Book 3 Review

The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris is a truly captivating novel. Almost all of the characters from this book really stick with you, particularly the psychotic psychologist, Dr. Hannibal Lecter. Hannibal’s behavior towards the protagonist, Clarice Starling, is the heart of the story. The relationship he develops with her is not exactly one of friendship, but the fact that he and she rely on each other when they are such opposites in terms of good and evil leaves the reader dumbstruck. Hannibal looks to Clarice’s visits as a way to escape from the bore of his endless days in a prison cell. In helping her to find out who and where Buffalo Bill is he manipulates her into a game of cat and mouse. Saying, "quid pro quo. I tell you things, you tell me things" (Harris). He even manages to manipulate the reader, you know he’s a murderer but you find yourself drawn to the passages where Jack sends Clarice on another trip to Hannibal’s brightly lit cell. He is absolutely entranced by her. He gives her as little information as possible every visit as way to keep her coming back to him. You don’t read about this in the book, but in the movie adaptation they show you a drawing that Hannibal has done of Clarice, perfectly detailed and almost creepy in its accuracy. He plays with her, talks about how “he’d give her Jame Gumb tomorrow”(Harris). He is absolutely psychotic.

Harris truly developed the characters he wrote about to the point where they’re almost alive. What makes Hannibal Lecter such a dynamic character though is that he is simply brilliant. He is almost brilliant to a fault, and it’s believable that his genius ended up turning him into the vicious serial killer he became. You don’t truly realize just how evil he is until his escape from the cell in the museum. He uses his cunning to trick the police into thinking he’s dead, when he actually carved a mask out of a slain guard’s face and pretended to be the guard, seriously injured to the point of disfiguration.

 If you contrast the evilness of Dr. Lecter with that of Jame Gumb (a.k.a. Buffalo Bill, the serial killer Clarice had to enlist Hannibal to help her find,) you can really see what true evil is. Not only does he murder, but Hannibal manipulates people, gets pure pleasure out of toying with the thoughts and feelings of those around him. Whereas Mr. Gumb is murdering women for one sole purpose; he believes he was meant to be a woman, and lacks the intelligence to get what he craves out of life in an appropriate way. Jame Gumb became the evil person that he is because of his weak mental capacity, and circumstance. You can tell by the way he talks, "It rubs the lotion on it's skin. It does this whenever it is told" (Harris). Hannibal, however, is the pure essence of evilness. He is evil because he loves being evil, loves hurting people, loves manipulating everyone around him.

The Silence of the Lambs is a beautifully crafted novel, filled with dynamic characters and vividly realistic moments throughout its plot. Thomas Harris take you on a ride through his story, leaves you questioning good and evil, and wondering what it means to be filled with so much darkness and evil that you become the villain that Hannibal Lecter is. Though the plot could have been moved along a little faster, I really enjoyed this book. If you like mystery and thriller and books that leave you thinking, this is just the one to pick up. If you do read it though, by its end, you won’t be able to muster anything more than silence.