To say the least, the vampire genre in general during the past few decades has not had the highest amount of polish. The alluring mythology that drew people into the Bram Stoker classic Dracula slowly but surely has been lost through interpretation after interpretation. Once being creatures of the night who were feared for their endless bloodlust, vampires have slowly transformed into glorified goths who sparkle like crystals in the sunlight. All vampires have to be absolutely beautiful outcasts that actually gain more of an advantage when transforming into the undead. Iconic weaknesses such as an allergy to garlic, a needed invitation inside, an inability to cross running water, and complete death by a stake through the heart have all but been lost. To most including myself, the vampire genre has been transformed into a mere shadow of itself. What has happened to this once imaginative part of both the gothic horror genre and the fantasy genre?

Although no book can truly be the one at fault for this slew of uninspired vampire novels, the trend can be traced back to the beginning of the nineties through the transformation of vampires from emotionless creatures of the night to desired romantic figures. Many people from multiple movies and books released during this time period gained this flawed ideology, far from the ancient folklore that inspired the horror creature in the first place. Everyone instead of fearing all vampire life desired to be one of the undead. From the scary folklore stories of the nineteenth century that inspired the creature of legend, this is a pure insult. In stories told before the time period that inspired the modern vampire, they were creatures full of a secret longing to be human again, cursed to live forever in a constantly changing world. Taking the appearance of undesirable bloated corpses with unruly hair and finger nails, only the fear of death kept these creatures going through the draining of human life force after human life force. Everything you identified yourself with as a human slowly would be lost through emotional turmoil, turning you as a vampire into simply a soulless corpse. Vampires gained their scary reputations for a good reason. It was not because they were desirable but rather reflected the relatable human fear of having no true purpose in life. Losing this element of the vampire lore has been a true tragedy to horror and fantasy alike. If one person in modern times were to just see these past elements of the vampire lore that made it memorable, perhaps this ideology could not only be restored but expanded upon.

That is the hope that a simple reading of Anne Rice's novel Interview with the Vampire could give a modern reader. Although published over forty years ago, the book still holds up today as a great addition to the better half of the vampire lore. The vampire characters depicted in this very novel from narrator Louis de Pointe du Lac, Lestat de Lioncourt, Claudia, Armand, and finally Madeleine all depict the more tragic side of the vampire lore. Despite their attractive appearances and lavish lifestyles, all five characters suffer from the detachment becoming a vampire puts onto a person. They teach an important lesson to readers from their pain; immortality is not a desirable ability to have. The inability to die brings upon the tragedy of losing those you loved, falling into insanity, and in the end forgetting the person you once were. As said by Louis to the person interviewing him about his life, his fate among the others was unavoidable from the start. This truth makes the novel much the more haunting yet intriguing to read page after page.

The main character Louis de Pointe du Lac as a human was a flawed yet empathetic man. Haunted by the jealousy towards his religious brother Paul that ultimately lead to his accidental death, Louis only wished as a human to do some good in his life. It is after his near death encounter with vampire Lestat one fateful night that Louis was turned into a vampire himself out of Lestat's desire for money and a companion. At first using his empathy in this new vampire form to help people such as the family he left behind, slowly Lestat's lack of empathy started to catch up to Louis. Through this influence, Louis started to lose his direction in life, going from feeding on animals to purely feeding off of innocent people night after night. This causes Louis to start detesting Lestat, only being held back from leaving due to fear of the unknown and the introduction of the child vampire Claudia to make Louis lose his feelings of loneliness. All of this backfires once the child vampire Claudia matures into an adult woman mentally, rebelling against Lestat so she and Louis can live a life for themselves in Europe. However, the trip to Europe only makes Louis's stare of mind worse by not finding another vampire full of empathy like himself, even in the vampire coven him eventually finds in France. The damage then becomes irreversible through Claudia's rebellion against Louis by forcing him to create another vampire as a companion for her, Madeline, to feel whole and her untimely death by the hands of someone Louis truly trusted, Armand. The mental breakdown that followed turned Louis into an emotionless vessel, dancing through life by just feeding on the humans he needed to feed on night after night. Time became meaningless to him, leaving him a tragic shell of himself in modern times. Louis is the prime example of the emotionless vampire that gothic literature first created to teach individuals about the curse of immortality.

