Evil is a point of view

Vampires…. a mythical creature that existed for centuries and is written in most culture back in the 1800 centuries. However, as the human race evolved over the centuries, vampire’s existence has been diminished to nothing but fiction. Nevertheless, the fascination for vampires has not ceased but instead more books and movies are made about them.

I confess I’m an ardent vampire fan. I have been following religiously on stories written about vampires. Still, nothing that I have even seen or read could surpass Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles. I liked the first book so much that I went and bought the sequels, and I loved them even more. I loved their power, their restless intensity. Almost all vampire stories were told from the viewpoint of the humans who encountered and had to defeat the vampires. Unexpectedly, Anne Rice changed all that.

It’s the first book ever written from a vampire’s point of view, they were the central characters, not humans. Suddenly, vampires were not just an evil bloodsucker that we want to slay. They became that glittering, dazzling rule-breaker and outsider who has gained ascendancy over time and place. I was drawn to the protagonist, Vampire Lestat, stylish, arrogant, flamboyant, powerful and sexy. He has a "twisted nature...full of unnatural lusts and passions [but] suffers the torments of the damned while committing his nefarious deeds"

Anne Rice is a brilliant story teller. As I read on, I was amazed that by how philosophical the books were and how much they probed into the questions of human nature and human existence. She evokes a theme of dualism through Lestat, a monster, yet he gains the reader’s sympathies because he deplores what he is and agonizes over how to become a "good" vampire; he is a killer with a conscience. The theme constantly battles on how to retain one’s humanity, no longer human but is still conscious, functional and capable of learning from experiences.

The vampire expresses the darker side of life better, and with more elegance than any other creature. Even though Lestat loses faith in God, he finds he is "still an immortal being who must find his own reasons to exist". As the reader follows his quest for meaning, one finds that his existential dilemma is the same for us all; the fact that he's a vampire only exaggerates his alienation and his need to establish his own significance.