Analysis Of Louis In Interview With The Vampire:a Perspective Of Freud’s Personality Theory

Anne Rice, as one of the most famous vampire fiction writers in contemporary America, is respectively addressed as "the mother of vampire" by vampire aficionado, her representative novel series the Vampire Chronicles being regarded as the vampire Bible by readers. Vampire images in her novels are different from "absolutely evil" images of those in former works, but are endowed with more humanism. Louis, the character in the novel Interview with the Vampire published in1976, is a typical representative. This thesis aims to discuss the social realities and social problems reflected in the struggle among Louis’s id, ego and superego through analyzing the protagonist Louis’s characteristics from Freud’s personality theory.Freud claims that personality is an integration with interconnection and interaction of id, ego and superego in his personality theory, and finally each individual will find a balance in them to form a person’s certain personality. This thesis will take Freud’s personality theory as the basis to analyze the process of Louis’s personality formation, which is under the struggle of id, superego and ego. Id is the most impulsive part in one’s personality, following the "pleasure principle", and its ultimate goal is desperately to reach the instinctive desires and get chaise for happiness. Superego is the conscience prohibition to suppress the id in one’s personality and it follows "ideal principle", by suppressing the bad practices of id, its ultimate goal to make an individual become perfect, while ego, as a composition of rational sense, locates in a position among id, superego and the real world, following the "reality principle". On the one hand, it is driven by instinct. On the other hand, it is repressed by superego’s moral, and also stumbled by the real world at the same time. The only thing it can do is no more than struggling in the middle of the three, and finally finding a balance. Since Louis has become a vampire, he is continually struggling among the id, superego and the real world and chooses the way he could live in difficultly, but until the end of the story, his ego still couldn’t find a real balance but completely gets lost in his own personality. Louis’s lose of personality is not only his personal tragedy, but also a reflection of the social tragedy at the time. Through Louis’s personality struggle and lose, and the pain from the marginalized identity, it is reflected in the novel that the loss of faith generated by the disaster of wars in United States; the dilemma of the Americans’failure in controlling their own destinies because of social unrest; as well as the loneliness and the lose of the marginalized people, such as homosexuals and AIDS patients who have been rejected from the mainstream of society. Louis’s struggle reflects the spiritual status of the disadvantaged groups in American society and it is urgent to call on the society to show more solicitude on marginalized people.