Interview With the Vampire

In Interview With the Vampire, Fire is a weapon of destruction and a symbol of rage and rebirth. It appears most overtly during periods of transition in Louis’s life (or afterlife). He burns down Point du Lac prior to the next phase of his life with Lestat. Babette drives Louis to new levels of despair when she sets him on fire with the lantern after telling him that he is a creature of the devil. Louis and Claudia burn their home after she attempts to kill Lestat, and Louis sets Lestat alight when he and the musician attack them before they flee to Europe. In Paris, Louis burns the Theatre des Vampires and kills the vampires whom he has trapped inside after they use the fire of the sun to burn Madeleine and Claudia. After Madeleine becomes a vampire, they burn down her doll shop. When Claudia suggests that the fire is a purifying agent, Louis corrects her, saying “Fire merely destroys” (277).

The Theatre is where Armand and his vampires hide in full view of the populace. It is a sort of cabaret show where they kill in front of an audience, yet the audience believes they are watching a campy performance with convincing effects. The Theatre des Vampires represents the mocking view that most of the vampires—except for Louis—take of humanity, but it also serves a more sinister symbolic function. It is one example where Rice tries to indict the humans in the audience as much or more than the vampires. The humans do not know they are watching a murder each night, but they know that the depictions on stage are realistic enough to arouse them and compel them to return. They are bloodthirsty participants in the deaths occurring on stage. Regardless of Louis’s respect for humanity, it is not without its darker aspects.

The Theatre des Vampires also allows Rice to employ another example of meta-fiction: the embedded narrative. Interview With the Vampire takes place as a fictional story told within a fictional interview. It is self-referential, reminding the reader that it is a work of fiction. The Theatre adds yet another layer of self-reference. The shows in Paris take place within a work of fiction that is itself framed as a story being told to the third-party interviewer.