留學生課程essay：《夜訪吸血鬼》中的哥特元素

Gothic is originally a Germanic tribe. In Late Medieval it refers to a style of art and architecture. In 1764, gothic literature came into being. Today, there are gothic music, gothic movie, gothic clothes, etc. The term “gothic” is more and more popular.
Gothic literature is a genre of literature that combines elements of both horror and romance. The literary Gothic embodies an appreciation of the joys of extreme emotion, the thrills of fearfulness and awe inherent in the sublime, and a quest for atmosphere. The ruins of gothic buildings give rise to multiple linked emotions by representing the inevitable decay and collapse of human creations.
Anne Rice is a best-selling American author of gothic and religious-themed books. Her works have had a major influence on the "Goth" movement. One of her masterpieces, Interview with the Vampire, has a prominent influence on present Goth culture.
 
 I. Anne Rice and Interview with the Vampire
 1.1 Anne Rice, a Best-Selling American Author of Gothic Books
 Born in Howard Allen O’Brien on October 4, 1941, Anne began college at Texas Woman's University in Denton. She later attended San Francisco State University and obtained a B.A. in Political Science. She was married to poet and painter Stan Rice (her childhood sweetheart). Anne had a disease named type1 diabetes. She did a lifelong battle with her weight as well as depression due to the long illness and subsequent death of her husband. Anne's life experiences and intellectual inquisitiveness provided her with constant inspiration for her work.
 Anne Rice wrote and published many novels including the Vampire Chronicles, and most of them are very popular. Of many distinguished writers, Anne Rice is one of America's most read and celebrated authors, and she is known for weaving the visible and supernatural worlds together in epic stories that both entertain and challenge readers. Her books are rich tapestries of history, belief, philosophy, religion, and compelling characters that examine and extend our physical world beyond the limits we perceive. Her books have sold nearly 100 million copies, making her one of the most widely read authors in modern history.
1.2 Interview with the Vampire, a Prominent Influence on Present Goth Culture
 Published in 1976, Interview with the Vampire quickly became a cult success, and a prominent influence on present Goth culture. The novel was set apart from its predecessors of the vampire genre by its confessional tone from the vampire's perspective, touching on existential despair and the sheer boredom of lifeless immortality.
 Interview with the Vampire is a story of Louis, as told in his own words, of his journey through mortal and immortal life. Louis recounts how he becomes a vampire at the hands of the radiant and sinister Lestat and how he becomes indoctrinated, unwillingly, into the vampire way of life. His story ebbs and flows through the streets of New Orleans, defining crucial moments such as his discovery of the exquisite lost young child Claudia, wanting not to hurt but to comfort her with the last breaths of humanity he has inside. Yet, he makes Claudia a vampire, trapping her womanly passion, will, and intelligence inside the body of a small child. Louis and Claudia form a seemingly unbreakable alliance and even "settle down" for a while in the opulent French Quarter. Louis remembers Claudia's struggle to understand herself and the hatred they both have for Lestat that sends them halfway across the world to seek others of their kind. Louis and Claudia are desperate to find somewhere they belong, to find others who understand them, and someone who knows what and why they are.#p#分頁標題#e#
 Louis and Claudia travel Europe, eventually coming to Paris and the ragingly successful Theatre des Vampires--a theatre of vampires pretending to be mortals. Here they meet the magnetic and ethereal Armand, who brings them into a whole society of vampires. But Louis and Claudia find that finding others like themselves provides no easy answers and in fact presents dangers they scarcely imagined.
 Originally a short story, the book took off as Anne wrote it, spinning the tragic and triumphant life experiences of a soul as well as the struggles of its characters. Interview with the Vampire captures the political and social changes of two continents. The novel also introduces Lestat, Anne's most enduring character, a heady mixture of attraction and revulsion. The book, full of lush description, centers on the themes of immortality, change, loss, and power.
 Rice reported in her biography that the themes of vampirism and the tone of the book echoed the loss of her daughter Michele from leukemia in 1972. Interview with the Vampires is distinct from its sequels in its sombre tone, and subsequently the perspective shifts to that of the vivacious Lestat. Nevertheless, it remains the best-selling and best-received of Rice's books. Moreover, this book has been made into a movie in 1994, directed by Neil Jordan, with Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Kristen Dunst as stars in the movie.

