i was dicussing with a friend a little while ago about Louis and lestat.....

when I first saw "interview W.A.V'...i had pity for louis...he endured the death of his child and his wife....then through his vampire years...he also struggled to find happiness.....so i felt a certain sadness for him....


yet, my friend, he considers louis weak......as he had the chance of death, lestat gave him this choice...louis had so longed for death, and when death found him, he turned to immortality.....

my friend also considers lestat strong, to which i do agree, as he was never given a choice to his fate...


what do you think?...:)......louis weak?....or do you feel his sorrow?...

I think ur friend needs to understand Louis' character. He represents humanity to vampires. Lestat grew colder with vampire age. Louis did not loose his human edge. If that makes him weak; if his sensativity and his concern for other living beings makes him weak, then humanity as a whole is weak. At the same time, Lestat and Armand adored and loved Louis for those EXACT traits....so there must be something in them they envied. Weakness and strength will alwasy be a matter of opinion. To me, the greatest strength is compassion and love. The greatest weakness or fault, coldness.

first of all, never did i see that louis had a wife. i have the book in my purse right now [it`s kinda like my bad luck charm] and i don`t see even one place where it mentions that he had a wife. just his adopted daughter, Claudia.

but, moving back to the question .. no, i do not consider louis weak or lestat strong. louis was very strong for enduring everything he did and not going crazy like lestat at the end. he has a lot of compassion for the world even though it has mostly gave him a great deal of pain. he feels for every single person he has killed and that`s what made him strong.

it`s kind of like when someone commits suicide. they are not considered strong because they did not go along with all of their problems without going crazy and killing themselves. they gave in to the pressure and got rid of themselves.

i could say the opposite for lestat. he`s the weakling here.

edit___one more thing.. how could you think louis weak if he didn`t even know what he was getting himself into before he turned into a vampire ?? he isn`t weak. he chose something that was beyond risky and he knew that it would alter his life forever. this isn`t the matter of death or immortality. it`s a matter of knowing what you`re getting yourself into.

Louis was the bitch and Lestat the dom right? Not an uncommon setup in a homosexual relationship.

IN Interview, in both the BOOK and the movie, u will hear that Louis had a wife and child in his MORTAL years b4 Lestat. They both died. It was what drove him to seek out death.

Perhaps the incident pressed him to make some radical alterations to his lifestyle.

Divine, i completely agree with you.......

opinions differ......people view things differently....

although, i myself consider my freind to be slightly incorrect, yet i understand what he is saying.......

Louis I use to pity thinking poor him he doesn't accept his new life and he is miserable but then I started to read the vampie lastat and I don't pity louis because Lestat went through so much more. Lestat is strong and Louis is not. I love Louis for what he is but Lestat must be loved for his commitment to his way of life.

For a grieving widower and father, Louis doesn't seem to talk about them an awful lot. Or maybe I'm missing something.

My distaste for Anne Rice books is well known, but I like analytical threads like this.

Funny, I distinctly recall in the movie and the book, that is was Louis's sorrow over the loss of his wife and child that drove him to the drinking and the seeking of death. But if Louis is like most men....and it seems he is and isn't according to how AR scripted him, he would not speak much outwardly of it. As a mortal anyways...we all know Ar's vampires are more sensative that others ONCE they're vampires. I think becuz it had little use in the story, AR left most of Louis' suffering over such a thing in his mortal life out of the tale. I, myself, am inclined to to think that the loss of his wife and child are what made Louis fall so hard for Claudia! The child he could never have! And when Claudia brought Madaline to him, I think he gave into her for similiar reasons of child without mother.

Actually the whole thing about Louis losing his wife and child was an invention of the movie. In the original novel, Interview with the Vampire, Louis was grieving over the death of his brother, Paul. Paul claimed that he received divine visions and Louis didn't believe him, and at a stage, Paul stood at the top of a long case of stone stairs, outheld his arms and then tumbled down the stairs, though from what I remember, whether he killed himself or whether he just fell wasn't specified.

