The Silence of the Lambs (novel)
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| Author | Thomas Harris |
|---|---|
| Publisher | St. Martin's Press |
| Released | 1988 |
The Silence of the Lambs is a 1988 novel by Thomas Harris, his second to feature sociopathic psychiatrist and cannibal Dr. Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter. In the novel, Clarice Starling, a young FBI trainee, is sent to see the imprisoned Lecter in order to ask his expert advice on catching a serial killer given the name Buffalo Bill, who is abducting women and skinning them.
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[edit] Plot summary
The novel opens with Clarice Starling, a young FBI trainee, being asked to carry out an errand by Jack Crawford, the head of the FBI division that draws up psychological profiles of serial killers. Starling is asked to present a questionnaire to a serial killer named Hannibal Lecter, a former psychiatrist and genuine sociopath, currently serving a life sentence in a Maryland insane asylum.
We also learn of the hunt for a serial killer dubbed Buffalo Bill, who has abducted five different women, keeping them for up to three days before killing them, taking parts of their skin and dumping them in rivers. The nickname was started by Kansas City Police Homicide Division, on the theory that "he likes to skin his humps." Starling asks if she should ask Lecter about Bill, but Crawford tells her not to, as such a direct request for help would lead to a refusal of co-operation from Lecter.
At the asylum, Starling is clumsily chatted up by its warden, Dr. Frederick Chilton. Eventually, Starling gets to talk to Lecter, who is seemingly quite polite and civil, but after toying briefly with Starling, he refuses to take the questionnaire. As she leaves, 'Multiple' Miggs, the prisoner in the cell next to Lecter flings his semen at Starling. Lecter, offended at this display of bad manners, calls Starling back and gives her some cryptic information: he tells her to 'look in Raspail's car for her valentines'. He tells her to look into herself. Lecter later talks Miggs into killing himself by swallowing his own tongue, which results in Chilton stripping Lecter's cell of everything, including his books; Lecter has quite an attachment to books; the name "Lecter" may come from the Latin word "lector," which means "reader".
The information leads Starling to a rent-a-storage lot where the possessions of Lecter's last victim, Benjamin Raspail, are contained. Hidden in Raspail's vintage car is a severed head in a jar. Back at the asylum, Lecter explains that the head is that of a man named Klaus; he was Raspail's lover, before Raspail killed Klaus in a fit of jealousy over a new partner. Lecter predicts that the next victim will have been scalped. He suggests an insight on Buffalo Bill's motivation: "He wants a vest with tits on it." Finally he offers some thoughts of his own. He has been in a windowless, stone-walled cell for eight years and will never get out while he is alive. He draws pictures of his favorite sights, ("The Duomo, as seen from the Belvedere" in Florence, Italy is brought to our attention), but these can be taken away from him. What he wants is a room with windows. Lecter wants to be free, and though this is not stated in the movie it can easily be understood).
When Bill's sixth victim is found, Starling helps Crawford perform the autopsy. Crawford's wife has a terminal condition and is not expected to survive for much longer; many at the Bureau marvel at Crawford's ability to function. Regardless of home-life distractions, he and Starling fly to West Virginia to investigate. A moth chrysalis is found in the throat of the victim. She has been scalped. Star shaped patches of skin have been taken from her shoulders. Autopsy reports, furthermore, indicate that he killed her within four days of her capture; whatever it is he does with them, he's getting better and faster at it. On the basis of Lecter's prediction, Starling believes that he knows who Buffalo Bill really is. Lecter, however, is not going to reveal such information easily.
Starling takes the chrysalis to the Smithsonian where, it is eventually identified as the "Death's Head Moth," so named because of the signature skull design on its back. It lives only in Asia and in the United States must be hand-raised.
In Memphis, Tennessee a young woman, Catherine Ruth Martin, is just getting home in her car and is just outside her home when she finds a man struggling to lift a couch into the back of his van as he has a cast on his arm. She assists him in moving the couch but is then trapped inside the van. He knocks her unconscious and drives off (serial killer Ted Bundy used a similar tactic to lure and kidnap his victims), having removed her shirt and left it at the roadside. However the woman's mother is Ruth Martin, a junior U.S. Senator from Tennessee. Crawford is advised that no less than the President of the United States has expressed "intense interest" in the case, and that a successful rescue is preferable. Crawford estimates they have three days before Catherine is killed.