 II. Gothic Themes
 Interview with the Vampire has the following gothic themes: supernatural, death, bloodiness, darkness, mystery, superstition, and terror
 2.1 Supernatural or Inexplicable Events
 2.1.1 Immortality
 As vampires, Louis, Lestat, and Claudia have the supernatural power: immortality. Compared to the normal people, they never get old and always keep young and beautiful. Besides, they will never be ill or die. The immortality is what people can not have and always want to get, especially many emperors in ancient times. What’s more, always keeping young and beautiful, never getting old is also what people dream about. The writer gives this supernatural power to the characters in the literary works, which makes them fascinating and attractive.
 2.1.2 Giving a Dying Person a Vampire Life
 Louis and Lestat have another power that is to give a dying person a new vampire life. They kill a normal person and drink his blood. At the moment before his death, the normal person has a choice: to die or to live as a Vampire. If he chooses to be a Vampire, Louis or Lestat will let him drink the vampire’s blood. From then on, the dying person is reborn and becomes a vampire. Human being cannot escape from death; they cannot make a dying person reborn either. However, the main characters in this novel have this admirable supernatural power.
 2.2 Death
At the beginning of the novel, Louis had lost his wife in childbirth. He couldn’t bear the pain of loss, so he longed for death, a release from the pain of living.#p#分頁標題#e#
 
 “I drank all the time and was at home as little as possible. I lived like a man who wanted to die but who had no courage to do it himself. I walked black streets and alleys alone; I passed out in cabarets. I backed out of two duels more from apathy than cowardice and truly wished to be murdered. And then I was attacked. It might have been anyone-and my invitation was open to sailors, thieves, maniacs, anyone. But it was a vampire.” (Anne Rice, 1976:8）
 
 If there is one experience that throughout history and around the world, binds mankind together, it is death. Death is something we all must face -- no exercise or diet regimen, no meditation techniques, no amount of money can avoid it. It is the great equalizer. The finality of death, coupled with the uncertainty of an afterlife, results in fear, for many. We see it all around us as we try so hard to stop the aging process.
2.3 Bloodiness
Vampires drink blood to survive. So in Interview with the Vampire, blood appears at almost every scene. The vampires bite on the neck to suck the blood of a victim. The victim bleeds, blood sheds the white clothes, and the victim screams until death. What’s more, the vampire bites his own wrist to let a dying person drink vampire’s blood, and then the person will turn to be another vampire. Louis was unwillingly to become a vampire. At first, he struggled and refused to drink human being’s blood. He drank animal’s blood: dogs, chickens, even rats. When Louis met Claudia, a little girl who just lost her mother and became an orphan, he decided to end this little girl’s bitterness and miserable life. “Merciful death” Lestat called. That was the first time that Louis drank blood of human being. He ran in the rain, sat in a dirty and muddy sewer where was full of dead rats. Drinking human being’s blood is one of vampire’s distinctive characteristics.
 2.4 Darkness
Vampires have a weak point: The sunshine can burn them to death. At the end of this novel, Claudia was killed by sunshine. Therefore, darkness is where these vampires appear. They come out at night and sleep in their coffins at the daytime. Before Louis became a vampire, he saw the sunrise. “That was my last sunrise. I watched the whole magnificence of the dawn for the last time. Farewell, sunlight.” (Anne Rice, 1976:11) From then on, he lived with the other vampires in darkness for ever. Darkness can have a strong psychological impact. It can cause depression in people with seasonal affective disorder, fear in nyctophobics, comfort in lygophilics, or attraction as in gothic fashion. These emotions are used to add power to literary imagery. Religious texts often use darkness to make a visual point. Darkness is a kind of sublime and easily to cause terror feeling. Darkness provides suitable environment to the vampire story.
 2.5 Mystery and Superstition
The vampire itself is a mystery. They do not eat food and drink water, but drink blood to survive. Vampires are immune to death or disease. Louis is said to have lived for 200 years. Mystery is a term used to express the overwhelming awe and sense of unknowable mystery felt by those to whom some aspect of God or of divine being is revealed. Mystery is an event or situation that appears to overwhelm understanding.  Its province is the unnatural, unmentioned, and unseen. It is a pivotal term for the religious and political dimensions of gothic literature. When people face mystery that they cannot understand and explain, superstition appears. After Louis’ brother jumped from the window and died, the priest attributed his death to the devil.#p#分頁標題#e#
 
