamasca. The purpose of this society was to document paranormal beings and

activity. These included the lives of witches, ghosts, spirits, psychics, werewolves

and vampires, to name a few.

 23

In the first chapter of Pandora, Pandora writes her acceptance of David’s

request:

Now here I am with your notebook open using one of the sharp,

pointed, eternal ink pens you left me…Yes I will tell you the story of

my mortal life in Ancient Rome, how I came to love Marius and how

we came to be together and then to part (“Pandora” 3,8).

All of these strategies and use of detailed description are used to

persuade the readers into feeling that the manuscripts containing the life

narratives and autobiographies of these characters in fact, did exist, and were

personally handed to Rice by the characters themselves. Rice’s depiction of the

framing device displays the details of the exchange of written history between

character and the author, which adds to the effect of veracity and persuasion,

making the story about the realistic exchange and realistic story plausible to the

reader.

Through the use of detailed descriptions and recollections that jump from

the past to the present and the use of adjectives that appeal to the audience’s

senses, Rice is able to seduce the reader’s curiosity into visualizing the opening

scene of her main character’s life. The narration is of David’s request for Pandora

to write about her life and evolves into the introduction of the novel as well as the

preface to the autobiography of this fictional character: “And now it has begun,

David. And now you see, David, I have made our meeting the introduction to the

story you asked me to tell” (“Pandora” 35).

 24

Other than Rice’s descriptions, there is one characteristic that makes her

work as a writer a memorable one. She has a way of capturing the character’s

humanity and inner struggle with morality in order to maintain the spiritual human

qualities they have lost after they have crossed over to a life of darkness. Being

able to include this in her novels helps Rice’s audience connect to the characters

even more.

In the novel Vittorio the Vampire, Rice’s approach to character introduction

is different from her other books. Vittorio’s fictional autobiography belongs to The

New Tales of the Vampires. Rice’s approach to make him real differs from the

Vampire Chronicles because unlike her other books, where the characters had

contact with David Talbot in connection to the documentation of their lives,

Vittorio di Raniari is portrayed as having handed Rice the manuscript that is to

become this novel. At the end of the novel in the “Selected and Annotated

Bibliography” there is a note from Rice that reads: “I went to Florence to receive

this manuscript directly from Vittorio di Raniari. It was my fourth visit to the city

and it was with Vittorio that I decided to list here a few books for those of you

who might want to know about the Age of Gold in Florence and about Florence

itself” (“Vittorio” 289).

The dedication of the book is a strategy that gives life to the character

outside of the written context. This is important because it makes the character

better well-rounded and leads the audience to believe that perhaps this fictional

character could have perhaps been real and lived during the historical time

presented in the novel.

 25

The book has a double dedication. One is by Rice where she addresses

her late husband Stan Rice, her deceased daughter Michele and her son

Christopher Rice. This part of the dedication connects the audience with the real

author of the novel. The second dedication is right before the title page and the

message reads: “This novel is dedicated by Vittorio to the people of Florence,

Italy” (“Vittorio”). This message gives the illusion that Rice, as an editor chosen

by Vittorio, is forwarding and delivering the main character’s wishes as if he were

the real author to the audience that he intended this autobiography for.

Also, through the framing devices, Rice develops her characters’

personalities so that they are very complex and multi-layered. Through their

introductions she presents them as vulnerable, showing emotions such as

loneliness and fear, even if they become immortal, especially if they become

immortal. These methods become crucial in order to make the characters three-

dimensional and well rounded. Their well-developed personalities make it hard

for the audience not to react to them, and in some cases, to identify with them.

Roger Herald Moore discusses three fictions that Rice as a writer needed

to keep in mind as she created the vampire mock autobiographies. He considers

these three fictions: “support Lejuene’s strictest definition of autobiography: (1)

The author is a real person capable of writing his own autobiography; (2) The

author is the protagonist; (3) The author-protagonist writes (in prose) a true story,

that of his own life” (Moore 9). Furthermore, this argument connects directly with

the case of Vittorio the Vampire: A Novel because he addresses the role of the

manuscript tradition as part of the development of fictional autobiography and

 26

autobiographical fiction; a strategy that Rice has used on several occasions, but

that is most clearly seen in Vittorio the Vampire: A Novel. In the case of Moore’s

article, which is about the role of the pícaro5, he considers that: “The manuscript

tradition with its emphasis on the first person singular which links writer and

character seeks to establish and maintain the fiction of the genuine

autobiography of the real pícaro written by that pícaro/buscón” (Moore 9).

As mentioned in the previous paragraph Rice’s novel portrays the

character of Vittorio as having handed Rice the autobiographical manuscript.

This action, therefore, bringing to life the manuscript tradition previously used by

writers such as Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra once more.

Her novel The Vampire Armand is another style of autobiographical fiction.

This falls into the collection of The Vampire Chronicles but follows a different

format. The framing device is a full circle turned into a spiral transition between

present and past and future narrated by the main character of the book, Armand.

This book in particular is the life narrative of Armand. In it, he just writes

down his memories about his life, from the time when he was mortal and

kidnapped from his family, to the point when he first meets his master and lover

Marius, to his transformation into Child of Darkness. His story ends in the present

where the book began then continues from that point on, leading to the resolution

of the book.

5
Rice’s vampires can be considered pícaros because, just like the pícaros in the Spanish novels,
they are rogues involved in a series of adventures that usually take place as part of a journey.
They are also similar to the pícaro because as vampires they are characters that are constantly
hungry and searching for food, they are known to be thieves, as they steal from their victims to
accommodate to their needs and they live under the tutelage of a master with whom they have a
love hate relationship.
 27

Unlike Pandora who reluctantly wrote her story because of a request from

fledgling vampire David Talbot and Vittorio who documented the tragedy of his

family and his seduction by Ursula, Armand does not write his story for a specific

reason. He does not have a person to give his manuscript to, or someone who

requested the manuscript from him; or is he persuaded into writing what he has

lived. He just does, thus presenting the lead character of the novel playing the

role of the writer, role that Rice bestows convincingly upon her fictional

characters.

Human or not, the character retrieval of their human qualities through their

narrative is gained through self-acceptance. Their struggle to finally find

redemption requires a great deal of mental and personal strength that will guide

and push them towards reaching that goal of finding a place where they belong.

The struggle is hard and they will face many trivial moments that will cause them

to question their identity and purpose as living beings. They have their own free

will to either battle the obstacles they have encountered or give up. When they

are finally free of their existential burden they will feel they found their goal

through forgiveness or enlightenment.

1.5 Chapter Overview: Thesis Subject Matter and Methodology

There are three main objectives that the research that this thesis proposes

to determine. First, the thesis will attempt to establish how the topic of

autobiography plays a relevant role to understanding Anne Rice’s Vampire

Chronicles. Second, the thesis will focus on how Rice creates a mock

autobiography reflecting elements of her life using a twice removed perspective

 28

and whether she is successful at it or not. Third and last, the thesis will focus on

determining how autobiography and The Vampire Chronicles can be connected

to minorities and the vampire as a metaphor.

Chapter one is the introduction of the thesis but it also focuses on the

discussion of autobiography as well as its connection to the Chronicles’

characters. It focuses on autobiographical narrative and how it is reflected on

Anne Rice’s style, including her literary devices. The chapter concludes with a

description of the framework of the thesis itself, demonstrating the objectives of

the research as well as the thematic content of each chapter.

Chapter two is the review of the literature. It provides an overview of the

books, essays, and novels that inform the main topics to be discussed in the

thesis to have a better understanding of. The works used as reference include

essays, critical essays, books, and novels that have relevant information on

autobiography, race and identity, ethnicity, vampire fiction, the vampire

metaphor, minorities, Anne Rice’s life its connection with her work.

Chapter three of the thesis is an outlook into the Rice legacy. It includes

an overview of her influence into contemporary literature as well as the role of

New Orleans in her work. It further discusses the autobiographical influence that

she has poured into her ouvre, especially her life’s experiences are reflected into

her characters without becoming part of the fictional storyline that takes place in

her novels. It continues the discussion including the role of religion and morality

in Rice’s personal life and the life of her vampires and extends into a discussion

of the Academic appreciation of Rice’s works. It concludes with a review of the

 29

literary inspiration that influences her into creating her novels, as well as the way

that these other works may mark their place in the pages of the Rice novels.

The information in this chapter will help resolve the second objective of the

thesis. It will help by not only determining which factors of Rice’s life can be

linked to her work, but also what inspired her to write mock autobiographies. This

discussion is relevant to understanding how she allows herself to create a fiction

based on a twice removed perspective of her life so that this work can stand by

itself as a mock autobiographical narrative, while at the same time reflecting traits

that are directly linked to her personal life.

Chapter four is a discussion of the vampire’s quest for an identity. Its

purpose is to define the character of the vampire in Rice’s fiction and transition

into some of the elements that will help answer the third objective of the thesis;

how the Vampire Chronicles and the topic of autobiography can help explain the

use of the vampire as a metaphor for minorities. It documents and reflects upon

the struggles the vampires in Rice’s novel suffer as they go on a quest for

acceptance of their lifetime away from the sun and the repercussions that this

way of life imposes on them, while hinting at the connection these may have

when compared to different type of minorities that not only include race and

ethnicity, but sex, illness and coming to terms with mortality.

Chapter four also discusses the code of conduct and laws that the

vampires in the Vampire Chronicles must abide by, which is not only a reflection

of the religious influence in Rice’s life, but also a connection to the codes of
 30

society. These codes become a segregating factor that creates more rules

towards the creation of new minorities.

This chapter reflects role of the relationships between vampires; the

importance of keeping the secrecy of the vampire ways in order to survive and

how this creates a dilemma in the search for identity (an indirect reflection of the

struggles of minorities) thus creating the desire and need for mentors and life

lessons that will help the characters survive as part of the vampire subculture.

Chapter five is the conclusion. It will present the closing argument of the

thesis and discuss how the topics of Rice’s Chronicles and autobiography play

an important role in the creation of the vampire metaphor for minorities.

By discussing why particular audiences such as part of the gay community

and people who are ill with the AIDS virus are drawn to Rice’s fiction, the reasons

why they are considered a dystopian minority will be disclosed. The chapter will

focus on the use of the vampire as a metaphor in literature and how it represents

subculture and a Dystopian minority struggling to find an identity as well as

redemption, as they are ostracized from society. It will conclude presenting the

results of the objectives proposed in the introduction, show how the elements

discussed throughout the thesis come together to create a literature that is

sought by many and conclude with how Rice’s novels indirectly reflect her, but

are not a parallel narrative of her life.

 31

Chapter II

Review of the Literature

2.1 Chapter Introduction

Reliable texts and sources are necessary to develop the proper research

necessary to resolve the main objectives proposed for the thesis. Books and

materials covering topics of autobiography, race, identity and ethnicity become

resourceful when attempting to gain a better understanding on how and why it is

necessary to have a familiarity of the subject of autobiography when reading

Rice’s Chronicles. The texts that focus on autobiographical content instruct the

audience into a clearer perspective of the reasons why people not only read, but

also write autobiographical works. They present a more comprehensible

perspective on how such sources are capable of being linked to other works

relating to identity struggles and representation as well as their relationship to

race, minorities and ethnicity.

Books on vampire fiction, the vampire metaphor, minorities, and vampire

criticism also help create a better understanding of Anne Rice’s life, her work and

the way she developed a twice removed connection of her life from her fiction.

These particular works become necessary to intricately unravel the distant

connections between vampires and Rice’s personal life, as well as the

possibilities to connect elements of vampire fiction to issues such as race and

 32

identity. These sources also allow an exploration of Rice’s role and influence on

the new developments within the vampire genre, thus giving a preview of the

areas in which the new works about vampires might branch out into.

In The Vampire Chronicles, Anne Rice chose to use vampires as a way to

portray through them from a twice removed perspective her personal feelings

about a somber moment in her life. She created a series of mock

autobiographies that reflected a great verisimilitude to everyday life, and

characters whose struggles extend from Rice’s personal suffering, and may have

very well been the same as minorities living in the United States. But the truth is

that Rice just used a fictional figure that had been used before in literature, and

that attracted people’s interest even centuries before Rice wrote her first story.

2.2 Review of the Literature

The figure of the vampire is one that has fascinated people for centuries.

Works such as Polidori’s The Vampyr, which was the first vampire work in

English fiction and Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla became predecessors to what

was to become a growing increase of the narratives and storylines of vampire

tales. These works of vampire fiction have served as a cornerstone to influence

writers like Anne Rice. Rice as a writer not only incorporated in her works the

sensuality of these works, but managed to make them evolve into mock

biographies, and allowed the audience to see the story from the vampire’s point

of view for the first time. Her characters manage to capture the essence of the

past generations, while at the same time delivering through a twice-removed

 33

perspective Rice’s knowledge, emotions, interests and even her experiences as

an author.

The adaptations and variations from old style vampires to modern times is

such that novels like Mario Acevedo’s The Nymphos of Rocky Flats have been

written using the current events surrounding politics that flood the media. This

novel shows how far the range of vampire literature has reached as it presents

the audience with the character of Felix Gomez, a Hispanic American soldier who

participated in Operation Iraqi Freedom. His life took an unexpected turn when

he returned from the war a vampire. “I don’t like what Operation Iraqi Freedom

has done to me. I went to the war a soldier; I came back a vampire” (Acevedo1)

is the opening line of the novel.

Although this novel has a never before seen approach to the figure of the

vampire in current times, it still does not depart from the figure of a character

struggling to find an identity and meaning of his lifetime because of his lifestyle.

He struggles to find redemption and forgiveness from the murders he had to

commit in order to survive as a soldier. As a vampire he must also struggle with

the decision of whether to hunt live victims to feed from them and whether he

should kill them or not while feeding on their blood. This moral dilemma is also

presented in Rice’s Chronicles. Her vampires live under a code that requires

from them to never kill a victim as they feed. Usually when they kill a victim after

feeding from them it is because they chose to take their life. In most cases

vampires feed until the victims are on the brink of death. The victim is left so that
 34

it can either survive or die on its own because it lost the will to live, but not

because the vampire took their life.

Rice’s influence over works like these is easily perceived because she, as

a writer of vampire fiction, broke the rules of creating a stereotypical vampire. In

his novel, Acevedo, just like Rice, incorporates a subjective first person narrative

of a character that shares similar qualities with him. He writes a vampire tale that

presents a verisimilitude to current issues. Nonetheless, although he as a writer

transmits some of his views and opinions through his subject matter, the storyline

is not about him or his life as a soldier and is strictly a fictional tale.

Even though vampires have existed in folklore and literature for centuries,

no vampire ever became as famous as that created by Bram Stoker in his novel

Dracula: “When published, Dracula became one of the many contemporary titles

that pitted humans against monsters. Robert Lewis Stevenson, Rudyard Kippling

and H.G. Wells, among others all published in the same genre at about the same

time. Yet it is Dracula that readers cannot forget” (Stoker back cover).

Bram’s Stoker’s Dracula becomes a relevant source for comparison

between what is considered the main classical depiction of the Old World

Vampire and the New World Vampire that is presented in Rice’s fiction. Rice, just

like Stoker found her literary success through her vampire novels and since they

were first published, they have not fallen out of print.

Because people seem to have found a great fascination for the

supernatural and fantastic, many books have been written in order to document

and capture a better understanding of these fantastic creatures. The Fantastic in

 35

Literature by Eric S. Rabkin is a book that analyzes the elements of the use of

the fantastic in literature and deconstructs the fantastic itself to get a better

understanding of it.

The book also give reasons why people such as Rice become fascinated

with supernatural elements, thus choosing to add that element to their works as

metaphors for other situations or issues of the real world. When creating

characters and settings as works of fiction which have fantastic elements, writers

like Rice are allowed a creative freedom and flexibility that might otherwise be

condemned by ordinary social standards because of the way they target taboos

and controversial material as would be murder, incest, homosexuality and

adoptions6 by gay parents. As Rabkin concludes: “Boredom is one of the prisons

of the mind. The fantastic offers escape from this prison” (42).

Just as Rabkin analyses the fantastic in fiction, Noël Carroll wrote The

Philosophy of Horror or Paradoxes of the Heart. This book studies the reasons

why people choose to write stories of horror and add elements of horror to

literary works. The book proposes in its chapter about horror today that:

The argument is that if horror is, in large measure, identified with

the manifestation of categorically imposed beings, works of horror,

all things being equal, will command our attention, curiosity and

fascination, and that that curiosity, as well, can be further

6
In Rice’s Interview with the Vampire the relationship between Lestat and Louis has homosexual
connotations. They also become a “family” when Lestat decides to incorporate Claudia, a child
vampire as part of the household that he shared with Louis. Claudia becomes a bond between
them because Louis finds Claudia, but Lestat not only turns her into a vampire, but he “gives” her
to Louis as both a daughter and companion in hopes that they will become closer.
 36

stimulated and orchestrated by the kind of narrative structures that

appear so frequently in the genre. Moreover, that fascination with

the impossible being outweighs the distress it engenders can be

rendered intelligible by … the thought theory of our emotional

response to fiction, which maintains that the audiences know

horrific beings are not in their presence, and, indeed, that they do

not exist, and, therefore, their description or depiction in horror

fictions may be a cause for interest rather than either flight or other

prophylactic enterprise (Carroll 206).

Again, this book becomes relevant to understanding Rice’s use of

fantastic elements because she as a writer expressed that when she began

writing Interview with the Vampire and consecutively, the other Vampire

Chronicles, that fantastic element and the essence of a horror novel would better

manifest the feelings provoked by the somber moment in her life she was going

through. Somehow, a vampire would become a better medium to portray feelings

of despair, existential angst, religious uncertainty and spiritual loss she was going

through when her daughter died, as well as the other dark moments from her

past that fueled her storylines while not necessarily having to write her

autobiography.

Essays such as Carol A. Senf’s “Dracula: The Unseen Face in the Mirror”

gives audiences new approaches to analyzing the character of Dracula and his

connection towards good by exploring the duality of the character’s nature. Senf

does this by going through “Stoker’s narrative technique in general and

 37

specifically on his choice of unreliable narrators” (Senf 421). This duality about a

vampires’ goodness was hardly considered before because of the characters’

associations with evil and it was not until Rice’s Chronicles were written, that a

new door was opened towards the exploration of a previously evil character’s

possibility of having a good nature.

After Rice’s novels were published, there has been a growing interest for

the vampire as a creature with a mind and even a soul. Senf’s essay targets a

study on the approach to how Dracula is portrayed in Stoker’s novel. She

analyzes whether taking the same approach as other writers have taken

beforehand determines this character’s evil qualities. She discusses how they

are deemed to the author’s literary style, which guides his readers to an

incomplete and easily questionable personal profiling of the vampire.

The creation of Dracula himself, to this day has sprung such interest that

people not only have portrayed his likeness in movies as old as F.W. Murnau’s

Nosferatu (1922) and as recent as Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s

Dracula (1992) and as E. Elias Merhige’s Shadow of the Vampire (2000), but

have also studied his historical and cultural background and the impact this very

well known figure has had on the media.

Books such as In Search of Dracula: The History of Dracula and

Vampires by Raymond T. McNally and Radu Florescu have been reprinted out of

growing interest by readers of the genre and popular demand even after they

were out of print due to the renewed interest in the figure of the vampire in both
 38

literature and film. McNally and Florescu’s book in particular focuses on horror,

history and film and the impact that Dracula has had on all three genres.

In the book’s introduction McNally states the desire that drove him to

research and document the idea of Dracula and the vampire theme in general.

He declares:

As a fan of Dracula horror films, I began to wonder whether there

might be some historical basis for the vampire hero…At first, like

many Americans, I assumed that [Transylvania] was some

imaginary place.... I found out, however, that Transylvania is a

province…of western Romania, bounded by the Carpathian

Mountains, that had been independent for almost a thousand years

but under Hungarian and Turkish influence… I had an intuition that

if all the geographical data were genuine, why not Dracula himself?

Most people had never asked this question, being generally thrown

off by the vampire storyline. Since Vampires do not exist, Dracula—

so goes the popular wisdom—must have been the product of a wild

and wonderful imagination (McNally & Florescu 1-2).

What makes this book important is that it not only demonstrates the

similarities that both Stoker and Rice have as authors of vampire fiction, but it

also manages to study the connection between both works. McNally and

Florescu’s research incorporate Rice as part of their investigations and as an

example of the modern depiction of the vampire’s history and its impact in

vampire film and literary genres.

 39

Books such as the Vampire Film: From Nosferatu to Interview with the

Vampire have focused more on how the figure of the vampire has left a

memorable mark in the cinematic world. This particular book focuses on the

constant reinvention process that the vampire has endured through the years

and the deconstruction of how vampires have been portrayed in movies during

different decades. In general, it displays and categorizes how films continue to

mold the vampire to represent the essence of the times in which they were

created while at the same time holding on to the classic allure that draws its

audience. It also discusses the adaptation to film of Rice’s Interview with the

Vampire as well as its relevance to the vampire film industry and its importance

of why a novel like hers would have the elements necessary to make it to the

silver screen.

There have also been popular publications such as The Vampire Book:

The Encyclopedia of the Undead by J. Gordon Metton. This book in particular

not only documents the vampire’s role in film and history, but also discusses the

literary movements that promoted this legendary figure to appear in the pages of

books produced during those times. It includes a historical synopsis of the

vampire origins and moves to discuss such topics as the different

representations of the vampire have emerged since it became a literary character

taken out of folkloric lore.

Despite it being written for popular audiences such as fans, thus making

this book a non-scholarly publication, this book becomes relevant to this research

because it discusses the cultural and social diversity that has suddenly become
 40

part of the vampire trend. It includes a discussion on African-American Vampires

and Gay and Lesbian vampire representations in literature such as Anne Rice’s

Vampire Chronicles, thus making the study of the subject of vampires as

metaphors for minorities and marginalized subcultures more approachable from

an academic perspective.

Ken Gelder’s Reading the Vampire, although also focusing on the figure

of the vampire, does not make particular emphasis on the figure of Dracula

alone. It consists of a series of critical essays that discuss thematic contents in

some of the most popular vampire related literary works. The book’s content

includes a range from Polidori’s Vampyre, to including more modern works such

as those of Anne Rice and her very famous Vampire Chronicles. The topic of

Rice’s vampires and their voyages through the centuries is covered in an essay

entitled “Vampires in the (Old) New World: Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles”. The

role of Rice’s Chronicles becomes particularly important. They have proven to be

the most popular vampire work written to date since Stoker’s literary success with

Dracula. They have even inspired a couple of movies based on two of the novels:

Interview with the Vampire (1994) directed by Neil Jordan and Queen of the

Damned (2002) directed by Michael Rymer.

Rice’s Vampire Chronicles consist of eleven novels. The first one,

Interview with the Vampire becomes important because it is from this novel that

the whole series sparked from. This novel in particular reflects more Rice’s

personal emotions from a twice removed perspective. It also is, just as Bram

Stoker’s Dracula, one of the most popular vampire works ever written.
 41

Although there are female characters in the series, only two novels

Pandora and Merrick are narrated by a female character and focus mainly on a

female character. Along with Vittorio the Vampire, Pandora is the only other book

belonging to The New Tales of the Vampires.

What makes Rice’s vampires different is that, added to her departure

from Classical horror vampire fiction, she adds an element of ‘queerness’ to her

characters. This element has become a great source of discussion between

scholars. This topic is discussed in books such as Our Vampires, Ourselves by

Nina Auerbach, where it slightly focuses in Rice’s use of a seemingly gay

vampire as a reflection of the late 70’s and 80’s taboos about the subject. It also

discusses how Rice has applied to the genre (along with other authors during the

1980’s) the role that illnesses such as AIDS and cancer have partaken in the

creation of new vampire fiction. Rice’s literary style and her portrayal of death

and how to approach it and embrace it is one of the reasons why so many people

suffering from these potentially deadly diseases have identified with her works.

Interview with the Vampire, the first novel of Rice’s Chronicles, becomes a

key to understanding the autobiographical influence of Rice as an author and the

context of her work. This novel, originally a short story7, has been considered

one of Rice’s most popular books and her breakthrough novel into the publishing

mainstream of popular culture and horror fiction. It was written in the 1970’s

during Rice’s period of mourning following the death of her young daughter

7
This story can be found as an appendix in KatherineRamsland’s The Vampire Companion:
The Official Guide to Vampire Chronicles. 2nd ed. New York: Ballantine Books, 1995.
 42

Michele. Her use of vampires such as Louis, Lestat and the child vampire

Claudia reflect not only herself and her inner demons, but also her husband and

even Michele.

This struggle becomes easier to understand through books that will shine

light on the author’s life itself. Prism of the Night by Katherine Ramsland and

Conversations with Anne Rice by Michael Riley are the two books that can give a

clearer insight on the author’s life since she collaborated in the creation of both.

Prism of the Night is Anne Rice’s official biography and it records her history,

from her parents’ union, up to her literary success. At the same time it gives a

somewhat subjective psychological overview of the life changing events that

molded Rice as an author. Riley’s book, on the other hand, is a one on one

interview with Rice. It is through Riley’s questions that the audience gets not only

information about Rice’s personal details, but at the same time, Rice’s personal

opinions about subjects such as positive and negative criticism that has risen as

a response to her literary works.

Magazine articles such as Deborah Garrison’s “Last Words” also help

understand more closely some of the elements that played crucial roles in Rice’s

life. This article, which was published in the September/October issue of Poets

and Writers magazine, was written to honor the life of Anne Rice’s husband Stan

after he died of Cancer. It is known to those familiar with elements of Rice’s life

that Stan was a rock to her and a strong influence to her creation of Lestat, the

main character and narrative voice of most of the Vampire Chronicles.

 43

Once the audience gets acquainted with Rice as an author, they can

understand better how she discusses through her vampires topics of mourning,

the loss of youth and the struggles to adapt to a new lifestyle following life

altering events. In Interview with the Vampire in particular, the tale of the vampire

is overturned from the classical stereotype to a more intense, more personal

narrative seen from the vampire’s eye. It also happens to capture the social

changes of the time including gender issues and feminist perspectives.

