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About what vampires are, there are some different definitions. One brief definition is that a vampire is “a soul or re-animated body of a dead person believed to come from the grave and wonder about by night sucking the blood of persons asleep, causing their death”(Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, 2002:679). There is also an authoritative definition given by a famous biblical exegete: 源'自:751`!论~文'网www.751com.cn
“We are told that dead men, men who have been dead for several months, I say, return from the tomb, are heard to speak, walk about, infest hamlets and villages, injure both men and animals, whose blood they drain thereby making them sick and ill, and at length actually causing death. Nor can men deliver themselves from these terrible visitations, nor secure themselves from these horrid attacks, unless they dig the corpses up from the graves, drive a sharp stake through their bodies, cut off the heads, tear out the hearts; or else they burn the bodies to ashes. The name given to these ghosts is Oupires, or Vampires. (Calmet, Christmas and Leatherdale, 1993:336)”
From these definitions, we can learn the general traits of the vampires: living-dead, blood, darkness and grave. These mysterious traits make us addicted to exploring vampires and vampire culture.
Anne Rice, who is called the mother of vampire, is one of the most famous writers in contemporary America. Her abundant work experience before becoming famous helped her a lot when she wrote the vampire novels. She is the mentor for readers to know the gloomy gothic world. Her vampire chronicle is a rebel and devastation of the traditional ethical relations and myth. Interview with the Vampire was her first vampire novel, which was published in 1976. In this book, Anne Rice creates two kinds of vampires. One kind includes those vampires who are pursuing self-dignity and beauty industriously, such as Louis and Claudia. But they are always not accepted by society. Although they have supernatural power, they are still under the threat of death. Besides these vampires, the other vampires are crazy about killings without human emotion and nature, such as Lestat. These vampires live a lonely life, even the supernatural power can not make them satisfied.