Stylistic Analysis of Interview With A Vampire

“Do you know what it means to be loved by Death?... Do you know what it means to have Death know your name?” (221) In Anne Rice’s novel Interview With a Vampire, Rice speculates and draws on some of the most asked and wondered about questions of humankind: What is the purpose of our existence? What truly makes one good or evil? Is mankind doomed from birth to be evil? In her novel, Rice shows the theme of loss of innocence and good versus evil through the parallelism of evil vampirism and immoral human behaviors, the juxtaposition of Claudia’s and Louis’ humanity, and the recurring metaphor of Louis’ “dieting”. As a result, after the interview is over, the reader is left wondering and awestruck by Rice’s ability to make one rethink everything one has ever learned in their lifetime. As the novel progresses, it is clear that Rice has created a certain parallelism between the evil of vampirism and the immoral behaviors of mere humans. For example, throughout the novel, Louis is plagued by his need for knowledge: Is he, now that he is a vampire, damned? Louis believes that vampires are inherently and undeniably evil because they kill humans - which is, of course, a sin - to continue to survive. Louis’ “master” Lestat is of a completely different mindset. He believes that to be a vampire is a gift completely and upon asking Louis what he believes a vampire is, answers his own question:
Vampires are killers… Predators. Whose all seeing eyes… see a human lift in its entirety, not with any mawkish sorrow, but with a thrilling satisfaction in being the end of that life, in having a hand in the divine plan.
However, this does nothing to settle Louis’ qualms. How could this be true? He could not find any satisfaction in the taking of a life; if anything, Lestat’s declaration more firmly confirms his belief that to be vampiric is to be damned. Finally, when Louis is introduced to the Parisian vampires from the coven of Theatre des Vampires, one of the members points out