Ironically it is Lestat de Lioncourt that teaches the audience about being overwhelmed by their emotions. All throughout his vampire existence, Lestat lived by the cover of being an emotionless being who only desired money and power. In reality, all of this was far from the true being Lestat really was. His true desire as a vampire was to have a companion, first with Louis and then with Claudia. Lestat craved the idea of a family even when his conditions made that possibility impossible. Once Louis and Claudia left him for good, he tried to fill the hole in his heart with other vampires he transformed throughout the centuries. When all of these vampire inevitably left him, he tried to lure Louis back to him through the Théâtre des Vampires, a vampire coven lead by Louis's friend Armand. Trying to force Louis back into his life by the threat of death, he ultimately failed when Louis refused to give in. As a result, he lost Louis forever and Claudia was brutally burnt to ashes by the coven. After that, Lestat lived in complete isolation, doomed forever to be consumed by his loneliness and left alone routinely whenever the next vampire he transformed eventually had enough of him. This is the state Lestat still lived to the point of the interview present in the novel, ironically a path Louis would have filled instead had he not faced tragedy firsthand.

Claudia lives the curse of looking like a five year old child from her vampire transformation, yet being mentally an adult woman. Turned by Lestat as a way to keep Louis in his grasp, Claudia played the role of being the small group's plaything. Dressed always in the most beautiful of attire New Orleans could offer, Claudia more and more felt restrained from being the adult woman she desired to be. This translated in anger for Claudia, where she first attempted to kill Lestat twice in order to leave New Orleans with Louis. Then, this turned into a desire to find other vampires like her in Europe, which proved to be a complete failure. Eventually, Claudia got frustrated with Louis and forced him to turn the now childless Madeline to gain the respect she thought she deserved. In the end, all of this anger and detachment over her desire to become a true adult lead to her death by Armand, routed from her attempted killing of Lestat long ago. She never gained the chance to be herself in life, which all began the second Lestat turned the plague ridden five year old into a vampire.

Armand before Louis's existence was a man full of equal empathy. His transformation into a vampire changed all that, when empathy started to become a secondary thing to him. Knowledge became his primary goal, which remained true for his entire existence. He formed the Théâtre des Vampires coven in a new pursuit for power, which Louis and Claudia unfortunately got stuck in the middle of. After getting to know Louis better as a person, a new desire filled Armand's mind. He felt once again a need for companionship, even in the smallest form. All he wanted now was to travel the world with Louis, gaining knowledge about each environment along the way. To him, Claudia as well as his coven stood in the way of that reality. In a selfish move, Armand had the coven kill Claudia and allowed Louis to pursue revenge against the Théâtre des Vampires by burning the facility and the vampires down to the ground. He gained an unknowing Louis as a result of this venture, but one without empathy. In the end, everything he did was fruitless and once Louis realized the truth, like Lestat, Armand was doomed to a lifetime of loneliness. The only difference between him and Lestat is that Armand forever will try to conceal his need for companionship through knowledge, which over time will most likely consume him too once the mask falls off. The consequences of selfishness is the lesson Armand teaches the audience as a side effect of becoming a vampire.

Finally there is Madeline, who is cursed with the loss of a child. Trying to fill this hole by building a beautiful doll shop, she eventually instead decides to become a vampire so she can have her child back through being with Claudia. At first, this succeeds in filling the hole inside Madeline's heart. Feeling contently happy for the first time in her life, Madeline ends up burning down the doll shop, which had become a relic of her grief. Like the other characters though, Madeline was doomed for despair. Because of her attachment to Claudia, Madeline ended up killed by the Théâtre des Vampires in Armand's selfish attempts to win Louis over. Madeline was a victim of her own despair that only was being filled by Claudia. Her tragic lesson to readers is the price of desperation.

Anne Rice through all five vampire succeeds to make the iconic horror figure once again tragic and trapped inside the shadows. The original alluring traits of vampires is highlighted through her first book that over the years has become a revered classic and for good reason. For those wanting to explore the less romantic side of the vampire lore, Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire is definitely a must read. I am telling you already that it will succeed in bringing about that desire through the character brewed like fine wine page after page.