The Vampire Lestat

Essay by mariaarroyo24College, UndergraduateA, October 2004

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For anyone who has ever read one of the Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice, knows who Lestat de Lioncourt is. Lestat is a character females fall in love with and men would love to be. Lestat was in fact a mortal who was later in his life turned into an immortal, or in other words, a vampire. Lestat tends to be a difficult being to understand, but that makes him all the more interesting.

Being immortal, Lestat continues to love mortals and finds them fascinating; he feels deep emotions towards them. Of course, it doesn't prevent him from killing people, because he is above all a supernatural being, a bloodthirsty vampire. It leads him to compare the world with a "Savage Garden" in which only the aesthetic principles are ruling: he sees the world as a jungle, where the weaker is killed by the stronger, where the most beautiful is chosen to the detriment of the least beautiful; the world is governed by strength and beauty.

But because of the love he feels for mortals, he wants to become one of them again: paradoxically, while loving what he is, he is tortured by his vampire state, by his obligation to be evil in order to survive. However, when the opportunity to become mortal again arises, he realizes that he had deluded himself about the mortal condition and that he prefers by far to be a vampire. So, even if he hates himself sometimes, and hates the evil he can do, he loves his vampire state and doesn't want to give it up.

Nicknamed 'the Brat Prince' or 'the James Bond of the vampires' by his equals, Lestat remains very impulsive and refuses to submit to the various rules laid down by the likes of him. Lestat has always been...