Summary:
The internal and external conflicts in "Interview With A Vampire" are between three vampires with differing personalities. However their struggles are typical of internal and external struggles we all face.
Internal and External Conflicts
Everyday people experience conflicts. In literature almost every character has been involved in at least one type of conflict. In the novel Interview With A Vampire, the main character, Louis, tells his story of his struggles with being a vampire. He is an 18th century nobleman bitten by the powerful, alluring vampire Lestat. Louis at first is unable to enjoy killing humans and grows to be hopeless. To comfort Louis, Lestat helps him create another vampire, Claudia. She is a young girl, which could not age once she became a vampire. Together these characters all experience both internal and external conflicts. The conflicts that occur in Interview With A Vampire are Louis' struggle with killing, Claudia's battle with her appearance, and Claudia's hatred for Lestat.
Internal conflicts take place inside a character's mind. They occur when the character is struggling with his own mixed emotions or what to do in a certain situation. In Interview With A Vampire Louis experiences an internal conflict. When he becomes a vampire his first victim he killed was a slave. To him the occurrence was disturbing. It made him extremely unhappy and was convinced that he was the devil's child. "And the sight of the blood, the aroma of it, maddened me. I believe I moaned aloud. But I did not reach for him, I would not" (pg. 53.) Louis says this after he kills another man. It reveals that he is uneasy about killing and does not enjoy it like Lestat does. It also shows that he feels guilty about killing and that it makes him sick. In Interview With A Vampire Louis constantly reveals to us the guilt that he struggles with for each murder.
Another internal conflict found in Interview With A Vampire is Claudia's struggle with her appearance. As a child Louis and Lestat found her near death in a hospital. Together they turned Claudia into a vampire making her their daughter. As time passed Claudia got older and no longer had the views of a child, however she was trapped inside a five year old's body for eternity. This was a problem for Claudia, knowing that she could act like a woman, but never could look like one. Claudia knew that she would never be able to support herself; she would always need someone to take care of her. She felt trapped and wished she were never made a vampire. This constant struggle with her appearance was burdensome and was never resolved.
Another type of conflict displayed in Interview With A Vampire was an external conflict. An external conflict is a struggle between a character and another character. An example of this is Claudia and Lestat. As Claudia grew older she began to have a strong hatred for Lestat. She hated him for creating her, for making her have the body of a child forever. Together, they would always argue, apart they would complain about each other. Claudia was finally the one to put an end to this. "And why not kill him! I have no use for him! I can't get nothing from him! And he causes me pain, which I will not abide." (Pg. 121.) This reveals Claudia's anger toward Lestat. She feels that he is of no use to her and only makes things worse, and that she would be better off without him. This conflict finally ends when Claudia kills Lestat She kills him by giving him the blood of a dead boy, which poisons a vampire and eventually kills him. With the death of Lestat Claudia is happier that she no longer has to deal with him, putting an end to their external conflict.
In conclusion, the conflicts in Interview With A Vampire include both internal and external. Internal conflicts are very important because they allow the reader to get inside the mind of the character. For example, Anne Rice shows the reader how vampires struggle with themselves and deal with different situations. External conflicts show how a character will react to another character. We see that in Interview With A Vampire Claudia reacts to Lestat by killing him. As you can see, internal and external conflicts are very important in the development of characters.
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