As for the strong autobiographical element that plays a role in Rice’s work

and how it may affect her worth as a professional author, essays such as

Germain Brée’s “Autogynography” discuss the credibility of female authors who

wrote autobiographies in the professional literary realm and how the credibility

and quality of female authors is challenged due to their gender. This essay asks

“whether autobiographies written by women constituted a subgenre…or a

different genre-in which latter case perhaps they should acquire a different label”

(Brée 223). This analysis of the female literary perspective and its connection to

authorship helps to better understand some of the struggles that Rice as an

author had to face. This, in connection to the believability of her characters,

especially since she wrote such autobiographically influenced literature during a

transitional time in history where the search for identity and meaning became a

high point of interest.

Rice’s autobiographical style is seen in many of her novels and it does not

only reflect her own life, though these elements are completely disconnected

from the novels’ storylines. Examples of the different styles of life narratives can
 44

be seen in The Vampire Lestat, which re-introduces the audience with the

character of Lestat de Lioncourt, who was one of the primary characters in

Interview. This novel begins with a first person narrative of Lestat as he

introduces himself to the reader as a character yet at the same time disclosing

his inhuman condition in the first lines of the novel: “I AM THE VAMPIRE LESTAT.

I’M IMMORTAL” (“Lestat” 3); words that are emphasized in caps to point out the

importance of the character’s identity and as a reflection of his pompous

personality.

Though Louis was the primary character in Interview, it is the character of

Lestat that comes to assume the role of lead narrator in several of the books of

the Chronicles that are to follow this introductory novel. Books such as The

Queen of the Damned, Memnoch the Devil,and The Tale of the Body Thief begin

their narrative with opening lines such as “I’M THE VAMPIRE LESTAT.

REMEMBER ME? THE vampire who became a super rock star? The one who

wrote the autobiography?” (“Queen” 1) or perhaps “THE vampire Lestat here. I

have a story to tell you” (“Thief” 1), or even more, “LESTAT HERE. You know who

I am? (“Memnoch”1) These introductions to the character as a first person

narrator help emphasize the importance of that autobiographical element that

Rice’s novels encompass, but perhaps none of the novels encompass the

longing and desire through a subjective eye as Lestat’s opening lines in the last

novel of the Chronicles.

Merrick, Blackwood Farm and Blood Canticle become the closing novels

of Rice’s vampire saga and the merging with the Mayfair Trilogy which consists
 45

of the novels The Witching Hour, Lasher and Taltos. At the same time, through

the narrative voice of Lestat in the first and last chapters of the novel, the

audience is subject to finally understand the true meaning and purpose of the

vampires and their journeys, which is to find means to deal with their curse as an

eternally damned blood seeker, find their own identity as an individual who is not

only part of the vampire community, but that also manages to live between

humans while at the same time finding solace and redemption from their

everyday actions that are a result of the monster they have become.

In Blood Canticle’s first chapter, the audience is introduced once more to

Lestat through a series of very uncommon requests for a vampire. In his opening

lines he states: “I want to be a saint. I want to save souls by the millions. I want to

do good far and wide. I want to fight evil!” (“Canticle” 1). A few lines later the

audience is briefed about the true identity of the vampire as he discloses his

name through his ritual of introduction:

Allow me to introduce myself, as I absolutely crave at the beginning

to every one of my books…I’m the vampire Lestat, the most potent

and lovable vampire ever created, a supernatural knockout, two

hundred years old but fixed forever in the form of a twenty-year-old

male with features and figure you’d die for- and just might. I’m

endlessly resourceful, and undeniably charming. Death disease,

time gravity, they mean nothing to me (“Canticle”1).

Lestat’s introduction also serves as the key to understanding the downfall

of the vampire as a virtually immortal being: “Only two things are my enemy:
 46

daylight, because it renders me completely lifeless and vulnerable to the burning

rays of the sun, and conscience. In other words I am a condemned inhabitant of

eternal night and an eternally tormented blood seeker” (“Canticle” 1).

It is important to know that Lestat’s narrative is not the only one presented

in the Chronicles. Novels such as The Vampire Armand and Blood and Gold,

present the readers with other characters within the storylines and their

connections. These become part of the books in which the vampire Lestat was

not the main character and that as a result, provoked a more negative

acceptance from Rice’s devoted fans. Still, they follow through Rice’s literary

style of a vampire searching for an identity, solace and redemption as he

documents the struggles of his lifetime and his connection to those who surround

him.

Some of these novels such as Pandora and Vittorio and Blackwood

Farm’s literary devices become important because Rice utilizes epistolary

framing devices to develop the character’s transition into their life narrative. At

the same time she captures in the storylines her own autobiographical elements

through the eyes of fictional characters. They become represented in the form of

landscapes, cities, artwork, food and textures to name a few.

Because of the high interest on particular details about the author, her

inspirations, and what led her to intertwine personal influences into the book’s

storylines, a book titled The Vampire Companion: The Official Guide to Anne

Rice’s Vampire Chronicles was created by Katherine Ramsland in collaboration

with Anne Rice. This book is not a scholarly publication. It was written for popular
 47

audiences, such as her fan base would be, but proves to be of great relevance

for those who seek to understand Rice’s process as a writer. It serves as an

encyclopedia and contains not only personal accounts and quotes by Rice about

her novels, but also catalogs and defines many key concepts about the process

of writing and understanding the novels, along with the listing of crucial

information about the settings, art, historical events and literary works that

permeate in the pages of these books.

This book give the Chronicles’ audience insight into the Rice’s personal

interests and the topics she extensively knows about, as well as all of the

information she has obtained from her religious education and her many travels

to Europe. It will also give additional information to the readers and further

understanding of the terminology, characters, situations and background

information that influenced Rice to write her novels.

More than a glossary of terms, it offers information about the relationship

of the author and her books and allows insight of the personal aspects of Rice’s

private life that served as inspiration for The Vampire Chronicles and The New

Tales of the Vampires. It provides details of the author that focus on Rice’s

choices for creating specific characters that embody some of her ideals, conflicts,

struggles and perspectives before her writing process began. There is a similar

book by Ramsland entitled The Witches Companion: The Official Guide to Anne

Rice’s Lives of the Mayfair Witches that serves the same purpose for those

readers who follow the Mayfair Witches Trilogy or that may have become
 48

interested in the subject once Rice created a crossover between both series of

novels.

The essay about the Mayfair Witches Trilogy, “The Least of These:

Exploitation in Anne Rice’s Mayfair Trilogy” by Kay Kinsella Rout, helps shed

light into the thematic content of the Mayfair storyline and simultaneously

overlaps into Rice’s Chronicles because of the merging of both plots in the latter

Chronicles. Books like Merrick, Blackwood Farm and Blood Canticle incorporate

Mayfair characters as part of the major vampire storyline. Characters such as

Mona and Merrick Mayfair even make the transition into becoming Children of

Darkness, and Lestat professes his attraction and admiration to Rowan Mayfair.

It is necessary to understand that, though not the main focus of the thesis,

novels such as the Mayfair Witches’ Trilogy and The Feast of All Saints play an

important role in the development of the thesis because they focus on the

connections between generations and the role of “family” in the creation of a

narrative whose purpose is to define a particular identity. Kinsella Rout’s

previously mentioned essay provides insight into the complexities of the Mayfair

family unit and the characters’ struggles for control that transgress into Rice’s

Chronicles.

In order to have a better understanding of the role of this search for an

identity, books like Black White and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self by

Rebecca Walker and Half and Half [Writers on Growing up Biracial + Bicultural],

an anthology edited by Claudine Chiawei O’ Hearn become useful because they

include autobiographical or autobiographically influenced stories of individuals

 49

that are struggling with coming to terms with the several layers that constitute

them as a person. As Danzy Senna expresses in her essay “The Mulatto

Millennium”, published in Half and Half as a reference to a list of terms describing

different types of Mulattos that defined just before this remark: “The categories

could go on and on, and perhaps, indeed, they will. And where do I fit into them?

That’s the strange thing. I fit into none and all of the above, or at least, mistaken

for each of them at different moments in my life. But somehow, none of them feel

right” (Senna 27).

Walker’s autobiography proves to be very useful in the demonstration of

the vampire metaphor because in it she discusses many of the sentiments that

are voiced by Rice’s fledgling vampires in her collection of vampire tales.

Struggling to fit in and feeling uncomfortable or cursed in an existence where

these characters cannot help who they physically are just some of the issues that

Walker also discusses as she narrates the events of her life in her own book,

thus allowing a fairly reasonable basis for comparison between the feelings of

Rice’s characters and Walker’s.

The book Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying

Practices discusses the portrayal of minorities. It is divided into sub themes such

as the representation of “The Other” and the importance of representation and

difference. This book also discusses the portrayal of stereotyping, its reversals

and positive and negative images of it and proves helpful when analyzing the

figure of the vampire not only as a representation of a minority figure through a

 50

fictional character, but as the vampire as a metaphor for marginalized and

repressed subgroups of society who struggle to find a sense of identity.

The genre of autobiography may seem simple and narrow, but when

analyzed carefully it becomes hardly that as it branches out into many aspects

within itself. Books, such as Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life

Narratives by Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson, help the reader become

familiarized with the background of the genre of autobiography in general and its

ramifications. For example, in Reading Autobiography, Smith and Watson

categorize fifty-two styles of life writing and how these relate and differ from each

other.

This book also points out the genre’s evolution, and thus, makes it easier

for the reader of autobiographies to better understand these texts. It becomes a

helpful reference when reading Rice’s Chronicles because by researching the

different types of autobiographical works, it becomes easier to decipher why Rice

would use particular writing strategies in the creation of her character’s mock

autobiographies.

The book Autobiography by Lisa Anderson, just like the Smith-Watson

book, examines canonical and non-canonical books in order to describe the

elements of an autobiography. In a different aspect from the Smith-Watson book,

“Anderson ranges across canonical and non-canonical texts and looks closely at

twentieth-century women’s writing, black and post-colonial writing” (Drakakis i).

Moreover, in her book Anderson explores the critical approach to topics such as

identity, selfhood, languages, and the use of genre in autobiography.

 51

Both books not only define the terminology that branches out from the

extensive and complex genre of autobiographical writing, but they also give a

description of why particular generations have adopted the autobiographical style

in order to document their history. Anderson’s book in particular has a more

critical approach towards the subject and includes theorists such as Lacan and

Derrida thus defining from a more academic approach to the analysis of the

personal desires (such as the search for a personal and cultural identity) and

social influences that fuel the creation of autobiographical writing.

In the article “On Writing Autobiography” published in The Southern

Review, Wallace Fowlie looks back upon his own experience of writing a series

of memoirs he later on published. He, just as other writers already mentioned

such as Hemingway and Rand, agree that it is important “to recollect the past

and to recreate it and to record particulars that may stir the imagination of the

reader...with places, with ambiences that retain…very special atmospheres not

always easy...to describe” (Fowlie 274). Description and detail are two

memorable elements that instantly stand out in the works of Anne Rice.

2.3 Chapter Overview

The works discussed in this chapter can be divided into three main

categories. First there are the novels used as the source of research. These

include Rice’s collection of Vampire Chronicles, as well as other novels and non-

fictional narratives used as reference of style and content.

The second group of books contains critical theory, essays and

discussions on vampire fiction. These books not only include the information
 52

necessary to develop the discussion about the vampire metaphor, but also some

included information relevant to Rice’s work and personal life. This information

proved to be of value when discussing her personal influence in her works and

also when trying to determine her methods to allow her fiction to stand on its own

and become credible to its audience, instead of it becoming a parallel narrative of

her life.

The third group of books and essays included information about race and

the portrayal of race in the media and literature. These books did not only focus

on the role of one particular race, but also discussed issues of multi-racial, multi-

ethnic individuals who are informing the world of the wide range of variety and

diversity within the topic of racial and ethnic issues. These books helped the

research by providing insight into some of the connections that can be made

universally enough to be able to fall into the parameters of the vampire as a

metaphor for minorities.

 53

Chapter III

The Rice Legacy

I am giving you my life to prove to myself I can…Even when

I am not getting paid…Completely and totally, permanently
and without hope of reward, just as an act of will.

Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters

3.1 Chapter Introduction

A writer’s work can become a legacy of their lives. Sometimes a work that

may have begun as a personal challenge for a writer will end up becoming a

creation that will transcend through centuries. This chapter will focus on the

particular moments in Anne Rice’s life that branded a deep enough mark to mold

her into the writer she has become. It will discuss her personal life and her

influences a writer while trying to prove what is it about her work that allows her

to have such a subjective influence filter into it without turning it into the story of

her life.

Although Rice created novels previous to the Vampire Chronicle, it was

her vampire legacy that gave her world-renowned fame as a writer. With her

previous works, she struggled as a writer to get her work published; but it was

not until tragedy struck her life that she became inspired by her grief. She

became self-motivated into writing a short story that a few years later would

revolutionize the genre of Vampire Literature. She wrote Interview with the

Vampire as an act of will in order to channel her grief into something else,

something better.
 54

She did not envision the outcome that her short vampire story published in

1973 would have, or how it would evolve into a world-renowned bestseller. Nor

she foresaw the sudden interest that a brand new audience coming to terms with

death and their individual identity would spark in her books amidst a raging

incurable epidemic, as they sought for knowledge and solace from the life of this

relatively unknown, former writer of erotic novels.

3.2 The Re-birth of Popular Vampire Fiction: Rice’s Influence in

Contemporary Literature
The works of Anne Rice have gained world-renowned fame and

considerably large cult following by eager fans belonging to all fields. “The ever

mysterious vampire world [she] has created has made her the most popular

vampire novelist since Bram Stoker8” (Gordon Metton xiv). She finished a short

story about the life of a vampire in 19739. In this story she “tried to capture the

vampire’s perspective10” (“Companion” 207) by having her main character, an

unnamed vampire, tell his life narrative to a young radio station DJ with a tape

recorder in hand. This interview takes place in an empty room inside an old

Victorian house in Divisadero Street11.

8
Anne Rice’s first three vampire novels were Interview with the Vampire (1976), Vampire Lestat
(1985) and Queen of the Damned (1988). “None of these novels have since been out of print.”
(Gelder 1994)
9
“She finished the story in August 1973, one year after her five-year-old daughter Michele had
died of Leukemia.” (“Companion” 208)
10
Anne Rice acknowledges that one of her inspirations that influenced her writing of “Interview
with the Vampire” (the short-story) was the story “Dress of White Silk” by Richard Matheson,
which was “told from the point of view of a child vampire” (“Companion” 207). The film Dracula’s
Daughter also inspired her because “it depicted vampires as both tragic and sensual”
(“Companion” 207).
 55

Rice chose this street because she “had visited a small radio station

[there] when she was lengthening [her] short story… “Interview with the Vampire”

(Ramsland 104) and she “noticed the tragic contrast of tall Victorian houses

sitting in the midst of contemporary squalor and gloom” (“Companion” 104). She

claims she was inspired because of the feel of the “deep urban Gothic that used

to be captured years ago in comic books” (“Companion” 105). To her, the

location of this street has great importance in her work because it becomes a

“metaphorical joining of diverse neighborhoods—rich and poor, gay and straight,

white, yellow and black12” (“Companion” 105-06).

After revising the storyline several times, she finally finished writing this

tale; a short story that later on would be modified one last time and shortly after

come to revolutionize the world of Horror fiction13 and Vampire fiction forever. It is

true that “no vampire novel…has ever surpassed the general popularity of

Dracula” (Gordon Metton xii), but not since Bram Stoker’s Dracula had a vampire

story turned out to become so popular14. The name of this short story was

“Interview with the Vampire”.

11
Divisadero Street “cuts across San Francisco, terminating in the Castro District, a gay
neighborhood” (Ramsland 104).
12
“That Louis, a vampire who had left behind political and economic concerns was situated on
this street gave the story an interesting juxtaposition between background and character”
(Vampire Companion 106).
13
“For the purpose of examining horror fiction, terror can be interpreted as the extreme rational
fear of some form of reality, whereas horror can be interpreted as the extreme irrational fear of
the unnatural or supernatural. Moreover, there is realistic horror— fear of the unnatural or
supernatural presented in the guise of the dread of something unpredictable, something that may
have potential for violence.” (McNally & Florescu 133)
14
“Published in May 1897, it [Dracula] became a success after Stoker’s death and has never
been out of print. In America, where it has been available since 1899, it continues to be a
bestseller. (McNally & Florescu 193)
 56

By January 1974, “Interview with the Vampire” had evolved into a full

sized novel and the first installment of a series of vampire novels written by Rice.

Now her main character had a name, Louis de Pointe du Lac; a background: he

was “the son of a plantation owner in New Orleans, Louisiana” (Gelder 110) he

also had a brother who was a religious zealot, a sister and a mother who lived in

the plantation with him and the novel’s content was that of a vampire that “related

his fruitless search for redemption and for escape from grief and suffering”

(“Companion” xi).

Rice was inspired by the desire to “look at the vampire as a tragic figure, a

human who had made the mistake of choosing such an existence to his deep

regret” (“Prism” 142). This was because “Anne thought of vampires as images

that emerged from a deep primitive consciousness, trapped by their nature in a

psychological purgatory, not like Stoker had depicted Dracula” (“Prism” 149). The

particular collection of vampire novels that emerged from this first installment

would later come to be known as The Vampire Chronicles. These novels

became popular because in them, Rice “developed the theme of sensitive,

beautiful artistic vampires who feel rapture and intimacy when they drink blood,

and who find various ways of coping with their dark world and murderous nature”

(Gordon Metton, xiv). This takes the original stereotype of the aristocratic15

vampire such as Count Dracula was and pushes it a notch further, giving more

depth to the classical vampire that is already world famous and that had been

immortalized in books and movies.

15
“It was through the depiction of Count Dracula that the vampire gained such famous and
universal traits as being mortal, aristocratic, corrupt, unholy and ruthless.” (“Companion”111)
 57

The story became a novel in the late 1970’s, a time considered as “the

age of realism and the biases [of this age and time were] in favor of the

semiautobiographical” (Riley 122). At first, it may have seem that Rice as a writer

would have to struggle against these semiautobiographical ideals sought for in

books during this time because instead of appearing to write what was

considered mainstream books, she wrote a story with a context based on

fantasy. Nonetheless, Interview with the Vampire was distributed and publicized

all across the nation in many bookstores16. Its popularity caught on with

audiences, in part, because Rice’s fantasy was deeper than what it seemed to be

at firsthand. She wrote “a fantasy that allowed her to go back home” (Riley 123).

Since the novel was first released, it has never been out of print.

Following the book’s rampant success, with time, her popularity made her

a role model for other writers of the genre, including writers who have published

novels as recently as 2006. Rice has also influenced reviewers and critics into

comparing newer works within this literary genre to her already established

influence. An example of critics utilizing Rice as basis for their literary critiques on

style and form can be seen in the back cover of the 2006 novel by Mario

Acevedo, The Nymphos of Rocky Flats. Here is displayed the commentary of

writer J.A. Konrath, author of Bloody Mary which reads “Deliciously unique. A

smooth combination of Anne Rice and Michael Connelly with a generous portion

of Dave Barry” (Acevedo, back cover).

16
“[Rice’s] biographer, Katherine Ramsland, reports that Ballantine made the book into an
‘event’… (with an extensive tour, coffin shaped book displays, T-shirts and so on), ensuring its
success with heavy promotion” (Gelder ,180).
 58

In 1994, approximately twenty years after its print release, this short story

turned bestseller17 was then changed by Rice into a screenplay for Interview with

the Vampire the movie, which eventually became a blockbuster18 and earned it

two Academy Award nominations for Art Direction and Original Score. The movie

was considered controversial at first, shocking people with its depictions of

graphic vampire cruelty and violence, but caught on, and years later in the year

2002 it prompted a less successful yet popular sequel based on the also

bestselling novel and third part of The Vampire Chronicles, Queen of the

Damned19.

Adding to these two films, after years of development, Rice’s work was

also taken to the stage in 2006 when the musical “Lestat”, based on her also

bestselling book The Vampire Lestat, the second novel in the Chronicles series,

was created and performed in theaters. With a musical score by famous British

singer and songwriter Elton John, it showcased in theaters both in San Francisco

and a short lived run on the Broadway stage, closing in 2006, in New York City.

Another production subsequent to her previous line of popular books turned to

film is the non-vampire related novel The Feast of All Saints, which is an example

of Rice’s works that became adapted for the smaller screen.

The Feast of All Saints, a national bestseller, explored an additional

subject in Rice’s range of topics of interest and her connection to her place of

17
“It was not an immediate bestseller because Rice at this time was unknown—she had not been
published before.” (Gelder 108)
18
It was the highest grossing vampire movie ever created. At least up to the year 2002
19
“In 1988 Queen of the Damned outsold The Vampire Lestat by 400,000 copies. It became a
best seller in its first week and stayed in the lists for seventeen weeks” (Gelder 1994).
 59

birth. It portrayed the life of the Free People of Color in Louisiana before the Civil

War and was adapted in the year 2001 by Showtime, which created it into a two

part mini-series constituted of an all star cast including the talent of actors such

as Jennifer Beals, Pam Grier and Peter Gallagher among others.

This novel, although not part of The Vampire Chronicles, shows the

connection of Rice and Louisiana. More so, it shows the connection and interest

that Rice has for the rich and diverse cultural background of New Orleans. The

city’s history is greatly discussed through references made by her characters and

the narrative voice in her novels, making it come alive as it would have been

centuries ago during colonial times.

3.3 New Orleans’ Influence on Anne Rice’s Fiction

Originally named Howard Allen O’Brien, Anne Rice was born in New

Orleans, Louisiana on October 4, 1941. Growing up there and soaking up the

culture and the customs and history of this great Southern and Colonial city

created a strong impression on her which later on would be greatly represented

in her work. Her depiction of local color both in her historically based novels

along with her vampire fiction is exquisite. She captures the everyday routine that

gave life to New Orleans. From the city’s downtown Spanish and French

influenced architecture to the plantations that stood erected nearby the banks of

the Mississippi River, she manages to make sure that the local lifestyle and

customs are being integrated as the part of the back-story that establishes the

plot and settings in her books.

New Orleans becomes a fitting choice to describe the Dystopian

 60

neutralization of the vampire’s subculture that Rice created in her Vampire

Chronicles. It must not be forgotten that it is a city that was created by great

cultural diversity. It was also known for a sense of modernity and decadence, the

supernatural and an avant-guard acceptance of all the cultures that arrived to its

harbor and that blended within its limits.

As any place that is culturally diverse, there is partial marginalization

through its districts, which are known for concentrations of particular minority

groups congregating in order to establish their own communities. Though,

contrary to other Metropolitan centers like New York City, the margins between

these communities blended better between each other. Rice’s novels embrace a

special connection with her hometown of New Orleans and its essence of

diversity:

Anne illustrates the impetus in the human heart to seek others, but

she also notes the tendency of wanting to bond with others so

strongly that those who find community seek to force others to

follow rules. [She] disliked conformity and believed in the

preservation of individual rights. However, she also understood the

pull to be with others, to be inconspicuous which meant to follow

rules that divide insiders from outsiders. Thus she shows how the

notion of community becomes a paradox, fed by the urge to

dominate others and make them so like oneself that formal bonding

can take place, validating the rule makers (“Prism” 172).

New Orleans’ tolerance for Free People of Color when the rest of the
 61

United States still debated about their role (or lack there of) in society were also

an outstanding factor, which was captured in Rice’s work. It was particularly

portrayed in her novel The Feast of All Saints but it is also reflected in the pages

of The Vampire Chronicles as part of the background setting for the storylines.

The Afro-Caribbean influence was very strongly present in the city and left a

mark as the alternative religious practices became part of the picturesque

essence of it. These allowed a series of non-conventional religious practices20

that are considered to be pagan or taboo by some to be practiced up to this day

as part of the cultural background of New Orleans.

Through the eyes of her characters she captures the elements of the city

and the essence of the Colonial-Creole lifestyle as it evolves through the

centuries. Her characters are the ones that knit with their narratives the historical

evolution of the setting and slowly demonstrate the infusion of the variety of

cultures that permeate New Orleans as they themselves, along with the city,

change through the years.

Rice shows her connection to the place where she grew up by using her

knowledge of the city and its traditions in her works. In her biography of Rice,

Katherine Ramsland makes a reference to New Orleans by saying that the city

“in the 1940’s was an interesting place to grow up for Anne” (Ramsland 3). She

describes that the city during this time was “alive and with motion and energy,

[and it] had a distinct personality. With French, Spanish, and Caribbean

20
Some of these practices include Hoodoo, Voodoo and Santería.
 62

influences, genteel, gleefully corrupt, there was no other place in America quite

like it” (“Prism” 3).

Rice represents this influence of existential opposites that created the

ambience of her city; a city “settled in the precarious banks of the Mississippi

[and that] harbored people of strong passion, manic aspiration, fragility and deep

despair. They partied hard and repented to excess” (“Prism” 3). She is faithful

when describing the way that the city connects with its origins, harboring its

influences.

While being interviewed by Michael Riley, he asked her: “What is it about

New Orleans that has made it such a powerful presence for you?”(Riley 117) To

what she replied as part of her extensive answer: “I think New Orleans is unique,

and an honorable recipient of devotion on the part of its native sons” (Riley 120).

She also voiced that her attachment to New Orleans has to do with the fact that:

“In New Orleans you will see and experience things you cannot find any other

place. A different ethic prevails, and it influences all of life…It’s a way of

celebrating life… and everything that goes along with the Catholic ideal of what’s

important” (Riley 118).

At the same time the city absorbs and keeps its history despite the many

disasters that have plagued it and through the years have aggravated its

existence: “New Orleans culture was created by survivors” (Prism 3)21. This

instinct for survival can be seen in the following excerpt from the novel Interview

with the Vampire:

21
Through the centuries this cultural spirit of survival remains untouched in New Orleans. Even
now in the 21st Century it can clearly be seen as the city is being slowly rebuilt following the
devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
 63

[Paris] was the mother of New Orleans, understand that first; it had

given New Orleans its life, its first populace; it was what New

Orleans had for so long tried to be. But New Orleans, though

beautiful and desperately alive, was desperately fragile. There was

something forever savage and primitive there, something that

threatened the exotic life from within and without. Not an inch of

those wooden streets, nor a brick of the crowded Spanish houses

had not been bought from the fierce wilderness that surrounded the

city, ready to engulf it. Hurricanes, floods, fevers, the plague—and

the damp of the Louisiana climate itself worked tirelessly on every

hewn plank or stone façade, so that New Orleans seemed at all

times like a dream in the imagination of her striving populace. A

dream held intact at every second by a tenacious, though

unconscious collective will (“Interview” 203-04).