  “‘The devil made the visions,’ he went on to explain. ‘The devil was rampant. The entire country of France was under the influence of the devil, and the Revolution had been his greatest triumph. Nothing would have saved my brother but exorcism, prayer, and fasting, men to hold him down while the devil raged in his body and tried to throw him about. The devil threw him down the steps; it's perfectly obvious.’” (Anne Rice, 1976:8)
 
 The Priest believed that all things were arranged by the devil. Superstition is commonly applied to beliefs and practices surrounding luck, prophecy and spiritual beings, particularly the irrational belief that future events can be influenced or foretold by specific, unrelated behaviors or occurrences.
 2.6 Horror and Terror
 Many scenes in Interview with the Vampire give rise to horror or terror feelings, such as murder, blood, coffins, corpse, etc. For example, Lestat was a true vampire. He killed people, drank their blood, even danced with corpse. Louis killed all the vampires in Paris, and burned their houses. Claudia cut Lestat’s face with a knife. After Lestat drank crocodile’s blood, he grew crocodile’s skin. Claudia was killed by sunlight, and her body changed into ashes and flied away, so on and so forth. Horror is the feeling of revulsion that usually occurs after something frightening is seen, heard, or otherwise experienced. It is the feeling one gets after coming to an awful realization or experiencing a deeply unpleasant occurrence. Horror includes Morbid, gruesome, surreal, or exceptionally suspenseful or frightening theme. Horror fiction is fiction in any medium intended to scare, unsettle, or horrify the audience.
 
 III. Gothic Settings
3.1 Physcal Aspects
 In the work, the following settings always appear and can be regarded as gothic settings: First, Castles, ruined or intact, haunted or not; Second, Ruined buildings which are sinister or which arouse a pleasing melancholy; Third, Coffins, where vampires sleep, underground passages, crypts, and catacombs which, in modern houses, become spooky basements or attics; Forth, Disease, Black Death appeared in the works, it killed many people and caused panic; Fifth, Extreme landscapes, like rugged mountains, thick forests, and extreme weather; Sixth, Dark Animals: Many Gothic tales deal with dark animals. These can either relate to dark characters or just show a general fear of the night and the creatures that inhabit it. Owls, rats, Vampires are associated with bats, especially vampire bats, which suck the blood of livestock. Rats can be associated with either vampires or revenants.
3.2 Psychological Aspect
  Interview with the Vampire tries to explore and show the extreme human emotions such as fear, desire, revenge, and sensibility
 3.2.1 Fear and Desire
 Fear and desire is the theme of almost every gothic literary works. Interview with the Vampire is always trying to explore and show the fear and desire from the bottom of people’s heart. On the one hand, it always creates a fearful atmosphere, whatever visional, sensational or psychological by describing death, blood, mystery, darkness, vampires, mad women, haunted houses, so on and so forth. On the other hand, it reflects human beings’ desires like the curiosity of the unknown, superstition, mystery, and secrets. What’s more, when Louis lost his family, he felt life was of no meaning, and he was eager to release from the pain. At the moment Lestat let him choose whether to die or to be a vampire. He didn’t choose death, but to be a vampire which could experience a new kind of life. This shows people’s desire to look for something new to change the present life, although it may be a terrible experience.#p#分頁標題#e#
3.2.2 Revenge
 Revenge is characterized as the act of repaying someone for a harm that the person has caused. The idea also points back generically to one of the key influences upon Gothic literature. Revenge may be enacted upon a loved one, a family member, a friend, an object or even an area. Within Gothic Literature, revenge is notably prominent and can be enacted by or upon mortals as well as spirits.  Revenge can take many forms, such as harm to body, harm to loved ones, and harm to family.  The most Gothic version of revenge in Gothic Literature is the idea that it can be a guiding force in the reverence of the dead.
 The figure that can exactly reveal anger and revenge is nobody but the little girl Claudia. At the moment she realized that she could never grow up to a young woman, she was very depressed. She began to hate Lestat who made her like this. She put a lady’s corpse on her bed to show her anger. Then she screamed and quarreled with Lestat. She even cut on Lestat’s face with a knife. At last, she tried to kill Lestat with poison and threw him into marshland. The little girl is very cruel to take her revenge.
 3.2.3 Sensibility
 Sensibility deals with an acutely sensitive response to the afflicted or pathetic in literature, art, and life.  Originally formulated by Adam Smith as a positive force of compassion and moral sympathy, sensibility soon degenerated into something of a cult wherein its members (usually upper-class women or those aspiring to be so) proved their exquisite sensitivity through tears, blushes, palpitations, and fits of fainting.  Many gothic heroines exhibit sensibility.
 Louis is probably the most sensible one in the book. He is a special vampire, a vampire with human being’s emotions. Louis seems to be always gloom and sad. What he experienced made him struggle all the time. At first, he lost his family. Then he corrupted and wanted to die. After he became a vampire, he resisted to kill people and always struggled. When Claudia was killed by the bad vampires in Paris, he was very sad and took revenge. Finally, he got the peace in modern America. Louis’ miserable experiences arouse readers’ sympathy.
 
