66 pages • 2 hours read
Anne RiceThe Vampire Lestat
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1985A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Epilogues 1-2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Epilogue 1: “Interview with the Vampire” - Epilogue 2: “Dionysus in San Francisco: 1985”
Epilogue 1, Chapter 1 Summary
After leaving Marius’s island, Lestat doesn’t hear from Gabrielle. He lives out a lifetime—70 years—with Louis and Claudia, which is a long time for a group of vampires to stay together. Lestat compares and contrasts Louis and Nicki. He explains that he turned Claudia when “her body wasn’t six years old” (498) for Louis. Lestat also explains that the humans that Louis thought were innocent when Lestat killed them were in fact evildoers. Beyond that, Lestat forgives Louis for his lies in Interview with the Vampire. He contemplates the role of the vampire in 19th-century literature and culture, as well as why Claudia attempted to kill him. Lestat’s motivation to turn Claudia is the same as his motivation to play the violin for Akasha: He “wanted to see what would happen” (501).
While Lestat is healing from Claudia’s attack, he doesn’t call out to Marius, ashamed to have broken the rules. Instead, Lestat goes to Armand in Paris for help. Armand refuses to give Lestat some of his healing blood and is able to imprison Lestat in his weakened state. Armand refuses to give Lestat blood from a living human until he vows to tell the tribunal about Claudia’s guilt. After Claudia is killed, Armand lies to Lestat, saying Louis was killed by the tribunal as well. Armand continues to hold a grudge against Lestat for breaking up the Children of Darkness, and throws Lestat off the top of Magnus’s tower.
Epilogue 1, Chapter 2 Summary
Two years later, Lestat is finally able to make the journey back to New Orleans. At first, he reads constantly in a Garden District house and is too weak to eat anything other than the blood of animals. Eventually, Armand visits Lestat and confesses that Louis is still alive. Armand is depressed that Louis is leaving him and calls Lestat a “ratcatcher” (511). Lestat laughs at him. Armand says he’ll give his blood to Lestat if Lestat will love him and be with him. Lestat refuses.
Lestat leaves instructions and money with his lawyers to manage his properties and goes underground. As he sleeps, he has visions of Marius using new technologies to entertain Those Who Must Be Kept. Then, Lestat has a vision of Akasha asking him to come to her.
Epilogue 2, Chapter 1 Summary
Shortly before Lestat’s first rock album goes on sale, he receives threats from other vampires. They call him an outcast. He moves the band from New Orleans to a Carmel Valley location that they keep secret from his lawyer, Christine. Lestat drives to Monterey to communicate with her and hunts in San Francisco. After the album is released, it becomes a huge success, along with The Vampire Lestat, his autobiography. Lestat and his band film music videos that include the secret names that Marius told him to keep secret. Vampires continue to threaten him and try to get him to call off the concert. Lestat refuses. He wants to perform, like he did at Renaud’s theater.
The night before the concert, Lestat feels the presence of another vampire outside of the Carmel Valley house. It turns out to be Louis. They embrace and discuss how vampires tried, unsuccessfully, to find and kill Louis for a while, but now they are focused on Lestat. Louis wants Lestat to cancel the concert so they can talk, but Lestat assures Louis that they’ll be able to talk afterwards. They discuss what the older vampires will do, and Lestat is excited at the prospect of bringing them all together. Louis tells Lestat about the “Vampire Connection” (528)—bars in various cities that play Lestat’s music where vampires gather gossip, but don’t hunt. The bars aren’t in New Orleans because that is Armand’s territory, but no one knows where he is.
Louis and Lestat argue about modern technology’s ability to detect vampires. Lestat dares scientists to try to capture him and laughs. He admits to wanting to incite change. Louis tries to seduce Lestat to keep him away from the concert, but Lestat is determined. Louis gives up and asks to go to the concert with him, and Lestat is overjoyed that he wants to attend, but tells him he must get better clothes.
Epilogue 2, Chapter 2 Summary
Lestat’s limo, holding Louis as well as the band, arrives at San Francisco Cow Palace. It is filled with screaming fans that they have to push through to get to the dressing rooms. Lestat kisses Louis and then goes on stage. Everyone raises their lighters, then chants “Lestat” as the lights come on. Lestat introduces himself to the audience and asks if they love him and want to be vampires. They scream yes. Then, Lestat and his band play some songs, he dances, and the crowd goes wild. A biker gets on stage and Lestat bites his neck, but security pulls the man away. Lestat feels like he is being worshiped as a god.
