"Lestat was being a perfect idiot. 'Oh, for the love of hell!' he began shouting. 'Do you realise I've made no provision for you? What a fool I am.'

I was tempted to say, 'Yes, you are,' but I didn't.

'You'll have to bed down with me this morning. I haven't prepared you a coffin.' "

Interview with the Vampire ~ Anne Rice

Coffins

The traditional sleeping place of vampires and central to all vampire literature, it serves as a forceful reminder that vampires are the living dead. Because coffins fully enclose their contents, the external appearance hints that there are great secrets within. The coffin does serve as a womblike receptacle, for it offers protection, but it can also be a trap and thus is an ambiguous symbol of both strength and vulnerability.

In many cultures, coffins are viewed as a sort of chrysalis, a place of mystery and transition. The dead are sealed inside as a caterpillar in a cocoon, and are expected to transform into spirit and move on. Alchemists referred to coffins as "philosophical egg," meaning a vessel of transmutation. Vampires reverse the symbol by making a transition to eternal substance.

In past vampire literature, coffins were central to the vampire's existence, and the vampire had to return to it before daybreak. In films like Son of Dracula, burning the vampire's coffin just before he returned meant his doom. However when Interview was written, Rice did not think coffins were necessary, although they did serve the purpose of keeping out the light, which was necessary. She viewed Lestat's insistence on using coffins as a supersition; the need to use a coffin was mere artifice: "They could sleep any place where they were not hit by the sun. In a sense, using a coffin is also metaphorical. Vampires sleep in coffins because they're dead."

Rice admits that she had not clearly developed her vampires' motivations for resorting to coffins, and so by the second book in the Chronicles she modified this tradition by having vampires sleep in the earth (Gabrielle), in sealed chambers (Akasha and Enkil), or in abandoned temples (Lestat). It was only the stronger vampires like Gabrielle who realized that they did not need coffins. Lestat, however, simply preferred the romance of rising from the grave and continued to use a coffin for several centuries. In BT, he recalls how he had once polished his coffin to a nice luster, as if it were a treasure.

Not all of the vampires appreciated the fact that a coffin was their resting place. Louis, in particular, shows a claustrophobic distaste for the experience of being enclosed into a human-shaped box. When Lestat makes Louis a vampire, he realises too late that he has provided no coffin, and finally he makes Louis sleep on top of him in his coffin. The image of two vampires enclosed face to face is humourous and even sensual, while at the same time it is loathsome. Louis is disgusted by the intimate experience with Lestat, "handsome and intriguing though he [Lestat] was."

Yet even as coffins provide beds, they retain their ties to death. The vampire child Claudia sleeps with Louis in his coffin until she decides she wants a coffin of her own. She makes Louis go with her to select one that will fit her tiny body. Louis cannot tolerate the idea of a child's coffin, and this scene evinces both a parent's agony over losing a child and despair over the cosmic injustice that coffins should ever be necessary for children. For Claudia, however, the coffin seems to provide a source for meditation on the mystery of death. Rather than sleep in it, she sits and watches it by the hour.

In a hotel room in New Orleans, Lestat brings in whores to tease before he kills them. As one of the women is dying, Lestat places her in his satin-lined coffin and pushes her down when she attempts to rise. It is a hideous scene of sadistic pleasure. The coffin, a means of security for vampires, is a place where no mortal wants to be.

When Lestat places Gabrielle in a sarcophagus the first night she is made a vampire, her trancelike sleep appears so similar to death that Lestat bites his tongue to allow his blood to drop on her lips and briefly revive her.

In one of the most momentous scenes involving coffins, the vampires in Paris lock Louis into one, to get him out of the way while Claudia and Madeleine are destroyed. Louis realises he could be permanently nailed in and this terrifies him. His entrapment is a metaphor of his vulnerability, passivity and suffering. He knows that this is the way a vampire is starved, and he reacts violently to his confinement. His experience is the same as that of being buried alive, but made more dramatic by the fact that he is immortal and thus must endure the agony for so much longer.

Even where vampires place their coffins is significant. Louis likes to go into a solitary place - beneath the floorboards or into the oratory - while Lestat prefers higher places. He uses a tower room, a hotel room and an attic as his special retreats, and his preference symbolises his higher forms of consciousness and control. He is a vampire who strives for mastery and the heights of the gods.

In MD, Lestat describes how David Talbot keeps his coffin disguised inside a chest in a bedroom at the Royal Street town house.

