LESTAT – THE GOD:
- Offers eternal life, creates new life – The
Maker.
- Immersed in light,
associated with divine, godlike imagery: enchanting, described as “luminous”
and “radiant”, an “overwhelming experience.” Compared
by Louis to a biblical angel and Jesus, he comes like a solace to save Louis from his misery (“I’ve come to answer your prayers”) and offer this
wondrous life after death. Lestat’s general love for light is often emphasized, even later in the series. His iridescent eyes “burn with an incandescence” and “convey the power to walk on water.”
- Louis dying and becoming a vampire (“afterlife”)
as Heaven: Louis seeing light as Lestat’s
taking his life, everything suddenly becoming more beautiful and vibrant and angelic,
Lestat waiting for him all radiant and happy, his laughter like “peals of bells”, the night like “a chorus of whispering women.”
“It sounds as if it was like being in love.”
The vampire’s eyes gleamed. “That’s correct. It is like love.” He smiled.
- Perceived by Louis as unattainable, distant, emotionally inaccessible like a celestial being – wants Louis to stay and
follow him, but also keeps pushing him away as far as emotional intimacy and communication are concerned. Avoids answering difficult questions or answers them
vaguely, and so Louis has no choice but to secretly adore him from
afar, “studying him with a detached fascination”, and the act of
gazing at him is described like a self-transcendent experience, a
religious one almost:
“Sometimes I’d find myself staring at his wrist from which I’d drawn my
vampire life and I would fall into such a stillness that my mind seemed
to leave my body or rather my body to become my mind (…)”
- Is desperate to keep Louis close and prevent him from leaving, and out of this desperation creates Claudia, the token of his love for Louis: the dark immortal child, “evil of [Lestat’s] evil.” Claudia is the actual victim of the story, an innocent sacrificed in order to stop Louis from turning his back on Lestat, her martyrdom for Louis’s “repentance.” She dies abandoned, “forsaken” by her father. (For the record, I do NOT believe Claudia’s entire purpose is martyrdom or Louis’s character development!!! Claudia is a completely separate, fascinating character, one I could write a whole other essay about. I’m pointing out the circumstances of her creation and death merely in regard to Lestat’s “godhood.”)
“MADELINE, the Doll Maker, resplendent in green taffeta, sitting like a
Madonna with Claudia on her lap.” (‘92 movie script)
- Like a judge of a sort, Lestat
mostly
takes the lives of evildoers (interestingly, he’s actually the only vampire in the story who doesn’t really follow the “indiscriminate killing” rule, though it is something he teaches his fledglings/“angels”).
- Represents Louis’s dreams and aspirations, what he longs for, what he wishes he was: liberated, lively, unapologetic, self-assured and without regrets (in Louis’s eyes at least). In TTOTBT, when asked “Why do you love me?” Louis replies: “I wish I could be you.”
- Lestat’s godhood reveals itself in the duality of his personality, too. He’s cruel, vengeful and full of wrath, yet surprisingly forgiving and capable of unconditional love: doesn’t hold a grudge against Claudia, loves and is ready to take Louis back despite his rebellion. The roles are even reversed at the end of the story: it is the fallen “God” who asks for forgiveness and absolution rather than the other way around. Louis leaves, but even then, it’s like “the sorrow hadn’t left [him] suddenly, but had been near [him] all this time, hovering, saying, ‘Come.’”
“But you’ll come back… you’ll come to visit me… Louis?”
Literally has a god and hero complex and thinks he’s Dionysus?
ARMAND – THE DEVIL:
- Takes/destroys what Lestat creates.
- Immersed in darkness, magnetic and eerie, serious and collected in nature unlike Lestat. Associated with dark, satanic symbols and red/black colors: the edgy paintings of Hell and The Devil surrounding Armand, his dark angel aura, his deceivingly innocent appearance; eyes inscrutable, deep and dark, hair red/auburn. The contrast between him and Lestat is plain, from the way they look to the way they act: Lestat being this bright, loud, flamboyant, careless persona; Armand, on the other hand
–
dark, quiet, composed, distinguished.
- Théâtres des Vampires as Hell: the underground dungeons (“underworld”), Armand as the Devil, Armand’s minions as demons, the audience and tortured human “actors” as souls, even the black waters Louis crosses while traveling to Europe and fantasizing what it would be like to look into Satan’s face –
like a journey to Inferno itself. Visiting the theatre, Louis immediately feels uneasy, like something’s wrong with the place and its aura, though he’s too enthralled to draw any conclusions.
“The very ceiling writhed with skeletons and moldering dead, with demons
and the instruments of pain, as if this were the cathedral of death
itself.”
- Very open and accessible; suspiciously, temptingly so – reaches out to Louis himself, seeks contact, answers questions, willing to actually talk – attracts Louis’s attention by giving him what Lestat couldn’t: a connection, a lesson.
“God? Or Satan? It struck me suddenly what consolation it would be to
know Satan, to look upon his face, no matter how terrible that countenance
was, to know that I belonged to him totally, and thus put to rest
forever the torment of this ignorance.”
