Louis, A Lost Soul... a Lost Cause.

Interview With a Vampire, a story with many different ideas of morality floating around, most importantly the gaping chasm that separates the human from the vampire. Most importantly the chasm that exists between Louis and Lestat. What causes this chasm? What inspired Louis to succumb to Lestat's wiles in the first place? What kept him lingering on even when he loathed him so much?

So much of the novel is concerned with the morality of the mortal life. It is a strange thing for Louis to hold on to, when he longed so desperately to part with it. "I lived like a man who wanted to die but who had no courage to do it himsel." (11) " 'I want to die; kill me. Kill me.' I said to the vampire. 'Now I am guilty of murder. I can't live.' " (18) Yet as we hear Louis' transformation into a vampire, he becomes reconnected with a will to live, but a will to live as a mortal, yet, he is no longer mortal. He is Vampire (the race). Rather than be "deracinated" like in Dracula, he is brought into a whole new race, a race with its own moral laws and ethics. Vampires can kill indiscriminately without remorse, as it is hard worked into their nature to savor the power of mortal blood. " 'Vampires are killers,' he said now. 'Predators. Whose all-seeing eyes were meant to give them detachment. The ability to see a human life in its enitrety, 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.' " (82)

There can be no true explanation for the tight grip Louis has upon himself. What Lestat says is true in many ways. Mortals live by a separate code of ethics, and for good reason. Without those laws, there would be complete anarchy and chaos, but vampires feed upon the blood of the living, and it cannot be held against them to strive for survival. Detaching himself from the mortal coil with immortality allows him to see the flaws of humanity, to analyze it and know it to the point of loathing it. From what we know, the vampires have no civil wars, they have no worry about murder amongst them. Yet humanity constantly fights a struggle to keep it at bay.

Through their disagreements on morality, Louis patiently stays by Lestat, but for what? He knows Lestat has nothing further to teach him, he knows that Lestat is using him for money and support, but Louis doesn't need Lestat at all. Perhaps Louis' sees Lestat as a means of keeping his moral code alive. To loathe Lestat is to hold his ideals higher than his. To see his merciless killing is to justify himself in the world. He wants to see what he will become, to try with all his might to avoid it.

There are things about him that remain a mystery to me, such as the puzzle that surrounds Claudia. Why does he 'love' her, when she has so many similar traits to Lestat? How can he see beyond the twelve-year-old form she is bound to? Most importantly: What does he see in her?