The Vampire Lestat

“And so I had to work for a living. But I’d always been a hunter.”

This passage is about Lestat having to expend extra effort to find evildoers to kill in the prosperous 1980s. It connects his human experiences of hunting to feed his family and protect his village to his vampiric experiences of finding murderers and thieves to drain. This develops his character as a very human vampire.

“Yet, I sang on, pounding the slick white keys of the electric piano, and something in my soul was broken open.”

This is the moment when Lestat plays for the human band Satan’s Night Out, which later becomes The Vampire Lestat. Spiritual release is one role of the arts in the novel. Music always has a powerful emotional sway over Lestat, and this is seen for the first time in this passage.

“Maybe it was like being in a little boat on the ocean, all of us pulling together, unable to escape each other. It was divine.”

This is Lestat’s description of working in Renaud’s theater in Paris. Anne Rice uses a simile that compares rowing a boat with putting on plays, signifying how—to Lestat—both are productive. Creating art means working alongside others to arrive at a metaphoric destination of theatrical grandeur.