"Interview With The Vampire" Challenge Quiz

Answer: 1791

Louis was born in 1766, and he was twenty-five years old when Lestat made him a vampire in 1791. (Paperback Edition, p. 5)

Answer: bloodletting

Not the best medical treatment under any circumstances, bloodletting was highly inappropriate in Louis' case - but who would have believed his illness was due to a vampire? (Paperback Edition, p. 13)

Answer: to demonstrate the reality of vampirism to Louis

"I was to watch and to approve; that is, to witness the taking of a human life as proof of my commitment and part of my change". (Paperback Edition, p. 16)

Answer: indigo

Louis' family owned two indigo plantations on the Mississippi, though only one of them is mentioned by name in the book - Pointe du Lac. (Paperback Edition, p. 5)

Answer: the slaves

"I did not realize at the time that these slaves would be the first, and possibly the only ones, to ever suspect that Lestat and I were not ordinary creatures. I failed to realize that their experience with the supernatural was far greater than that of white men. I still thought of them as childlike savages barely domesticated by slavery. I made a bad mistake". (Paperback Edition, pgs. 27 - 28)

Answer: Louis killed him

Lestat's father was very old and dying of natural causes (his precise illness is never mentioned in the book), but the slaves of Pointe du Lac were at the point of rising up against their masters, believing them to be of the devil. Without the time to wait hours or days for Lestat's father to die naturally, Lestat insisted that Louis kill the old man. With the slaves ready to attack, Louis opened a gash to let Lestat's father bleed out, "so he would then die without feeding my dark passion". (Paperback Edition, p. 57)

Answer: all of the above

Louis told Babette all of these things. During his first visit to her, he told her that her brother was dead, but that she could run the plantation herself without male guidance. On his second visit to her, he advised her to give a charity ball in order to overcome the scandal of running the plantation alone.

The ball was a success, and Babette was able to re-enter society despite her previous ostracism. (Paperback Edition, pgs. 48, 58, & 60)

Answer: four years

Though Louis had killed Lestat's father only the night before, he did not drink his blood. "For four years I had not savored a human; for four years I hadn't really known..." (Paperback Edition, p. 74)

Answer: Othello

Lestat often quotes Shakespeare, and we later learn (in the next book of The Vampire Chronicles, "The Vampire Lestat") that Lestat had been an actor in his mortal life. This particular quote is from "Othello", Act V, Scene II. Othello utters this phrase just before he kills his wife, Desdemona. (Paperback Edition, p. 79)

Answer: Central Europe

"...We'll find them in central Europe. That is where they live in such numbers that the stories, both fiction and fact, fill volumes. I'm convinced it was from there that all vampires came, if they came from any place at all". (Poor Claudia; she was badly mistaken, wasn't she?!) (Paperback Edition, p. 121)

Answer: absinthe and laudanum

Claudia drugged the boys with absinthe and laudanum, and then offered them to Lestat as a symbol of peace between them. The drugs in the blood of the boys made Lestat weak, and Claudia then took advantage of his weakness to "kill" him with a knife. (Well, we all know how that turned out, don't we?!) (Paperback Edition, p. 136)

Answer: France

"I didn't remember Europe from my childhood. Not even the voyage to America, really. That I had been born there was an abstract idea. Yet it had a hold over me which was as powerful as the hold France can have on a colonial." (Paperback Edition, p. 148)

Answer: Morgan

Morgan's wife, Emily, had been killed by the revenant vampire which haunted the monastery ruins nearby. Unfortunately, Morgan eventually met the same fate as his wife! (Paperback Edition, p. 176)

Answer: 15

Although Louis notices ten vampires on the stage during the performance at the Theatre, Armand later tells him, "There are fifteen vampires in this house, and the number is jealously guarded". (Paperback Edition, p. 252)

Answer: 4

Louis tells of four fires. The first fire Louis sets himself at Pointe du Lac. The second fire takes place at the Rue Royal townhouse on the night that Louis and Claudia leave New Orleans, began when Louis hurls an oil lamp at Lestat. The third fire involved the burning of Madeleine's doll shop, which she insisted upon after her transformation into vampirism. And of course, the final fire was at the Theatre des Vampires, when Louis sought to destroy all of the vampires who had mercilessly killed Claudia. (Paperback Edition, pgs. 57, 157, 277, and 309)

Answer: "Gentleman Death"

"I was shocked to see him there, so near, the figure of Gentleman Death in a doorway, marvellously real in his black cape and silk tie, yet ethereal as the shadows in his stillness". (Paperback Edition, p. 277)

Answer: kerosene

Louis doused the theatre with two barrels of kerosene, then lit it with his torch. (Paperback Edition, p. 309)

Answer: Fontainebleau

The day before he burned the theatre, Louis slept in a grave in Montmartre. However, after the fire, Louis' coachman drove him to Fontainebleau. (Paperback Edition, p. 309)

Answer: a siren

I believe in the movie version, it was indeed a helicopter. However, the book tells us that the cause of Lestat's fear was a siren. "It was a siren. And as it grew louder, his eyes shut tight against it and his fingers covered his ears". (Paperback Edition, p. 329)

Answer: Austria

Louis and Claudia traveled through Austria on their journey from central Europe to Paris, but Louis never mentions Austria when describing his travels with Armand. (Paperback Edition, p. 322)