Central to the vampire mythology Rice developed is the Egyptian legend of Osiris, in which a coffin plays a significant role. Osiris was a beloved vegetation god, tricked into getting inside an elaborately decorated (and thus enticing) coffer that had been made to fit his body. He was sealed inside, then set adrift. Eventually his coffer was absorbed by a tree, the trunk of which was used as a roof pillar for the house of a king. Finally anchored, the body of Osiris was then rescued by his sister Isis. His coffer was thus both a trap and a means of protection - just as it is for the vampires.

Related to this legend, the coffin is also used by Egyptian followers of Osiris as a reminder of mortality. Khayman recalls how, during a prebattle feast, he had passed a tiny coffin to King Enkil, who passed it to Queen Akasha, before the slaughter that resulted in a chain of events that turned them all into vampires. They symbol of death became a symbol of life, albeit life dependent on death.

"Finally I closed my eyes and opened them again, and I smiled very gently at the creature. He smiled back. That was Lestat, all right. And there seemed nothing in his face that was any way malevolent. Well, not very malevolent. Just the old mischief, the impulsiveness. He could have been an angel, in fact, this creature, except that when his tears did rise, they were red, and the entire image was tinted red because his vision was red. And he had these evil little teeth that he could press into his lower lip when he smiled that made him look absolutely terrifying. A good enough face with one thing horribly, horribly wrong with it!

But it suddenly occured to me, I am looking at my own reflection! And hadn't it been said enough that ghosts and spirits and those who have lost their souls to hell have no reflections in mirrors?"

The Vampire Lestat ~ Anne Rice

Mirrors

Since Bram Stoker's Dracula, vampire lore suggests that vampires are unable to see their reflections in mirrors. Since mirrors traditionally represent the soul, this deficiency symbolizes the absence of a soul; using a mirror thus became a sure way to detect the presence of a vampire.

Rice felt that her characters, despite their supernatural status, should have no more proof of the existence of God than do mortals. "If Louis failed to see himself in a mirror," she says, "he would know that some force was at work." But Rice wanted her vampires to "possess supernatural powers without explanation" and to exist as what they logically were: beings outside humanity, but still part of it and still governed by the same physical laws. Since vampires take up physical space and represent eternal substance, they naturally would see themselves in mirrors.

Louis is the first to describe his experience of seeing his vampire image. He is amazed, because he had expected that, as a vampire, he would be unable to do so. It means to him that perhaps he does have a soul and there are no supernatural processes at work. But when he catches the image of himself sucking blood from a rat, he comes to wish that he could not see himself.

Lestat is horrified when he first picks up a mirror in Magnus's tower and perceives the image of a replica of himself. "I became frantic to discover myself in it." It is clear that he has lost some of his humanity and the mirror seems to mock that. Gradually, however, viewing what he has become fills Lestat with an eagerness to know all about his new existence.

On a later occasion, after he has been on a killing spree with Akasha, he looks at himself naked in a full-length mirror and thinks back to his original experience. "I was just as afraid right now," he claims. Examining his white skin, he grows more aware of what becoming a vamprie can mean. There seems to be something beyond the mere reflection in the mirror, and the scene hints at the larger theme of self-deception.

Lestat next gets a jolt when he sees the image of a mortal man as he looks into a mirror. He has just switched bodies with Raglan James and is not used to the idea that he is now a brown-haired, six-foot-two, human being. The expression on his face is fearful, foreshadowing what his experience of a mortal will be like.

More symbolically, a mirror represents the concept of doubles, and Rice often uses pairs of characters to mirror each other. For example, Louis sees himself mirrored in the hypocrisy of the priests. The effect makes him more self-aware and more appreciative of what his vampire experience offers him. By the end of IV, however, after Louis loses his passion, Armand sees in Louis a reflection of his own emptiness and despair; unfortunately, neither of them is able to utilize this insight for psychological growth.

Louis also mirros Nicolas because he, too, possesses the same grim intensity and capacity to suffer, and this attracts Lestat to him. Lestat makes both men vampires because he wants mortals that he loves to join him as immortal companions. Louis and Nicolas represent Lestat's darker side - a part of himself that he wants to avoid. Yet his attraction to mortals who possess these traits shows that he cannot really escape his own.

The mortal who mirrors Lestat is David Talbot; both look for adventure, initially refused the Dark Gift, possess great moral strength, and willingly take risks. Because David is so similar to Lestat in these ways, he makes a more suitable companion for him than either Louis or Nicolas.

Garlic

The peasants of Eastern Europe used garlic in an attempt to ward off vampires. They attributed to it the power to cure illness and protect against evil spirits. Its origin as a vampire repellent is traced back to mthe Moslem's dislike of garlic, which they believed sprang up in Satan's footprints as he walked out of the Garden of Eden, combined with the Christian superstition that Moslem corpses were especially prone to becoming vampires.