 IV. Gothic Characters
 4.1Vampire
Interview with the Vampire is a story about the vampires. A vampire is a preternatural being of a malignant nature (or a reanimated corpse) who seeks nourishment and often bodily harm by sucking the blood of the living.  Usually but not always described as highly sexual beings, vampires are often but not exclusively found in European folklore. Examples of vampires found in Gothic Literature include John Polidori's The Vampire, Bram Stroker's Dracula which tells the story of a Transylvanian vampire Count Dracula who can only be defeated by the occultist Van Helsing, and Ann Rice's Interview with the Vampire, which brings to the forefront the old bloodsucker's status as a villain-hero and even invites our sympathy for him. And when Louis first met Lestat, he described him as follows: “The vampire was utterly white and smooth, as if he were sculpted from bleached bone, and his face was as seemingly inanimate as a statue, except for two brilliant green eyes that looked down at the boy intently like flames in a skull.” (Anne Rice, 1976:2)#p#分頁標題#e#
 4.2 Characteristics of Gothic Characters
 4.2.1 Odd and Lonely
 Gothic characters are often different from the normal people no matter in appearance or behaviors. Thus they usually live far away from people, in castles or decayed houses. What’s more, some of them only go out at night, and some of them may suffer from diseases. Gothic figures are seen as odd and fearful. Few people like or dare to be together with them. Therefore, gothic characters often live alone and feel lonely. Loneliness has become their distinctive characteristic.
As the main character in Interview with the Vampire, Louis feels himself odd and lonely. He has a vampire’s body as well as human being’s emotion. He belongs to neither kind. He is so different from the other vampires who live meaningless. Meanwhile, he is not a human being any longer. He suffers from this kind of bitterness and tries to struggle. For example, he drinks animal blood instead of killing people. However, he can not change his fate, being oddness and loneliness for ever.
4.2.2 Legendary and Mysterious
Most of gothic characters are different from normal people.They appear in the myth and legends, having magic power. Some can use their power to control nature, like water, fire, weather, etc. Some can control human being’s mind and behaviors. Some can predict the future and know one’s fate. Some others can be immortal, so on and so forth. All these things make gothic figures seem to be quite mysterious. It arouses people’s curiosity and interests to explore phenomenon that does not exist in the real world. What unknown things to people is magnet to nail. Therefore, gothic characters are usually legendary, mysterious, and fascinating.
In the novel Louis and Lestat can let a dying person become an immortal vampire. They are always young and beautiful as well as immune to death or diseases. Besides Lestat can read people’s mind.
4.2.3 Emotional and Intuitional
 Gloom and sadness is easily to be sensed from gothic characters. They live in darkness, decayed houses, and apart from others. Some of them are sick and suffer from mental diseases. They often feel sad and try to struggle with their bitterness. What’s more, they perform extreme emotions, being angry or grief. Sometimes they resort violence to solve problems. In Interview with the Vampire when the ugly vampires in Paris persecuted the girl to death, Louis was so extremely grieved and indignant that he poured petrol to the coffins and burned the vampires slept in them to death. In addition, they have many non-rational characteristics. Some believe in superstitious and religious things, some believe they saw vision or are possessed by a ghost or devil. The following is Louis’ feeling when he drinks blood for the first time.　　

