Interview with the Vampire, by Anna Rice

Something that we seem to have discussed in class as well as in the questioning for this specific blog post is the importance and significance that interpersonal relationships have in vampire stories. Interview with The Vampire being a cornerstone example of vampire literature is a great example of these heightened relationships. From what I notice all the emotions and connections between characters were elevated in intensity, a big reason that romance and violence appear so much in the novel. The reasoning for this took me a while to come to terms with. I assumed that it was just the nature of the beast, the beast being a vampire. Sucking blood and being the spawn of some demonic dark magic would probably lead to the intensity of emotions to increase. While this seems to be a part of what I noticed in the work there is something else that I found interesting and somewhat existential to tackle. The idea of immortality, something that any person would have trouble wrapping there head around, living with it is a whole other issue. The nature of the vampire means that immortality is in play, age is not a factor and mental development continues indefinitely while the body stays the same. Obviously, you can be killed by the very “normal” ways you’d kill a vampire, garlic, sunlight, fire, etc. Either way, immortality comes into play and id argue is the main reason for the intensity of the relationships in the novel or any vampire work. Being immortal literally means forever, saying you love someone and want to be with them forever might seem a little bit longer than normal when being a vampire. So, the simple fact that vampires have to deal with these emotions and the same people for such long and extended periods of time. Watching mortals die and be born and die again while staying the same and continuing to develop mentally. It seems that eventually, the intensity of emotions would increase between vampires as people (if you can call them that), for the simple reason of boredom and propensity for violence. Distrust and espionage seem to take root in these long drawn out emotional battles between characters that span decades. Where mortal normal humans would move on and forget, vampires have the benefit of always having to deal with others. Humans short lives lend to letting things go to have a more enjoyable short life, but when you're immortal you can keep a grudge for hundreds of years.