The presence of garlic hanging over the door of an inn indicates to Louis and Claudia that the peasants think there are vampires nearby, but since using garlic is only a superstition, Louis and Claudia are not adversely affected by its presence.

"But..." the boy started.

"Yes" said the vampire. "I'm afraid I don't allow you to ask enough questions."

"I was going to ask, rosaries have crosses on them, don't they?"

"Oh, the rumour about crosses!" the vampire laughed. "You refer to our being afraid of crosses?"

"Unable to look on them, I thought," said the boy.

"Nonsense, my friend, sheer nonsense. I can look on anything I like. And I rather like looking on crucifixes in particular."

Interview with the Vampire ~ Anne Rice

Crucifix

A representation of Christ on the cross, it is one of the traditional devices used in superstitious areas to ward off vampires. The peasants of Eastern Europe invest their crucifixes with the power of God, and so they believe themselves to be protected when they hold one.

Louis explains to the boy reporter that crucifixes actually have no such power. In fact, he himself likes to look at them. He realises, however, that if a crucifix hangs over a house, it may signal that the local peasants believe that a vampire resides nearby. Louis and Claudia rely on this possibility as they track down Old World vampires. When they find out form an innkeeper about one such creature, they accept a protective crucifix from her so that they will not evoke suspicion about themselves.

In the chapel of St. Elizabeth's Orphanage, Lestat stares at a large crucifix as he meditates on the bloody but mystical nature of Christianity. This same crucifix was removed from St. Elizabeth's and now hangs in Rice's home.

Stake

One of the superstitions in vampire lore, particularly since Bram Stoker's Dracula, is that a stake hammered through the heart of a vampire will destroy it.

Morgan witnesses this in a village in Eastern Europe and conveys the horror of this act to Louis. Louis has already told the boy reporter that a stake's ability to destroy a vampire is a myth. However, in the first draft of IV, Louis admits that stakes could inceet have a deadly effect: driving a stake through the heart destroys it, and pins the helpless vampire to the coffin, where he can bleed to death.

Fire

A form of energy associated with life, vitality, regeneration, spirituality, transcendence, and change. The medieval alchemists retained the notion from the ancient philosopher Heraclitus that fire is at the centre of creation, being the primary agent of transmutation. All things derive from fire and eventually return to it. Without it, survival is difficult, although fire paradoxically possesses the power to destroy. Fire also shares qualities of the sun and, as such, partakes in the concept of divinity. Many cultures view fire as a means fo purifying and/or annihilating forces of evil. Thus, fire is traditionally used against vampires, to burn their coffins of their remains after driving a stake through their hearts.

David Talbot tells Jesse that "vampires are endlessly associated with fires... It is the one weapon they can use effectively against one another." Although vampires can be destroyed by fire, they often utilise fire for their own means, to destroy something or someone else.

The first fire mentioned occurs when Louis burns down Pointe du Lac to distract the slaves and allow him and Lestat to escape. The house becomes a funeral pyre for Lestat's dead father. The next night, Babette throws a lantern on Louis and he is stunned by the action, unable to save himself, until Lestat puts out the fire. Only later does Louis realise the danger he was in.

Louis burns down his next residence as well. He and Claudia plan their trip to Eastern Europe, but when Lestat, whom they believe to be dead, turns up, a struggle ensues. Louis uses fire as a weapon and the town house goes up in flames. Louis and Claudia escape, erroneously believing that Lestat has perished. Many years later, Louis finds the town house restored, just as Lestat himself is restored. Lestat gets his revenge over a century later when he burns down Louis's small hideaway.

Louis also helps Madeleine incinerate her doll shop. For her, fire is a means of destroying all traces of her mortal past; the fire allows her to let go of her grief over her daughter's death. As they watch the shop burn, Claudia says, "fire purifies." But Louis rebuts, "fire merely destroys." Their statements represent their different perspectives: hers is active, his passive and filled with regret. Nevertheless, burning the plantation, the town house, and the doll shop all prefigure what Louis will do in his one act of purification: burning the Theatre of the Vampires.

Lestat witnesses the destructive effects of fire when Magnus, his maker, jumps into the flames and destroys himself. Later Lestat hears that his friend Nicolas has done the same. This reminds him of his childhood fear of fire, which had been caused by the story of how the villagers had once burned witches at the stake.

Armand had seen his own maker, Marius, burned by fire and had mistakenly believed him to be destroyed. He also destroys part of his first Parisian coven by forcing them into the fire after Lestat has destroyed their belief structure.

