Week Two: Vampires

This week is all about vampires. We were asked to read Anne Rice's Interview with a Vampire.

A summary of Interview with a Vampire:

The story is about a vampire name Louis, which he tells his 200-year-long life story to a reporter. Louis story starts off with him living as a plantation owner in New Orleans, 1791.

Escaping to New Orleans, Louis feeds off a plague-ridden young girl, who is five years old, whom he finds next to the corpse of her mother. Louis begins to think of leaving Lestat and going his own way. Fearing this, Lestat then turns the girl into a vampire "daughter" for them, to give Louis a reason to stay. She is then given the name Claudia. Louis is initially horrified that Lestat has turned a child into a vampire, but soon begins to care for Claudia. Claudia takes to killing easily, but realizes over time she can never grow up; her mind matures, but her body remains of a young girl. Claudia and Louis tried to kill Lestat. As Louis and Claudia prepare to flee, Lestat appears, having recovered from the attack, and attacks them in turn. Louis sets fire to their home and barely escapes with Claudia, leaving a furious Lestat to be consumed by the flames.

In Paris they encounter vampires, Armand and his coven at a Theater. Inhabiting an ancient theater, Armand and his vampire coven disguise themselves as humans and feed on live, terrified humans in mock-plays before live human audiences. Claudia is repulsed by these vampires and what she considers to be their cheap theatrics, but Louis and Armand are drawn to each other. Convinced that Louis will leave her for Armand, Claudia convinces Louis to turn a Parisian doll maker, Madeleine, into a vampire to serve as a replacement companion.

Lestat has arrived, having survived the fire in New Orleans. His accusations against Louis and Claudia result in Louis being locked in a coffin to starve, while Claudia and Madeleine are locked in an open courtyard. Armand arrives and releases Louis from the coffin, but Madeleine and Claudia are burned to death by the rising sun. He returns to the Theatre late the following night, burning it to the ground and killing all the vampires inside, leaving with Armand. Together, the two travel across Europe for several years, but Louis never fully recovers from Claudia's death, and the emotional connection between himself and Armand quickly dissolves. Tired of the Old World, Louis returns to New Orleans in the early 20th century. Living as a loner, he feeds off any humans who cross his path, but lives in the shadows, never creating another companion for himself.

I thought that Interview with a Vampire was interesting and shows a different form of work that uses vampires. One-way that Interview with a Vampire was different that I found was the type of vampires they use. Nowadays when you think of vampires what normally comes to people’s minds is the Twilight Saga with their sparkly vampire skin. I think the most commonly used vampire type is the “romantic” interest. For twilight they use the romantic type of vampire where the vampire seduces a normal human girl and they fall madly in love with each other. Another form that’s commonly used for vampires is that they are betrayed as monsters or villains. One example that I know off the top my head is the film Van Helsing, with Hugh Jackman. In this film the main villain and protagonist is Dracula. In this case the vampire is not a hot high school student but a classic, charming and mysterious vampire character. You do not really get to know too much about Dracula besides some things they slipped in to the movie to make the story go along.

With Interview with a Vampire the author makes Louis’s life dramatic and depressing. The main character Louis has to go through a lot of ups and downs and while you’re reading you don’t expect some of the events that happened in the book, for example Claudia are burned to death by the rising sun. You also get to see a vampire that is torn between killing people and not killing. In Louis’s story you also get to see a vampire that is more human. You can also see how Louis really drastically changes from the beginning of the book the end. Which helps for interesting read and makes the reader route for the main character more.

Another part of Interview with a Vampire that makes it really original for me is a character of Claudia. At the beginning when she’s first introduced you feel bad for her because she was turned into a vampire at a really young age and what she had to deals with. When Claudia as she gets older becomes trouble, lashes out a

lot and angry which in turn she loses control. Even though Claudia is emotionally messed up in the book and the movie she can still be a compelling character that people can relate to. She has an interesting dynamic character because she's forever a little girl but mentally she's a grown woman. You could also see this as when a child is trying to leave the house and grow up but cannot.

I highly recommend reading Interview with a Vampire. It’s a good read for anyone who really likes vampires and dramatics. Also I recommend watching the movie for this book.

Week One: Frankenstein

For this week we were asked to read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. I have not read any of the origins of Frankenstein until we were ask to read this version this week. My background on Frankenstein that I have acquired over the years is made up of many different versions that I have seen in movies or have been told. The different versions go from one extreme to another for an example one Frankenstein was not smart and could not talk well. The town’s people found out about the doctor stealing body parts. In the end the town’s people tried to burn down the castle to kill the monster but the doctor ends up being stuck in the castle. Frankenstein ends up saving the doctors life.  For the opposite

type of Frankenstein, which was used in the movie Van Helsing. This Frankenstein was smart and sassy and you got to see more of a character development throughout the movie.  There is more to this Frankenstein besides being made up of dead body parts.

I found that the Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was extremely different from what I expected. One thing that threw me off was the doctor “Victor Frankenstein” was actually not an adult in his 30s to 40s when he made the monster. In this version he was actually roughly a sophomore in college at the University of Ingolstadt in Germany, which puts him roughly around 19 to 20 years old. Another part of the story I found unique about this version was after the creature was made. Victor was repulsed by his work, and he flees, which in turned saddened by the rejection, the creature disappears.

The next section that I wanted to talk about is very sad and heart wrenching. Victor feels grief and guilt, because he thinks that his monster killed his brother William and set up Justine to take the blame. Victor ends up going into the mountains and the monster

locates him. At this point the monster can talk which throws off Victor and the monster tells him his story. After the monster was rejected by Victor. He fled into the woods and ended up finding a cottage where he learned to speak by listening to the people in the cottage talking and learned to read after finding some discarded books. The monster sees himself in a reflection in a pool and realizes how scary you looks. Even though he is scary looking he then tries to approach the cottage to become their friend but he ends up scaring off the people in the cottage. In a fit of rage he burn down the cottage.  The Monster then demands that Victor create a female companion like himself. He argues that as a living being, he has a right to happiness. The Creature promises he and his mate will vanish into the wilderness, never to reappear, if Victor grants his request. I find that this section sad because if Victor never rejected the monster that he created. Then the monster would not have all this pent-up anger and would have better morals and ethics.  Also the monster wouldn’t have killed or injured people he came cross.

After that the story gets messier and intense. I found this version of Frankenstein to be really fun to read enjoyable. It’s really different from other things of Frankenstein that I know. Overall the book is gut wrenching and a great read.