Interview with the Vampire Movie

In the movie Interview with the Vampire there are a few examples of narrative structure, including a free motif that involves dolls. The character Claudia is a six-year-old vampire who is trapped in her never changing shell. She represents the dolls that she is constantly given by her maker, Lestat de Lioncourt. For example, in the film one of the scenes shows Lestat giving Claudia yet another doll. In the far right of the screen we can see a large collection of dolls on her bed. All of those dolls were given to her on her birthday and shows how old she truly is. Another example of a free motif is when Claudia visits a doll store and pretends to be an innocent child who wants to buy a doll. Her outer appearance can fool any sympathetic mortal, but once Claudia has the doll maker in her trap she pounces on him and feeds. Towards the end of the movie, she feels hatred for her maker because she can never grow to be a woman. She is essentially frozen in time with a young girl’s body and an adult mind. These examples display Claudia’s strong power over her prey and demonstrates her overall thematic meaning. Although the story can be told without this free doll motif, its repeated visuals makes it clear that there is a connection with Claudia and her dolls.

In the film, there is one public goal for the characters Louis de Pointe du Lac and Claudia: to attain the knowledge of where they came from. For example, in the beginning of the the movie Louis is turned into a vampire and over the years he spends with Lestat, his maker, he asks a lot of questions. Lestat will not tell him directly where all vampires came from, but he does say something about how he was made into a vampire in France. Louis takes this as a clue to his question and plans to go there to seek vampires other than Lestat, Claudia, and himself. Since Lestat will not tell them anything related to their public goal, they take a ship to France from New Orleans and eventually find other vampires. They talk to the leader of a vampire group to obtain their answer. The leader hints at where all vampires came from, but it is still a vague answer. Louis and Claudia’s public goal to reach the answer is resolved, one way or the other because they found an answer that satisfied their curious minds.

The entire film centers around the flashback of the main character of Louis. For example, he tells the story of how he was created into a vampire to a young mortal reporter. The story leaped back and forth from Louis’ past to the present scene of Louis being interviewed. The certain places that the story cuts back to the present creates exceptional plot structure. The flashbacks can be very quick to go back and forth because the reporter can ask a question and we see the visuals of what Louis is saying for his answer. Such as when the reporter asks what he saw right after he was turned into a vampire and Louis explained that it seemed like everything changed but didn’t; all the while we are seeing what he saw through his vampire eyes. Resulting in the present coming back into view with Louis and the reporter sitting at the table. The past comes back when Louis mentions something about what happened in the past. For instance, the reporter asks him about coffins and Louis say that coffins are a necessity. The next scene we see is when Louis first sleeps in his coffin and he describes how that felt like to him.

Professor Peter Lehman
FMS 100
02 October 2017
Mid-term Examination