There is no question why it is so easy to make a vampire story seem fitting

during a time when people were stricken by disease. If connected to the vampire

myth, not only would an illness reflect a good excuse to cover the deaths caused

by the vampire, but it would also serve as a clever literary device, such as a

metaphor would be to represent a group that has been infected by the disease.

New Orleans, because of its very busy harbor, received many

immigrants, visitors and sailors. Due to the large number of foreigners who

entered its ports from distant lands, it was not unusual for these visitors and

immigrants to bring illnesses, which were spread to the people who were already
 64

living in the city and in many cases had never been exposed to such, therefore

making them more vulnerable to acquire and also spread the diseases. The rats

and animals that were also brought in as cargo in the ships that docked at the

bay were also sometimes tainted, making them threats to the citizens of the city.

Diseases such as the plague, cholera and typhoid were some of the

causes of widespread death along the immigrants and citizens, yet at the same

time they become the perfect cover for a writer to camouflage the vampires in the

novels. The large numbers of victims in the city created a general apathy of those

who fell ill. Because of the urge to contain those who were sick, people with any

symptoms similar to those of the plague were categorized as having it; therefore

this made it easy for the vampires to hide their victims amongst the bodies of

those who had been afflicted with the deadly diseases. This device has been

used time and time again in vampire stories and movies; even Bram Stoker

claimed to have been inspired by his Irish mother, Charlotte Stoker’s22 true horror

stories because: “[She] had witnessed the Cholera epidemic in 1832; later Bram

recalled her accounts of it suggesting that the vampire pestilence in his novel

owed much to the frightful stories told by his mother” (McNally & Florescu 137).

It comes to no surprise then why Rice would set the background in the

introduction of the character of Louis de Ponte du Lac in Interview with the

Vampire during a time when widespread disease was high and difficult to control

in New Orleans. The lack of technology, knowledge and of resources made it

hard to do so. Through the years, movies such as Shadow of the Vampire and

22
Charlotte Stoker was Bram Stoker’s mother. She was from Sligo, Ireland.
 65

Nosferatu depict at some point how the cities’ districts were being affected by

disease (in particular, the plague), which was in part spread by rats23.

Nearly twenty years after the novel was published, Neil Jordan’s version of

Interview with the Vampire also did the same as the other vampire movies had

done before. It blended the historical elements that gave life to the vampire’s life.

Except this time it was seem from the vampire’s eyes instead of its victims.

Perhaps most important is the fact that it gave life to the history of Rice’s literary

and fantastic vision of New Orleans. It portrayed Louis’ story beginning on the

historical pre-Civil War era of New Orleans in 1791, right before he became a

vampire.

The setting was staged so it would depict the range of the city, from the

decadence of the lifestyle around the darker parts of town, to the traditions

beheld by the slaves who lived in the great plantations, to the devastation

brought on by the plague as it ravaged the streets of the city with its horrible

consequences. Jordan, as director, created scenes where Louis the vampire

walked through the filthy, wet, and muddy puddles on the streets of New Orleans.

There the vampire, soaked by the pouring rain, roamed the back alleys of

the city as the rats walked over his feet escaping the plague. Louis becomes

walking death where real death had left its mark. Corpses left by the plague are

23
The rats also play an important role since they become the source of nourishment for those
vampires that were unable to feed from people because of one particular reason or another.
Some of the reasons for a vampire not being able to feed from humans include long journeys by
ship, such as the one that Claudia and Louis had to endure on their way to Europe and Nosferatu
also endured on his way to cross from one land to another, and guilt to feed from human victims.
Louis suffered great guilt when facing the truth about vampire feedings. When Lestat informed
him that he could feed from small and large warm-blooded animals, Louis chose to feed from rats
for as long as he could in order to spare human lives.
 66

rolled out in front of him. As the vampire walks in, he is ironically warned by

mortals of the lurking danger that awaits him in the direction he is headed into. At

that precise moment, the vampire is turned into a metaphor of how this fledgling

metropolitan center became alive and challenged death, and, through the

cinematographic eye, the city becomes alive through a visual history, tradition,

disease and endurance (rats included).

3.4 Autobiographical Influence

It can be said that Rice’s own experiences are what caused her to

integrate her existential struggles into the pages of her novels. She was brought

up in a very strict Catholic environment, which has been infused by her into her

narratives therefore systematically reflecting these environments and beliefs

upon her characters. As a Catholic, she had stages in her life that made her

question her religious upbringing and the dogmas that she had been taught to

believe and not question. One of the more striking moments that caused such

doubt in her faith was her relationship with the man that would become her

husband, Stan Rice.

Because of her religious upbringing, Rice confessed to her interviewer,

Michael Riley: “At one point I considered I had to give Stan up because kissing

him had been a mortal sin. I was deeply conflicted about it” (Riley 20). Thus

demonstrating that for her it was hard to come to terms with this new chapter in

her life that seemed to defy everything she had been taught. Part of her big

struggle with acceptance to her attraction to Stan was because he was what she

would describe as “a bombastic little atheist” (Riley 21). His spiritual beliefs
 67

clashed with every moral and religious lesson that had been embedded in her as

a child. Because of her strong catholic background, to her “even kissing him was

supposed to be a mortal sin. That was one of [her] first and more horrible

Catholic conflicts” (Riley 20).

Just as the vampires that would later come to be the characters of her

most famous novels, she would have to debate whether to break free from the

structure and stigmas that were used to build character and shape her as

amorally, worthy individual of society. While enduring this personal clash of

beliefs she would ask herself: “How can this person…somebody I didn’t want to

lose no matter what happens in life…really be all that bad and damned and going

to hell? How can kissing him be a sin?” (Riley 20)

Later on as part of her novels, even in the non-vampire ones like Cry to

Heaven, she used this dilemma of attraction and loving which is predestined to

be damned or condemned by society and the church. Still, no matter her inner

struggles about her religion and morals, like a victim drawn to a vampire “she

was enchanted by him” (Riley 21) and Stan and her married. She explained that

for once: “I didn’t care what the Church said. It was too strong a belief that if I

didn’t connect with this person I was going to make a mistake I would regret for

the rest of my life” (Riley 21).

This was a big step in her defining her own identity as opposed to living up

to the expectations and moral standards set by those who had raised her and the

influences she had while growing up. It was that defiance for an individual identity

that allowed her relationship with her husband. It was this relationship and the
 68

trial and tribulations that would eventually come along with it that eventually built

a foundation for the inspiration of what would become the characters of Louis

and Lestat.

As for how she connected Louis and Lestat from her novel Interview with

the Vampire to her relationship with Stan, Rice expressed to Riley that she

“would have been Louis if [she] was anybody, and fell in love with that sort of

opposite to [her]” (Riley 16). The opposite to her being her husband Stan and his

beliefs and the way they formed a contract with what she had been taught to

believe.

When fragmenting the connection of both Louis and Lestat to herself, she

considered: “Louis was certainly me when I wrote Interview with the Vampire and

then later Lestat was more in me in a fantasy way” (Riley 14). It is not that the

characters she created were mirror images of her or her husband, but there was

a personal influence that let itself be felt within the characters in the way that she

created them. Her interview with Riley reflects how parts of her life become alive

through her characters and yet, curiously enough she claims that “neither of

these characters is related to [her] real life” (Riley 14).

Still, it cannot be denied that some of the strongest emotional moments in

Rice’s life fueled her inspiration and gave her ideas to what later on would

become her characters in her vampire novels. The only difference is that these

emotions are channeled into representations of completely different situations

that did not take place in Rice’s life.

Every writer has his or her own method of creating a character. Ernest
 69

Hemingway once wrote:

When you first start writing stories in the first person if the stories

are made so real that people believe them, the people reading

them nearly always think the stories happened to you. This is

natural because while you were making them up, you have to make

them happen to the person that was telling them. If you do this

successfully enough, you make the person who is reading them

believe that the things happened to him too. If you can do this, you

are beginning to get what you are trying for, which is to make the

story so real beyond any reality that it will become a part of the

reader’s experience and part of his memory. There must be things

that he did not notice when he read the story or the novel which,

without his knowing it, entered into his memory or experience so

that they are part of his life. This is not easy to do (Hemingway 6).

Rice had her own way of creating her characters and letting her life infuse

itself between the lines of her novels. She could have written of the average

person that lived down the street, instead she chose to add reality to creatures

that defied reason and common sense when it came to their existence. Her

justification for utilizing a fantastic framework and supernatural characters as

part of her narrative instead of representing her ideas through more realistic

representations of people was “that the fantasy frame allow[ed her] to get to her

reality” (Riley 13). And yet, she manages to make vampires appear convincingly

human because she grew up “in a religious atmosphere in which the natural
 70

touched the supernatural” (“Prism” 150).

Rice as a writer became more comfortable using her personal structure in

order to create her fiction. This embedding of her own beliefs and struggles

made it capable so that she could express a more human character through a

more supernatural being; after all, “the fantastic has a place in every narrative

genre” (Rabkin 28). As she told Riley, her approach to writing to Interview with

the Vampire was simple: “You take a fantasy framework, you step into it, you try

to write reality” (Riley 123). After all, there is one important characteristic about

fantasy that connects it to reality because, despite the fact that it can be defined

as it being “not real or based on reality…the fantastic is important precisely

because it is wholly dependant on reality for its existence” (Rabkin 28).

It is the use of this strategy that made her become more comfortable with

what she was writing. By adding the autobiographical influence to her fantastic

characters’ ambience, she added the depth necessary for them to become real.

While writing The Tale of the Body Thief, one of the novels that belong to The

Vampire Chronicles, she made an attempt to break free from the supernatural at

one point in order to write about a normal set of characters. She explained to

Riley as he interviewed her:

I made an attempt to move [The Tale of the Body Thief] apart from

The Vampire Chronicles to have it be the very same novel but to do

it with a mortal man as a hero. At the time I wanted freedom of

being out of The Chronicles. I spent an enormous amount of time

trying to give birth to the novel with a mortal hero, and it didn’t work.
 71

It simply didn’t work with a mortal character. I couldn’t get the voice

right. As soon as I entertained the idea of going back to Lestat,

everything fell back into place. (Riley 29)

As for having autobiographical factors in The Vampire Chronicles, Rice

does not imply that by reading her Chronicles her audience will be able to define

and discover her autobiography in them. She justifies the use of these elements

so that the human touch is present in order to reach the level she wanted for her

vampires to exist in. What she tries to convey to the readers that look for this

autobiographical meaning from her is that: “You have to remember that there is

also a statement being made all throughout the books that true art can only be

made by human beings. The vampires can’t do it themselves” (Riley 30).

This explains why she can easily take a semiautobiographical approach to

her novels by using metaphors of events in her life, mainly her childhood and the

loss of her daughter, and depicting them in a fictional setting through fictional

characters because: “She writes a fantasy that allows her to go back home24”

(Riley 123). It can be easily seen how the figure of her own alcoholic mother who

once told her the craving of an alcoholic was “in the blood”25 (“Prism” 153) and

her Roman Catholic upbringing can be reflected into the creation of the figure of

the vampire. “Anne most strongly portrays the vampire as a compulsive sinner,

the thirst as an addiction, like the alcoholic for the bottle” (“Prism” 153). Rice

24
She also uses the image of the fantasy of going back home in her other novels such as Violin,
The Witching Hour, Lasher, and Taltos. The latter three, being the novels creating The Mayfair
Witches Trilogy.
25
This argument is also used in her novel Violin.
 72

described how the desire for blood in her vampires block all reason, such as the

addiction to alcohol clouds the judgment of an alcoholic, and goes as far as

detailing how “after killing ‘a vampire is warm’...a common sentiment amongst

alcoholics” (“Prism” 153).

Even more, during her period of grief and mourning after Michelle’s death,

Rice herself also resorted to drowning her sorrows with a bottle. Still, she

acknowledges her use of her own drinking experience as an influence in her

work. From a writer’s perspective, she decided to use it because “any experience

for a writer, anything that involves pain, suffering, anything, you can use” (Riley

190). To Rice, drinking led her in a direction that she would otherwise not have

taken. She “got a lot out of it in its own way. It moved [her] into groups where

[she] might not have gone and to meet people and listen and talk to them” (Riley

190-191).

According to Ramsland, her character’s frustration towards being trapped

in the threshold of their prime represents the loss of Rice’s own childhood due to

the fact that she had to deal with alcoholic parents. Rice has used this

autobiographical concept as influence to the creation of her characters. One

example of this use of the alcoholic parents would be Mona Mayfair: “both of her

parents were alcoholics, so she takes over as the responsible one in the family”

(“Witches Companion” 290). Therefore, Mona is representing the image of a child

that was forced to grow up too early into her life because of the circumstances

that surrounded her. Mona, who at first falls into the category of the Mayfair

Witches Trilogy, later on crosses over The Vampire Chronicles as a character in

 73

the latter novels that conclude the series. Rice created Mona and bestowed upon

her a reflection of herself writing the character as being: “Obsessed with family,

race cars, guns and computers, she shares many of Rice’s interests” (“Witches

Companion” 289).

Mona was originally introduced in the Mayfair Witches Trilogy as “the little

girl with a bow in her red hair” (“Witches Companion” 290), but the truth is that as

some of the vampire characters she seems to be stuck in that transition between

childhood and adulthood. This theme of the adult trapped in the body of a child or

someone fairly young is recurrent in Rice’s books, such as the theme of the child

forced to grow up before their time. Mona also reflects this strong depiction of

opposites with her sheer constitution as a character, after all “being highly erotic,

she lost her virginity at the age of twelve [and] although she is well developed,

Mona likes to dress as a little girl. This disguise keeps men off guard” (“Witches

Companion” 290).26

In Interview with the Vampire, the characters of Lestat and Claudia appear

bitter at the fact that they were created at a point in their lives where they would

never be able to appreciate complete adulthood. It is for this particular reason

that they kill victims that represent that desire and longing in order to release that

anger. These deaths became the vampires’ way of dealing with the bitterness

that held them and prevented them from coming to terms with their lives. At the

same time Rice through writing, came to terms with her own personal loss, not

26
The topic of the seductive erotic minor that seduces older men also appears in Rice’s novel
Belinda. Claudia also becomes a different sort of child seductress in Interview with the Vampire
because she utilized her youthful appearance to deceive her preys and lure them to her.
 74

only for her child, but of the loss of her own childhood.

In the pages of her Chronicles, the vampire becomes a metaphor for

events in her life, such as her daughter Michele being stolen of her youth by

Leukemia and being forced to grow up at five years old. Ramsland considers

Louis to “[express] Anne’s feelings of loss to her daughter. Almost six27, Michele

had been on the verge of experiencing her life more fully when the vampire,

Leukemia, had claimed her” (“Prism” 153).

An author’s life is full of memories. Some of these memories are happy and

some of them are sad. They create an extensive canvas that allows the author

to paint a world with their fiction and bend it whichever way they please and for

an author that is so visually impressionable28, capturing these images on paper

became an easier task for Rice. During the discussions with her biographer,

“Anne admitted that all of her work incorporated impressions of people, places,

and events familiar to her. And it is evident that her relationship with her and Stan

provided intense emotional tones for the book (“Prism” 152).

Her creation of Lestat and his relationship with Louis reflected her

husband’s need to take control. He did this as means to deal with slowly losing a

child while at the same time claiming his role as man of the house; a role that

strained his marriage to Rice because it clashed with her own dominant

personality: “While Stan was flattered to be the physical model, he also perceived

27
Michele died of Leukemia one month before turning six years old.
28
When discussing with Riley the importance of visual influence and the impact it had on her
writing, Rice expressed:” that happens to be very strong with me—seeing a visual image, whether
it is a movie or a painting and being struck by it and wanting in almost a clumsy way to speak of it
specifically in a novel” (Riley 33).
 75

that the novel revealed Anne’s reaction to this tendency to exert control” (“Prism”

152); the type of control that flares poignantly in those scenes in Interview with

the Vampire when Louis and Lestat live together as a family unit before and even

more after Claudia was created. As for connecting her books to the process of

dealing with death, she considers that “you don’t have to run away from what you

are suffering when you read these books. You can experience your thoughts and

feelings about it, one step removed” (Riley 26).

The idea of her own struggle as well as the vampires’ struggle with their

previous religious background and their dilemma of trying to find redemption, as

well as the promise of Heaven as a reward had primordial meaning and

influenced Rice’s mindset as a writer. This allowed her to integrate these

elements into the creation of the character of the vampire Lestat.

This characters’ uncertainty about Heaven or Hell, his view of life and his

desire to untie Louis from his religious burden in order to give him more freedom

to embrace his identity as a vampire were sparked by the religious beliefs of

Stan, her husband, and the effect they had on her. Stan was an atheist therefore

his beliefs were completely opposite to her own. She disclosed her predicament

with Stan to Riley:

It was Stan the atheist saying to me, Louis the Catholic what do you

need all that crap for? Live, look at the life around you, reach for it

you’ve got it all! Don’t mourn for a system that may never have

existed, or a religion that’s dead, or go looking for God and the

Devil to justify things. Look at what’s right before you (Riley 16).
 76

This brings her back to the process of spiritual change as a person. She

faces the possibility of an alternate perspective in which she applied the opposites

of her spiritual self to her life. By allowing Stan to influence her, she redefined her

beliefs thus merging her previous identity to these new ideals that became

integrated in her life as it progressed. As a result, this questioning and slow

transformation was mirrored in the development of Louis and Lestat as characters

in her novels.

3.5 Religion and Morality

The section in Interview with the Vampire when Louis meets Morgan

during his trip to Eastern Europe represents how Rice’s characters embrace the

human qualities that she as a writer wants to give them. It is then when her way

of portraying vampires in her novels encounters the contrasting parallels of the

old literary vision of the vampire versus the new literary portrayal of it. The

reader is persuaded to identify with these characters in such a way that there

are moments within the text where the lines between these characters’ lingering

humanity versus their supernatural monstrosity merge. Her vampires know that

as humans they used to have a soul and are aware of it “they had a conscience,

and suffer from guilt, loneliness and many of the numinous questions of their

formal morality” (“Prism” 150). Coming to terms with their monstrosity does not

become easy for these vampires, as Lestat would express in the novel The

Vampire Lestat when he found himself alone a short time after following his

transformation:

Well, it has been great fun pretending you will be this vampire
 77

creature, I thought, wearing these splendid clothes, running your

fingers through all that glorious lucre. But you can’t live as this! You

can’t feed on living beings! Even if you are a monster, you have a

conscience in you, natural to you… Good and Evil, good and evil.

You cannot live without believing in—You cannot abide the acts

that—Tomorrow you will…you will…you will what?

You will drink blood, won’t you? (“Lestat” 105).

Rice has a way of creating moral arguments that make the audience

justify the vampire’s actions29 and switch their own morality and values30. In order

to make these switches between Good and Evil and the role they pose against

the reader’s morality, Rice employs a particular strategy: “The concepts of Good

and Evil must be malleably meaning different things in different contexts, but

seemingly linked by a threat of continuity” (“Prism 259). The narrative makes the

audience forget what they think is right and persuades them to support what

normally would be considered unacceptable based on the morals and religious

canons of society.

Nonetheless that moral bias is a part of what reinforces her vampire’s

29
Lestat can be thus construed as a noble innocent following his animal nature. He moves
through the world as Dionysus, transcending traditional religious notations of good and evil
utilizing the physical immediacy of excess and rock music and making himself vulnerable to be
torn limb from limb as he prepares later in [The Vampire Lestat] to go on stage as a rock star.
30
Rice also finds ways to integrate the audience’s knowledge of religious subjects and
ceremonies such as the Holy Sacraments of the Catholic faith into her novels. An example of this
can be seen in The Vampire Lestat when Lestat’s mother Gabrielle is dying and Lestat turns the
communion she is receiving into her conversion into the Dark World. Instead of offering her The
Blood of Christ to save her soul he switches the wine and offers her his own vampire blood, thus
saving her and turning her into a vampire. It becomes a vampire equivalent of the Catholic
Church’s eternity after death.
 78

lifestyle. If anything she presents her characters as angels of death that in some

cases come to salvage those humans who seek a way out of their miserable

lives; as it can be seen in her novel Pandora when Pandora, the main character

addresses David Talbot through her narrative telling him of why she chose to

feed off a young woman who was about to commit suicide by jumping into the

river: “Let’s see her mother, dead, gone and now waiting. Let me glimpse through

her dying eyes the light through which she sped towards this certain salvation”

(“Pandora” 10).

Pandora uses the victim’s eyes as vessels to find her lost humanity, and

uses them as a vessel to give her victim the redemption and peace she wanted.

After the woman dies, Pandora refers to her as “the one I rescued” (“Pandora”

11) thus making the murder seem more morally acceptable to the reader. By

choosing these words to justify the murder the vampire goes through a transition

from a cruel hunter to a compassionate savior of the hopeless. If anything, the

vampire is given a saintly essence.

People adjust their actions accordingly to what they consider is right. Rice

also employs this example of adjusting with the character of Lestat in her novels.

This is the reason why even though Lestat can be considered to act evil at times,

he is not really doomed. “Lestat insists in moving through life like a good man”

(Riley161). Even more, in the novel Blood Canticle, he becomes obsessed with

the unobtainable idea of becoming a saint. “I want to become a saint. I want to

save souls by the millions. I want to do good far and wide. I want to fight evil!”

(“Canticle” 3).
 79

Hunting, through the eyes of a Rice vampire, becomes more than just

frivolous killing. Rice’s vampire characters justify the deaths as more than just

satisfying the thirst for blood, but as doing humanity a favor by cleaning the world

of killers, drug pushers (who seem to be the favorite prey because they are

everywhere), mobsters, serial killers, assassins, and in some cases of having

mercy on those poor souls who feel they cannot go on living because life has

been too cruel to them and their only way out of the arms of despair is death.

Rice considers that the concept of evil is relative because it is impossible

for a human being to correct all of the wrongs in the world. Rice said: “We try in

our own lives and in our own groups to achieve a kind of peace and charity that

does not exist in nature in any form” (Riley 167). The vampires become an

acceptable vision through a fantastic element of a possible solution to eliminate

some of the wrongs in the world that humans are incapable of completely

eliminating.

The hunt, the art of killing, becomes poetry in the words of these

characters and yet it can also be described as an existential dilemma for a

number of the vampires. Some vampires cannot stand the thought of having to

kill others to fulfill their primitive need to feed. Some try to suppress their hunger,

which usually backfires in a feeding rage making them kill victims who they would

not have normally killed. In other cases, some decide to have a less glamorous,

yet more acceptable way (at least to them) of living and feeding on animals

instead of humans. Killing becomes an addiction, and a search for an identity

through the lives of each of their victims. Every time a vampire chooses a victim,
 80

usually they describe the process of death as they feed on them. This process

may go from a simple feeding in which the victim is left weak but alive, to a

grotesque show of force and power to where the victim is completely drained of

their blood and sometimes the body is mangled even more by the hunter for a

specific reason. Such cases may include territorialism, rage and intimidation.

This process is not just the description of a murder; it becomes a bond

between the hunters and their victims. There is a psychic connection in which the

hunter has visions of the victim’s lives or the pains or joys that the victims have

surpassed. With these killings the vampires make their audience aware of the

purpose they seek to find to the points where the killing becomes their

justification as a favor to humanity. At the same time it becomes their solution in

order to blend in and find literal human warmth so that they can walk among

those living.

The allure that the narrative has over the audience reflects on them the

struggle that the vampires have. The reason for this is because these vampires

find themselves trapped in an existential limbo that is attached to their

immortality. Usually the most prominent characters in The Vampire Chronicles

have had religious influence, which made an impact in their lives. Some

examples of these characters include Armand, who was to be a monk before he

was kidnapped and sold into slavery when he was just a teenager. Other

examples include Lestat and Louis who were raised in the Roman Catholic faith.

Louis in particular had a brother who was a religious zealot and claimed to have

had visions and had heard divine voices speaking to him. Because of this
 81

religious connection, now they find themselves trying to decide if everything they

believe and stood for was a lie or not, and even if it is, they question whether

they still should abide by those beliefs.

As humans, these now vampires were taught that these dogmas and

moral choices were the canonically right thing to do. If they follow them they will

be rewarded by going to Heaven, or punished by being damned into Hell.

Despite that, even before they become immortals they struggle with the duality of

religion and they fear the consequences that their actions might impose on them,

as it is evident by Lestat’s reflection about his religiously based fears when he

was a child: “It had terrified me as a child, the idea that I might go to heaven and

my mother would go to hell and that I should hate her. I couldn’t hate her. And

what if we were in hell together?” (“Lestat” 102). This portrayal of vampires

reflecting on their faith and immortality is ever present in Rice’s vampire novels.

As immortals these vampires do not face the choice of being sent to

Heaven or Hell. They are trapped in limbo because of their immortality and this

inability to cross over creates in them great existential angst. With the concept of

no reward of an afterlife due to immortality, they must struggle now with the

decision of parting with the beliefs they had of Heaven and Hell. It becomes

evident to them that in order to survive in their new lifestyle, they are guided to

act in ways that were considered to be morally unacceptable to them when they

were mortal. Rice wanted to create a sense of vulnerability despite the super

human qualities of her characters therefore she described her creations as “the

image of a person who takes a blood sacrifice in order to live” (“Prism”149),

 82

somewhat similar to the image of the Catholic’s who drink the blood of Christ in

order to save themselves even though they are constantly surrounded by sin and

temptation leading to damnation. It becomes evident that for them, in order to

survive as part of their lifestyle they must accept the paradox of the blood.

Now as part of the vampire lifestyle, drinking blood becomes a means of

salvation whether it is spiritual for humans and physical for the vampire. On the

other hand, vampires are guided to act in ways considered to be morally wrong

to them when they were mortal and somehow, they are not completely damned

for their actions. Louis and Lestat: “as corrupted Catholics…seem to have naively

and paradoxically believed that consorting with the Devil would somehow get

them to Heaven” (Kinsella Rout 88). If anything, Rice described her vampires as

“angels going in another direction as finely tuned imitations of human beings

imbued with these evil spirits” (“Prism” 150).

