Interview With the Vampire

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1976

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Pages 1-70

Part 1, Pages 70-159

Part 2, Pages 160-201

Part 3, Pages 202-273

Part 3, Pages 273-319

Part 4, Pages 320-343

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Part 3, Pages 273-319Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 3, Pages 273-298 Summary

Louis and Claudia help Madeleine burn the doll shop. Armand approaches Louis afterward and asks him to follow him. They climb a tower to Armand’s secret room, where Armand says he wants Louis more than he has ever wanted anything. He asks him to leave Claudia for him. Armand says that Claudia represents only an era to Louis and that most vampires do not have the stamina for immortality. Their most common form of death is suicide. Armand believes that Louis can save him from that form of despair. He claims that Louis is the spirit of his age and admits that he made Louis change Madeleine so that he would feel as if he could leave Claudia. Louis says he loves him but that Armand must never control him again. Finally, Armand urges him to get Claudia out of Paris before Santiago tries to kill her.

Louis and Claudia talk about separating. During the discussion, the other vampires invade and take them to the Theatre. Lestat is there waiting for them. He is covered in scars. He tells Santiago he only wanted Claudia and that Santiago promised Lestat could take Louis back to New Orleans. However, the vampires lock Louis in a coffin as Lestat protests. Louis realizes they are sealing his coffin beneath a brick wall.

Part 3, Pages 299-319 Summary

Louis hears Armand’s voice and bricks being lifted from his coffin. Armand is alone. He tells Louis he can’t save Claudia and that the others will overpower him if he tries. Louis finds Lestat with tears in his eyes, holding Claudia’s dress. The other vampires had put Madeleine and Claudia in a room exposed to sunlight, which burned them to death. Armand says he could not have stopped them. Louis thinks of his passivity and all the wrongs he has allowed. He tells Armand he is done being passive and to stay away from the Theatre des Vampires.

The next night, Louis goes to the Theatre des Vampires, nails the doors shut, and burns everyone inside. He kills Santiago with a scythe found in the yard. He tells Claudia’s memory that these deaths are the only good ones he has caused.

Louis returns to the Theatre two nights later. He has never felt so alone as he reads about the burning in the newspapers. He doesn’t know where to go. Then he hears Armand’s steps as he walks. There were no human guards because Armand had discharged them. He asks Armand if there is a way for them to go into the Louvre before dawn.

As they look at the art, Louis feels no connection to the paintings. He now thinks of all art only as something that can burn.

Part 3, Pages 273-319 Analysis

These pages serve mainly to allow Armand to make his pitch for Louis’s heart and to place Claudia in danger. Armand understands Louis’s melancholy, and his revelation that most vampires die by suicide is a testament to the grueling nature of eternity. Because Louis is still curious, Armand believes that he can inspire and reignite the same feelings in himself. This existential questioning is a product of a new age, and Louis can act as Armand’s conduit to modernity.

Louis must make his choice. He must either abandon Claudia for Armand or stay with her and live with the possibility that this choice will lead to Armand’s death.

These pages also do the most work in terms of developing the symbolism of fire. While pondering the flames of the burning doll shop, Claudia says that fire purifies. Louis disputes this, saying, “Fire merely destroys” (277). As the other vampires intrude, Louis and Claudia will now face judgment for their attempt to kill Lestat. The weapon used against Claudia in Part 3 will be a fire that destroys without purification. Just as quickly as Louis tried to atone for his mistakes by turning Madeleine into a vampire, Claudia and Madeleine are about to be taken away forever, stripping all meaning from his choice. Though Armand revealing that he controlled Louis’s decision with Madeleine removes Louis’s responsibility of this choice and therefore the opportunity of redemption anyway.

Louis has now lost everything, and as Part 4 will show, Armand’s company will be of little solace. Not only is Louis willing to kill the other vampires, but he also expresses no remorse about the possibility of collateral damage: humans who might be hurt during his revenge. Of all his regrets, he says, “That passivity in me has been the core of it all, the real evil” (307). Claudia helped Louis cling to the last vestiges of his humanity. Now that she is gone, he will be a pale shadow of his former self. Now that he is willing to embrace his identity as a destructive force, the most meaningful uses for that power are gone.

There is a sense of morbid liberation in the disaster. Louis no longer has anything to search for. He has no more questions to answer, or he does not care whether they have answers. Even his newfound hatred for Armand is not enough to make him send Armand away. Immortality is an endurance test, and, for the moment, Louis would prefer to endure it with someone.

The scene in the Louvre demonstrates Louis’s full transformation. He can appreciate the art, but it is no longer evocative for him. It does not prompt questions in him or heightened feelings about the meaning of life. He is reduced to a mere observer of the art, which is how the other vampires in the story have treated all of humanity: as something to watch, enjoy, and use. Louis is now an observer of the world. He is detached and aloof, which is exactly what Armand wished to avoid for him.