Anne Rice
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to rehabilitate wayward souls and enable them to forgive their God so that they
may enter Heaven, rather than as a place of eternal damnation, seems both
logical and believable, if not exactly comforting.
But, in Hell itself moments later, Lestat almost immediately faces
horrendous “images of murder, torture, [flashing] before me so hot they burnt
my face. Phantoms were dragged to their deaths in pots of boiling pitch, soldiers
sank on their knees, eyes wide, a prince of some lost Persian kingdom screamed
and leapt into the air, his arms out, his black eyes full of reflected fire” (312). He
later explains that, at one point, he “fell forward, my foot striking a rock, and
pitching me into the middle of a swarm of soldiers on their hands and knees,
weeping as they clutched at one another and the wraithlike phantoms of the
conquered, the slain, the starved, all rocking and crying together in one voice”
(312-313). Meanwhile, the “heavens opened with another fiery shower of sparks
and the clouds burst above, clashing together, the lightning touching down over
our heads, and on came a thunderous deluge of cold and chilling rain. . . Oh
God, oh, God, oh God!’ I cried. ‘This cannot be your school! God! I say no’”
(313). Very soon after uttering these words, Memnoch implores Lestat to help
him help the souls wallowing in Hell forgive God and to, eventually, enter the
Kingdom of Heaven on His terms. Lestat, however, can no longer even
countenance such a notion:
‘I can’t do it!’ I cried. ‘I won’t do it!’ Suddenly my fury
rose. I felt it obliterate all fear and trembling and doubt; I felt
it rush through my veins like molten metal. The old anger, the
resolve of Lestat. 7 will not be part o f this, not fo r you, not for
Him, not for them, not for anyone /’
I staggered backwards, glaring at him. ‘No, not this. Not
for a God as blind as He, and not for one who demands what
you demand of me. You’re mad, the two of you! I won’t help
you. I won’t. I refuse.’ (317-320)
Lestat does manage to escape Hell, but not before Memnoch inadvertently rips
Lestat’s left eye out of its socket and allows it to fall at their feet, and the
spiteful ghosts of Hell step on it and smear the residue all over the stairs. Despite
the loss of his eye, when he plunges into the cold abysmal winter of real world
New York City, he and his readers’ sense of relief, though short-lived, is
palpable.
By the time he reaches his friends in the Olympic Towers, the vampires
David and Armand and the mortal Dora (a beautiful young televangelist he fell
in love with earlier in Memnoch the Devil) he is on the point of raving madness.
After a full 24 hours of sleep, Lestat emerges from his room and begins to tell
the tale of his experiences with Memnoch the Devil and God Almighty. As he
speaks, it becomes clear that he does not know what to believe about what has
happened to him, about God or the Devil, or about the purpose of humanity.
David soon comments that they [God and Memnoch] “‘let you escape, and they