Hello Coven Members-

I’m posting here once again, as promised, and am providing the requisite discussion post for this week. If you’re not already aware, our discussions take place on our coven’s Facebook page or by leaving a comment below. In case, you wish to be updated on the events on the Coven’s page, via email, you can join our newsletter. More details can be found on the sub-page of this blog: Lestat Book Coven’s Meeting Room (and I know it needs to be tidied up once again)

Discussion Questions for Week #5, of our discussion of Interview with the Vampire, by Anne Rice

1. If this is your first time reading this section, what is your initial reaction to Claudia’s insidious plan to destroy Lestat? Do you think the film adaptation did a poor job of casting Lestat in a sympathetic light?
If this isn’t your first time reading this book, what are your current feelings about this entire segment of the novel?

Well, since this probably my third or fourth reading, I’ll be bold, and say that I sympathize much more with Claudia this time around. She has to be Anne Rice’s most complex, paradoxical characters, but she is also very defiant and audacious, during an era when women were basically castigated for showing any overt signs of being assertive by any means.

Claudia is the foil of Babette, in that Babette represents a fully mature women (both physically and mentally), whereas Claudia’s very tragedy is having that opportunity to become mature in a physical sense denied to her. So, Claudia’s identity crisis is rooted in cognitive dissonance, over her maturing mind versus her ageless physical body.   That already is setting her up for a tragic disaster for her character, in more ways than one, and she views the destruction of Lestat- the one responsible for bestowing this tragedy on her without her mature consent- as her only means to vindicate the wrong done to her. So, I actually feel much more sympathetic of Claudia, whereas I did not entirely understand the reasons for her malicious plot to destroy Lestat, when I first read the book.

Now, my hugest discrepancy with the film is the way Lestat almost seems far too exaggerated, in his arrogance. Perhaps, they were capturing the almost clownish smugness of Lestat, as reproduced by the impartial perespective of Louis in the novel. Yet, the duty of the film should be to convey the characters outside of that boxed-in, first-person perspective of the character that the book provides.

In that way, we never quite sympathize with Lestat. I cannot speak to the feelings of other audience members, but as I’ll elaborate in the answer below, we never quite get the complexity of Louis and Lestat’s relationship, as such the audience cheers on Lestat’s destruction, rather than have complex, mixed feelings about the dilemma Louis finds himself in. He is never quite certain whether to have blind rage for what has befallen him, and thus resort to try to seek vengeance out on Lestat (In the book, the readers are much more aware by Louis’ reluctance to kill Lestat,as he seeks instead ways of getting passage out of America.)

2.More importantly, why does Louis initially go along with Claudia’s plan, until he begins to experience deep regrets after the event occurs?

   The one thing that really stuck out, like a sore-thumb, through my third or fourth reading was how much Louis acts as a substitute mother/guardian to Claudia. He carries her burdens, tries to allay her existential woes, and flashes of youthful rebellion. I love that sequence, in the last segment that our coven read, where he attempts to pacify Lestat’s fatherly anger towards Claudia. Lestat’s anger was very much patriarchal, in a sense, as he is legitimately confused by the more feminized conflicts that Claudia undergoes. To someone like Lestat or any father really, they are a blind man, groping in the proverbial dark, when it comes to trying to understand the unique psychological dilemmas for anyone with a more feminized psyche (I am not using the term, feminized, to imply stereotypical weakness, just as a way to show some kind of recognizable gender differences, even if slight, in the types of psychological conflicts that arise for the characters in the story).

So, Louis is mostly going along with Claudia’s plan because he is doting “mother,” in a sense, and seeks above all else to quell her worries and coddle her with love. At the same time, his reluctance is shown by how confused and anxious he becomes over the nature of Claudia’s plans, which involves the death of Louis’ husband in a sense. In the Freudian marriage of psychological opposites, Louis resembles the superego (or the overpowering conscience), and Lestat serves as the ID (capricious, wildly passionate).  Personalities may clash, but opposites are actually attracted to one another, because it creates the most dynamic type of relationship. Both Louis and Lestat subconsciously need something that the other lacks; therefore, one cannot live really without the other. So, destroying Lestat is symbolically the destruction of Louis’ subversive family structure in the novel, and it also spells the demise of his one connection to the world, outside of his own amplified sense that the world is a great abyss.
All Louis’ complex feelings about Lestat, and the psychological complexity of their relationship, is subtly shown in the film, but it is never anywhere near as complex as it is shown within the pages of Anne Rice’s novel.

What are your own feelings on these questions? Leave a comment below, or post on our coven’s Facebook page.

Until then, the next assignment for week #6 will appear next week!!

*By clicking the photo below of the Prince Lestat cover, you’ll find details on the Barnes and Nobles online website about pre-ordering your own signed edition of this  much-anticipated novel!*

Here are some other exciting tidbits from the page:

**Watch Sumiko’s lovely video, about #PrinceLestat!!**

William Massa’s Fear the Light: Who Murdered Dracula?
Also, we have this #PrinceLestat contest from editor and regular contributor on Anne Rice’s Facebook Fan Page: Todd Barselow (freelance editor for many self-published writer’s novels). He is also a venerated member of the Talmasca!! (unofficially)

**Click the banner below to access details about this giveaway of copies of Prince Lestat!!**