Then again, there is also Rice’s creation of Lestat who is a secondary

character in Interview with the Vampire, but later on obtains his own voice thus

making him a central character in the development of The Vampire Chronicles.

Lestat becomes Rice’s way of justifying some of her personal disapproval of

some of the moral choices she was taught to practice according to her Roman

Catholic upbringing. She becomes a rebel against the practice of these dogmas

by using her character as a device to deliver some of these beliefs because:

“[Lestat] is Nietzchean overman [sic] creating a new meaning for an age of good

and evil, as he has the courage to see it through. He does this by showing the

emptiness of the old moral concepts. It is an ingenious device to deliver through

 83

metaphor Anne’s feeling by a church that clings to an empty dogma” (“Prism”

259).

A particular argument made by Rice relating to vampires enduring

humanity despite their superhuman quality is her use of her character’s

reflection in mirrors. Initially, it may seem as another attempt for her to break

another cliché of the original vampire lore, but when interviewed by her

biographer, Katherine Ramsland, Rice explains that the need for mirrors goes

beyond simple superstition. The “lack of reflection signifies that their souls were

in hell and Anne did not want her vampires to have anymore assurance than did

humans that God existed” (“Prism” 150). She wanted to keep her characters

equally in the dark as humans are to the existence of God or the Devil and thus

“she eliminated those things which would have necessitated too logical an

explanation that God or the Devil was at work” (“Prism” 151).

3.6 Vampire Types: Breaking the Stereotype of the Old-School

Vampire
In early gothic literature vampires were portrayed as bloodsucking hunters

who did not have any particular purpose other than to kill their victims in order to

stay alive, and prevent being killed from those who discovered the truth of their

identity. Usually the story told by the writers was narrated from the victim’s

perspective or an omniscient narrator. This narrator sided with the victim’s point

of view on the attacks.

Although some stories described the vampire’s actions and would

sometimes superficially go into the character of the vampire itself, it was never

really considered to tell the story from the predator’s point of view. This was so
 84

because vampires were thought of as evil, inhuman, and were thought to have

no place in humanity due to their predatory nature.

In works such as Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Polidori’s The Vampyre and

Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla, the audience is introduced to a series of characters

that have been victims to the vampires in the storylines. The audience is also

presented to the character of the vampire itself, but there is no retrospective to

how the creature came to be. One thing is certain though, the vampire in

literature is usually portrayed as a character that is elegant and has high social

standing in society with a title such as Duke, Duchess, or are socialites. The

Gothic style in the storyline tends to be represented with details in the setting

like, for example, Dracula’s castle in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Despite all of her references and influences, Rice’s works explode with

their own individuality, which makes them stand strong all on their own. Just as

Bram Stoker “created a set of vampire traits for the purpose of the novel that

came from his own imagination rather than from actual vampire lore” (Gordon

Metton xii) Rice decided to apply her own rules when creating her own set of

vampires.

With her literary style, a more Western and more modern visionary style of

the vampire is created. Instead of finding their identity in the dark hills of Bulgaria

and the other geographic locations named in Bram Stoker’s Dracula and the

original vampire folktales, Rice decides to move her vampires to Western

Europe. It is in Paris where they finally begin to find the answers they had been

searching for to unlock the secret to their identity. When creating the characters,
 85

she kept some of the basic concepts such as them being killed by sunlight, and

she kept the aristocratic appeal of the vampire, but despite some of the seldom

traditional traits that her characters exhibit, she manages to break free from the

already established mold and gives new life to her Children of the Dark: “garlic,

crucifixes, mirrors and stakes do not frighten [her vampires] anymore” (McNally &

Florescu 168).

Her description of the vampires’ encounter with Eastern European people

has a comical accent to it because it defies all of the folkloric taboos and

traditions that had been established by vampire literature written before. Rice

even addressed the subject of the contrast of the old vampire beliefs versus her

newly created myth with a hint of humor when, in Interview with the Vampire

David Malloy, the interviewer, approaches the subject and questions Louis. Louis

responds to David’s inquiry by replying: “Oh the rumor about crosses!

…Nonsense, my friend, sheer nonsense. I can look on anything I like. And I

rather like looking on crucifixes in particular” (“Interview” 23). Louis even

demonstrates that they do not affect him when he narrates to Malloy the incident

at the Inn, where one of the village women gave him a crucifix to protect himself

from the vampire that had been causing deaths in the vicinity once Louis insisted

that he would go out into the night, an action which went against the advice of the

locals at the inn.

As for turning into mist to go through keyholes, Louis dismisses that notion

by telling David, “I wish I could” (“Interview” 23). In the case of “the stakes

through the heart…the same…Bull-shit” (“Interview” 24). There is no question

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that Rice’s turn on vampire fiction has revolutionized the genre. She has become

role model for many, and, even critics accept that there is a trace of her style in

the new novels that have hit the market since Interview with the Vampire was first

published.

It is true that novels such as Bram Stokers’ Dracula have given the reader

a very slim insight into the vampire’s point of view. This type of vampire is seen

as a predator:

Although Stoker modeled Dracula on the historical Vlad V of

Walachia and the East European superstition of the vampire, he

adds a number of humanizing touches to make Dracula appear

noble and vulnerable as well as demonic and threatening; and it

becomes difficult to determine whether he is a hideous bloodsucker

whose touch breeds death or a lonely and silent figure who is

hunted and persecuted. The difficulty in interpreting Dracula’s

character is compounded by the narrative technique, for the reader

quickly recognizes that Dracula is never seen objectively and never

permitted to speak for himself while his actions are recorded by

people who are determined to destroy him and who, moreover,

repeatedly question the sanity of their quest (Senf 423-424).

Rice’s perspective of the vampire takes a different turn when approaching

the portrayal of this immortal creature she breaks from the traditional stereotype

and makes the vampire’s story more subjective to the reader because she

“wanted a new take on the vampire. She retained the need for coffins as a mere
 87

superstition, but defied the traditions in which the vampires are killed by stakes,

fear crucifixes, can become mist and have no reflections in mirrors” (“Prism”

150).

In her novels, Rice overturns this old fashioned view of the Slavic, Eastern

European vampire, depicting it as a “hollow mindless animated corpse” and

moves her own vampires in a different direction. If anything this hollow vampire

reflects the old vision of the folkloric and literary vampire. It represents Anne

Rice’s realization of the “gulf between nineteenth-century literature and the

vampire in folklore” (“Prism” 149). Her representation of the Eastern European

vampire in Interview with the Vampire portrays these creatures as being

supernatural, with no soul, evil and with no purpose in life other to than to kill and

feed on its prey in order to conserve its animation; the meaning, the essence and

depth of true immortality is lost.

This portrayal of the folkloric Eastern European vampire presents a

character with no background and no distant future. The readers of Interview with

the Vampire, when confronted with Old World vampires will care about the fate of

Rice vampire’s which, for a moment, connects with the audience with its human

qualities, instead of caring for the Old World vampire. They will want to see the

Old World vampire dead, finished and destroyed because they are predators and

momentarily will forget that they are being simultaneously confronted with Rice’s

new style of vampire because of its depth and capabilities of assimilation within a

human crowd.

Anne Rice’s writing style has a particularity about its tone and how it
 88

directs the audience towards creating an affinity to respective characters within

the storyline. In the essay “The Least of These: Exploitation in Anne Rice’s

Mayfair Trilogy” Kay Kinsella Rout discusses it applying it to the Mayfair Witches

Trilogy, but it can easily be adapted to The Vampire Chronicles also:

Whether the wish be to exploit others or to exterminate them,

ruthlessness sets the tone. A dominant sub-theme of the

intertwined histories and bloodlines is thus the exploitation of

helpless beings in the name of self-interest. Whenever an

explanation is offered, the perpetrator always feels justified in the

name of survival, the elimination of “evil,” or even curiosity, but in

every case Rice is on the side of the victim (Kinsella Rout 87).

According to Katherine Ramsland, Rice’s portrayal of the Old World

vampires also poses as a metaphor to the representation of the vampire in

popular culture and literature after Bram Stoker’s Dracula was published. In her

novels: “The Old World Vampires symbolize what vampires have become in

fiction since Bram Stoker published Dracula in 1897. Many contemporary authors

present vampires and monsters who kill without compunction and, for decades,

films have depicted the same image” (“Companion” 331).

Rice pays homage to the influence of Bram Stoker’s Dracula and the

vampire folktale. She does utilize the old narrative device of utilizing a human,

Morgan, to lead the reader into the vortex of the vampire hunt. Still, she manages

to change the perspective of the classical narrative style in vampire literature by

focusing once again into the narrator, who in this case happened to be Louis, a
 89

vampire. The events in Varna and the situation involving Morgan and his fiancé

resemble the events in which the character of Lucy Westerna went through in

Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Rice utilizes in this particular storyline the classical scene where a body (in

this case that of Morgan’s fiancé) is dug up and the locals stab it through the

heart with a wooden stake. She as a writer takes her comparison of the classical

folktale as far as having the villagers insist on the decapitation and burning the

body to ensure the safety of the people present, while at the same time ignoring

Morgan’s plea to avoid the desecration of his beloved’s corpse.

Louis the vampire, who had studied the history of the old country,

becomes a witness who is familiar to these rituals. He becomes the vessel for the

audience to witness the savage actions, and just as Morgan, he considered the

desecration of the body grotesque and unnecessary. With this situation, the

reader is confronted with a particularity that is fairly uncommon in vampire fiction;

the human in the story and the vampire both think alike and are on the same

side. Even more, as the situation unfolds, the vampire is willing to save the

human because he feels compassion for him.

This situation moves the audience to reconsider their vision of the vampire

they had already created in their minds because of previous literary works. It

provokes them to ask themselves who the real barbarian in the story is. Is it the

vampire or is it the angry mob that is willing to desecrate a corpse based on their

skewed yet ignorant vision of safety based on cultural tradition?

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Anne Rice’s fiction becomes the counterpart of these Old World vampires.

She goes against the mainstream representation of them by struggling to create

believable, realistic and dynamic characters utilizing fantastic elements. As a

writer she began experimenting with vampires and eventually found her perfectly

human creation: “In contrast [to the classical literary vampire] Rice’s vampires

suffer guilt and loneliness because they experience strong connections to their

former humanity. They thus offer a psychologically richer portrait of the vampire

experience” (“Vampire Companion” 331).

In other words, vampires such as Louis, who struggles to maintain a

stronghold of his humanity long after being converted into a Child of Darkness

breaks from the stigma of hollowness of the traditional vampire, giving the

character depth and meaning, thus blurring the vision of the vampire the

audience previously had. Based on old tradition, it would make more sense for

Louis to side with the Eastern European vampire instead of defending Morgan

from him; after all, Louis first went to Varna with Claudia in search of another

vampire, but because of the depth added by Rice’s literary style and the human

perception that is attached to the character, it is understandable why the reader

would side with Louis instead and hope he defeats the mindless corpse that is to

attack him.

3.7 The World Seen Through Vampire Eyes

In the pages of her novels, her words paint a multi-dimensional landscape

that evokes the senses of those who read them. From the picturesque colorful

streets of Renaissance Italy, the somber gothic and rustic landscapes of the
 91

Slavic regions of Eastern Europe and the alluring, cold and wet, dark nights of

Paris, France, her readers travel the world, seeing it through the keen perception

of vampire eyes. Vampire eyes evoke a more in depth perspective of the world.

In a more supernatural and metaphorical sense vampire eyes becomes a type of

“third eye or mind’s eye” (“Vampire Companion” 491). An example of seeing how

this perception is important is that after seeing through these eyes Louis learns

that “he can see aging among mortals more clearly… [and] he sees life as too

precious to waste. Savoring that which mortals take for granted, he understands

that this is possible only because of his new perspective” (“Vampire Companion”

492).

This personal perspective is what gives life to her books because she as a

writer: “wanted to know what it really feels like. [She] wanted to see through

vampire’s eyes” (“Vampire Companion” 207). Not only that, but by flaunting the

perspective of an immortal character in her pages, it gives her mortal readers a

new vision and appreciation of life.

Her depiction of historic events includes real historical figures that interact

with her fictional characters; figures such as Sandro Botticelli in the novel Blood

and Gold and Cosimo de’ Medici in the novel Vittorio the Vampire. But the effect

of accuracy is not only the mentioning of these famous figures. It becomes

familiar because the vampires through their life narratives guide the reader

through a tour of history, retold through what may seem to be the witnessing

eyes of experience.
 92

An example of historical events in the Chronicles can be seen in her novel

The Vampire Armand when Armand and Marius are traversing through the

streets of Florence, Italy in the middle of the night on the day that Savonarola

was tried and executed by Lorenzo the Magnificent, ruler during that time and

member of the very famous Medici family:

An execution had taken place that day, hardly an uncommon

occurrence in Florence…It had been a burning. I smelled wood and

charred flesh though all the evidence had been cleared before

night…Now as we moved into the great Piazza della Signora, I

could see that [Marius] was displeased by the thin ash that still

hung in the air, and the vile smell… ‘It’s their great reformer

Savonarola’ Marius said ‘He died on this day, hanged, and then

burnt there. Thank God, he was already dead when the flames rose

(“Armand” 170-71).

Rice’s historical and geographical descriptions include detailed accuracy

including specific names of streets and people. These are elements that make the

story more veritable and are connected to her extensive research, her love of

reading and her years of traveling around the world. Rice is known to let her love of

history, traveling, and literature embeds itself in the lines of her novels while

infusing it with a deep originality all of its own. It evokes the spirits of the past to

arise again through words. They enter through the eyes of the reader into their

minds filling them with the resonance of ancient cultures who have long gone been

dormant.
 93

Rice’s keen eye on detail reaches the point up to where she will capture

the smells of the cities, the textures of fabrics, the weather to set the mood of her

scenes, the emotions that linger around in the crowds and the flavors of the foods;

even colors of everything that creates her fictional world. From landscapes to

objects she makes sure to mention what gives them the essence of life. She has

been known to research the textures of fabrics used by particular time periods and

specific cultures in order to encompass them in her character’s narratives to give

them even more veracity. These are elements that enthrall her readers with such

magnitude that they can be persuaded into believing that the characters she

created for her novels are real, and lived during the many centuries captured in

them.

3.8 Academic Appreciation: Literary Impact in Rice’s Works

At a postgraduate academic level, Rice has been considered by some

scholars as worthy of becoming part of the hard to change literary canon. This

consideration is based on these scholars’ admiration of her thematic content and

their capability of looking over the idea that her work is mere popular fiction, and

looking in further into the other aspects that it has to offer. Rice has defended her

use of fantasy in her storylines against the skepticism of critics that frown upon

her choice of literary genre. She states that: “we forget that Hamlet has a ghost

and Macbeth has witches” (“Prism” 248), so it is possible for a canonical work to

include elements of fantasy and the supernatural without it having been

dismissed as unimportant or not serious enough because of its content.

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The truth is that, although Rice’s works have not been accepted into

literary just yet, her novels are becoming academically popular because they “not

only reflect a wide range of research in various intellectual disciplines, but they

are now being taught in schools” (Riley 192). These are observation made by

Riley as he interviewed Rice for his book Conversations with Anne Rice. During

the interview, Riley tells Rice: “students frequently tell me that they first read one

of your books—usually Interview—in a class” (Riley 192).

Conversations with Anne Rice has a section entitled “Critical Reputation:

‘My readers took me out of that world’ ”. In it Riley approaches the subject of

literary reputation as he interviewed Rice by pointing out that there are people

who tend to create superficial judgment on her success based on her books’

popularity without having even read them. They “dismiss the possibility of serious

literary achievement31, as if popularity and seriousness were mutually exclusive”

(Riley 192).

Further on, he makes a point of Rice’s previously voiced “frustrations that

come from reviews that simply dismiss a book about vampires on the assumption

that the subject would be of no interest to an intelligent writer or reader”32 (Riley

192). Rice begs to differ from these accusations. She considers that “good

31
Rice describes herself as “never been a sophisticated writer” (Riley 33), and expresses that
now in order to write she “no longer [worries] about seeming naïve or foolish” (Riley 33).
32
Ann Rice is quoted in Riley’s book of saying: “most of the writers I knew in Berkley were far too
guarded or sophisticated to write anything like Interview with the Vampire. They wouldn’t have
been caught dead with it” (Riley 33).
 95

writing could be done in the supernatural genre and that there were not

necessarily any stigmas attached” (“Prism” 248)33.

While discussing the misinterpretations of Rice’s works by critics and their

responses, Riley recalled a review he had once read in a “popular weekly

magazine”. According to the reviewer “a vampire story needs a human victim to

lead the audience into the vortex and help them escape it” (Riley 261). And

perhaps, if looked at from a superficial point of view when reading Interview with

the Vampire, that may have seem to be the role of David Malloy, the reporter; but

Anne Rice’s novel was not written to be read with that particular vision in mind.

Rice reacted to this review by justifying the vampires in her novels. She

claimed that in her books “[vampires] are metaphors for us, and obviously that

reviewer completely missed that point” (Riley 262). To Rice, “her books… were

essentially mainstream asking strong questions of the human condition” (“Prism”

248). To be more precise about the relevance or lack-there-of of David’s role,

because the story is told from Louis’s point of view, and because it is a first

person narrative, the reader identifies more with him, the vampire, until they

forget about David’s presence.

It is only when the storyline is broken to go back to the interviewer that the

narrative reminds the reader that he is in the same room as the vampire. This

allows the audience to be led through the story by the vampire and not the

human; therefore, separating Rice’s narrative style from earlier vampire tales.

This is important because it permits the reader to have a more personal

33
“Fans, she considers, were astute and perceptive, allowing writers of fantasy the greatest
amount of freedom with their visions that could still be psychologically compelling” (“Prism” 248).
 96

perspective of the situations that are taking place in the storyline. It changes the

style of the vampire literature that had been written up to that point just because

it allows the audience to perceive the story from a different angle. It opens their

eyes and allows them to view into the life of a character that up to this point had

been two-dimensional.

Michael Riley justified the switch of perspective and defends Anne Rice’s

omission of the human victim defending it against the claims of the article he had

read and brought to Rice’s attention. In his argument Riley declares that “what it

misses…is the extent to which in [Rice’s] version of the myth viewers and

readers perceive these characters, themselves as human. So the audience

doesn’t experience an absence of a human victim. However paradoxically, the

vampires are the human victims in Interview” (Riley 261-262). They are human

victims because even though they have forsaken their human condition by

transforming into vampires, they have a hard time resigning to every human

quality that was encoded into their minds before their super human physical

transformation.

The narrative language and style she utilizes in her writing is another

element worthy of admiration. Still, it is not completely understood or accepted by

all critics of her work. Some of her critics have a hard time dealing with her

elaborate use of description and criticize her for it “they call it florid and dense

and unreadable” (Riley 86). This type of language is a style that Riley identifies

as “a kind of overripeness [sic] that’s characteristic of [her] style” (Riley 86).

Nevertheless, despite some negative views about her work, her accurate and
 97

sometimes controversial use of history, literature, art and religion has become a

subject worthy of discussion amongst professionals that compose a range of

thematic fields, including scholars and fans alike. Those who admire her use of

words and description do so because it surpasses the typical and general

overviews of a written storyline.

3.9 Literary Inspiration for Rice’s Vampire Fiction and Style

While Rice was writing her Vampire Chronicles, “she researched the

sparse vampire lore, reading mythologies from other cultures, as well as stories

like Sheridan Le Fanu’s “Carmilla”34. She tried Bram Stoker’s Dracula but

stunned to see vampires portrayed in such animalistic fashion, she did not finish

it” (“Prism” 149). Her revolutionary new views were not just based on old vampire

novels and folktales. She was also influenced by literary classics, along with films

and more contemporary works that have marked change in the way that vampire

fiction had been established so far. It cannot be denied that in literature “the

archetype of the vampire that Stoker molded has become the standard against

which all other fictional vampires are compared” (Gordon Metton xii). Still, Anne

Rice’s works are deeply infused by the writings of many famous authors other

than Stoker. Writers such as Lord Byron, Oscar Wilde, John Milton and William

Shakespeare to name a few have become Rice’s inspiration as she molds her

creations. Even more, “Inspired by a poem by William Blake, she felt that light

itself becomes God to the vampires, but they are forever barred from it” (“Prism”

151).

34
It is interesting to see how the character of Claudia also does research such as Rice did in
order to find the truth about vampires according to literature.
 98

Her characters, along with her settings, evoke the nostalgic feel of pre-20th

century literary works. For example, when referring to Louis, the protagonist of

the novel Interview with the Vampire, she clarified that “the vampire was not

Louis, really, but an Oscar Wilde sort of character” (“Vampire Companion” 207).

When referring to Lestat, Rice described him as a “blond haired, Shakespearean-

mannered creature that has no qualms about religion, little sympathy for moral

weakness and exerts a strong will for those around him” (“Prism” 152).

When referring to Rice’s writing process in Interview with the Vampire as a

novel, Ramsland elaborates on how “the first-person perspective took a

Dickensian quality, and Louis revealed his faults yet sustained his sympathy”

(“Prism” 143). Rice explains that the importance of this “Dickensian” vision

because, according to her, by utilizing it “you can make something wonderful and

deep and it can be available to people from eight years or even younger” (Riley

277). This “Dickensian” quality is one of the main reasons why her books appeal

to such a wide range of people.

Going back to the character of Louis and the influence of other classics

upon Rice’s creation of him, “his attitude about life echoed Hamlet35, and his tone

had the flavor of Oscar Wilde—an aristocrat humorously observing modern life”

(“Prism” 143), therefore emphasizing this influence of the classical literary

characters. Lestat was also a reflection of Rice’s Shakespearean influence and it

can clearly be seen in Interview with the Vampire when “Lestat quotes from this

35
“Louis is the character that has many of Hamlet’s brooding passive qualities…According to
Rice ‘Louis is the most tragic character in the book. He says yes to becoming a vampire and
suffers terrible regrets’ ” (“Companion” 182).
 99

play when he kills a man who has a range for his hotel room…‘good night sweet

prince’, he says echoing what was said to Hamlet as he lay dying”36 (“Vampire

Companion” 182).

Still it is not only these two characters that reflect the Shakespearean

influence within the Vampire Chronicles. The latter Vampire Chronicles are

infused with Shakespearean elements as well. The novels Merrick, Blackwood

Farm and Blood Canticle37, for example, utilize supernatural elements both found

in Shakespeare’s Macbeth (with the use of witches), and Hamlet (with the use of

ghosts). These examples reinforce that literature that includes paranormal and

supernatural characters, as well as fantastic elements can still be considered

worthy of the literary canon.

Blackwood Farm in particular strongly echoes the influence of Hamlet.

Not since the characters of Lestat and Louis, have the Vampire Chronicles

depicted a character that oozes that Shakespearean quality. Tarquin Blackwood

reflects the character of Hamlet in many ways. Just as the character of Hamlet,

he lives in conflict with his mother and feels as though his mother has set him

aside in order to pursue other interests. Even more so, Quinn evokes the

essence of the character of Hamlet by being hunted by restless ghosts who

seem to seek vengeance for their death, thus making him question his own

sanity38.

36
“The quote reinforces that he was at the hands of fate, just as Hamlet was” (“Companion” 182).
37
These three novels are the last three novels of the Vampire Chronicles and are a crossover
between Rice’s Mayfair Witches Trilogy and the Chronicles.
 100

A reference to this situation is made in chapter 19 of Blackwood Farm.

Here, during a conversation with Fr. Kevin, Tarquin seeks guidance in relation to

his encounters with Rebbeca’s ghost and its seeming intent to get him to help

him resolve a problem. Fr. Kevin used Shakespeare’s Hamlet as lesson as to

why Quinn should ignore the ghost:

Don’t talk to it, don’t entertain it… Remember it can’t do much to

you without you helping it. Just maybe it can’t do anything without

your helping it. Take the ghost of Hamlet’s father for instance.

Suppose Hamlet had never gone to meet it or spoken to it.

Suppose he had never given the ghost an opportunity to put a story

of murder into his mind. The result was pure destruction for

innocent and guilty (“Blackwood” 257).

Still just like Hamlet, the character of Tarquin Blackwood becomes drawn

to the ghost. His actions eventually lead him to his mortal death because by

following the ghost to the island hidden in Sugar Devil Swamp, he disturbed the

vampire that later on attacked him and transformed him against his will into a

Child of Darkness. These impulsive actions and their result, demonstrate the

naïve and choleric side of Tarquin, who was lead by his emotions into completely

ignoring the advice that could have saved his human life (much like Vittorio).

They also reflect the theme of the child who attempts to take control and

establish order when he feels his parents have lost control of their duties.

38
In the play, Hamlet was haunted by the ghost of his father, the king, who appeared to seek for
someone to avenge his death. In Blackwood Farm, Quinn is approached, and (seduced) by the
ghost of a woman named Rebbeca, who also appears to seek vengeance for her death. At the
end of the novel it is also learned that Quinn’s doppelganger is actually the ghost of his twin
brother.
 101

Also, just like Hamlet had a love interest, Tarquin also had a love interest

that reflected the Shakespearean play, serving as his emotional counterpart in

Blackwood Farm, Mona Mayfair39 enters the novel’s framework. She is the witch

with whom Tarquin Blackwood becomes enamored with, and coincidentally, she

adopts the name Ophelia40 as a pet name when she and Tarquin begin their

relationship41.

The name, fittingly enough, evolves later on into Ophelia Immortal when she

becomes a vampire. Just as Ophelia embraces her death by committing suicide,

Mona embraces death by accepting immortality and becoming a vampire. Her

mortal death evokes the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, for she and Tarquin

become star-crossed lovers separated by circumstances, yet they refuse to let

death separate them, thus being reunited by it42. The scene of Mona’s death

reflects the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet even more as Quinn rushes to her: “I

stood there shocked to the core of my being…My Mona, my frail and withering

Mona, my pale and magnificent Mona” (“Blackwood” 529).

