unger for blood and avoid having to murder humans. Louis is preoccupied with the purity and freedom available to the body that refuses food. Louis's refusal to eat is a moral issue. Because for vampires eating involves killing people, Louis, who cannot discard his human moral sensibilities, who associates killing with damnation, is in a constant struggle to keep his soul and his body pure. As Tomc stated, this desire for purity mirrors Rice's similar attempts to purify the gendered body is made evident by the fact that Louis's refusal of food is not simply described as a reluctance to commit murder. It resembles a constant vigil to keep from gaining weight. Louis, in order to not have to murder subsists on a diet of small animals. Louis describes over and over again how he is "Torn apart by the wish to take no action--to starve, to wither in thought on the one hand" or to give in to his "craving," his "vile insupportable hunger" on the other. When Louis does break down and indulge his craving, he describes it as a "sin," an illicit gorging, like eating a whole chocolate cake. (Pg 68) Coming upon Claudia when she is still a human child and he is in one of his fits of self-starvation, he says: "You must understand that by now I was burning with physical need to drink. I could not have made it through another day without feeding. But there were alternatives: rats abounded in the streets, and somewhere very near a dog was howling hopelessly. ... But the question pounded in me: Am I damned? ... If I am damned I must want to kill her, I must want to make her nothing but food for a cursed existence. (Pg 73)I tend to agree with this view presented by Tomc that dieting is central to the characters plight, however, I am not as focused on dieting as being the main reason that Anne Rices vampires differ from the classic vampire. The distinctiveness of these vampires is that they have life stories and are emotionally involved characters. Tha...