So if we go by the novel, it wasn't the fact that Paul died that upset Louis. Louis felt that Paul killed himself because he didn't believe him and he felt it was his fault and he became guilty because he thought he was responsible.

Yes, Indeed. That was true. I failed to mention that. Perhaps he did grieve more for his brother than his wife and child. Who knows? I still think the loss inclined him to fall harder for Claudia.

Funny... In the book it is the death of his BROTHER that lead him on his wanting for death... in the film how ever, it was his wife and child that lead him on his downward sprial... I think... Correct me if I''m wrong Sin

No, ur right. In the book, it was his brother...in the movie, his wife and child. AS I said above, I left that out and confused it.

i thought louis was quit strong for he didnt go insane after seeing claudia dead
lestat was the one who was weak [he got killed by a little girl (kinda) *shakes head*] he didnt adapt to the changing world around him and he sat in a damn house for hundreds of years doing nothing

oops sorry Sin, I missed that post. My fault.

manfred, manfred, manfred. once again you saved me the trouble of setting things straight. as i was reading the posts, the only thing i could do was say "um, excuse me, but i think you all are wrong on the fact of the wife/child or brother thing." but then i came to your message. you made all of it sound so simple. you said exactly the way it was. that was that. so once again, hats off to you! ^_^

Thankyou,

and franky, I happen to love Louis more than Lestat, simply for his weaknesses. Lestat seems to superficial and over confident to intrigue me. I feel that I identify more with the sensetive and melancholic characters, like Louis.

After waching "Interview with the vampire" Luise was my favourite, but Anne Rice's books made me change my mind. Of course Luise is more Human and sweet, but Lestat has charizma, that atracts everyone :devilflip:

Dude, yeah, like, awesome, hot, sweet, cool, no way.

(The thread needed these words, trust me.)

Aaah, but that is where history comes into play. Humanity is weak... humans have to rely on others for life and feeling. yay, armand and lestat loved louis for his human characteristics..its because that his humanity is what they lacked. My theory is that since they lacked those human characteristics they both searched for someone who could show them the way. if that makes any sense. and then they found Louis. but weakness or strength...louis was just too human to be a real vampire. Only my theory...don't sack me for this.

I think Louis wasn't weak, but sad. I mean, if I was a guy and I got my wife and daughter taken away I would probeley be ready to die to. I think he's strong.

Actaully I think in the book he is grieving over the lose of his brother. They changed it to his wife and kid in the movie so you would feel more sympathy for him.

Louis is obviously weak... he has almost no powers when compared to the others of his kind.... he cannot take to the sky, he cannot read minds, and if i remember right one of the other vampires says that if lestat were to go into the sun he would be burnt to cinders. I know that Louis also symbolizes humanity towards the vampires which i belive they all like but i also believe that he is weak and scared and even if he was given stronger blood as lestat has offered him many times i dont think that he would be as strong as some of the others are.

You shouldn't base your judgments of a character on their physical strengths and weaknesses. Judge them based on what they embody, what they are, their psychology.

I love Louis because he WAS and intrieguing new idea, a vampire with human emotions, who hated killing.

The reason he didn't try to become more power is because it would seperate him more from his humanity, something he holds very dear to him. He is sentimental.

Though I did get pissed off at him when he threw Mojo (Lestat's dog) across the room.

It seems though whilst Louis likes humans, he doesn't care about animals. That is the one thing about him that pisses me off.

Pardon this intrusion, but....

I can assure you all that Louis *never* had a wife and child in the BOOK. That was Anne Rice's creation to simplify his story for the movie, rather than go into the details of why he suffered over the death of his brother.

The closest Louis ever came in the book to having a known female love interest was his slight infatuation over a neighboring plantation owner he "called Babette."

His only "child" was Claudia, and even then she was actually more Lestat's child, or fledgling.