39
The character of Mona first appears in the novel The Witching Hour which is the first
installment of the Mayfair Witches Trilogy. “She is a “twentyfold” Mayfair and a very powerful
witch” (“Witches Companion” 291) and she is “obsessed with the image of Ophelia of Hamlet”
(“Witches Companion” 291).
40
After her first sexual encounter with Tarquin, Mona tells him that his doppelganger has
disappeared and bestows upon herself the name Ophelia by telling Quinn: “I am Ophelia once
again” as she lay on the bed between the pillows. She repeats: “I am Ophelia drifting in the
“weeping brook”, so light, so sure “or like a creature native and endued onto to that element.”
They won’t find me until tonight and maybe not even then” (“Blackwood” 294).
41
At this point in the novel both Tarquin Blackwood and Mona Mayfair are still mortal.
42
At the end of the last chapter of Blackwood Farm Mona is gravely ill and lay dying in Quinn’s
bed.
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As is the case in several of Rice’s Vampire Chronicles Tarquin becomes the

desperate, already undead lover who cannot bear to see his dear companion die,

thus he offers her a chance for immortality by offering her the Dark Gift43. Mona’s

final resting place also becomes a reflection of Hamlet’s Ophelia’s death. “The

bed was covered with her flowers…the roses, the marguerites, the zinnias, the

lilies” (“Blackwood” 529-530) and Tarquin described her in the last paragraph of

the book as “Ophelia in her nest of flowers” (“Blackwood” 530).

Curiously enough, Bram Stoker also had a strong Shakespearean influence as

he wrote Dracula. It can be seen that: “Throughout the novel [Dracula] allusions

to Shakespeare’s dramas—Hamlet in particular—complement the storyline”

(McNally & Florescu 146).

Some examples of the ways in which the influence of Shakespeare’s Hamlet

infiltrates the pages of Stoker’s work include segments in the novel, for example:

“Early in the novel, in an entry dated 8 May, Midnight, Harker

records in his diary that after a long talk with the count about his

ancestry, from Midnight to “close on morning” the count abruptly

cuts off the conversation and flees, “as if everything has to break at

cock-crow…like the ghost of Hamlet’s father” (McNally & Florescu

146-147).

Other parts in Dracula that demonstrate the Shakespearean influence and

the play Hamlet are documents such as Lucy Westerna’s diary entry, dated 12

43
Lestat intervenes and offers to give Mona the Dark Gift in order to allow Mona and Quinn to
keep their connection, which otherwise would be lost if it were Quinn who turned her into a
vampire.
 103

September. In it she wrote “Here I am to-night, hoping for sleep, and lying like

Ophelia in the play, here with ‘virgin crants and maiden strewments’ ” (McNally &

Florescu 148). It must be taken into account that Stoker had helped produce a

staged performance of the play during the period of time surrounding December

30, 1878 44.

Stoker’s relationship with his mentor Henry Irving contributed to his

familiarization with the theater, in fact “Stoker organized the first American tour of

Henry Irving’s theater company, one of the first tours that included entire

theatrical productions and equipment” (McNally and Florescu 145). Their

relationship as master and mentor can even be daringly compared to the

relationship between Louis and Lestat in the Vampire Chronicles because:

In all, Stoker as Irving’s private secretary and confidant for twenty-

seven years, which are described in his Personal Reminiscences of

Henry Irving. He called their friendship “as profound, as close, as

lasting as can be between two men.”45 But there was more to the

relationship than that. Irving held such fascination for Stoker that he

achieved an extraordinary dominance over him. Indeed, in life

Irving was lord and master to Stoker as in fiction Dracula is to

Renfield (McNally & Florescu 140-141).

44
The play had a run on stage for one hundred days and starred Stoker’s mentor sir Henry Irving.
“Hamlet evidently remained in [Stoker’s] mind when he wrote Dracula.” (McNally & Florescu)
45
Stoker held such admiration for Henry Irving that he named his only child Irving in honor of his
idol, “but the boy apparently resented the connection and preferred to be called Noel” (McNally &
Florescu 140).
 104

Even if it was not inspired by the relationship between Stoker and Irving or

Dracula and Reinfeld, Lestat and Louis still had a close relationship in which

Lestat served as mentor and companion to Louis. Just like Sir Henry Irving

familiarized Stoker with theater life, Louis would attend plays with Lestat. This

part of their relationship becomes clearly evident when Louis tells David Malloy

during his interview about his escapes with Lestat46:

He was positively friendly, in one of those moods when he wanted

my companionship. Enjoyment could bring that out of him. Wanting

to see a good play, the regular opera, the ballet. He always wanted

me along. I think I must have seen Macbeth with him fifteen times.

We went to every performance, even those by amateurs and Lestat

would stride home afterwards, repeating the lines and even

shouting out to passers-by with an outstretched finger, ‘Tomorrow

and tomorrow and tomorrow!’ until they skirted him as if he were

drunk (“Interview” 128).

Nonetheless, in Rice’s case, the storyline embraces the change that

centuries have brought with them, thus allowing the works to evolve thematically

into a more contemporary view and interpretation of the characters and the world

that surrounds them: “Her vampire’s work is much like our own… The good

46
During this particular time in the story, the family unit that Lestat had created with Louis and
Claudia was less than perfect due to tension that was dividing their family dynamic. Lestat would
seek out the theater as his means to escape the arguments and tension in the household. He
would take Louis with him in order to keep himself company, just like he did before Claudia
became a part of their lives.
 105

vampires are the heroes; men are the villains. The vampires are also bisexual”47

(McNally & Florescu 168).

Katherine Ramsland, Rice’s biographer expressed that: “Rice is as

comfortable with philosophical depth and psychological dynamic as she is with a

lighthearted romp through Edwardian England or with creating a sexually explicit

fairytale” (“Prism” xii). Up to this point, vampires had been seen as dark fear

evoking predators. Now through Rice’s literary influence, the audience is

confronted with her characters, her vampires, who exhibit the influence of

dandyism. This versatility allows her to take her narratives to a whole new

dimension: “Anne enlarged [her vampire’s] existence with a mythological context,

stiffened with the starch of contemporary logic, psychology, and enduring

philosophical questions” (“Prism” 150).

3.10 Chapter Overview

There are many elements of Rice’s life that saturate the pages of her

novels. Her novels in general, as well as her characters, reflect her great love of

history, music, art literature, as well as her love for travel and her deep

connection with her birthplace, the city of New Orleans. Her storylines reflect the

places she has traveled to and her literary style reflects the influence of the many

books she has read, in many cases including elements of authors such as

William Blake and Charles Dickens, to the point where her novels has been

47
“Anne wanted to write about a romantic relationship that would avoid the clichés attached to
heterosexual couplings, and she was also enamored of the image of lovers as equals….Having
already written about homosexual attractions, the relationship between her vampires came easily
and naturally” (“Prism 148).
 106

described as having a Dickensian quality because they appeal to a wide

audience with a various range of backgrounds.

Considering that Interview with the Vampire is a novel that embodies so

many of Rice’s emotions as well as how the other Vampire Chronicles reflect so

many of Rice’s interests, surprisingly enough, they do not narrate a paraphrase

of her life. The characters manage to obtain voices that stand on their own.

Both—characters and events—become a metaphor of Rice’s life, representing

through mock autobiography her personal influence (her feelings, events,

interests) but allowing her as an author to maintain a twice removed perspective

of her own subjectivity when writing.

What allows her stories to stand on-their-own is her great use of detail and

history as her vampires narrate their own mock autobiographies, which are in no

way identical to any of the events in Rice’s life except for maybe the strong

influence that the city of New Orleans has in her storylines. Rice creates a great

verisimilitude to everyday life, which her audience can see through vampire eyes.

She gives life to the storylines using her knowledge of history, using not only real

historical events, but famous historical figures also. These help the audiences

situate themselves and the characters in a particular place and time that was real

thus making them more acceptable and believable.

People are drawn to Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, because through these

works they are allowed a rare and previously forbidden glimpse as witness of a

vampire’s autobiography and get to know not only the character’s origin, but the

character himself as human, in some cases, and as a vampire in other

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instances. The reader can connect, for a change, with those beings which had

been otherwise portrayed as a objective, fantastic characters. These character

become a portal for the audience to address their own repressed violent desires

and gain satisfaction from them one step removed from actions that would

normally be reprimanded by society.

Because vampires are not truly human, the vicious, sadistic actions that

are being performed by them become acceptable to the audience. This is

because they are fitting to their character and to be expected from such

creatures. As a result, the audience overcomes the moral repercussions of the

vampires’ actions and admires the characters because of who they are and the

feats they have achieved; as opposed to what they do to remain alive. In the

case of Rice’s fiction, there is an additional link between the vampire’s humanity

and the reader’s that allows a sense of sympathy, forgiveness and even justice to

some of the murderous actions taken by these creatures. After all, as it has been

mentioned several times within Rice’s fiction, her vampires drink for a living from

their victims but they do not feed until the victim is dead. The victim’s death (in

most cases) comes after the vampire has already released them.
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Chapter IV

Rules, Secrets, Lies and the Quest for Truth in

Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles

You talk of finding other vampires! Vampires are killers! They

don’t want you or your sensibility! They’ll see you coming
long before you see them, and they’ll see your flaw; and,
distrusting you they’ll seek to kill you. They’d seek to kill you
even if you were like me. Because they are lone predators
and seek for companionship no more than cats in the jungle.
They’re jealous of their secret and of their territory; and if you
find one or more of them together it will be for safety only,
and one will be the slave of the other, the way you are of me.

Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire

4.1 Chapter Introduction

In order to discuss the vampire metaphor and to apply it to another subject

such as minorities while using Rice’s Vampire Chronicles as basis, it is

necessary, first, to understand the construction of the Rice vampire. This is

particularly important because her vampires break most of the stereotypical

characteristics that have been imposed on the figure of the vampire in works

previous to her publications.

Initially, the idea of including the image of the Rice vampire as basis of

comparison in the discussion of topics such as race may seem farfetched. Still,

when looked at closely, there are many similarities involved in the thematic

content of their narrative. Topics that include social codes, segregation,

assimilation, immigration, traditions and culture are some of the few that can be
 109

mentioned and that are also strongly connected with the social and personal

ideal of the quest to find an identity.

Even if the topic of the vampire’s origin is discussed in Rice’s novel, The

Queen of the Damned, none of her characters really know the full truth about

their origins. Those characters that are more familiar with the secrets and are

capable of disclosing them have become forced to maintain their silence. The

new source, Akasha, is kept locked in a temple with her companion Enkil, where

they lived as marble statues sitting on a throne, not feeding and eventually

finding their own demise from the hands of other vampires once they rise from

their slumber. Those who attempt to reach them to obtain their blood and

knowledge are also murdered.

Maharet and her sister Mekareh, the redheaded twins are also linked to

the original source. One has been blinded while the other’s tongue was ripped

out to maintain her silence. Even as survivors they isolate themselves and find

ways to prevent the secrets of the blood from being disclosed to those who do

not understand its mysteries.

These vampires become a representation of social structures present in

everyday life. They become a symbol of taboos and secrets, and fictional

representations of the forbidden and those who struggle to break through the

boundaries set in order to create new rules of social understanding, thus

breaking marginalization caused by ignorance of the unknown. Whether the

restricting master in this social relationship translates to actual people, or an

individual’s internal and psychological monsters, some individuals decide to go

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against the rules and become outlaws, rebelling against society in order to find

their own identity. This ideal of rebellion has been linked in the past to ethnicity,

social and racial issues, especially during times of segregation.

Through difficult struggles, Rice’s vampires play with the social and

personal parameters that restrict them from finding themselves. They become an

easy parallel to those people who decide to do soul searching, or travel to their

countries of origin or that of their ancestors in order to deal with the ghosts and

conflicts of their past. Decisions to uncover past histories can at times provoke

conflict from people close to those who go on this quest, especially those who

are closest to the situations of the past; as well as stranger who will encounter

these curious individuals and who consider that they are meddling with things

that do not concern them.

On the other hand, sometimes the leaders of the subgroups are willing to

go through extreme measures to maintain the secrecy of their ways.

Organizations like cults, for example, as well as racial supremacy groups have

created strict codes that attack those who threaten their orders and its’ members.

They have also been known to kill in order to keep the secret, or to repel those

who meddle; even more, they have killed to protect their members from outsiders

who try to intrude into what they consider sacred.

4.2 Vampires: Origin and Adaptation to an Alternate Lifestyle

In Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, the existence of secrets and lies

becomes a major struggle in the character’s quest for identity. The same can be

said for members of minority groups who struggle with their own secrets and lies
 111

in order to fit in as they simultaneously struggle to maintain their own identity. In

The Chronicles, the true definition of the essence of what it is to be a vampire is

unknown, and lies are told to protect that secret. The same can be said for

groups within a culture, who debate to maintain a level of secrecy about their

traditions, customs, lifestyles and even rituals. Some of these groups can be

categorized, for example, as social, ethnic, and religious.

If necessary, protective and defensive actions are taken by those who

surround the members of these subgroups, in most cases because of fear that

these individuals will betray the identity of the other members of their community

as well as their own, by trying to answer questions that go beyond their

capabilities. This struggle to maintain a grasp of the secrecy within the minority is

constantly represented in The Chronicles, as characters usually face continuous

threats from the elder vampires. These elders refuse to disclose information to

those who are unable to manage the power that goes hand in hand with the

secrets of their kind.

The same occurs to people of mixed race that attempt to identify with a

singled out characteristic or racial group out of the two or more that constitute

who they are. There is usually a sense of betrayal attached when attempting a

level of assimilation to one particular side, therefore isolating the others. For the

individual, this moment of transition usually comes accompanied with feelings of

shame and betrayal.

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As presented in Rice’s Blood Canticle, Lestat’s moment of enlightenment

about his kind does not imply that he will take the opportunity to acknowledge the

truth and disclose it to others:

I did not want to be taken to [Maharet’s] famous jungle compound.

No, not for me that fabled place of stone rooms and screened

enclosures […] And as for the legendary archives with their ancient

tablets, scrolls and codices of unimaginable revelations, I could wait

forever for those treasures as well. What can’t be revealed to the

world of men and women can’t be revealed to me. I had no taste or

patience for it (“Canticle” 296).

Just like a person attempting to find an independent racial identity within a

biracial or multi-cultural group, finding an identity and a place of origin does not

justify that the character will obtain a sense of self-fulfillment or gratified

happiness. In Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, vampires that encounter similar

struggles become a metaphor for minorities in the United States even though

they do not embrace a particular group out of the many that exist. By being

created from an ordinary human into a supernatural being, vampires are forced

to deal with rejection from society because they do not exclusively fit into any of

the subdivisions of the social whole:

Anne Rice, commenting on her Interview with the Vampire (1976)

and its sequels, asserts that the vampire is a ‘metaphor for the

outsider’. She made Lestat a rock star in The Vampire Lestat

(1984), she says, because ‘rock singers are symbolic outsiders’

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who are ‘expected to be completely wild, completely unpredictable,

and completely themselves, and they are rewarded for that.’

Contemporary American society, in glorifying and ─at least to some

extent ─ rewarding the outsider, differs from the cultural milieu that

engendered the literary vampire (Carter 27).

By being forced to resign to their human condition and most of their

human characteristics, the vampires portrayed in Rice’s Vampire Chronicles

embark on a difficult journey of self-discovery just like minorities in the United

States. According to the essay “The Vampire as Alien in Contemporary Fiction”

by Margaret L. Carter: “the logic behind this identification of the vampire with the

outsider is supported by Tobin Sieber’s theory of superstition as ‘a symbolic

activity, in which individuals of the same group mark one another as different’ ”

(Carter 27). Carter further discusses Sieber’s theory by quoting his argument

that: “Superstition always represents identities as differences. The group

represents individuals or other groups as different for the purpose of creating a

stable center around which to achieve community…Such false differences create

a structure of exclusion”(Carter 28).

Outside of Rice’s fiction and as part of everyday life, people have been

known to cast aside those who they do not understand, forcing them to create a

smaller community of socially condemned outcasts. Within Rice’s fiction, some of

these newly created vampires are lucky enough to be introduced into the vampire

world with some ease while others are just dumped into that void by being turned

into Children of the Dark against their will. In the novel Interview with the
 114

Vampire, Louis complains about his life, and the burden that he must live with as

a vampire: “but while Louis may bemoan his condition, he is still a vampire by his

own choosing. However ill-informed his choice, his fate is the result and his

torments are not entirely undeserved” (Silver and Ursin 218).

The vampires that are forced to the change are usually burdened by their

transformation because they were not allowed to opt out of it and in many cases

were tricked by their masters into embracing immortality. Some of the characters

in Rice’s novels that have gone through this change include Lestat and Armand

who are some of the original characters and which appear in most of the books

of the series, Tarquin Blackwood who is one of the central characters in the last

two volumes of the Chronicles, and Vittorio, whose story is part of the New Tales

of the Vampires.

These particular characters have a higher tendency to become dazed and

confused with what is expected from them once they have become fledglings; a

term that can be considered a metaphor for the process of transitioning into the

other. This phase of transition can be adapted to people dealing with transgender

issues as well as minorities trying to fit into a racial whole that is different or

partially similar to their own.

These individuals become burdened by the new lifestyle and feel trapped

inside an immortal prison made of flesh. This situation can easily translate to bi-

racial minorities, as it is stated by Rebecca Walker in her autobiography.

Throughout her book, she constantly looks back into the memories of her life and
 115

meditates about the existential significance of the struggles she lived through

often writing thoughts that reflect her unhappiness with herself such as this:

The only problem, of course, is me. My little copper-colored body

that held so much promise and broke so many rules. I no longer

make sense. I am a remnant, a throwaway, a painful reminder of

happier and more optimistic, but ultimately unsustainable time.

Who am I if not a Movement Child? (Walker 60).

Some of these vampires reach a higher level of desperation and try to find

ways to end their lives. They attempt to tempt faith approaching their doom by

the hands of more powerful others. Usually this is because they cannot handle

the burdens and the guilt of having to kill in order to survive, as Lestat clearly

declared in the opening chapter of Blood Canticle: “I am a condemned inhabitant

of eternal night and an eternally tormented blood seeker” (“Canticle” 1).

Through their adapting to the hunt and kill and their need to find others of

their kind, these vampires endure this journey of self-discovery, although

sometimes it may drive them away from their roots and those people closest to

them before their transition. They are confronted with the raw and awful truth of

what being a vampire is about and the numerous secrets that will prevent them

from getting the secret answers they are trying to obtain.

In Rice’s Chronicles, the fledglings realize that there is no simple way to

access concrete documentation about this new persona they have been

transformed into. Not knowing how to act properly as part of their new lifestyle

also becomes a struggle. It reflects in part the same struggle that many people
 116

endure once they have been diagnosed with an illness, or they have migrated to

a country that is unknown to them; even the struggle of coming to terms with an

identity that is socially segregated by racial or sexual boundaries set by those

who cannot live in harmony with people who are different to them.

In the Chronicles, vampires narrate how they must endure through

centuries of uncertainty and blind ignorance as they struggle to survive through

encounters with people and entities that become threats. Once again, an

argument that can easily translate to cultural and racial segregation and the

struggles that people have had to endure through the centuries as they struggle

for integration.

In Rice’s Chronicles, vampires were threatened by even those belonging

to their own kind that wish them harm, a fact that can also be said of humans and

people who are different to what is considered the social norm. For the vampires,

learning to survive through long journeys around the world as history takes place

around them becomes crucial. Facing years of solitude and heartbreak just to

find solace in the idea that someday they will find a place where they belong will

always be a burden upon them. These vampires long for a time when they will

finally find their reward for an eternity of suffering and strife. They hope and

desire to find redemption and freedom from their cursed existence, no matter if

that freedom is physical or psychological. In some cases, they only find death.

Immigrants who travel leaving their own kind in order to find a better life

and a place they can call their own usually struggle with the same situations.

They are known to cross Oceans and great distances to far away lands in hopes
 117

of integrating themselves into other cultures and become part of a society that

holds promise to a better future. These choices usually come with the

consequence of having to reject or deny the individual’s original heritage and

cultural and moral regulations.

4.3 The Laws of the Lawless: Unwritten Rules and Codes of

Conduct in The Vampire Chronicles

Because vampires are immortal creatures of the night, a structure in order

to keep the low profile of this minority group’s place in society becomes

implemented by their predecessors. A set of unwritten rules is implemented by

the older vampires to maintain a code of conduct48 as an attempt to create

margins for its constituents. The purpose of this code is to preserve the secluded

lifestyle that their progeny must lead. Here is where the secrets and lies begin to

unravel.

Even in non-fictional scenarios, people are forced to live by a social code

of order that restricts their behavior within the environment of their community.

Whether the rules are dress codes, etiquette or moral guidelines, it is fairly

common for people to have disciplinary guiding principles to their lives, even if

these rules are unspoken or constantly recalled. Some are even unwritten laws

of conduct, but people respect them because these are implied as part of an

everyday routine.

48
The Laws of the Lawless described in diverse literature for all ages. It normally applies to
groups of characters categorized as outcasts. An example of its use in Young Adult Literature is
the Greaser’s code of honor in S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders. The code consists of 2 rules: 1.
Always stick together and 2.Never get caught. These rules are simultaneously precise and
generally and can be applied to any gang of outlaws, including Anne Rice’s vampires.
 118

In the Vampire Chronicles, only those vampires who belonged to covens

or were familiar with covens knew about the five Great Rules of conduct to which

they must abide by. This becomes a clear reflection of Rice’s religious

background. After all, only those who belong to a particular religion are the ones

who really know the codes and rules of conduct expected from the members of

their church. In The Chronicles, these rules “are based on religious ideas and

prohibitions” (Ramsland 390). Their source becomes trivial when referring to the

author’s subtle influence upon the text, because religion always plays an

important role in Anne Rice’s fiction.

The code of conduct was created with the purpose of establishing which

actions are permitted or are not. Further on, vampires create a code of conduct

that summarizes what actions might be punishable may it be the case that

someone is foolish enough to break the code. Once more this reflects the social

codes of conduct found by members of particular minority subcultures within the

social whole. If applied to gangs, it is evident that they also create their own

system of justice and punishment for those who betray the secrecy of their group.

This is also applied to outsiders who meddle into guarded territory

One of the most recognized secular groups in The Vampire Chronicles

was the Roman Coven, a satanic coven led by a vampire named Santino49. His

form of punishment to those who did not abide by his rules was very particular:

invaders or intruders were “considered outcast and must be burned by fire”50

49
Santino was a “black-haired Italian vampire…Born to Darkness in the mid-1300s, during the
reign of The Black Death” (Ramsland 406).
 119

(Ramsland 390). The Roman coven becomes another example of how Rice

utilizes her background knowledge about religion and Catholicism and applies it

to her fiction. It “patterns itself inversely on the Roman Catholic Church,

worshiping Satan as Christians worship God” (Ramsland 376). The form of

punishment by fire also brings out the memory of the Inquisition and the burning

of the heathens that were persecuted.

Santino’s code of conduct in the Roman coven was named The Great

Laws, and it consisted of five specific commandments. First, “Each coven must

have a leader to work the Dark Trick” (Ramsland 391). This imposes a sense of

hierarchy and structure. It gives the coven a leader. The leader is necessary to

make sure the rules are followed plus to offer guidance to the followers.

Usually, in social subgroups and marginalized minorities there is always

an individual that is considered as the leader of their cause or of their people.

They usually provide others with guidance and a sense of security which protects

them from those who they feel might threaten their community. Usually this

leader becomes the voice of those who the majority refuses to acknowledge.

Figures such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Malcom X and Ghandi have become

examples in the past of those who have been rejected by a majority.

Second: “Mortals who are granted the Dark Gift must be beautiful in order

to insult God” (Ramsland 391). In some cases, measures are taken to guarantee

that this rule is followed. An example of some of the means taken to preserve the

heightened ideals of beauty is presented in the novel Blood and Gold, one of the

50
Marius suffered this horrible fate, yet survived when Santino’s followers raided the studio that he
owned in Venice.
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Vampire Chronicles that follows the original five written by Anne Rice. Marius, the

main character of this Chronicle, has invited Thorne51 into his home and they

partake on a conversation. Thorne reveals to Marius that he was a Norsemen.

Marius asked him: “Why is there no red beard my friend? […] I remember the

Norsemen with their beards. I remember them when they came to Byzantium”

(“Blood and Gold” 25). It is then when Thorne discusses the grooming rituals that

are performed in order to preserve a higher quality of beauty once the

transformation has taken place. He replies he was asked to shave before he was

transformed into a vampire: “My beard was thick and long even when I was very

young, let me assure you, but it was shaved the night I became a blood drinker. I

was groomed for the magical blood52. It was the will of the creature that created

me” (“Blood and Gold”25).

The social standards of beauty have always had their own strong

influence. Race and gender alone have their own particular and greatly

noticeable guidelines. In a society that has placed so much weight on the

importance of beauty, people have become marginalized just because of the way

51
The character of Thorne makes an appearance for the first time in the novel Blood and Gold,
which is the Chronicle about Marius’s life. Marius extended his hospitality to Thorne by inviting
him into his home during a snowstorm. During a conversation Thorne tells Marius he was of
Nordic origin, and that he had been created by Maharet, one of the most Ancient vampires in the
Bloodline.
52
The reason for the grooming is that once transformed, even though the character’s hair and
body will change appearance (The skin becoming smoother and the hair more lustrous) the way
that the character looked when he was transformed will be preserved to eternity. For example, if
the character had long hair like Gabrielle in Vampire Lestat or a beard like Thorne in Blood and
Gold when they were transformed into a vampire, no matter how many times they cut their hair or
shave the beard, it will be restored to its full length by the following night. Wounds are also
healed, and tend to heal faster when a character feeds on victims before going to sleep. If the
wound is too severe it might take some time before the vampire is fully healed, as it is the case of
Marius after he was set ablaze by Santino’s followers.
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they look. There is a constant struggle to fit in, as some individuals go through

grueling processes of dieting to stay eternally thin, and plastic surgery to

maintain eternal youth in order to live up to the unspoken standard that has been

set for them. There is a great level of unsatisfaction in today’s youth with the way

their body looks, and even they have had to face the rejection of their peers

because of the clothes they wear, their weight or the way they style their hair just

because it doesn’t live up to the social standard of the moment. They become the

outcasts, forming their own groups trying to find an identity and acceptance from

other who have suffered the same fate from the judging eye of their peers.