With the stakes heightened, Starling is sent back to Lecter to obtain more information from him. After his correct predictions and, most notably, the discovery of another Death's Head Moth cocoon in Klaus's throat, the inside word is that Lecter must know who Buffalo Bill is. Starling presents a deal: if he gives information which leads to Bill's arrest and saves Catherine Martin's life, Senator Martin will have Lecter transferred to a new institution where he will be given greater freedom. Unknown to Starling, the deal is phony, concocted by Crawford as a last-ditch effort to get Lecter to talk. Lecter, in turn, demands information from Starling: in exchange for details of her personal life, he will offer his views on who Buffalo Bill might be.
He starts by asking Starling about her worst childhood memory: the death of her father, a policeman who was killed by two crooks on a night patrol. In exchange, Lecter explains that Bill is seeking to change himself, and that he is a transsexual, or rather, someone who thinks he is a transsexual. Bill's obsession with moths stems from the metamorphosis they go through, caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly. He has probably tried to apply for gender-reassignment surgery and been rejected. Starling doesn't pick up on how this will help her, so she asks for more information. Lecter probes further into her past: After her father's death, her mother couldn't support her and she was sent to her uncle's ranch in Montana. Two months later she ran away. Lecter, quid pro quo, explains that checking through the records of people turned down for gender-reassignment surgery because of convictions for violence would be a good place to start a search for Bill's true identity. He explains that "Buffalo Bill" was not born a criminal, but made one through years of systematic abuse. He hated his own identity, and now identifies himself as a transsexual, which he actually isn't.
Lecter, reminiscing on the past, recalls a conversation with Benjamin Raspail, in which Raspail explains Klaus's death at the hands of Raspail's jealous former lover, James Gumb, who then used Klaus's skin to make an apron. Raspail also points out that Gumb was obsessed with butterflies and moths. Lecter's pleasant ruminations are interrupted when Chilton steps in. A listening device allowed him to overhear Starling's conversation, and Chilton has found out that Crawford's deal is a lie. He offers one of his own: If Lecter reveals Buffalo Bill's identity, he will indeed get a transfer to another asylum, but only if Chilton gets credit for getting the information from him. Lecter insists that he'll only give the information to Senator Ruth Martin in person, in Tennessee. Chilton agrees. Unknown to Chilton, Lecter has managed to fashion and conceal a handcuff key. He knows that once he is outside the asylum, he will be in the custody of police officers who will use handcuffs on him, rather than strait-jackets.
In Tennessee, Lecter toys with Senator Martin briefly, enjoying the woman's anguish, but eventually gives her some information about Buffalo Bill: his name is William Rubin, (changed to Louis Friend in the movie), and he has elephant ivory anthrax, a knifemaker's disease. This information in hand, the FBI races off to save Catherine.
The next day, with Lecter held in a makeshift cell, Clarice Starling confronts him. She suspects that Lecter has misled everyone about "Billy Rubin". Their conversation continues from before, with Lecter giving clues as to Buffalo Bill's identity in exchange for stories about Starling's childhood. One night at the ranch, she awoke to hear lambs screaming, as they were being slaughtered, and tried to save one by carrying it away. She was soon caught and the lamb returned to slaughter. Hannibal asks if she can still hear the lambs crying and wonders if she imagines that saving Catherine will finally give her some peace. Lecter now understands Clarice Starling, but Chilton interrupts the conversation, preventing Lecter from transmitting to her a parallel understanding of Buffalo Bill. Starling is escorted from the building. She is further ordered by Justice Department deputy Paul Krendler to return to Quantico and study like she's supposed to; failure to do so will result in her flunking out. Krendler later figures prominently in the plot of the sequel Hannibal.
That evening, Lecter requests a second meal. Using his makeshift key, he picks the lock of his handcuffs while an officer puts the second meal in his cell. He beats both officers to death with a truncheon and cuts the face off of one of the officers and puts it on himself, and dresses in his clothing. He puts the officer in his uniform and throws him down an elevator shaft. When the police and SWAT teams arrive, they think that the man in the elevator is an injured or dead Dr. Lecter. However, Lecter pretends to be one of the police officers by wearing his clothes and face (although severely mangled, the other officers believe that Lecter has bitten him) and escapes when he is taken to a hospital in an ambulance.