Eventually, he starts to notice vampires in the crowd among the humans. He demands they reveal themselves, but they do not. Some vanish. After three hours of music, security struggles to get Lestat and his band in the limo. Once Lestat is back with Louis, and the band starts to get in the limo, a few vampires approach. Vampires try to knock over Lestat’s car, but Lestat is able to stop them from killing the crowd of humans that surround the car. Then the vampires start bursting into flames.
Gabrielle appears and gets Lestat and Louis into the car. She drives them away from the crowd, but a van follows them. When the van rams them, they manage to jump out before the car explodes. The vampires get out of the van, one spontaneously combusts, and the others run away. Gabrielle keeps Lestat from chasing after them. Lestat calls out for Marius, but gets no answer. Gabrielle embraces him and warns him that they are still in danger.
Epilogue 2, Chapter 3 Summary
The band makes it to a house in Sonoma. In the Carmel Valley house, Lestat, Gabrielle, and Louis discuss who, other than Marius, has the power to cause other vampires to spontaneously combust. They sense an old energy, and later learn it is Akasha. This is the first time Gabrielle and Louis have talked, and they like one another. They go out to sleep in the earth together.
After they leave, Lestat wanders around the house alone just before sunrise. He reaches out to Marius with his mind and learns that Marius is stuck in the ice and Akasha is free. Lestat has to run to his crypt as the sun starts to rise. As he loses consciousness, Akasha grabs him. The novel ends with the phrase: “The Vampire Chronicles will continue” (551).
Epilogues 1-2 Analysis
The first Epilogue is included in Lestat’s autobiography and ends with the date and his name, signifying the end of the book-within-a-book. In the second Epilogue, Rice describes what happens after “book publishers” (519) sell Lestat’s autobiography. The theme of The Performance of Vampirism and Humanity is developed in the Epilogues. When Lestat is with Louis, they “acted Shakespeare together for Claudia’s amusement” (499). Lestat gives private performances as human characters for his close companions. However, this does not satisfy him for long. He becomes a rock star because he “crave[s] the bright lights as [he] crave[s] blood” (531). He desires the adoration of an audience as much as he craves the intoxicating substance that makes him appear human. Rock performances, like the Theater of the Vampires, offer a place where vampirism appears to be “nothing but art” (538). The audience believes that they are witnessing illusions.
However, The Importance of the Arts goes beyond fooling humans. Performing music is an ecstatic rite. Onstage in San Francisco, Lestat realizes, “Now I knew all that had been left out of the pages I had read about the rock singers—this mad marriage of the primitive and the scientific, this religious frenzy. We were in the ancient grove all right. We were all with the gods” (539). Art transports the artists and their audience to a spiritual and supernatural place. Lestat wants his audience to experience vampirism through art—the concert is “a human experience made vampiric, as the music itself was vampiric, as the images of the video film were the images of the blood swoon” (535). Art therefore further blurs the boundaries between the human and immortal realms, allowing them to connect with one another.
Lestat sings about The Tensions Between Good and Evil on his recordings and in front of the live (and undead) audience. His lyrics include: “Mythic evil you don’t need anymore” (541). He compares the Age of Enlightenment with the 1980s in the lack of religion, as good and evil are not defined by the church for many humans in the 20th century. Lestat embraces the atmosphere of hedonism and prosperity associated with the ’80s. Lestat, in his lyrics, argues that myths do not define evil for this generation. He thinks that “[p]assion rolled toward the images of evil, not evil” (539). It is the aesthetics of evil, not actual evil, that appeal to fans of rock music and patrons of vampire bars. Humans in the 1980s are more interested in the iconography of evil than the religious concept of it.
However, the novel’s cliffhanger ending suggests that the battle between the old good and evil is not yet over. The growing resistance of the other vampires to what Lestat is doing speaks to a widening rift within the vampire world, while the reappearance of Akasha suggests that a new era is beginning for Lestat as well.
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By Anne Rice