The third rule is: “No old vampire should work the Dark Trick, for otherwise

[this] would make the young vampire too strong” (Ramsland 391). It refers to the

age of existence instead of the physical age when the vampire was created. Most

vampires are turned from human to Children of Darkness while they are in their

twenties or thirties due to their optimum physical beauty during that age. As a

result of their transformation they will remain at the optimum point of physical

beauty they had obtained up to that age and from that point on resemble that age

forever. This stereotype falls under the second rule of beauty. Only a few

vampires have been created beyond that age.

Still, this is also applied as a metaphor for the younger groups attempting

to fit in with an older majority. Usually there are rules that dictate when a person

should drink, drive and become sexually active. This is because the

consequences of acting without the proper maturity to perform these actions will

result in reckless, harmful behavior from the person that is acting and it may be
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hard for those surrounding that person.

There are exceptions to the rule of age an beauty established by the

coven. One such exception would be Magnus53, the old, aged and unappealing

vampire who created Lestat54. He defied the second rule by stealing the Dark Gift

from a vampire he captured when he was mortal. He is referred to amongst the

other vampires as Prometheus for having stolen the gift of the gods and

immortality55. Once his purpose was complete, he passed on the Dark Gift to a

French, twenty year-old mortal by the name of Lestat de Lioncourt, making him a

vampire, and after, destroyed himself by jumping into the fire; a fire that Lestat

had helped create for him under his command.56 Through his actions of self

destruction, Magnus becomes an example of one of the vampires that could not

endure their existence and searched for a way out of it. Still, he leads the way for

those outlaw vampires who want to make a difference and defy the rules in order

to make a prosperous change to the rules established.

53
“Rice’s inspiration for this character came from the short story ‘Count Magnus’ by M.R. James.

54
“According to the tale [by M.R. James], Count Magnus is a sixteenth-century Swedish
aristocrat. ‘Phenomenally ugly’, he is both powerful and cruel, and the general populace fears
him. Interested in alchemy and the secret of eternal life, he makes a ‘black pilgrimage’ to the city
of Chorazin− where, reputedly the Antichrist was born− and returns home with a mysterious
stranger. After the count’s death…a gruesome murder on the count’s land suggests that Magnus
has risen from the dead…Magnus appears to possess the power to hypnotize people and to
move objects at will. He also pursues people relentlessly, appearing wherever they are and
making it clear that he is slowly closing in on them as if he intends to kill them” (“Companion” 272-
273).
55
“When human, Magnus had been an alchemist who had trapped a vampire and stolen from him
his blood and with it the immortal gift” ( Ramsland 273).
56
“Magnus…lights a fire, dances around it, extracts a promise from the reluctant and terrified
Lestat to scatter his ashes, and jumps in to destroy himself. As promised, Lestat tosses Magnus’s
ashes to the wind” (Ramsland 274).
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4.4 Relationships, Maturity, Submission and Psychological Change

The Fourth rule is that “No vampire is allowed to destroy any of its own

kind, except for the coven leader, who has obligations to destroy certain types of

inappropriate and outlaw vampires” (Ramsland 391). This rule in particular

becomes broken in several occasions throughout the Chronicles; mostly by

vampires who are considered outlaws, such as Lestat and Claudia.

Claudia attempted the worst crime of all according to the Great Rules;

killing her creator. This connects to Rice’s Roman Catholic upbringing once again

as it reflects the Church’s rule to honor thy father and thy mother. Also, Claudia

reflects the previous commandment of youth and knowledge. When she was

created she was only five years old in human years, thus she was not allowed to

obtain the human maturity and emotional growth to be sympathetic and have an

appreciation of life.

Claudia tried to kill Lestat because she refused to live like the servant or

slave of the man that should be giving her the knowledge she wants about her

identity. She particularly despised Lestat for this reason. Her situation reflects

typical characteristics of the vampire relationships with each other. Usually

vampires live alone. If he or she were to get a companion, this companion would

be submissive as opposed to their maker. It is a sadomasochistic relationship

between creator and fledgling as well as a battle for power between master and

servant. If a third vampire was made, it was usually to find companionship for the

servant, but the connection between the creator and created is of hate and

distance even if it originated out of love.

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Claudia struggled with Lestat’s dominating personality. She considered

that the only and most logical way to rebel against him to break free of his power

over her and Louis was to eliminate him. Because of Louis’s submissive and

needy personality, he had the most difficult time breaking away from Lestat’s

dominant grip. This may translate to cultural ties between parents and children.

Usually if a child decides to leave the family unit in a culture where there is a

family centralized style of living, the child will have to struggle against their

background. It usually causes tension between parents and children because the

parent will feel betrayed and abandoned by the child they not only created but

educated with the morals and values of their ancestors.

Once more, the idea of rebellion is linked to knowledge57. Claudia was

only five years of age58 when Lestat transformed her into a vampire. After sixty-

five years of living with Lestat and Louis she felt trapped and confused about her

vampire origin, especially because of her inability to age. “Her body! The boy

said… She was never to grow up!”(“Interview” 101) is a crucial observation made

by the interviewer as Louis discusses Claudia’s sudden hunger for an identity.59

It reflects growth just as teenagers want to break free from their parents to find

57
There is a connection with The Old Testament. Eve ate the fruit from the tree which gave her
knowledge of good and evil thus defying the rules established by God. In the Chronicles, Claudia
demands answers from Lestat and defies the rules and attempts to kill him when he cannot
provide the information she wants. Eve was punished by being cast out of paradise. Claudia is
left to be incinerated by the sun for her murderous actions.
58
“Rice based Claudia’s appearance on her own daughter Michele, who died at the age of five
from Leukemia” (Ramsland 70).
59
Claudia becomes the example of a repressed woman. She is to be young forever and cursed to
look like a porcelain doll. Lestat tries to shield her from the world and to keep her ignorant of
everything except for what he wants her to know. She exhibits the characteristics of a teenage
human including resentfulness against her “parents” for shielding her from the world. She is
driven to kill to find her freedom from repression.
 125

themselves or how sometimes members of minorities want to do a pilgrimage to

rediscover their origins or the motherland of their faith.

A strong impatience brewed quietly within her: “She was to be the demon

child forever” (“Interview” 101-102) Louis explained. The word demon60 having a

duality because when Claudia was created she had barely experienced what it

was to be human. She may have had the body of a child: “But her mind. It was a

vampire’s mind” (“Interview” 102).

At the same time, Louis struggles with the intellectual change that Claudia

has endured. As a father figure, he accepts that he grew accustomed to having

her as a companion. There are high levels of intimacy between them, and his

relationship with Claudia borderlines as incestuous. He felt connected to this

woman in the body of a child and became her mentor as a way to remain

connected to her. In this situation Louis takes control as the elder who provides

the knowledge she sought and she became his apprentice: “She came to talk

more, though she was never other than a reflective person and could listen to

[him] patiently by the hour without interruption” (“Interview”102). This reflects the

often cultural stereotype of respect for an older figure that is considered wise and

educated by life.

As he did this he unconsciously overlooked that Claudia’s personality was

changing gradually despite her inability for physically changes. He saw her as a

60
Demons are “creatures of the dark that symbolically embody the human tendency to diabolize
people of different cultures or beliefs. Their monstrous form mirrors the human fear of inadequacy
and the need to dominate and control such fear. A demon is usually the husk of an old god of
past seasons. For example patriarchal religions treated as demons people of older religions who
believed that their souls originated from their mothers…Vampires are thought to be a form of
demon, and the vampires occasionally employ this word to describe themselves. However, the
use of demon in the Chronicles is generally metaphorical” (“Vampire Companion” 94).
 126

parent would overlook with denial their own child’s maturity. Louis, through the

use of Claudia, explored the vampire mysteries. He wondered how she would be

able to change at all: “I strained to know how she moved towards womanhood”

(“Interview”102). During his narrative about Claudia he acknowledges: “I knew

her to be less human…Not the faintest conception bound her to the sympathies

of human existence” (“Interview” 149)61. She became tortured by her ignorance

about her identity. Louis described her change into a woman as gradual, but he

overlooked crucial factors about her. The most noticeable changes were mainly

her ruthlessness and determination.

Claudia’s process of maturity reflects her psychological growth, and the

physical transition that she was unable to go through. It included several signs

that flared the change that was taking place within her: “She grew cold to Lestat.

She fell to staring at him for hours. When he spoke, often she didn’t answer him,

and one could hardly tell if it was contempt or that she didn’t hear”

(“Interview”105). Louis discovered how fierce Claudia could be, even though he

did notice when she was converted into a fledgling, that she had the same innate

instinct for the kill that Lestat had. Louis lacked this instinct. It became a personal

trait that made him a target to Lestat’s constant criticism. Lestat thought of Louis

as a weak vampire because of Louis’ overwhelming longing for human

compassion62.

This weakness in Louis’ character can be adapted to the inability of many

62
Louis and Claudia held a tighter bond with each other than with Lestat because they did not
share each other’s blood through the Dark Gift. The void between master and creator did not
apply between them.
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individuals to gain the strength of character needed to internalize the ability to

confront the social barriers that faced when coming to terms with their identity.

This indecision, these inner monsters have a duality of making a person stronger

while simultaneously defeating them. Not letting go of his humanity made Louis

vulnerable as a vampire, but it made him a stronger individual because it was the

only thing he could consider he could still hold on to for comfort.

As for the quest for identity, when Claudia demanded from Lestat to give

her answers he was unable to do so63 and Louis to could only reply: “I don’t know

the answers to your questions…I wonder the same things you wonder. I do not

know. How I was made, I’ll tell you that…that Lestat did it to me. But the real

“how” of it I don’t know!” (“Interview” 111). This infuriated her and fueled her

desire for knowledge even more.

Claudia is a character that becomes overwhelmed by ignorance; not only

her own, but the ignorance of others. She justified her murderous decision to kill

Lestat because he reinforced the barrier she was trying to overcome to

understand who she was. She tells Louis: “And why not kill him! …I have no use

for him! I can get nothing from him! And he causes me pain, which I will not

abide!” (“Interview” 123).

The peculiarity about Claudia is that her own ignorance made her reject

her origins when this is what she looked for. Her personality was more similar to

Lestat’s than what she was willing to accept. She was equally dominant and

63
Lestat displays authority by withholding information from Claudia. His way to keep both Louis
and Claudia by his side was to make them feel that he still had secrets they needed to know, but
in truth he did not know everything. When Claudia points this out, Louis can see that and for the
first time he is genuinely scared.
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manipulative of Louis and used his weakness to serve her purpose because of

her own limitations. She was her own minority; physically young, weak, female,

and vulnerable but with a will stronger than those that surrounded her.

The latter part of the fourth rule is also important. “The coven leader…

has obligations to destroy certain types of inappropriate and outlaw vampires”

(“Vampire Companion” 391). This fragment becomes the catalyst for the action in

most of the Vampire Chronicles. The vampires that are particularly considered

outlaws become the main characters of their own chronicle, which evolves into a

mock autobiography that includes the other vampires they encountered in their

lifetime, as well as their impact in it. Characters, such as Claudia and Louis have

a strong yearning to find their origins64.They struggle with their old morality

versus their newly acquired life code.

4.5 The Urgency of Secrecy

In many cases these vampires appear to be hypocritical. They take

actions contradictory to their beliefs about finding the truth and try to silence the

others who seek them for answers. Once again this becomes a reflection of

society’s hypocritical actions against racism and discrimination. In most cases,

those who preach for love and equality are so blinded by their dogma that they

become arduous practitioners of that which they preach against.

In The Chronicles, the vampires seek to silence those who threaten to

disclose the ancient truths and the little information they know. According to

Marius’ mock autobiography entitled Blood and Gold, as well as other Vampire

64
Many Creoles desire to go back to Europe to find their origins. Louis considers himself Creole
because he was too young to remember his life in France before he arrived to live in Louisiana.
 129

Chronicles such as The Vampire Armand and Pandora, for centuries he bore the

weight of the secrets of vampires on his shoulders. He became soul protector of

‘Those Who Must Be Kept’65, the most ancient vampires and the closest

connection to the source of every answer the outlaw vampires search for.

By disclosing the essence of the source, the vampires become the hunted.

The others who are trying to silence them become hunters and usually are

ignorant and intolerant of their lifestyle. Clouded by ignorance and fear of that

which poses a threat, the world feels the need to destroy what is unnatural and

different to their own kind; a situation that has been repeated in real history over

the centuries time and time again.

In return, vampires must protect their truth from those who do not

understand their lifestyle in order to save themselves and their ancient traditions.

Vampires become an extreme representative example of what a minority group

will have to endure to protect their traditions when faced with having to assimilate

to a new culture. It becomes particularly important when facing the threat of

being engulfed by the larger group that surrounds them. If this were to happen,

the smaller group would be facing the threat to disappear into that whole66.

The main problem that each minority group must confront is that, in most

of the cases, they do not even know the background of their identity or the

65
In the novel Blood and Gold Marius explains how the title came to be: “…no religious impulse
guided me. I had thought of the “god” of the Druid woods to be a monster. And I understood that
in her personal way Akasha was a monster. I was a monster as well. I had no intention of creating
devotion for her. She was a secret. And from that moment she came into my hands she and her
consort were Those Who Must Be Kept” (“Blood and Gold” 53).

66
An example of this is the Americanization of minorities that live in the United States of America.
The newer generations become more assimilated and breakaway from their cultural traditions,
forgetting them. As a result they are lost.
 130

veracity of the secrets they are trying to protect. They are safeguarding and

defending the dogma of their existence and only their faith and loyalty guides

them.

During one of the most heated confrontations between Claudia and Lestat,

Claudia confronts Lestat67 in order, aggravate and belittle him:

You know nothing! … And suppose the vampire who made you

knew nothing, and the vampire that made that vampire knew

nothing, and the vampire before knew nothing, and so it goes back

and back, nothing proceeding from nothing, until there is nothing!

68
And we must live with the knowledge that there is no knowledge!’

(“Interview 120)

There is one final rule established: The fifth rule. And it becomes crucial to

the saga created by Rice because it is bluntly broken for the first time in the

opening novel of the Vampire Chronicles, Interview with the Vampire. This rule

establishes that “No vampire should reveal to mortals his nature, name, coven,

locale, or history and allow them to live” (“Lestat” 301-302). This statement

becomes the cardinal rule to break by the outlaw vampires. As the Chronicles

progress throughout the series, each vampire writes down their own story for the

world to read about. Rice, as writer, depicts this revelation of information in

67
Books like The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald demonstrate the fall of the hero when
knowledge is presented. In Fitzgerald’s novel Gatsby seems to be in control of everything until
Daisy walks into the same room as he is. The fact that she would know who he used to be makes
Gatsby’s guard fall and for a second his physical reaction reflects how “social godliness” appears
to be defeated.
68
Lestat becomes shaken and scared at the realization that Claudia was right. Louis becomes a
witness to this argument, which marked the dissolution of the family unit Lestat had attempted to
create with the three of them.
 131

several forms that range from manuscripts, to songs, to books of popular fiction

that has been penned under a nom de plume.

Nearing the last chapters of the novel Blood Canticle, Mona Mayfair

confronts Lestat about his hypocrisy about this secrecy69. She accuses him of

being defensive of the secrets of the vampire ways and then contradicting

himself. Lestat managed to break this rule by writing his life narrative and writing

songs when he decided to become a rock star. These songs were particularly

defying to the ode of secrecy because they were a call to the masses and

disclosed some the secrets that other vampires had struggled for centuries to

keep under wraps.

Lestat, being the clever character that he is, manages to rest his defense

on the use of fiction and freedom it gives him as a writer justifying the

reinforcement his actions. He considers that pen names and framing devices

allow the audience to believe what they desire to believe. These literary devices

blur the borders that define what is real and what is not because it is left to the

audience to accept what they consider is deemed as believable.

4.6 Mentoring and Life Lessons: Guidelines for Vampires in a

Struggling Subculture

As for the Great Rules, Santino is not the only vampire that takes the

initiative to create a coven or a set of rules. Just like Santino, the vampire

Armand created his own coven in Paris. At first, Armand lived under the

69
The novel The Vampire Lestat (mainly) along with the novels Interview with the Vampire and
Queen of the Damned discuss how Lestat used to be a rock star. In his songs he wrote and sang
to the world calling others of his kind and disclosing some of the Ancient secrets that the other
vampires were trying to protect.
 132

mentoring and companionship of Marius, but after a series of unfortunate events,

Marius and Armand ended up living separate lives; mostly because Armand

believed Marius had been murdered in front of him70. It was centuries before

Armand saw Marius again. Armand became independent of his master and

eventually became a leader himself. He created his own coven. His rules were

known as the Rules of Darkness and he traveled throughout Europe teaching

them to other covens. This basically consisted as the same commandments

established by Santino in the Rome coven, but he added a few more elements.

Once again there is a connection to Rice’s religious background, but these

rules are also a parallel of societies constraints in order to maintain a civilized

behavior from those who are part of it, as well as those who have become

integrated into it.

Those who abide by Armand’s Rules of Darkness “are to live among the

dead in cemeteries, return to their own graves, shun places of light, honor the

power of God, and never enter a church” (“Vampire Lestat” 225). Even here, an

unspoken respect for God and the church can be perceived from creatures that

call themselves Satanists. Lestat manages to break all of Armand’s rules, and by

doing so, he shakes the base of the whole establishment Armand had worked so

hard to create. He disclosed the secrets Armand tried to contain by defying him.

After their transformation, suddenly Rice’s vampires have to face that they

must live a life in which almost everything they knew as mortals becomes

70
After being abducted from Marius’s studio in Venice by Santino’s followers, Armand joins
Santino’s Coven and later on becomes leader of an extension of it. He did not strongly believe in
what he preached (he was like a priest to his followers), but he followed the lifestyle and adapted
to it as means to survive from the same fate as his master Marius (death by fire).
 133

questionable logic. They must now endure a lifetime in which their morals and

religious background become obscured by means of survival in their new real

world. Now, for them the matter of life and death becomes a paradox of life

through death in a spiritual and physical way. The worst comes when their maker

tells them they must learn through life experiences what it is to be who or what

they are, such as the way Magnus told Lestat right after he transformed him and

right before destroying himself, ‘There are things you must know. You’re immortal

now. Your nature shall lead you soon to your first victim’ ”71 (“Lestat” 290).

Vampires must let their predatory instinct set in and start their new lives

from there. They must adapt to what is morally wrong in order to survive. The

rules of nature take over and it becomes tolerated to feed from a human victim as

long as it is not frivolous killing. The murderous actions also become acceptable

(as well as in a non-fiction scenario as long as the reason for killing benefits

others from one who poses a real and acceptable negative threat against others.

The audience of the Chronicles can see how general a phrase like this

can be. Magnus will point out details that Lestat must know, but he will not go

into depth or detail about information of great importance, except for Lestat’s new

reality in which he is now immortal. As a result, just as any other predator,

instinct will guide him to what is needed to stay alive.

It can be compared to the way humans kill animals to feed or the case of

some struggling minorities who have faced hard times. Sometimes they have

found themselves acting on instinct and stealing food, or even killing in order to

71
Louis tries to mentor Claudia. During his interview he realizes that he should have done a
better job.
 134

feed themselves or their children, even if it goes against their morals.

In Interview with the Vampire, Louis reaffirms his statement that

sometimes he wished he would have been better prepared to face this new

alternate lifestyle he was about to begin. By narrating the experience of his first

hunt, he expresses disappointment of Lestat for not telling him everything he

needed to know about vampires and hunting humans for food: “There were many

things, as I mentioned which Lestat might have said and done. He might have

made this experience rich in so many ways. But he did not” (“Interview” 29).

Louis is not gratifying death, but he is disappointed that he could not embrace his

identity as a vampire because his lack of instruction.

Louis learned how to be a vampire as time went by, but his bad

experience as a fledgling was blamed on Lestat’s attitude: “He was concerned

only with our victims, finishing my initiation and getting on with it” (“Interview” 28).

This attitude scarred him into limiting himself to living up to his full potential as a

vampire.

Lestat’s refusal to inform Louis of his background was very troubling for

Louis. This is evident when he confessed to the interviewer: “He had never told

me how he had become a vampire or where I might find a single other member

of our kind. This troubled me greatly then, as much as it had for four years”

(“Interview” 63). Louis was a very submissive character; always dependant of a

companion although he had the power or means to be in control. He felt

emotionally dependant of Lestat. Later on he was submissive to Claudia’s

desires and motivations. He went as far as imposing restrictions on himself such

 135

as “not allowing himself to fly or to read the minds of his victims” (“Body

Thief”104). A situation that can be reflected in minorities once more since

usually people of scarce resources and of foreign backgrounds are told they

cannot achieve success because of their background, so they limit themselves

because of the barrier that pulls them down based on these ideas. They are

expected to fail or to remain in the social strata they live in because of who they

are and where they came from.

Lestat’s selfish attitudes did prove to have beneficial side effects towards

Louis’s growth as a vampire. The distance and tension between them grew to a

boiling point. It fueled Louis’s desire to flee from Lestat’s influence and find his

own identity as a vampire. He finally gathers up enough courage and takes on

the mission of venturing out into the world to find answers about his new lifestyle.

Claudia plays an important role in Louis’s interest to travel to find his

identity. His emotional co-dependency along with his interest in her reignites his

drive and passion to leave New Orleans and travel to France and the rest of

Europe with her. Feeling like a victim herself, she gives him the reasons and

motivation he needed to break away from the bond he had with Lestat.

One of the major turning points for Louis’ struggle to leave came after a

great argument following Louis’ failed attempt to save the young man from

Lestat’s doom. He realized that he could take Lestat’s overpowering control no

longer. He confessed to the reporter : “I was confident we must part ways at once
 136

that I must, if necessary, put an ocean between us”72 (“Interview” 63).

The arguments he was frequently having with Lestat created within Louis

the confidence he lacked before. He confesses: “I realized that I’d tolerated him

this long because of self-doubt” (“Interview”63). He even acknowledges to David

Malloy73 the excuses he utilized to justify his dependency of Lestat when he

claims: “I’d fooled myself into believing I stayed for the old man, and for my sister

and her husband” (“Interview” 63) thus reflecting the tie that usually family can

have in an individual who is seeking personal growth. The old man he refers to is

Lestat’s father, who was blind and frail and lived with them at the house at Pointe

du Lac. Still, he found another existential plateau of comfort that distracted him

from his longing for an identity when he lived with Claudia and Lestat as part of

the family unit Lestat had created for him.

Through Louis’ account in Interview with the Vampire, the audience can

understand the value that these morsels of advice acquired by their life

experience and the role they play in the fledgling’s acceptance of this alternate

lifestyle which he/she must adjust to. The information their maker gives them (in

Louis’ case the maker being Lestat), instructs them to the understanding that

even the capabilities of immortality become relative74. Lestat mentors Louis while

he is still adjusting to his transformation by warning him: “You will die, you know.

72
In many Caribbean Literature Novels, the protagonist crosses the ocean back to Europe or the
Motherland of their ancestry. Examples of novels that include this crossover are Jean Rhys’s
Wide Sargasso Sea and Jamaica Kinkaid’s Annie John.
73
David Malloy is the name of the reporter in Interview with the Vampire.

74
Young vampires become more susceptible to death by sunlight or fire because they are easily
distracted by their new powers and supernatural perspective of the world. They also have not
developed fully their vampire senses; therefore they fall as easy pray to any predator or threat
that might surround them.
 137

The sun will destroy the blood I’ve given you, in every tissue, in every vein”

(“Interview”25).

Through Magnus’ words, the secret of their immortality is disclosed. They

are not immortal unless they follow the rules of survival. “But you shouldn’t be

feeling this fear at all” (“Interview”25). These words are spoken to say that they

are death incarnate:

Although vampires survive their own physical death as mortals,

they never escape death itself, nor the threat of

annihilation…vampires are the living dead. Through immortalized

blood they experience their own death without losing

consciousness. Once the body dies, the vampire experiences a

sense of invincibility and can survive many things that would have

killed him as mortal…[but] despite possessing personal fears about

death the vampires do not hesitate to bring death to mortals; not

only is it necessary to their survival, but they find it irresistible

(“Vampire Companion” 90-91).

Because of their own existence they should not fear what they are75.

Lestat illustrates his point by making a comparison: “I think you are like a man

who loses an arm or a leg and keeps insisting that he feels pain where the arm or

the leg used to be” (“Interview” 25). Louis tells the reporter about his first

experience sleeping inside a coffin: “I had a dread of being enclosed… It was a

75
Louis tries to explain to Claudia the meaning of death in the novel Interview with the Vampire.
He shows her the decaying corpse of a woman and tells her: “This is death…which we cannot
suffer. Our bodies will stay always as they are, fresh and alive; but we must never hesitate to
bring death, because it is how we live” (“Interview” 98).
 138

normal enough fear. And now I realized as I protested to Lestat, I did not actually

feel this anymore. I was actually remembering it” (“Interview”24-25). He

acknowledges the importance of this conversation because he was told about the

possibility of mortality and the newfound truth about his humanity and he begins

to accept himself: “That was positively the most intelligent and useful thing Lestat

ever said in my presence, and it brought me around at once” (“Interview”25).

Just like human life, there is no instruction manual to what it is to be a

vampire. Just like a parent would teach their child about crucial things in life,

these new creatures are told by their masters or makers simple rules such as,

“Stop your feasting… before the victim’s heart ceases to beat. In years to come

you will be strong enough to feel that great moment, but for the present pass the

cup to time just before its empty. Or you may pay heavily for your pride”76

(“Lestat” 93). Moreover, vampires must not question or try to meddle with the

past as an attempt to search for answers about their kind. By doing so they are

bound to meet their doom in the process.

This is portrayed in a nearly humorous manner in the novel Blackwood

Farm. Tarquin “Quinn” Blackwood, the main character writes a letter to Lestat in

hopes to contact him. In the postscript Tarquin writes to his defense and as a

justification for mercy due to his defiance of the ancient rules “Remember I am

only twenty-two and a bit clumsy. But I can’t resist this small request. If you do

76
The concept of pride and damnation can also be seen in the character of Satan in John Milton’s
“Paradise Lost”. Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles are similar to Milton’s “Paradise Lost” because
they include a series of characters that have been damned and are struggling for salvation and
redemption. Milton’s Satan is similar to the vampires because he, just like them, is an intellectual
character who tries to persuade the reader into his story and tries to get the reader to have
sympathy for him despite of his anti-moral actions.
 139

mean to track me down and eradicate me, could you give me an hour’s notice to

say some sort of farewell to the one mortal relative I love most in all the world?”