- Represents Louis’s dark instincts, including his inner resentment towards Claudia. Louis’s attraction to Armand might be rooted in his initial “desire to be thoroughly damned.” Armand mirrors Louis’s deepest, darkest secrets. A little push from him is all Louis needs to forsake Claudia entirely. Curious about how far down he can possibly go, he follows, distancing himself and getting rid of the only remaining element of the bond between him and Lestat at that time: the rock bottom he’s been trying so hard to hit.
LOUIS – THE FALLEN:
- The Rebel, The Angel of Death:
calls himself the Grim Reaper (“Dark
Angel” and “Merciful Death” also sound quite suggestive), his weapon of
choice is a scythe, he takes life regardless of whether someone’s a
good or a bad person, their age, identity, social status, etc. He
doesn’t even mention Lestat tends to kill mostly “evildoers”, probably because
it doesn’t really matter to him. The “angelic” side of Louis’s nature
reveals itself in his emotionality, empathy, preference for peace and
quiet and fascination with humanity.
- Filled with this inner rage, he rebels against God, literally and figuratively, even during his mortal life (going against his “saint” brother, beating up a priest).
Lestat comes as a saviour from his faithless, pointless life, as if to
give him a second chance, but Louis keeps resisting regardless,
projecting his own issues and anger at God and himself onto Lestat, always shifting the blame, always fighting, disobeying and stubbornly disputing his tenets on every occasion.
“(…) I believed I was damned when I went over to [Lestat], just
as Judas must have believed it when he put the noose around his neck.”
- Says he’s “damned like angels put in hell by God” and simultaneously associates his doom with Lestat.
The motif of Louis’s rebellion and Lestat “damning” him/”condemning him to hell” is also apparent in the scene where Louis imagines Lestat’s face right before feeding on Claudia, then bites her almost out of spite.
“(…) and I saw Lestat in my mind and hated him, and I felt, yes, damned and this is hell, and in that instant I had bent down and driven hard into her soft, small neck (…)”
- Louis feels about Lestat the same way he feels about God. The indecisive, love/hate nature of his relationship with his Maker(s), the guilt, the
secret adoration, the miscommunication, the detachment, the betrayal: characteristics of a God/Rebel dynamic. Louis biting, Lestat reaching out anyway. Louis reaching out, Lestat not responding. Damned and bitter
and stubborn and proud, he hates. Though spellbound and intrigued,
he can’t help but idealise Lestat in secret, yearning for emotional
connection and contact.
“But aren’t angels capable of love?” asked the vampire. “Don’t angels gaze
upon the face of God with complete love?” The boy thought for a moment. “Love
or adoration,” he said. “What is the difference?” asked the vampire
thoughtfully. “What is the difference?” It was clearly not a riddle for the
boy. He was asking himself. “Angels feel love, and pride… the pride of The
Fall… and hatred. The strong overpowering emotions of detached persons in
whom emotion and will are one.”
- Struggling with moral doubts and repressed sexuality, confused about Lestat’s enigmatic motivations, Louis initially suspects Lestat of being the Devil that came to tempt and “damn” him. It is only after he’s met Armand that he realises he was wrong, that his accusations were misplaced and baseless, and his judgement of Lestat faulty.
“It seemed more than ever absurd to me that Lestat should have died, if in fact he had; and looking back on him, as it seemed I was always doing, I saw him more kindly than before.”
“I have wronged Lestat, I have hated him for the wrong reasons.”
“What right had I to be so bitterly disappointed in Lestat that I would let
him die! Because he wouldn’t show me what I must find in myself? Armand’s
words, what have they been? The only power that exists is inside
ourselves…”
- Oblivious and blind to his Maker’s love, he insists Lestat only stayed for his wealth, though secretly wishes that wasn’t the case. His confusion about Lestat’s motives seems to parallel his religious existential crisis.
“‘I want to die. You have it in your power to kill me. Let me die.’ I refused to look at him, to be spellbound by the sheer beauty of his appearance. He spoke my name to me softly, laughing. As I said, he was determined to have the plantation.”
“Why, if God exists, does He suffer me to exist! (…) Why does He suffer me to live!”
- “(…) why, Louis, you know…” says Lestat in their last scene together. And when he despairingly tries to Tell Him Something once again, Louis “speaks of it with great reluctance”, and when Lestat fails to speak the words again, Louis feels “a profound, undeniable relief.” It’s less about him not knowing or failing to see the real reasons, and more about denial, the fact that it scared and overwhelmed him at the time, challenging him to question things about himself and his beliefs. Maybe there is no God.
Maybe he loves Lestat back.
Louis presents his story as an allegorical journey to eternal damnation: first death, Heaven
and becoming one of “God’s angels”, then rebellion, Fall, Hell and eternal damnation. Finishing the book, the reader is left with this intense feeling of
emptiness, this profound sadness and regret, a yearning for something irrevocably
lost.
Indecisive and conflicted, torn between Heaven and Hell and not really belonging to either in the end, Louis is sort of stuck in this gray area between the two, behind the “veil that hangs between [him] and the world feeling”, through which – even when he joins Armand “in Hell” – he still perceives Lestat, like a damned angel who in spite of himself keeps looking up, wishing to get rid of that insufferable numbness, to reascend and step through “the veil” to see the face of his Creator once again, as clearly as he used to.
