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Week 2: Interview with a Vampire by Anne Rice (#6 points)

    


I grew up watching movies and was enthusiastic about Vampires, invisible men, wizards, and goblins, so they are like childhood friends in my imagination.

    Among these imaginative creatures, my favorite is a vampire, because they have special abilities surpassing humans. Furious power, and immortal ability to live forever while maintaining youth. They can sustain life only by drinking human blood. This vampiric act may be scary, but also feel like a fatal temptation. They are attractive because of their distinction, but at the same time, I like vampires due to their familiarity. The fact that they have the same appearance as humans (except the colors of eyes and skin) and that they were humans in the past make vampires more intimate. They can fall in love with a human, and they can even make children with a human. These characteristics of vampires make me feel that they might exist. 


   Louis, who unwillingly became a vampire by the vampire Lestat, couldn’t accept his fate as a vampire suffering that he has to commit murder every night to sustain a life as a vampire. His body is a vampire, but his mind still suffers as a human. So Louis wonders about the vampire as being itself. Where and how did vampires come from? How can it disappear? Lestat was the only one who could explain this, but Louis could not hear the answers from him. 


   To keep Louis’s mind from wandering, Lestat made Claudia a vampire, the girl Louis impulsively drank blood. She becomes Louis’ lover, and a part of a new family. Since she turned into a vampire, Claudia has been hating Lestat for a long time who made her impossible to grow. Louis and Claudia ended up killing Lestat and ran away from New Orleans. They wandered looking for another vampire and met Armand who has lived as a vampire for 400 years, but they couldn’t find a reason for their existence. However, Lestat was alive, and he killed Claudia with other vampires. Louis killed the vampires and returned to New Orleans. However, Louis felt vanity after seeing Lestat. Because Lestat, who was majestic and powerful in the past, completely lost his vitality, due to the loneliness. 


   I think the most interesting part of this story is torment and collision as a ‘human’ that ‘vampire’ Louis experiences. Although he became immortal, he still had a conscience as a human. While Lestat and Claudia accepted and conformed to life as a vampire, Louis was constantly agonizing himself, and sometimes he looked weak because of that. But he was the most ‘humane’ than anyone else. 


   As immortality, living forever can be great, however, immortality for vampires means that they must suck on human blood without seeing sunlight forever. To continue this life for dozens or hundreds of years, vampires would feel detachment. They see humans aging and dying and see the time and the world flowing and changing regardless of themselves. Vampires cannot die physically, but this loneliness and apartness could be another ‘death’ for them.


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