Interview With The Vampire

Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire is an interesting novel, one of the earliest to take classic horror tropes in the direction of romantic intrigue common in contemporary young adult novels such as Twilight. However, Anne Rice's debut was noteworthy not only for its suggestiveness, but for the values at play. The chief point the novel appears to make is that one's drive to survive is much more potent than one's morality. Despite Louis desiring death when he Lestat first meets him, he quickly begins killing other human beings to preserve his own well-being, starting with the slaves on his plantation. He then goes on to feed on a young girl in New Orleans, further showing that mortal needs win out over moral choices. This point is most clear towards the end of the novel, however, when "the boy" interviewing Louis sees only the power in vampirism, and asks that Louis turn him into on as well. Louis is angered by the boy's failure to grasp the point he has been attempting to make: that he has lost his humanity, literally and figuratively, in the name of mindless self-preservation.