Ironically, however, fire can originate within the vampires, as the most powerful ones demonstrate. Akasha generates fire simply by willing it when she burns down coven houses. She also incinerates other vampires via their combustible blood. Despite how threatening fire can be, there is a kind of kinship between fire and vampires: both feed on other lives to survive and bother offer the double-edged gift of life and death. Attracted to fire, vampires often warm themselves with it, despite its destructive potential. Thus, it functions as a threat as well as a source of power, and both qualifies and enhances the vampire existence.

Sun

A symbol of divinity and spiritual enlightenment, it is a metaphor of grace. As such, vampires are unable to endure the rays of the sun. Vampire lore and literature says that the reason is because they cannot be in the presence of God, and the sun is God's closest earthly representative. As creatures of the shadow, vampires must reside in darkness. However, in QD, Rice offers a different reationale. Since there is no God in the supernatural cosmology of the first four Chronicles, the cause of the vampire's need to shun the sun is related to Amel, the spirit who enters Akasha and starts the vampire race.

Amel, as a spirit, fuses with flesh and changes it. Because Amel is using a lot of energy to achieve this fusion, he and the blood that carries his spirit "cannot endure the sun's heat coming down upon it." Thus, the vampires all know that to go into the sun is to be destroyed.

Mortals know that vampires must shun the sun as well, and in vampire history, worshipers of the sun god Ra opened up the crypts of many vampires to destroy them. When Claudia and Madeleine are exposed to the sun, it cremates them. And when the Elder who guards Enkil and Akasha (who is responsible for sustaining the life force of the vampires) exposes their bodies to the sun's rays, he causes death and damage to vampires worldwide. The youngest and weakest vampires disintegrate immediately, while the older ones are badly burned. Akasha and Enkil, however, suffer only a darkening of their skin, which fades over the centuries. Marius later predicts that drinking Akasha's blood may protect Lestat from the rays of the sun. It becomes clear, then, that the sun may not be the nemeisis it originally seemed to be. The older and more powerful a vampire becomes, the less effect the sun can have on that vampire.

Lestat discovers this for a fact when he goes to the Gobi. He flies directly into the sun, and while its rays reach into his every cell in an excruciatingly painful manner, they do not destroy him. His body saves itself by digging into the sand on the second day and he heals over time, with only a dark tan to show for his suicidal confrontation.

Lestat is enabled to see the sun when he switches bodies with Raglan James and beomes mortal. It gives him a sense of optimism and well-being. He is impressed with the energy the daylight world seems to possess, where people walk around in safety and accelerated activity. He feels the chemistry of his own mortal body responding. "The world by light," he says, "was not the world by dark." No artificial light could ever duplicate the sun's effect.

Ironically, the sun becomes Lestat's ally when he battles with Raglan James to regain his former body. Knowing that the vampire's point of greatest weakness arrives with the rising sun, and knowing that he himself has already faced the sun and triumphed, he attacks James just before dawn, rattling him sufficiently to regain his body, and fleeing to a prearranged hiding place with his last bit of strength.

When Lestat brings Veronica's veil from the hands of Christ and Dora displays it at St. Patrick's Cathedral, Armand and Mael both step into the sun and burst into flame. They believe in the miracle and wish to use the shock of their deaths to bring attention to it. Before he goes to his death, Mael urges Lestat to do the same.

"The blood thirst? Insatiable, though physically I have never needed the blood less. Possibly I could exist now without it altogether. But the lust I feel for everything that walks tells me that this will never be put to the test.

You know, it was never merely the need for the blood anyway, though the blood is all things sensual that a creature could desire; it's the intimacy of that moment - drinking, killing - the great heart-to-heart dance that takes place as the victim weakens and I feel myself expanding, swallowing the death which, for a split second, blazes as large as the life.

That's deceptive, however. No death can be as large as a life. And that's why I keep taking life, isn't it? And I'm as far from salvation now as I could ever get. The fact that I know it only makes it worse."

The Queen of the Damned ~ Anne Rice

Blood

The substance that makes life possible, it provides a wide array of symbolic possibilities in the Chronicles. In ancient times, deities were thought to live in the blood and were invoked and appeased by blood offerings. Blood was believed to provide spiritual regeneration with the promise of immortality. Similar ideas infused Christianity and thus affected Christianised vampire tales and traditions. Creatures like vampires need blood to animate themselves.

The first mention of blood in the Chronicles occurs while Louis is still mortal. He is delirious, having been attacked by a vampire. The doctors bleed him to improve his health, foreshadowing how Lestat will bleed him to make him immortal.