(“Blackwood” 9).

On a more serious note before the postscript ends, he points out that if he

is to die, not to let his death be in vain. The letter’s purpose was to ask for help in

order to kill a doppelganger by the name of Goblin. Quinn wants to emphasize on

the seriousness of his request while at the same time reinforcing his

acknowledgment of the threat his act might impose on his life by writing: “let me

plead with you. Let me live, and help me destroy Goblin or put an end to us both”

(“Blackwood”10). This supports the importance of his plea for help and his

insolence as to writing the letter in the first place.

4.7 The Vampire’s Kiss: Link to Knowledge and the Vampire

Legacy
Unlike humans, as part of “the act of transforming a mortal into an

immortal by draining the mortal of blood and feeding them the blood of a

vampire” (Ramsland 89), the vampires receive some of the knowledge that the

maker acquired as a vampire prior to transforming his victim. The ingestion of

blood becomes osmosis of knowledge between master and fledgling. The victim

will not only possess these memories, but may also discover new gifts that come

with it. These include the ability to read minds, telekinesis or to set things ablaze

by thought in the most powerful of cases. These are gifts that are kept secret by

those who have them, unless it becomes completely necessary to use them77.

77
Claudia seemed to have acquired some of these gifts from Lestat, such as The Mind Gift, but
she was not familiar about them because Lestat did not tell her about them. She did not live long
enough in order to develop them or find out what she was capable of.
 140

The moment when the bite occurs is when this connection between hunter

and hunted happens. Here, the victim falls into a trance-like state which is

considered in many cases as sexual ecstasy because:

The vampire’s teeth sink into erotic zones of the mortal’s body, the

mortal’s subsequent pain mingles with pleasure, making the

experience highly sexual and seductive. Although the vampire is

stealing the victim’s vitality via the kiss, the victim is often aroused

enough to want to surrender…In traditional genre fiction, the kiss is

most often heterosexual…however, the first vampire kiss described

in the Chronicles is from Lestat to Louis, and continues to be free of

such gender-role biases (“Vampire Companion” 499).

Lestat describes this moment prior to his transformation as it follows: “I

was altogether lost. I was incorporeal and the pleasure was incorporeal. I was

nothing but pleasure. And I slipped into a web of radiant dreams” (“Lestat” 88).

The vampire can then choose to kill or spare the life of his victim henceforth

turning him into a fledgling, which is a relative term to what is considered a young

vampire relative to the age of the older vampire to which the youngest is being

compared to.

There is one consequence to the vampire’s bite that affects the bond

between vampire and fledgling. Once the Dark Trick has taken place, and the

mortal is turned into an immortal, “The Dark Trick results into a veil of silence

between the vampires and their children, destroying the intimacy that the

vampire’s were trying to capture by making a companion” (Ramsland 88). This

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secret becomes the curse of immortality, sentencing vampires to lead a relatively

lonely existence despite the presence of others of their kind.

Some vampires had affective bonds with their victims prior to their

transformation. It is their need for companionship and attachment to their victims

that drives them to turn them into Children of the Dark. After the transformation is

complete, the bond is broken. Louis points this out when he tells the reporter

“Before I died Lestat was absolutely the most overwhelming experience I’d ever

had” (“Interview”25) to what the reporter asks “you mean when the gap was

closed between you… he lost his spell?” (“Interview” 26) Louis simply responds

“Yes, that’s correct…Lestat’s constant chatter was positively the most boring and

disheartening thing I’ve ever experienced”78 (“Interview”26). This proves to be an

argument that reflects the contrast of opposites before and after he became a

vampire.

Still, “vampires can read minds to a fairly accurate degree, except those of

their own children or minds that are skillfully cloaked against them” (Ramsland

497). This turns into a duality of advantages and disadvantages for the vampire’s

role as predator. The lack of a psychic bond with those it created (their children)

becomes a vulnerable point if they become their prey. Some vampires are better

at hiding their thoughts from others than other vampires. In some cases older

age is a factor for developing and mastering the defense against the Mind Gift.

Vampires are not the only ones that can read minds.

78
Claudia, who was also created by Lestat, confesses to Louis that she has grown bored and
annoyed by Lestat. “He made me then…to be your companion…He gives me nothing…I used to
think him charming…But I no longer find him charming” (“Interview” 118).
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These are some of the secrets that are not really discussed in depth in

Rice’s Vampire Chronicles. The audience becomes aware of the vampire powers

that some of the characters develop after their transformations. Some powers will

be similar to those of their makers, some will not. In some cases the source of

these will be disclosed but not the details of how they came to be, or why some

of the characters display them and others don’t. If compared to science, it would

be the equivalent of genetics and the randomness of dominant and recessive

genes.

As the narrative unfolds in each of the novels, some of these storylines will

overlap between books as the characters encounter each other throughout their

lifetimes. The audience will discover that not every vampire has the particular

gifts that others might have, and that only the most powerful ones, or the ones

who have succeeded in their attempts to drink from the source79 are the most

likely to manifest particularly strong supernatural forces.

In the novel The Vampire Armand, the reader gets to see how a mortal

Armand gets rescued by Marius, converted into one of the Children of the Dark
80
because of an ill fated event and educated by his master before and after the

transformation. Those who follow the series come to understand that this

becomes a privilege for him because Marius, who is considered one of the

79
Lestat was allowed by Akasha to approach her and drink her blood even if Marius did not want
this to happen. He developed the ability to fly, was able to read minds and set things on fire by
thinking of it.
80
Armand was poisoned during a sword fight. Marius could not tolerate seeing him die, so
against his own will he gave Armand the Dark Gift to save him.
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ancients, was the key holder to the many secrets that other vampires had died

while trying to obtain. In many cases, he witnessed as Akasha and Enkil

murdered these daring few81.

Akasha and Enkil are crucial characters of the background history of the

Chronicles and are known as Those Who Must Be Kept. They are the Adam and

Eve of the Vampire Chronicles. Marius was the sole protector of the sources of

the Dark Gift. When he created Armand he made sure to give him a proper

upbringing. He did educate him using some of the secrets he had sworn to keep

safe, but he never went so much into detail as to give away the nature of the

Dark Gift or those directly connected to its origins.

4.8 Importance of the Storytelling Outlaw Vampire in the

Development of The Vampire Chronicles
Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles consist of vampires that are considered

outlaws. Despite warnings and threats they refuse to keep their secrets and not

stick to the rules imposed on them in the hopes that the knowledge they disclose

will help others of their kind to become aware of their identity. Whether it is to find

some sort of salvation, to find meaning to their lives, or request the help of

someone more experienced when they are in trouble or simply to be rebellious,

they try to contact each other and write about themselves and others they have

met. Writing a life narrative, letters or an autobiography becomes their way of

defying an unscripted law that forbids documentation of and about any type of

vampire and their origins.

81
Many other vampires had invaded the secret temple Marius had built to attempt to approach
Akasha and Enkil. They would either die incinerated or crushed when Akasha used her psychic
powers to reject them.
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These laws are evidently known by the characters. Still, they insist on

defying them. Lestat in particular voices his opinion on the subject. He says: “I

had already broken the dark commandments, telling the name of an immortal…I

had never been good at obeying rules” (“Vampire Lestat”320). He emphasizes

the code he was to abide for, yet he went against it as a part of his quest for

answers about his own existence. He always seems to find a reasonable excuse

to reinforce his actions. In the last novel of The Vampire Chronicles, Blood

Canticle, Mona and Lestat argue as Lestat intervenes against Mona’s idea of

creating a web page about the vampires. She protests, reminding him that he

had published the Vampire Chronicles. He replies justifying his actions by telling

her that publishing is:

An age-old form of public confession…sacrosanct…A book goes

forth quietly into the world, labeled fiction, to be perused, pondered,

passed from one to another, perhaps put side for the future, perish

if unwanted, to endure if valued, to work its way into trunks and

vaults and junk heaps, who knows? I don’t defend myself to

anybody anyway (“Blood Canticle” 272-273).

It is through those mock autobiographies that the readers get to

understand the development of each character as they live through the ages.

Their records become written profiles of their lifetime and struggles as well as

records of their physical and spiritual maturity. Each one is framed with real

historical events that add a sense of accuracy to their tales. The life narratives

jumble the mind of the readers by making them momentarily forget that they are
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reading a work of fiction, and even more, play with their rationality by fooling

them with framing devices into believing that these events might have actually

happened. What’s even more interesting is that through these pages, the

audience becomes aware of the complex connection that intertwines some

vampires with the others.

The whole framework becomes a narrow to wide angle from the very

beginning, intricately connecting them from the ancients, to the very wide family

tree in which they all become part of. Through them the audience becomes a

spectator of the character’s evolution and growth as part of the Children of the

Night. Just like humans connect their origins to the biblical reference of Adam

and Eve, the vampires in Rice’s novels connect to the mother and father or the

source, Enkil and Akasha.

Then there is the particular motivation of these characters to tell their tale.

Lestat, for example, is the rebel of the group because of his defiant and careless

attitude. Still, even his rebelliousness is laced with a serious and conservative

undertone about maintaining the secret of the old ways. It is interesting how at

first he was outraged to find out that the very vampire he had created and who

for about a century had become his companion betrayed the trust he had

bequeathed on him about the secret of the Dark Gift. His curiosity about this leak

of information arose when he was told by a group of rock musicians about a

novel entitled Interview with the Vampire. He came upon it while he was in his

quest to create a rock band. The storyline was “Something to do with a mortal

boy getting one of the undead to tell his tale” (“Lestat” 13) he described his initial
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reaction by saying “I got a preternatural chill of sorts at the sight of the cover”

(“Lestat” 13).

Some characters are very forward about disclosing that there is an

“understanding” that the story of the vampires must be kept unscripted, yet in

order to find a meaning to their own life and teach a moral to the new generations

of vampires, they break the ancient rules and write about their own life journeys.

Eventually each story is knitted together into one now disclosed secretive truth.

In it each tale or chronicle overlaps with the others, therefore filling the gaps that

each character might have left when telling their particular point of view. It

becomes a quilt by telling a story through patches of partial stories of generations

after generations making a whole out of different fragments.

Despite the personal reason each character has, one common

denominator seems to permeate and stand out from each one of these

autobiographies. Writing becomes a medium of redemption and justification, if

not a cry for forgiveness for the actions that each one has committed. No matter

what background each character had during their mortal lives they are all joined

in blood in more ways than one.

Even in the novel Interview with the Vampire, the book that Lestat

describes as the first act of defiance against the rules of secrecy between

vampires, the audience can see the mysticism of the actual act of transformation.

In Rice’s books, her characters might describe some of the reasons why they

became part of the undead, whether it is by choice, destiny or the simple

unfolding of a chain of events that lead to that moment. Yet the actual reason of
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why and how they become vampires remains the biggest secret of all. A

genealogic tree can be created, tracing back to Ancient Egypt and to when

Akasha was created. Even more, the line can be traced to the creature that

created her, but where it got its powers and how the fusing of the blood itself

occurred in order to create an immortal being remains a mystery. During the

interview the reporter asked Louis: “How did you change exactly?”(“Interview”15)

His response was: “I can’t tell you exactly, I can tell you about it, enclose it with

words that will make the value of it to me evident to you” (“Interview”15).

Louis’s answer becomes the reflection of how people feel when asked to

explain something mystical. They cannot express in words the process, or the

secrets, just the actual sensations or humanization of this un-describable thing;

and even then, they might find themselves in an unsatisfactory loss of words. As

Louis would simply put it “I can’t tell you exactly, anymore that I could tell you

exactly what is the experience of sex if you have never had it” (“Interview”15).

Understanding becomes a matter of experience. Only those who have

lived through it can really experience the truth about the subject. Those who have

not will just have to settle with explanations of the whole, but will never be able to

embody the experience or fully visualize it until they go through it themselves.

Even then, because of the individuality of each being, no two experiences will

ever be completely alike; therefore the real truth will never be able to be fully

described and put into words.

As the interview progresses and Louis gives the details of his

transformation to the reporter, the audience becomes aware of the challenges of

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description as Louis voices his frustrations about not being able to describe the

process accurately because of restrictions that are difficult to pinpoint. He tells

the reporter: “How pathetic it is to describe those things which can’t truly be

described” (“Interview” 20).

Nonetheless, an aspect that becomes interesting about the narrative of

the novel Interview with the Vampire, in which the reporters asks that question

about transformation, is the sudden change of subject by Louis: “The young man

seemed stuck with still another question, but before he could speak, the vampire

went on” (“Interview” 16). Louis’ actions reflect to the audience that one must not

ask impertinent questions82 about the act of transformation itself. One should just

settle with the information facilitated by its provider.

The whole argument about accepting the information given becomes a

reflection of religion. One must not question the Dogma. Instead, people should

just lead their beliefs by faith, recognize these words, live by them and the

feelings attached. The believers should follow what the doctrines will teach, but

never question the mysticism of it. In most cases these doctrines can never be

fully explained without them losing their greatness. The meaning becomes lost in

translation.

This subject is not brought to light solely by vampire fiction. The secrecy

enclosed by mysticism has been recently brought up by other authors in their

82
The saying “Ignorance is bliss” becomes particularly important in Interview with the Vampire
because as long as Louis and Claudia did not ask questions about their origins, the family unit
that Lestat had created managed to be stable. Lestat becomes visibly upset when Claudia
became curious about what it was to be a vampire and treats the need for this knowledge as an
illness when he accuses Louis of putting ideas into her head by telling him “you infected her with
this” (“Interview” 121).
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works, such as Dan Brown in his book Angels and Demons. In this novel, the

secret of the existence of God becomes questionable through science because

of a scientific discovery, which serves as a revelation about Creation. In his book,

he presents his audience with the question (which can also be reflected in Anne

Rice’s fiction) of who is the real villain. It becomes questionable of whether it is

he who claims to hold the secrets of Creation and existence, such as the church,

or cultural tradition, or the vampires in Rice’s Vampire Chronicles. These are the

same people who can be accused of withholding secrets from the masses and

telling them to rely on faith. Or are the real villains those who are driven by

curiosity and the search of a more complete existence like the character of

Lestat, and Magnus? Those people who dare to defy the rules in order to find a

more solid answer than that which doctrines can provide, while at the same time

preventing the masses from experiencing the secrets implied.

This matter simplifies to a situation of control. He who controls the

information will control the masses. The truth about secrets and lies is that they

lead us into a paradox of fear and desire. In which people desire knowledge, but

are afraid to dig into the true depth of the reality of the phrase “Knowledge is

Power”, in fear of the repercussions that are attached to this. Enlightenment can

be a powerful thing, but not everyone is ready to face the truth and handle the

powerful consequences that may come along with it. Sometimes it is just better

to lie about the whole thing for the sake of humankind, fiction or not.
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4.9. Chapter Overview

Each subgroup within a larger society will have rules and codes that they

must abide by. Some of these codes of conduct are unspoken and even

unwritten, but that does not mean that they are unknown to the people of that

society. There will always be outcasts in larger groups. Usually intolerance and

ignorance of these outcasts will reflect negatively and create social myths against

them casting them aside from a culture, religion, opportunity or group that they

can belong to.

There are cases when an individual will rebel against mass ignorance and

become a controversial subject amongst those of his kind, as well as those he is

attempting to connect and communicate with. In many cases it is these outlaws

who allow for the social rules to change opening doors of progress and

knowledge to the same people that once may have been blinded by ignorance.

Usually social minorities have a stronger need to survive and succeed in

life just to establish to others that there is an underdog out there capable of

proving wrong those who thought of them as inferior; the will to survive

transcends over determining who is the stronger force in a battle of minds. There

is also the feel to preserve the traditions and rituals that created a culture, or

even subculture. The process of assimilation and integration can sometimes

threaten the essence of an individual making them forget the importance of their

ethnic and social background. Rejection and ignorance can be threatening

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elements against one person who seeks to belong into a larger whole while

struggling to keep a hold of where they came from.

This chapter used examples from Rice’s Chronicles to explore the

different journeys that an individual must go through, as well as the situations

they have to face in order to regain their individual, strong sense of personal

identity. The quest for identity is not only a physical journey, it is also a mental

process towards finding a place for both physical and mental comfort within

another group that was previously threatening, while at the same time finding

personal enlightenment.
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Chapter V
Conclusion:
The Vampire as a Metaphor

I make a hundred choices everyday, decisions about where

to put my money, who to talk to, what food to eat. And yet
the fundamental experiences which have shaped my life, the
cities I’ve lived in, the family I’ve been born into, the people
I’ve been attracted to, the color of my skin, the books I am
drawn to read, the ideas which compel me, none of these I
choose. I find my map without a traditional trajectory, too
fragmented for a linear narrative. There is always a direction.
There is never a dead end, never a path that does not make
me more a human being than I was before. I am always
moving. I am always in life, walking.

Rebecca Walker, Black, White and Jewish

5.1 Chapter Introduction

This chapter will bring to light the results of the objectives discussed in

the introduction of the thesis. This section will determine the use of the vampire

as a metaphor and how it is used to represent minorities; as well as discuss how

the Vampire Chronicles serve as a medium to convey this image of the vampire

metaphor through the mock autobiographical narrative of the vampires portrayed

in them. There will be a focus on the representation of the vampire as the

metaphor for a dystopian minority dealing with issues such as mortality, illness,

conflicts of faith and struggles with identity not only because of sexuality, but

because of race. Hopefully this discussion will open the door for future

possibilities of thematic investigations never discussed in link with The Vampire

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Chronicles as well as for an expansion of the ideas already associated with

Rice’s work.

After all, a person’s life is full of choices and as they live their life, these

choices will eventually mold a story about who they are. Still, there are things in

life that are beyond that person’s control because they were either born into them

or were really in the hands of someone else. Examples of these would be race,

the social background they were born into or the way their life changes after

being diagnosed with a fatal illness.

An individual, such as how the biracial, multi-ethnic writer Rebecca

Walker, daughter of African-American writer Alice Walker, portrays herself in her

autobiography, demonstrates through a series of memories how she will adapt to

the changing elements of society as well as her struggle to find a way to mold

these elements to her convenience in order to find and create identity that would

allow her to better fit in as she grew up. In many cases a more acceptable

lifestyle will result from this, but not without having to go through great personal,

emotional and social struggles to obtain it first. They will learn from those

moments that challenge them, and sometimes use them as fuel to make the best

of their existential situation.

Autobiographical works such as Walker’s tap into their author’s mind

exposing private feelings and personal struggles which can be deemed universal

and malleable to other groups of social outcasts. The exposure of these through

written works allow audiences to identify with them and give the opportunity to

writers such as Rice to mold them into creating a fictional character who narrates
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a life of hardship as well as of enlightenment through a mock autobiographical

work.

Walker chose to write the story of her life by using herself as the subject of

her book. Others will read that story and identify with it; even apply it to their own

lives, but there are also writers like Anne Rice that write fictional stories about a

character’s life story and people will identify with these characters also.

Writing mock autobiographies becomes the perfect tool to create a

metaphor out of a character. Fictional characters have the power to not only

become a person being spoken about, but through the power of literary license,

they may also turn into the embodiment of an emotion such as loss or mourning

would be to a grieving parent; a struggle such as finding an identity within a

group of people that reject because of race or a life choice taken by the

individual, or a social issue that otherwise would not be addressed such as

violence, or an epidemic that condemns its victims to die.

5.2 The Vampire Metaphor

Metaphorically speaking, the figure of the vampire has been given

interpretations that range from the tangible and physical, to spiritual, or

interpretations that reflect social and global issues. Through the centuries, the

image of the vampire has morphed through cultures and adjusted itself to social

evolution, time and the new influence the societies have brought in. Vampires

have gone through a cycle that has taken them from satanic evildoers to trendy

and do-gooder super heroes. One fact remains the same though, although these

vampires have assimilated through time to the surrounding cultural influence of

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the literary context they were written into, they will always be considered outcasts

in the human social groups of every century they will live through. Because

vampires are supernatural creatures represented in literary works and ethnic

folklore, they lack the human conditions that will allow them to completely fit in

with the people that surround them, thus forbidding them to lead the life that a

normal human being would in a social environment.

Newer styles of literary works, which include those that have integrated in

them the old vampire lore, present a retrospective narrative of the vampire’s life.

These works go beyond the original representation of the literary and folkloric

vampire as an unexplainable creature of the night. Now their stories narrate the

transition from human to immortal and the repercussions that this change will

bestow upon this person, now creature, for the remainder of its lifetime.

In Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, the narratives reflect how the creature

slowly becomes a minority and how it has been marginalized from the world it

used to know, banned from daylight, and separated from the beliefs that once

ruled its lives when it used to be human. The narratives also capture how the

vampire must now struggle to assimilate itself to its surroundings in order to find

an identity and survive.

It cannot be denied that literature has borrowed from history and folklore in

order to create the characters that constitute it. Authors like Bram Stoker in the

19th century and Anne Rice in the 20th- 21st century used their knowledge about

subjects that interested them. They also used memories of stories about history
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that their mothers would tell them, thus turning everyday horrors into mythical

representations and create fantastic creatures that rule their fictional world.

Subjects such as homoeroticism are not new in these tales. But they tend

to make themselves noticeable during periods in which sexuality tends to make a

noticeable mark in society. At first, the vampire was there during Victorian times

when sexuality was repressed. It re-appears a century later when there is a

sexual revolution. Even today, the vampire’s kiss has been considered a

metaphor for a sexual act. Its depiction in the novels has always been described

as highly erotic. It is understandable how the spilled blood, added to the

exchange of bodily fluids is connected with sexual intercourse as well as some of

the consequences implied with it, like diseases such as HIV/AIDS.

At the same time, the periods in which Stoker and Rice have lived in have

also been marked by deadly epidemics that would be merciless upon the

affected victims. Victorian and Edwardian times were marked by Typhus and

cholera, while now in the 20th and 21st century people are plagued with potentially

and deadly diseases like HIV and AIDS, illnesses of the blood that can be easily

linked to the representation of tainted blood in a vampire tale and the transition

between a normal human being to someone who has been affected by a foreign

body that takes over their blood and makes the victim one of “them”.

5.3 Current Events: Minorities, Illness and the Connections to

Anne Rice’s Vampires

Current events are a definite influence for writers as they create a

storyline. Whether the writer’s work is based on historical context or an actual

interpretation of recent situations, it cannot be denied that current events can

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affect the storyline as well as have an effect on the audience’s perception of it.

The impact these events will not only be reflected as context, but as the tone of

the product written; including its narrative style: “Narratives of crisis, focused on

injury self-reinterpretation, and testimony have proliferated in response to

widespread illness and genocidal war, to profound changes in personal life, and

to the growing audience demand for personal accounts such as self help” (Smith

and Watson 147).

In times as recent as the decade of 1980, the emergence of contagious

and deadly blood related diseases such as HIV/AIDS and the effect of potentially

deadly illnesses such as Cancer have sparked in society the desire to produce a

new line of literary works83 involving “oral histories, critical analysis, poetic

engagement with metaphors of history, and factoids” (Smith and Watson 147).

The importance of life narratives has taken a new turn since now people look for

new ways to cope with their fears, their grief and mourning and most of all, to find

a place of belonging now that they have been marginalized from society due to

their ailments. Also, “the emergence of the “new” vampire as a popular mass

culture figure during the 1970’s and 1980’s suggest a number of possible

directions for inquiry concerning the effects of multimedia presentation of a

popular icon” (Zanger 17).

The image of the vampire in literary works has evolved through the years

to reflect the ever-changing social environment of the centuries since the first

works were written:

83
“For example, the outpouring of narratives by victims and survivors of the AIDS crisis has
generated critical studies focused on the rhetoric of mourning in personal narratives” (Smith and
Watson 147).
 158

When Rice set out to make the “animal” vampire a new person, she

imagined the process as part of a larger program of what the

1970’s call liberation, whether sexual, gay or women’s. The icons of

this program were already figures of ambiguous signification,

bodied forth by the beautiful-boy stars of glam rock84 or the unisex

fashions launched by designers like Rudy Gernreich. For Rice,

trying to unsettle the clichés and to imagine her way out of the

ossified categories of human and monster, self and other, gender

uncertainty provided an exemplary metaphor (Tomc 96).

As a characters, the vampires become the embodiment through metaphor

of many issues, fears and concerns that society has faced during the time when

each of the works that depict them had been created. “The figure of the vampire,

as a metaphor, can tell us about sexuality, of course, and about power; it can

also inscribe more specific contemporary concerns, such as relations of power

and alienation, attitudes towards illness, and the definition of evil and the end of

an unprecedentedely [sic]secular century” (Gordon & Hollinger 3).

An example of how narrative and the use of the vampire as a metaphor is

used in her books, Rice was able to deal with her own mourning process caused

by the loss of her daughter Michele. She did this by incorporating the concept of

immortality into the pages of the novels that encompass the Vampire Chronicles.

The novels were her escape from her grief when her daughter died of Leukemia

at such an early age. Rice displaced her feelings, making them flow into her

84
Some of these popular glam rock icons include David Bowie and Ziggy Stardust and Iggy Pop.
 159

characters, fueling the storylines of an uncanny narrative that told the tragic story

of a solitary and confused vampire’s life. These vampires’ mock biographies

portray how these creatures searched for redemption as an exchange for the

actions they were now doomed to perform and live with and that would only bring

death: “Here was a way for Anne to buffer her fear of death and to ease her grief

over those taken from her. Working through immortal characters gave her a safe

place from which to ponder the fact of death” (“Prism” 146).

Despite the fact that Rice has said that she did not intentionally plan to

reflect her own feelings in her novel Interview with the Vampire as she wrote it,

she accepts that the grieving process brought upon the death of her daughter

might have driven her to set the tone for the book. In the end, when asked about

the novel during an interview for “Lear’s Magazine” she acknowledged that:

Interview with the Vampire is about grief, guilt, and the search for

salvation even though one is in the eyes of the world and one’s own

eyes a total outcast! ...When vampires search for their past trying

out to figure out who they are, where they come from, if they have a

purpose, that’s me asking the same questions about human beings

(Zanger 23).

