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Popular Culture Review
that, not too long at all before he was given the Dark Gift of vampirism, he did
not much believe in God, just like the majority of his enlightened and
aristocratic fellows of 18th century France. Ironically, when Lestat shortly
thereafter confronts the fact of his inevitable mortality, this lack of faith in God
and Christianity proves a serious liability to his peace of mind. “‘But do you
believe in God? . . . How can you live if you don’t’!” he asks his brother
Augustin, and of his father he insists, “‘If you knew you were dying at this very
minute, would you expect to see God or darkness’!” (57). As someone who
professed no, or very little, belief in God, Lestat’s response to the unalterable
fact of death seems, at first, excessive, if not irrational. With further reflection,
however, Lestat’s reactions expose the horrific core at the possibility of a
corporeal and spiritual existence lacking divinity in the form of an all-knowing,
all-seeing, and all-forgiving God. No matter what he does or says to the
contrary, Lestat cannot, in fact, live without a belief of some sort in God and His
goodness.
The peace Lestat manages to make with this spiritual cum existential
dilemma proves both tenuous and ineffectual, especially when he finds himself
the terrified captive of a creature named Magnus: “In my mind I was praying
fiercely, God help me, the Virgin Mary help me, help me, help me, as I peer