The vampires' receiving immortality via blood is traced back to the spirit Amel. This spirit makes the first vampire by invading the body of the Egyptian queen Akasha through wounds she has received. Amel travels through her blood to her heart and, fusing with it as she is dying, reanimates her with his own immortal substance. When she gives his blood to others, she in turn makes them immortal.

The downside, however, is that the blood must be fed to keep the bodies alive, so vampires search for victims who can provide more blood. Without it, vampires grow weak and wither away, starving for eternity because they no longer have the strength to feed themselves. An interesting twist on this theme developed in the Chronicles is that the creation of fledgeling vampires can help to alleviate the blood thirst for the older ones. The more the blood thirst is spread to others, the more it diminishes in the old ones, who drink blood simply to refresh themselves and heighten their powers.

Although some of the vampires dislike the need to kill, they are addicted to it because, along with being their sole means of survival, it is also the source of a vampire's greatest pleasure. "The blood is all things sensual that a creature could desire," says Lestat. Vampires crave the warmth and the swoon that accompanies drinking, something that animal blood simply does not provide. Human blood alleviates the cold.

Since blood plays such a powerful role, it becomes a precious commodity; as such, some vampires use it as a gift of love. Lestat gives his blood to Louis and David because he loves them and wants them to join him. He expects Louis to give it to him when he needs it in BT, but Louis does not view the Dark Blood as a gift, so he refuses. Akasha allows only vampires she favours to drink from her, and she conveys her powers to Lestat by allowing him to drink from her. Armand gives his blood to Daniel to seal their bond and to protect him from other vampires.

Since the blood flows through organs that create thought and contain soul, it enhances spiritual powers. The vampires feel and perceive with greater clarity and intensity. They can jump to great heights and attain great speed; they can also levitate and fly around the world. Mentally, they can read minds, confuse the thoughts of others, and communicate visions, either telepathically or through giving blood.

The blood also has the power to heal. When vampires are injured, they heal quickly, especially those who drink from one of the old ones. The Fang Gang heal the puncture wounds of their victims by placing drops of their own blood on the bite, effectively erasing all suspicion of vampire killings.

Yet that which can heal can also destroy. A unique property of the vampire's blood is its combustibility. Khayman discovers this when he grows angry at a trio of vampires fleeing him and one of them explodes. He tries to exert the same power on animals, but while he can kill them, they do not explode. Akasha is also aware of this power and utilises it to destroy most of her progeny.

One other feature attributed to a vampire's blood is its power to enslave. Those who drink it can become obsessed by it. Daniel is allowed a few precious drops of Armand's blood and thereafter nearly goes mad from his urgent need to be made immortal. Similarly, Lestat becomes addicted to Akasha's blood after he drinks from it. Whenever she gets near him, her blood is all he can think about; she uses his addiction to manipulate him to obey her.

In the form of Christ, God offers Lestat a drink of his blood - the ultimate spiritual experience. Lestat accepts, driving his teeth into Christ's neck. In the process, he envisions a tunnel leading to an intense source of light. Afterward, Christ hands him the veil of Veronica, the woman whom He had cured of chronic menstrual bleeding and whose cloth bears an imprint of His face. Lestat grabs it and protects it throughout his ordeal in Hell, then returns to Manhattan and to Dora. Having vowed never to take another human victim, he drinks from her menstural blood - "blood that brought no pain, no sacrifice" - to replenish himself. He views her feminine issue as a symbol of her forgiveness, and a way to become part of her without hurting her. In this way, he gets nourished from a life-giving source and connects Dora to Veronica, through both of whom the miracle of the veil had great religious force.

Rice had learned about Veronica's story as she was writing the novel, and she instinctively saw the connection. To her, Lestat was merging back into the flesh after having been caught up in the cold abstraction of religion. The death-blood of Christianity's violence and sacrifice contrasted with the lifeblood of a woman's menses, as did the nonreproductive angels with the human species. The images were dramatic, but seemed right to her.

Fangs

Vampires grow tiny sharp teeth which they use to open the veins of their victims and drink their blood. Louis's fangs develop slowly, so he must tear open the throat of his first victim. Lestat thinks fangs send a "primal message of alarm" through mortals, who react as if an animal is attacking them, and the tiger's fangs in his dream show how the tiger symbolises him.

Fingernails

They reveal the presence of a vampire because after the transformation, a vampire's fingernails look like glass. Some of the vampires wear gloves to hide them.

The Vampire Companion ~ Katherine Ramsland