Louis is a Hippy

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Louis is a Hippy

Interview with the vampire is Anne Rice’s outlet on the issues she was facing, especially reflecting the lifestyle of the Haight-Ashbury district (hippy district) in which she was living during the time she was writing her novel. The themes of the book embrace the struggles of American life during the era of the 60’s and 70’s especially with morality and living life as an outcast. In the novel, the character Louis becomes a vampire after his brother commits suicide. Louis feels responsible for the death of his brother, but when faced with the option of becoming a vampire or dying, chooses to become a bloodthirsty creature. Louis represents the “new” vampire and is used to illustrate the social issues America faced during the 60’s and 70’s, particularly among the youthful souls of society. Louis is used to describe the troubled psyche of the American peoples of the 60’s and early 70’s during which the hippie revolution took place entrapping many youthful peoples. These issues and struggles that Louis faces are the hunger of addiction, the belonging of community, and the struggle of free love.

Louis is used to portray the impulsive thirst of addiction that was a common problem found among the hippies of the 1960’s and early 70’s. The hippy movement of the 60’s was one filled with drugs and consequently addiction. It is easy enough to see that this small portion of Americans who took part in the “exploration” of substances was viewed quite negatively. To the outsider, hippies were disgusting creatures of habit. They appeared to be bums, without jobs, without homes, without initiative. One of the main components of being a hippy (especially within the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco) was the nature of dru...

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...8334 .>.

Haggerty, George E. “Anne Rice and the Queering of Culture.” A Forum on Fiction. Vol. 32. N.p.: Duke University Press, 1998. 5-18. JSTOR. Web. 31 Mar. 2011. .

Howard, John Robert. “The Flowering of the Hippie Movement.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 382 (Mar. 1969): 43-55. JSTOR. Web. 31 Mar. 2011. .

Rice, Anne. Interview With The Vampire. New York: Random House, 1976. Print.

Sankot, Margaret, and David E Smith. “Drug Problems in the Haight-Ashbury.” American Journal of Nursing 68.8 (1968): 1686-1689. JSTOR. Web. 31 Mar. 2011. .

Zanger, Jules. “Metaphor into Metonymy: The Vampire Next Door.” Blood Read. Ed. Joan Gordon and Veronica Hollinger. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997. 17-26. Print.

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