Interviewing the Vampire

God kills, and so shall we; indiscriminately He takes the richest and the poorest, and so shall we; for no creatures under God are as we are, one so like Him as ourselves, dark angels not confined to the sinking limits of hell but wandering His earth and all its kingdoms. (Lestat in Interview with the Vampire, 82-3)

Interview with the Vampire, the novel that redefined the vampire, is also interesting with regard to the vampire slayer, who appears to be absent. The novel is about the troublesome life of a vampire, Louis, constantly on a quest to find his origins and meaning. Louis is also the narrator which means the story is presented from his perspective. Hence, it is not surprising that the traditional vampire slayer as a significant figure is missing. As Wood says, ―no gallant band of humans unites in struggle for the preservation of virgins and the social status quo‖ (Wood 61). The biggest enemies of the vampires in Rice are in fact their own kind (see Wood 63). On these grounds, the notion of a vampire hunter occurs at two points in the novel.

37 Although many characters appear as described in their original novels Abraham Van Helsing is renamed as ―Gabriel Van Helsing― and he is bitten by a werewolf and becomes one, which enables him to kill Dracula. In the end, he is given a remedy which allows him to transform back into his former self (see Van Helsing). Therefore the film is not further discussed.

During Louis and Claudia‘s journey into Eastern Europe they come across a village whose inhabitants are obviously familiar with vampires. They know to beware of them and how to kill them effectively. Louis observes, ―[b]ut here we had to go to great lengths to make the kill unnoticed. Because these simple country people, who might have found the crowded streets of New Orleans terrifying, believed completely that the dead did walk and did drink the blood of the living‖ (Rice, Interview 155). He makes the danger clear to the reader,

―[t]hey knew our names: vampire, devil‖ (155). On the door to their inn garlic and a crucifix are attached. Also inside the house garlic is found everywhere (see Rice, Interview 156-7). There they meet Morgan, who mourns his wife and tells Louis what he witnessed at the village‘s cemetery, giving evidence of the villager‘s knowledge

[…] and then the others had come with shovels and had begun to dig right into the grave. […] And then I could hear this fellow in the grave. He was cracking the coffin lid with his shovel! Then out came the broken boards. […] And suddenly he let out an awful cry! The other fellows drew up close, and all at once there was a rush to the grave; and then they all fell back like a wave, all of them crying out, and some of them turning and trying to push away. […], right there in that coffin, with that fellow standing on the broken boards over her feet, was the dead woman, and I tell you … I tell you she was as fresh, as pink […] as pink as if she were

alive! Buried six months!

[…] They took a stake, a wooden stake, mind you; and this one in the grave, he took the stake with a hammer and he put it right to her breast. I didn‘t believe it! And then with one great blow he drove it right into her.

[…] And then that fellow, that beastly fellow, he reached up for his shovel and with both his arms he drove it sharp, right into the dead woman‘s throat. The head was off like that. (162-3)

The villagers admit to hunting their vampires by day, in the ruins outside the village. On the search for this ―European vampire‖ Louis has to realize that unlike him and Lestat, the ―European vampire‖ is ―a mindless, animated corpse.

But no more‖ (173). In a fight Claudia kills him and as a result they return to the village and Louis, pretending to be a vampire hunter, officially declares the death of the vampire the village was scared of. The situation is similar for the rest of their journey through Eastern Europe, they find numerous ―mindless corpses‖ (177) but no one like themselves.

The other occurrence of a hunt for vampires is towards the end of the novel, when Louis is on a quest to find and kill the vampire who is responsible for Claudia‘s execution. The question arises whether this is a case of a vampire slaying or rather ―just‖ a vengeful murder. The fact that Louis in his vendetta kills a complete vampire nest, with the only exception of their former leader Armand, combined with Louis‘ tortured existence and despair about being a vampire and establishing hatred towards them, makes it possible to name him a slayer (see Rice, Interview 279-281). In this context, a human or a usual vampire seer would not have sufficed to kill the vampires. They are illustrated as highly superior beings and only one of their own, having lived among them and being familiar to their convention is in a position to be strong enough to betray them.

McClelland is of a different opinion regarding the novel. He claims that the situation of vampire and vampire hunter is inverted: ―it is the vampire protagonist who must tell the vampire hunter (in this case, the reporter-narrator-interlocutor) of his actions and therefore his evil identity‖ (McClelland, Slayers 28). This statement arouses a number of controversies. First of all, Louis talks to ‗a boy‘ not a ‗vampire hunter‘. Secondly, although the question of Louis being evil is discussed throughout the novel, he is not identified as evil as Dracula was. Further, by revealing his story to the interviewer Louis does not intend to transform his listener into a slayer hunting him down. At last, even if Louis intended to get the interviewer to kill him for being ‗an evil vampire‘ the opposite comes into effect – the interviewer begs Louis for immortality.