Starling's shock at all these events is put on hold when she realizes that Lecter has left some further clues for her. With the help of her roommate, Starling realizes that there is something significant in the way Buffalo Bill's first victim, Frederica Bimmel, was killed. She was killed first but found third, suggesting that Bill wanted to hide her body. Starling surmises that she knew Bill in personal life, as Lecter had told her that the needs which Bill serves by killing those women is his eager desire; he had coveted those women and their identities. She accepts that she will flunk out of Quantico and Crawford sends her to Bimmel's home town, Belvedere, Ohio. There, Starling discovers that Bimmel was a tailor. Dresses in her closet have star shaped templates on them, identical to the patches of skin removed from Buffalo Bill's latest victim. Recalling Lecter's summary of Buffalo Bill's motive, "He wants a vest with tits on it", Starling realizes that Buffalo Bill is a capable tailor who wants to make himself into a woman by fashioning himself a "woman suit" of real skin. She telephones Crawford, who is already on the way to make an arrest. Lecter's transsexual-surgery theory has yielded a positive ID from Johns Hopkins: a "Jame Gumb" just outside Chicago. Crawford is leading a strike on Gumb's business address in Calumet City, Illinois, while Chicago SWAT takes a home address. Starling is to continue interviewing Bimmel's friends.
Starling learns (from Bimmel's friend "Stacy") that Bimmel once worked for a woman named Mrs. Lippman. At Lippman's house, however, the door is answered by Jame Gumb (Buffalo Bill). He gives her a fake name that she's heard of before. They talk and go inside. Starling has no idea who he really is, but when she spies a Death's Head Moth flapping around in the background, and a lot of yarn and thread, she knows with whom she is dealing. Starling asks the man if she could use the phone. He nervously says "Sure you can use my phone". When he looks the other way, Clarice draws her weapon and attempts to arrest Gumb, but he scrambles down into the basement. She follows him down. She manages to make contact with Catherine Martin, in a dried well, and is hunting Jame when the lights go out, leaving her in darkness. Gumb, wearing night vision goggles, creeps up behind Starling and cocks his gun. Starling hears the click and turns around, quickly firing back, killing him. Starling calls for back up, and Catherine Martin is finally rescued.
Life returns to normal for Starling. She is not going to flunk out, but the FBI is cutting her very little slack. With her roommate's help, she plans to graduate. She has approval where it counts, though: from Crawford, from some of her instructors, and of course from Catherine and Ruth Martin.
In a St. Louis hotel room, we find Lecter writing farewell letters. He is planning some self-administered cosmetic surgery to keep his anonymity, but for now he has some loose ends to tie up. To Chilton, he promises horrible retribution and tells Starling that he is having an old friend "for dinner", implying Chilton. To Barney, a nurse at the ward who was civil, Lecter appends a generous tip. Finally, to Starling, he sends a promise that he will not come after her, "the world being more interesting with you in it". He also reminds her that she owes him an answer in the future; he would like to know about it, should she ever defeat her inner demons, and find herself in the silence of the lambs.
[edit] Characters in The Silence of the Lambs
- Clarice Starling
- Dr Hannibal Lecter
- Jack Crawford
- Jame Gumb- Buffalo Bill
- Barney
- Ardelia Mapp
- Dr Frederick Chilton
- Catherine Baker Martin
- Senator Ruth Martin
- Paul Krendler
- Noble Pilcher
- Albert Roden
[edit] Film adaptation
- Main article: The Silence of the Lambs
Following the 1986 adaptation of Red Dragon (filmed as Manhunter), The Silence of the Lambs was adapted by Jonathan Demme in 1991. The Silence of the Lambs won five Academy Awards. It stars Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter, Jodie Foster as Clarice Starling and Ted Levine as the serial killer Buffalo Bill or his real name Jame Gumb.
[edit] Reaction
The novel was a great success and Craig Brown of the Mail on Sunday wrote, "No thriller writer is better attuned than Thomas Harris to the rhythms of suspence. No horror writer is more adept at making the stomach churn", The Independent wrote "Utterly gripping" and Amazon wrote "...driving suspense, compelling characters,...a well-executed thriller..."
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The Hannibal Tetralogy | |
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The Books Hannibal Rising | Red Dragon | The Silence of the Lambs | Hannibal The Films Hannibal Rising |
Red Dragon |
The Silence of the Lambs |
Hannibal |
Main Characters Secondary Characters |
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The Directors Other | |
es:El silencio de los corderos ja:羊たちの沈黙 pl:Milczenie owiec (powieść) sv:När lammen tystnar