“A dull roar at first and then a pounding like the pounding of a drum, growing louder and louder, as if some enormous creature were coming up on one slowly through a dark and alien forest, pounding as he came, a huge drum. And then there came the pounding of another drum, as if another giant were coming yards behind him, and each giant, intent on his own drum, gave no notice to the rhythm of the other. The sound grew louder and louder until it seemed to fill not just my hearing but all my senses, to be throbbing in my lips and fingers, in the flesh of my temples, in my veins.”(Anne Rice, 1976:15)#p#分頁標題#e#
 
 V. The Artistic Effects of Gothic Literature
5.1 The Arousal of Various Emotions
 Unlike the other literary genres, gothic literature describes things happened out of ordinary life: mystery, superstition, darkness, death, madness, etc. Therefore, stories beyond our daily life are very attractive for readers. Gothic literary works lead readers into a wonderland, take them to another world which is quite different from the world they live. Gothic literary works give rise to readers’ deep curiosity. Readers are eager to explore the unknown, the unexplainable things. Mystery, superstition, sublime, darkness, etc these are so attractive for readers. What’s more, as the gothic setting show in front of the eyes, gothic characters appear one by one, readers’ imagination is opened and extended. They feel themselves as if they were in the gothic environment, experiencing another kind of life.  
Gothic Plots are unavoidably full of violence, blood, and extreme emotions, and the settings are often gloom and fearful. All these elements give strong shock to readers as well as arouse their excitement. The tense atmosphere and fearful figures cause readers’ feeling of nervousness and horror. However, the more fearful they feel, the more they want to see and search for. This is one of enchantment points of gothic literary works. People who are tired of normal life can touch something new and different. And people who are suppressed their bad feelings in the real life can vent themselves through figures in the works. Therefore, gothic literary works are favorable by more and more people, especially people nowadays who live under high pressure and are difficult to be satisfied. Reading gothic literary works relieves readers of their bad feelings.
 5.2 The Experience of Horror and the Release of Negative Feelings
 People like to read gothic novel because what reveals in the book give rise to readers own experience of terror. Readers are in need of terror, a psychological instinct and psychological needs. Human has a very contradictory state of mind. They not only have the risk of escaping from the instinctive reaction, but also can not resist their curiosity and mental adventure temptation. Fear is not only a person born-emotion, in fact a kind of psychological needs. As a product of the need for such fear, gothic elements are the image of the most intuitive and most popular entertainment art form.
For readers, reading gothic novel is simply a continuous psychological game. As the game continues to "upgrade" to read gothic horror works, the psychological ability to bear fear is strengthened. In fact, to improve psychological ability to bear fear one of the purposes of people to read gothic horror works. We can see that things that arouse horror and fear in the gothic works, whether natural or fantastic, a basic characteristic is mystery. Its essence is that people do not know and understand them, namely ignorance. Process of people ambivalent fear and terror psychology is as follows：fear, trying to feel and understand fear, and to overcome the fear, and then face of the new cycle of this fear process. The digestion process of fear has become an elimination of the unknown. It can be seen not only to exercise psychological bearing ability, but also a mental skill, a growing skill.#p#分頁標題#e#
 The tension and suppression in social reality usually leads to some negative feelings of people, empty, boring, etc. If people’s emotion and nerve system always keeps a very regular, ordinary, similar status, that does not correspond to healthy physiological regularity. This tends to give rise to physiological fatigue and psychological pressure. Besides taking a rest, a more effective measure is to make one’s attention concentrated on another object, especially the very different one. This kind of stimulation can indeed break the quiet and get psychological and physiological balance. Therefore, reading gothic works is a good way to alleviate these negative emotions. People can draw their attention to some other matter, and transfer their anger. People get nervous as the tense atmosphere goes on, even shout out. These are means to release pressure, relax nerves, and get rid of fear and anxiety. In the process of reading gothic novel, people get not only sensational enjoyment, experience of horror and terror, but also release negative feelings that accumulated for a long time. Deeply speaking, the meaning of an excellent gothic literary works is through the exposition of evil and horror to arouse people’s alert, by exploring human nature to expose human minds’ complexity. Meanwhile, gothic elements satisfy people’s desire to curiosity of the mystery and exploring desire of the unknown.