Interview with the Vampire 2

Knowledge is defined as acquaintance with facts, truths, or principles, as from study or investigation; general erudition, but what is the value of knowledge when it becomes obsolete? I have thought of a few questions that the idea of knowledge and what its use is and how that theme shapes Interview with the Vampire.

Is there ever a point in a persons life when they know too much? What do you do with all of your acquired knowledge. You spent a lifetime getting only to die before you can effectively use it. That somehow trivializes the average human experience. Life will go on without you, you’re knowledge didn’t really impact anything and from a hundred years from nothing you have ever done will really matter. I mean reproduction and keeping the family counts for something, but even animals have been doing that longer than humans.

Knowledge is just floating out in the air , figuratively speaking, but what happens when the wrong people use it. If knowledge is considered pure why does it hurt people. Look at the atomic bomb. Someone had to think that up and someone had to think up genocide. So would it be wrong to eliminate this type of knowledge from the public or is it all fair game?

There has been a long history of who has privilege of gaining knowledge. It has been based on gender, class, and race. Women were once considered inferior to men and didn’t have any use for learning and that their time would be better spent in the kitchen and rearing the family. Then it seemed that only the rich were allowed to get an education. They had the money to pay for a private tutor and then college. Finally education and knowledge was separated by race. Segregation of black and white kids effectively kept kids in the minority down. The schools were terrible and not equal. Here we are now, if you don’t have a college education you can’t get a decent job that you can make a living off. When did knowledge become an elitist? It seems any sort of knowledge keeps you down.


The really fascinating thing about the comparison between people and vampires is the time each has to learn. Vampires may seem vastly more intelligent than normal people, but then again they have the time to learn. In fact they have forever to learn. Louis and Claudia have a thirst for knowledge that is comparable to the blood lust of Lestat. On page 99 and 100 Louis says “I’d find her tucked in the arm of my chair reading the work of Aristotle or Boethius or a new novel just come over the Atlantic.” “ She was my companion her long hours spent with me consuming faster and faster the knowledge that I gave her.” When Louis talks about knowledge he uses words like consume, and he talks about learning the way Lestat talks about feeding. Lestat is the one who doesn’t believe in the power of learning. All he knows is learn what you need to survive and forget the rest. He doesn’t see the use for anything human related.