THE BLOODY Leap (Tnterbiew with the Pampire through the eves of Kierkegaard) Becember 8, 1994 ‘Kirsten L Tauttest Philosophy 308% Br. &. J. MandtDREAD: “To hold in respectfal awe.” (i.e. to fear God) In this paper I will explore Anne Rice's character of Louis in Interview with the Vampire in the context of Soren Kierkegaard’s Concept of Dread. SK wrote his Concept of Dread from a definite Christian stance. It is laid out in five chapters, each chapter with titled subsections. ‘The focus of the ensuing discussion will remain on Chapters I (Dread as the presupposition of original sin and as explaining it retrogressively by going back to its ‘rigin), IV (The Dread in Sin, or Dread as the Consequence of Sin in the Particular Individual) especially the subsections, dread of the evil and dread of the good (the demonical), and V (Dread as a Saving Experience by Means of Faith). SK uses the story of Adam and the first sin as a means to introduce the concept of dread, Referencing passages from Genesis 3:5 (KJV) and Genesis $:22 (KJV) we find the following: “For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be ‘opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” (and) “And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever.” In Genesis chapter 2, we find that God has forbidden only of the tree of knowledge. It follows to assume then that eternal life was okay. Adam could live forever on the condition that he remained ignorant and innocent. In section 4 of Chapter I, SK speaks of a more not constituting a quality (85)./A more is a ‘cultural norm with strong feelings of right and wrong. Sin, then, is the wrong choice or the | anti-more. And since mores are culture-bound, and SK writes of Christianity, the sin we speak of is the breaking of the Christian mores. So if sin is culture-bound, then so is innocence. If innocence is culture-bound, then so is the loss of it and with that loss comes ult ‘Louis, the narrator in Rice's novel, was a devout, practicing Catholic prior to becoming a \_-s-»4/ ‘vampire, (The death of his brother caused him to doubt his faith and his belief in God.|~\ BE ‘He came to dread nothing and wish for death so that he rejoin his brother in the afterlife. \ 7) ‘His grief was so strong that even half-way through the novel, he was still referring to the loss. of his brother. “What does it mean to die when you can live until the end of the world? I ‘was thinking of my brother's death, of the incense and the rosary.” (148) But Louis main confusion and distraught came from the fact that vampires must kill ‘humans to live. Lestat, Louis’ creator and thus father in a vampiric sense, failed tounderstand Louis’ hanging on to the basic moral value of “Thou shalt not kill”, His rationale was “God kills, and so shall we; indiscriminately He takes the richest and the poorest, and so shall we; for no creatures under God are as we are, none so like Him as ‘ourselves, dark angels not confined to the stinking limits of hell but wandering His ‘earth and all its kingdoms.” (AR 89) But Louis still feared God. He tried to hang on to his mortal nature and remain in Dread. ‘But Lestat had long since lost his ability to Dread, At an early point in the tale, Louis even. wanted to return to his mortal nature. “My agony was unbearable. ‘Never since I was a human being had I felt such ‘mental pain. Itwas because all of Lestat's words had made sense to me. I knew peace only when I killed, only for that minute; and there was no question in my ‘mind that the killing of anything less than a human being brought nothing but a vague longing, the discontent which had brought me close to humans, to watch their lives through glass. And in my pain, I asked irrationally, like a child, Could I not return? Could I not be human again?” (87) een Tronically, in Chapter IV of the Concept of Dread, there is a passage that uses Neernce toa vampire: “The occasion comes, dread had already discovered it, every thought trembles, dread sucks like a vampire the strength of remorse and shakes its head.” (104) ‘This is from a subsection titled “Dread of the evil”. Dread of the evil, this is precisely Louis’ problem with his vampiric nature, But itis that same dread that sucks from him the ‘goodness, the power of his mortal nature and his ability to have remorse. As a vampire, one is bonded to sin assuming that taking a human life, ic. murder, is sin. “The bondage of sin is an unfree relation to the evil, but the demonical is an unfree relation to the good.” (SK 106) Lestat perhaps is in “dread of the good”. He does revel in the kill as a form of revenge, or we might say as a form of the rebelling against the good. Louis preferred ing rt for his matin as arebeltlon aguas is dette mata Pod sempre capt live on rats alone. ame = Bhs “If the question were to arise, to what extent the demonical is a psychological problem, I must reply that the demonical is a state. Out of this state the particular sinful act can break forth perpetually. But the state is a possibility, although again in relation to freedom itis a reality posited by the qualitative leap.” (SK 109) {tis undisputed that the vampire is a type of demon. A demon is a state. And in the (Christian realm of understanding, everything associated with the demonic is sinful. In the vampiric sense then, this sinfulness of murder for survival is a normal state and thus not sin, but the state of being a vampire is a sin in the Christian context. ‘The reality of this demon is a type of qualitative leap (of faith, if you will). Lestat gave Louis the choice of taking this leap into immortality. ‘The state of being a vampire is a new reality apart from being a mortal Christian human, In fact, itis posited against that very idea. Louis did choose to take the leap, but had second thoughts. (So did Adam, of course, after he took