Louis, the main character is forced to question his faith, just as Rice faced

hard times when she lost her daughter. Why would God take a young innocent

child making it suffer with such an illness of the blood85? Casually enough,

85
The 1983 movie “The Hunger” portrays the subject of vampirism as an illness of the blood. It
can be easily interpreted as a direct metaphor reflecting the AIDS epidemic that was raging
during this decade as well as the evolution of the decadence leftover from the 1970’s. The
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vampirism is like an illness of the blood. Louis, like Rice is also grieving when he

is first introduced to the reader. He has lost his brother and blames himself for his

death. No matter the centuries that pass, there is part of the death of his brother

that clings to him. He also loses Claudia, his companion and “adoptive”

daughter. His relationship with her can be considered intimate and romantic,

emotionally needy and simultaneously incestuous, adding to the controversy and

taboo that Rice always manages to incorporate into her storylines. The

connection between Claudia and Louis is very complex and multi-leveled. Louis

feels that Claudia completed him and inspired him to retaliate from Lestat’s

power over him. This reflects how Rice felt about her husband Stan Rice and

how he inspired her to break her bindings from tradition and faith in order to

create a new life and family for herself with him.

Because of the context of the Chronicles, Rice managed to create a

numerous following of readers who must face social marginalization86 and/ or

death due to illnesses such as HIV/AIDS. As part of their need for solace and

new meaning for their narrowed-down lives, this particular audience turns to

books and stories of other individuals, even fictional characters. They try to find

acceptance and relief from situations that caused them to become outcasts from

groups where they once had found a strong sense of belonging.

vampires in this movie can walk in daylight and are promiscuous. Their victims are portrayed as
club going individuals with a thirst for excitement and seduction. They are lured by the forbidden
and obscure. It is through an exchange of bodily fluids after an intimate contact that the victims
become infected and the vampire blood/virus takes over their blood. The movie also has
homoerotic highlights and its main character, Miriam, seduces both beautiful men and women
into her trap. There is a great attraction between her and the female scientist trying to discover
the mystery of the “sick” blood that takes over the human blood and makes it its own.
86
Rice has managed to gain great admiration and a cult level following by members of the ‘queer’
demographic and people affected by the AIDS virus.
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An illness is a factor that can cause such marginalization. Whether it is

because of physical limitations or fear and misunderstanding from the masses,

all of a sudden the affected groups find themselves limited from the freedom to

live they once held. These situations create boundaries between people and their

respective societies due to fear and rejection. As an added result in many cases

fear also creates in them a sense of threat from those who surround them. This

threat arises from a fear of the unknown due to lack of knowledge of how the

people may react to the change that is going on. The person going through this

change does not know whether they will be accepted or if people will react

negatively towards it because of ignorance and prejudice.

An illness defies the racial and cultural boundaries that other types of

minorities have encountered in the past and push these limits of tolerance

further. If anything, these “new minorities” created by illnesses and diseases

become a Dystopian minority because illness can strike victims despite their sex,

race, religion or social status they may hold in society. These groups now have

to deal with the possible rejection of those they considered equals to themselves;

even worst, people they considered inferior to them. Once their condition,

whether it becomes deadly or life threatening has affected them, they become

integrated to a sub-group forced to struggle with a new type of acceptance in a

larger community.

How apt that the vampire reflects such border anxieties, since it

penetrates boundaries by its very nature—between life and death,

between love and fear, between power and persecution. And how
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apt that it thrives in its post modern milieu of dissolving borders,

between the rivals and the real, between private and public

personae, in the breakdown of cultural and national boundaries,

while a plague transmitted by the penetration of body boundaries,

and often through blood, sweeps the world (Gordon & Hollinger 7).

It is understandable then why the figure of the vampire has been used in

literature as the perfect metaphor to represent these global groups; people who

do not fall into an established minority, but whose type has existed for centuries

into their own marginalized subgroups. As means of acceptance, these

subgroups manage to follow the primeval sense of community that is innate in

all human beings. By creating their own subculture within the parameters of the

society in which they live in and developing their own global community. They

work to find a network of acceptance and support making it easier for them to

struggle with the changes they have been forced to adapt to.

There is one truth that overcomes the boundaries or marginalization

though, and that somehow unites people who are and are not suffering from an

illness: “death is just death, finally everybody does it” (Riley 158). Attached to

this idea is people’s fear of death. They are terrified of the idea of being doomed

because an ailment has accelerated their life process thus making their life’s

span appear shorter than what they had visualized it would be.

When the feeling of impending death becomes tactile to a person as the

result of the diagnosis of a fatal or potentially fatal illness, it provokes an

awakening in the individual who is diagnosed, as well as the people who are
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close him or her. The same reaction occurs when someone close, like a family

member or friend dies. This process allows the individual to see how short life

can be and how death can be right around the corner when they least expect it.

This awakening is acknowledged as the impending sense of doom.

In her novels, Anne Rice considers that this fear can be overturned.

Michael Riley quotes her as saying “I think the novels are about a refusal to

being doomed” (Riley 161). She understands people’s needs to come together in

their own subgroups in order to face adversity; which is connected to the theme

of redemption and hope that can be found in these minority sub-groups.

If one is to connect this context to Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles then it

can be seen why so many readers tend to identify themselves with her storylines

and characters. The characters in her novels, just like many people, are

outsiders in their own groups they belong to and live in. As part of her personal

writer’s touch, Rice deals with the topic of death from a different perspective than

the way death has previously been portrayed in literary works prior to her and in

history altogether. In many books, the topic of death is commonly seen as dark

and hopeless. It is seen as a pessimistic overview of life and is approached with

somber and chaotic undertones. Rice overturns this depressive ideal into an

approach that can be interpreted as beautiful.

Michael Riley targets this particular subject by confronting Rice about her

portrayal of death in her novels and the influence they have on her very faithful

audience. He comments: “You’ve been engaged in a quest to discover not just a

system of belief but a consolation in the face of death. It seems important that
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your books strive to realize something that will survive the moment of death”

(Riley 155). To Rice, writing these books became her outlet to cope with her own

personal loss. For this reason, people who read her novels become drawn to the

characters and storylines. Her pages provide a different outlook on the concepts

of life and death.

Rice explains her depiction of such themes in her novels by emphasizing

that her “novels are always trying to say that somehow or other, no matter what’s

happened, the world is not meaningless and it is not absurd. It’s not, in itself

horrible, and neither are human beings” (Riley 155-56). She is uncertain and

puzzled of why people that are terminally ill read her novels. Still, she was told by

one of her friends, that people find a transition between life and death through

her books that relieves them of their fear of the unknown. “The books are a

marvelous bridge over” (Riley 25) though she accepts that in truth, she is “not

really sure what that means” (Riley 25). In many cases, people who are closer to

dying try to find a sense of meaning to the lifetime they have left and refuse to

live with the more prominent sense of impending doom that approaches as each

day goes by. They may resort to books and other means to find an escape from

the sad and fearsome side of death, and instead recapture the beauty of life that

they neglected during the years that they lived before the death sentence was

placed upon them.

Rice’s theory about the terminally ill audience87 seeking for comfort in her

novels is that as people facing such a critical situation in their lives, they:

87
Rice has a large fan base consisting of people afflicted with the AIDS virus.
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Are dealing with death at a symbolic and metaphorical remove.

They are making a coherent world, which obviously isn’t the literal

world, which obviously isn’t the literal world right here…you don’t

have to run away from what you’re suffering when you read these

books. You can experience your thoughts and feelings about it, one

step removed…people want this desperately…they want even

more literal treatments of death (Riley 25-26).

5.4 Vampires: Metaphor for Identity and Fitting in a Diverse

World
The search for identity is a desire that comes naturally to human beings.

In fact, it is part of human nature to be social. No matter if there are individuals

that decide to be an outcast from a majority by choice, or individuals are forced to

be an outcasts due to an illness, race or any other standard set by the social

majority, they will eventually feel a need to find others that will share their way of

thinking or the experiences they are going through. The search for meaning and

acceptance from others becomes necessary.

It becomes crucial for these outcasts to find an identity for themselves

before they can fully accept who they are as part of this community. By doing

this, they will allow themselves to functionally perform as a member of the new

group or they will fall into after they became outcasts. Whether it is belonging to a

social class, a particular social group, or a culture, obtaining and coming to terms

with their identity allows them to develop a feeling of individuality, existential

peace and self-satisfaction within this “community”.

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As for technical names that can be associated with reasons for social

marginalization, the term “ethnicity” can be applied to the ideal of the outcast

searching for their identity. It also happens to coincide with the thematic content

of Rice’s Vampire Chronicles because “ethnicity is typically based on contrast”

(Sollors 288). Contrast is constantly seen in the Chronicles because of the many

parallels discussed such as life vs. death, damnation vs. redemption, love vs.

hate and humanity vs. monstrosity to name a few. It has been noted that: “If all

human beings belonged to one and the same ethnic group we would not need

such terms as “ethnicity”, though we might then stress other ways of

differentiating ourselves such as age, race, sex, class, place of birth, or sign of

the zodiac” (Sollors 288).

This is what happens with the vampires in the Vampire Chronicles. All of

the vampires fall into the same ‘ethnic’ subgroup, yet within this level there are

subdivisions such as masters and apprentices, ancients and fledglings, Old

World and New World vampires.

Literature becomes a medium in which this striving for an identity is

represented. In the case for writers like Anne Rice, fiction provides a wider

creative range where a character may become a superhuman representation of a

specific social subgroup group or subculture. The characters partake on a quest

to find their individuality. From the perspective of the outlaw vampires, life seen

through vampires’ eyes cannot be fully understood by the others that surround

him, or those who just became vampires. These outlaws understand, as based

on their personal experience, that the other characters’ individual need to

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document their stories is for the purpose of creating a sense of community for the

wide and divided range of vampires who do not know about their history.

According to Sollors and his theory of an ethnic community:

Ever since Herder and the Grimms, the notion has gained

dominance that a “people” is held together by subliminal culture of

fairy tales, songs and folk beliefs—the original (“völkish”) subsoil of

the common people’s art forms that may culminate in the highest

artistic achievements. As a result, this legal “ethnicity” as a term for

literary study, evokes the accumulation of cultural bits that

demonstrate the original creativity, emotive cohesion, and temporal

depth of a particular collectivity, especially in a situation of

emergence—be it from obscurity, suppression, embattlement,

dependence, Diaspora, or previous membership in a larger

grouping (Sollors 290).

At the same time, fiction becomes a means for opening up doors that

would otherwise seem absurd or impossible in an everyday type of situation due

to the barriers that society imposes on peoples’ beliefs of lifestyles. Literature

becomes a way of utilizing the fantastic elements to break free of these stigmas,

which become acceptable because the characters, despite the fact that they may

be autobiographical representations of the writers themselves, are fictional. The

advantage that fiction provides is that it gives the writer creative freedom to make

this quest for identity either harder or easier, the challenges that the character

must endure becomes molded to what the author wants to demonstrate.

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5.5 Vampires: Metaphor for a Minority Struggling with Assimilation

There are those who struggle to fit in once they have been transformed

into a vampire. In many cases this is because these fledglings were victims of a

Master that changed them against their will as a result of a selfish desire. As

victims of an event that is irreversible, they are left with two options: One would

be to slowly come to terms with the person they are; the other one would be to

kill themselves and end their existential angst. Some, such as Louis and Armand

have opted to accept the latter choice, as they can’t bear the burden of their

cursed existence. Even then, the life altering decision proves the duality of the

word enlightenment. They both choose the drastic choice to literally go into the

light and face the death of the person they are. As a result of their actions, they

are burnt and scarred by these actions.

Sometimes there is a twist to this drastic decision. They survive and

eventually emerge and heal from their wounds, both physically and

psychologically, thus becoming stronger individuals who have come to terms with

themselves, learned of their past troubles and accepted the future that awaits

them.

The action of walking into the light becomes the perfect metaphor for

minorities that struggle with an ethnic background. Autobiographies such as

Rebecca Walker’s Black White and Jewish narrate the author’s struggle from

childhood and her efforts to fit into the social environment she was brought up in.

This autobiography in particular depicts Walker’s struggle on how to deal by

being the incarnation of opposites as were her White, Jewish father and her
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African-American mother. She constantly describes how she feels she is out of

place even when she has friends in those places; how she struggles to “pass” as

best as she can and assimilate herself to her White, Jewish heritage while at the

same time denying her African-American bloodline. Her life becomes a constant

struggle of opposites to what everyone else considers is right and what she

considers is right in order to accept who she really is as a bi-racial multicultural

female. As means to adapt she says: “I do what I do everywhere else, I heighten

the characteristics I share with the people around me and minimize, as best as I

can, the ones that don’t belong” (Walker184-185).

For Walker, as many other minorities who deny who they are and are

caught up in the turmoil of their existence, it became evident that it is impossible

to fully deny one’s identity. “Shame sticks to me like sweat”, (Walker 72) she said

as she recalled the memory of pushing away her mother, ashamed of what

others may have thought, when they saw that she was African-American. To

Walker, recalling the struggles of her past, confronting the memories and

experiences of her youth become a painful process she describes as “shards,

pieces of glass that rip my skin and leave marks” (Walker 73). To her,

reminiscing becomes “self mutilation” (Walker 73) and memories become “battle

scars” (Walker 73). Still, when her battles with her subconscious and her past are

finally over, she recalls the lessons she learned in the process:

Its jarring to think that most of my life I have been defined by

others, primarily reactive, going along with the prevailing view. It

makes me feel younger now, new, and slightly terrified. Having to

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remember my own life means I have to feel it, too. I have to pay

attention to the thoughts that float, uninvited, to mind. I have to

heed the unsettling emotions that erupt from somewhere inside of

my chest, from some dark pocket behind my eyes. Remembering

my own life means knowing that everything can look one way from

the outside but there is always another story to be told. (Walker 74)

In Rice’s Chronicles the process of assimilation becomes represented by

the act of the vampire feeding from its victims. The before and after

representation of the vampire’s description allows the reader to see how every

time this creature takes blood and the life force of each of its victims, the vampire

slowly blends into the majority that has threatened and rejected him, thus

allowing his status to change from victim to victimizer. Blending in becomes

means of survival. By blending in he assimilates, but this assimilation is

accompanied by the price of loosing part of the essence of being his true self,

thus making the vampire turn into something he is not and that others of its kind

will lament and reject.

An example of this argument is clearly described by the character of

Armand in Rice’s The Vampire Armand. In this novel, Armand accompanies his

Master, Marius, to a feast being held by a group of men that were causing

conflict by disrupting and threatening the life of those who Marius held dear to

him. Armand first came in contact with his Master, as he Marius, held him. He

described his “white fingers” as “these inhuman things that felt so like stone or
 171

brass” (“Armand” 30) and his eyes as “gentle blue eyes” (“Armand” 30). He then

describes in detail the rest of his appearance:

He was dressed all in red velvet and splendidly tall. His blond hair

was parted in the middle in a saintly fashion and combed richly

down to his shoulders where it broke over his cloak in lustrous

curls. He had a smooth forehead without a line to it. And his high

straight golden eyebrows dark like golden threads over his eyelids.

And when he smiled, his lips were flushed suddenly with a pale

immediate color that made their full careless shape all the more

visible…His upper lip and chin were all clean shaven. I couldn’t

even see the scantest hair on him, his nose was narrow and

delicate though large enough to be in proportion to the other

magnificent features of his face (“Armand” 30).

This description of Marius emphasizes the physical traits that make him

look too flawless to be human. It accentuates the pallor of his demeanor

enhancing the ghastly yet alluring perfection of his vampire self. At this point,

Marius is a savior and a saint to Armand, who, in the midst of his confusion

believes Marius to be “Christ” coming to save him. Marius clears his confusion by

telling him “Not the Christ, my child. But one who comes with his own salvation”

(“Armand” 30).

The contrast of Marius’s assimilation to the human form during his attack

on his victims is also described through the eyes of Armand. All of a sudden, with

every victim that he takes, his demeanor changes him turning him more and
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more human, at the same time reflecting with color the horrid consequences of

his murderous actions: “I could see the blood pump into my Master’s hand. I

couldn’t wait for him to raise his head, and this he did very soon…his

countenance was all afire. He looked as human as any man in the room, even

crazed with his special drink, as they were with their common wine” (“Armand”

104).

Here the audience can see how the vampire, by assimilating, seems to be

loosing his essence as he is corrupted and blinded by the human blood while he

slowly becomes one of “them”. This transformation makes him turn distant from

those he belongs with. Armand would describe this sudden detachment from his

own and the integration into the opposite of who Marius was: “I stared at my

Master. Never had I seen him so lovely as now when he was flushed with this

new blood. I wanted to touch him. I wanted to go into his arms. His eyes were

drunken and soft as he looked at me…But he broke off his seductive stare and

went back to the table” (“Armand” 105).

The sudden transformation was now more evident. The transition

experienced by Marius created an expanding void as every minute passed

between master and pupil. Armand, just as those who are close to an individual

going through the transition of assimilation became a witness watching as that

person they once knew faded and merged into someone else. As a result, the

individual stands witness to a complete stranger as opposed to the person was

before assimilating, thus separating this assimilated person from their original

social strata:
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Marius was human, utterly human. There was no trace of the

impermeable and indestructible god left. His eyes and his face

simmered in the blood. He was flushed as a man from running, and

his lips were bloody, and when he licked them now his blood was

ruby red...He kissed me…and his mouth was human and hot.

(“Armand” 109, 112)

The character of Armand thus becomes a metaphor. He is converted into

the speaking conscience that expresses the longing to regain the qualities of the

original being that was lost as part of the assimilation process. He describes that

moment of detachment and observation, yearning for the past and examining it

from a removed point of view that sets reason into perspective. From him

emerges the will to reach out in order to regain the identity that was lost: “I broke

away. He let me break away. ‘Oh come back to me, my cold white one, my god.’

I whispered. I lay my face on his chest. I could hear his heart. I could hear it

beating. I had never before heard it, never heard a pulse within the stone chapel

of his body. ‘Come back to me, most dispassionate teacher’ ” (“Armand” 112).

5.6 Chapter Overview: Final Thoughts

The three objectives proposed at the beginning of the thesis were

successfully met as a result of this research. First, it established the relevance

and usefulness of autobiography for deeper understanding Rice’s fiction. It allows

the reader to appreciate the difference between real and mock autobiography. It

provides insight into the mental process of the writer and a clearer view of her

intended purpose.
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Second, the study establishes that Rice was successful in creating a

boundary between herself and her fiction by allowing her characters to fortify

their own storylines even if inspired by elements of her life.

Third, through the use of several literary sources, including

autobiographical examples of non-fictional biracial individuals to support the

argument, it was determined that the Rice vampire is capable of becoming a

successful metaphor for a dystopian minority because its characteristics

accommodate and represent the struggles of different types of minority groups

that exist in society.

In addition to the topics that are covered in this thesis many of the people

who study her work focus on homoeroticism, race, history, religion, feminism,

gender studies, and art.

The situation surrounding her characters’ lives capture the attention of

scholars who are interested in the thematic content of her work as well as her

audience. In the case of The Vampire Chronicles, the audience does not only

become curious about the vampires’ past history, but they fall prey to being

seduced into the vampires’ narrative or mock autobiographies. This audience

hungers to know more about these mysterious creatures that lurk in the

shadows. They want to know where they came from, how they are connected to

other people and creatures, and where their choices in life will take them in the

near and distant future. Through these vampire narratives the audience is

transported within the context of Rice’s books into a subculture created by

vampires who roam the world at night, witches that hide century old secrets of
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their supernatural legacies, ghosts that haunt generations, and secret societies

that struggle to connect every bit of information in order to record everything they

can about the supernatural.

Despite Rice’s works being thought of as pop culture fantasy and horror

fiction, some of her books can be considered also as examples of mock

autobiography. Each of Rice’s novels has its own style, but some of The Vampire

Chronicles and New Tales of the Vampires in particular have stronger

characteristics that target the ideal autobiographical format. Whether it is through

the framing device portrayed by David Talbot, the fledgling vampire and

“Superior General of the Talamasca” (Ramsland 448) or by Rice using herself as

a medium through which a manuscript is delivered in order for it to be published:

“I went to Florence to receive this manuscript directly from Vittorio di Raniari”

(“Vittorio” 289), she has a way of creating a narrative through her characters that,

intermingled with superhuman sensory based description, emotional struggles

and historical accuracy, create the perfect blend to form a concise character

worthy of narrating his life to an audience serious enough to study it.

Rice’s subtleness when writing allows her to use her own life experiences

from a twice-removed perspective to influence her characters’ conflicts and mold

them into their particular personas, therefore allowing a form of autobiographical

reflection of her upon her fiction that captures her essence as a writer without

making the storyline overtly about her. Curiously enough, Rice has confessed

that when she wrote Interview with the Vampire she did not write it intentionally

framing it with her life. The character of Louis is grief stricken and self-
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destructive. He grieves the loss of his brother and gambles with life and death,

just as Rice grieves for her lost daughter and perhaps her own sense of loss of

her Catholic faith.

There is no question that Rice’s turn on vampire fiction has revolutionized

the genre. She has become a role model for many, and, even critics have

accepted that there is a trace of Rice’s style in the new novels that have hit the

market since Interview with the Vampire was published and became a literary

success. It is true that novels such as Bram Stoker’s Dracula did give the reader

a very slim insight from the vampire’s point of view, but still the vampire was seen

as the predator. In Rice’s fiction this perspective changes and now the audiences

could acquaint themselves better with a more personal and less threatening

character.

Rice’s portrayal of the Old World vampire also poses as a metaphor of

the representation of the vampire in popular culture and literature after Bram

Stoker’s Dracula: “The Old World Vampires symbolize what vampires have

become in fiction since Bram Stoker published Dracula in 1897. Many

contemporary authors present vampires and monsters who kill without

compunction and, for decades, film has depicted the same image” (Ramsland

331).

A more western and more visionary style of vampire has emerged since

then. Now instead of finding their identity in the dark hills of Bulgaria and the

places included in Dracula and the earlier vampire novels, Rice’s vampires move

along to Western Europe, and it is in Paris when they finally begin to find the true
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definition of their identity.

Rice’s description of the vampire’s encounter with villagers of the Old

Country is somewhat comical because it defies all of the folkloric taboos and

traditions associated with the vampire myth including the use of garlic, wooden

stakes and crucifixes that were used to slay the creatures. This becomes a

metaphor of new generations of humans going through a transition in their lives

from the old traditions of their background whether it is ethnic or social to the

more modern reality that surrounds them. Rice’s fiction represents the longing to

come to terms with a past while in the process the person’s character is

disclosed. These individuals through their personal journey go against and

sometimes break the stigmas of their past, creating new rules and codes of

conduct. They defy the taboos and already established traditions as part of

coming to terms with who they are.

If anything, it can be considered that the literature in the latter centuries,

including novels like Rice’s, reflect just as the earlier works, the turmoil of social

changes and transitional societies as they evolve. Even in the past, books both

popular and academic, including works such as Charles Dickens’ novels,

reflected the social struggles and situations of the time while using literary styles

such as the bildungsroman. These works have inspired writers of the 20th and

21st century such as Rice, whose books have been described as having that

“Dickensian” quality. Both the 19th century and the 20th century consist of events

such as the sexual revolution of women and feminist movements created to fight

for women’s rights and a chance of equality.

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Both centuries also reflect Gothic revivals in which there is new interest for

the Gothic style in literature. Another particular fact that can be allotted to these

time periods is how they reflect a spiritual crisis led by scientific and technological

advances, as it is reflected in works such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Still,

Rice manages to incorporate the growth of science and technology to make it

work in her fiction, bringing with it a sense of new hope and promise for a new

tomorrow. It is through this technology that her vampires go where others of their

kind had never been before. Now they are able to see the light again after they

have been cast to a world of shadows.

Through her novels, Rice brings forth her interest of the world and science

and she represents this through scientific research that characters such as

Rowan Mayfair perform. As a character Rowan investigates mysterious

conditions and illnesses, she even does genetic research in hopes to find

information that may prove to be useful for later generations.

As a whole, Rice’s work manages to merge the old and the new traditions.

She creates a legacy of vampires that through mock biography incorporate in a

metaphorical sense the needs and angst that the modern generations are

struggling with. Her characters become universal portals of issues that are

usually not talked about, and become means for discussion of topics that would

have been controversial to discuss, thus allowing her as a writer the creative

freedom to target and confront through the use of metaphors her personal

monsters as well as the monsters that society is afraid of dealing with.

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She has become triumphant as a writer. People continue to read her work

to this day still identifying with them and giving her praise for her talent as a writer

whose work appears to be on the road to becoming timeless. Through her

innovative changes to vampire literature and personal ways of thinking, she has

inspired people to search for answers outside of religious doctrines and inside

literary works, which may reveal a more viable and socially acceptable meaning

of life.
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Appendix

Interview with the Vampire

A short story by Anne Rice, August 1973 approx.. Later became a novel
completed January 1974.

"Do you wish to record the interview here?" asked the vampire.

The boy had drawn the small tape recorder timidly from his briefcase. He
hadn't expected this response. "You don't mind . . . that I record the interview,
possibly broadcast it on FM radio throughout San Francisco?"

"I haven't the slightest objection," said the vampire. "I was referring to the
room." He gestured now to the small round oak table, the straight-back chairs. In
the rhythmic flashing of a neon sign beneath the window, the boy saw these, and
a door that was not the hall door, partially open.

"0, it's fine," said the boy, and quickly he checked the batteries of his
recorder, lifted its clear plastic lid to start the tape, and looked timidly at the
vampire. "Is this . . . your room, then?" he asked.

"No," the vampire smiled. "Just a room." He was standing at the window
and the red light shone on him at intervals of three seconds. Then there was only
the dim light from Divisadero Street and the passing beams of traffic. The boy
could see a washbasin and a mirror, and again he stared at the partially open
door.

"Do you want the light on?" asked the vampire gently.

"You mean you don't mind?" asked the boy.

"No, of course I don't mind," said the vampire, walking slowly and silently to the
center of the room. His long cape flared around him. "I know that you did not
have a close look at me in the bar. It was very dark. I don't want you to be
nervous, frightened."

The rest of this story can be found as an appendix in KatherineRamsland’s The

Vampire Companion: The Official Guide to Vampire Chronicles. 2nd ed. New
York: Ballantine Books, 1995.
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