Anne Rice A Fascinating Story Essay Research — страница 2

  • Просмотров 313
  • Скачиваний 9
  • Размер файла 16
    Кб

life improved, then she became pregnant.(Ramsland, 103) Anne was very happy about becoming pregnant, and looked forward to becoming a mother. Her daughter was born Michele Rice and was very special to Anne. One night Anne had a very disturbing dream. Her dream was about Michele, in which Anne?s daughter was suffocating because of something in her blood. Anne Considered this to be a premonition and watched over her daughter very carefully for about a month. (Ramsland, 112) There were no problems, so Anne thought her worries were over. That very year Michele began to get sick. Anne took her now four year-old daughter to the doctor where she was diagnosed with acute granuleucytic leukemia. (Ramsland, 116) Michele lived until 1972 when she died on a hospital bed. ( Ramsland, 129) Two

years later Anne wrote about the loss of her daughter through the eyes of Louis in Interview With the Vampire. (Ramsland 130) Lamz 6 Here is the outtake- I looked up and saw myself in a most palpable vision ascending the altar steps, opening the tiny sacrosanct tabernacle, reaching with monstrous hands for the consecrated ciborium, and taking the Body of Christ and strewing Its[sic] white wafers all over the carpet; and walking then on the sacred wafers. . .giving Holy Communion to the dust. . .God did not live in this church; these statues gave an image to nothingness. Anne has not only been influenced by her family life, but also by her place of birth, New Orleans. New Orleans had an extremely positive influence on Anne. It taught her that diversity was a blessing, and that

life was full of contradictions. These Contradictions may be seen in the way that New Orleans may have a mansion next to a small, inexpensive house. (Ramsland, 3) I?m sure that if you?ve ever read any of Anne?s work you may know that she likes to use vampires as characters in her novels. Anne has an extreme fascination with the occult that started when she was Lamz 7 very young. As a small child she ventured out to see the movie The Mummy. (Ramsland, 33-34) When the scene where the mummy first comes out of the coffin occurred, Anne became so terrified that she walked out of the theater. (Ramsland, 34) She became fascinated with mummies and the supernatural soon after this fear was overcome. When Anne was nine she went to see Dracula?s Daughter and was very impressed with the

amount of emotions the vampire portrayed. (Ramsland, 382) She became fascinated with these creatures of the night, a passion that has been kept intact to this day. In her books, Anne keeps her vampiric characters very androgynous. She does this because she feels there will be a better display of emotions since there is no gender bias. Since vampires do not reproduce, Anne feels that the most erotic experience they can have is sucking a humans blood. Here is an example of what I mean- Lestat and the swamp and the noise of the distant camp meant nothing. Lestat might have been an insect, buzzing, lighting, then Lamz 8 vanishing in significance. The sucking mesmerized me; the warm struggling of the man was soothing to the tension of my hands; and there came the beating of the drum

again, which was the drumbeat of his heart- only this time it beat in perfect rhythm with the beat of my own heart, the two resounding in the very fiber of my being, until the beat began to grow slower and slower, so that each was a soft rumble that threatened to go on without end. (Interview With the Vampire, 29) This was an example in Interview With the Vampire which happened to Louis, the books main character. It was the first time he fed on a human in his afterlife. In Interview With the Vampire there are many symbolic characters that relate to Anne?s life. To further explain this I will use the example of Claudia. Claudia is a young girl around the age of seven whom Louis, makes into a vampire. Since vampires retain the age in which they are created, Claudia remains seven

for eternity. Anne uses Claudia to represent women and the way that she feels Lamz 9 about their rights. Claudia is so young as to represent how women are (or were) given the rights of only a small child. Lestat, another character in several of Anne?s books, is one of Anne?s most famous characters. He is somewhat of an anti-hero, but still remains just in some instances. He represents all the things that Anne has never done, but that she wishes to do. (Ramsland, chapter 9) In the novel Interview With the Vampire Lestat takes a man named Louis, and turns him into an unwilling vampire. Louis is another of Anne?s more famous characters. He is enraged that he was drug into the hellacious existence of a vampire and vows revenge on Lestat. Though Louis still wishes to remain human, he