The Silence of the Lambs - Thomas Harris

Vocabulary:

to mutilate - verstümmeln

moth - Nachtfalter, Motte

chrysalis - Puppe, Kokon

investigation - Ermittlung

urbane - weltmännisch

savage - unzivilisiert, gefährlich

# MAIN CHARACTERS:

Clarice Starling: A potential FBI agent who is about to complete her training.

Hannibal Lecter: He once has been a brilliant psychiatrist and is now imprisoned because of a fetish for cannibalism.

Jame Gumb: criminal psychopath who murders young women to sew clothes made of their skin. He is named Buffalo Bill by the FBI as long as they don't know his real identity.

Special Agent Jack Crawford: Section Chief, Starling's boss. He is the most successful tracker of serial killers at the FBI.

# PLOT:

A serial killer named Buffalo Bill has killed and mutilated six young women who were found in rivers. Clarice Starling is a young, ambitious FBI trainee who is pulled out of school by her boss Jack Crawford to go on a special assignment: She has to interview Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a very dangerous psychopathic killer, whose nickname is "The Cannibal" because he likes to eat parts of his victims. Buffalo Bill once had been Lecter's patient and so the FBI hopes to find the criminal through Lecter's knowledge about him.

Lecter plays an enigmatic game with Starling: While he provides her with snippets of data that can lead her to the criminal, he systematically uncovers and enjoys her personal fears.

During official trips to the places where the victims were found, Starling and Crawford discover moth's chrysalises placed in the throats of the victims after they had been killed and skinned.

Starling, who gets an ID-Card and a speedloader for her work for the FBI, is running out of time when Catherine Martin, the daughter of Senator Ruth Martin, is kidnapped and Buffalo Bill is suspected for it.

Because the Senator wants to speak personally to Hannibal Lecter, he is brought into another prison by plane, but unfortunately he is able to escape in an ambulance car and not imprisoned again.

While Jame Gumb plans to skin Catherine, the analyze of a moth from a victim's throat cannot help the FBI to pick up the right trail. In spite of the risk getting recycled at school, Clarice Starling visits the victim's homes, because it's the only chance to find the killer. Without knowledge, she knocks on Buffalo Bill's door a few days later. She identifies him only when she notices a moth on his pullover.

In the following Clarice and Buffalo Bill chase each other around his basement, with all lights out, but then she outwarts Bill and kills him by a shot in his lungs.

She saves the live of poor Catherine Martin and is awarded the title of Special Agent.

# INTERPRETATION:

The book was first released in 1988, and it is considered by many to be a masterpiece of suspense.

Thomas Harris is a very skillful writer with a real talent for suspense and a gift for creating very unusual characters. The book takes us inside the world of professional criminal investigation. All the elements of a typical thriller are working here - driving suspense, compelling characters, inside information, publicity-hungry bureaucrats thwarting the search, and the clock ticking relentlessly down toward the death of another young woman. What enriches this book is the opportunity to live inside the minds of both the crime fighters and the criminals. This because the narrator's point of view changes very often.

Clarice Starling is the central figure in the book. She is clearly the hero of the story. The fact she is a beautiful woman, slender and soft, makes her all the more a hero. She is given a past which infects her present: In her conversations with Dr. Lecter, she tells about how hard it is to be an orphaned and poor girl trying to be someone. With her attendance at the FBI training school she wants to get out of her disappointing and poor past. Her weaknesses makes her a character to empathize with.

The title of the book refers to a scene in the new prison Dr. Lecter is brought to. During a talk Clarice has to tell him about her experiences on a ranch where she was sent to after her father's death. I want to read this short extract out of the book to you.  (page 220f.)

Dr. Hannibal Lecter is merely a figurehead. He is imprisoned and, presumably, his killing days are over. From a research point of view he's a goldmine. He provides an intriguing kind of genius madness, but he is a sadist: Feeding from the pain of others, he for example compares his experience of Senator Ruth Martin's pain with "sweet nectar".

He is a fascinating mixture of the urbane and the totally savage. As a brilliant psychiatrist, he still publishes a scientific article from his cell, but his warders have to take care not to get within biting distance. It is a fact that Lecter is a cannibal: At one point, when annoyed with Starling, he says "A census taker tried to quantify me once. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a big Amarone."

# THE FILM:

The bestseller by Thomas Harris was adapted to film by Jonathan Demme in 1991. It follows the novel very closely. Starring Jodie Foster as Clarice Starling, Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter and Scott Glenn as Jack Crawford, the film received outstanding reviews and saved the movie company Orion from impending bankruptcy.

"The Silence of the Lambs" became only the third movie ever to win the top five awards:

Best actor for Anthony Hopkins, best actress for Jodie Foster, best screenplay, best director for Jonathan Demme and best picture.