This was my final for 11th grade honors english
Steven Ellis
Professor O’Brien
Honors English 11
21 June 2001
If you even know who Thomas Harris is, you probably connect him with Hannibal Lecter. Most people see Thomas Harris as a popular novelist, the creator of one of the most fascinating villains ever. Yet, underneath the surface of Harris’s wildly popular suspense novels are the results of years of pondering questions about life and human nature. After all, it took Mr. Harris nearly twenty years to write his three Lecter novels. What Harris does with his novels beneath the intriguing characters should spark just a much discussion as does his cannibal serial murderer. Thomas Harris looks at a killer through a different light in his novels as he delves into the psychological nature of humans and possibly tries to justify the reasons behind certain actions. These actions in Harris’s novels are of course, murders. Harris has taken the serial killer and sociopath and put their actions and thoughts under the microscope of his books. Exploring the motives of killers, human nature, and even harkening back to the Bible, Harris may be asking for us to excuse many horrendous and immoral acts in society as being simply the way things are and will always be. We are given these thoughts by Harris before even beginning the novel Red Dragon, Harris’s first novel to deal with Hannibal Lecter: Cruelty has a Human Heart,We will exclude Black Sunday, Harris’s first novel, from this particular thesis and focus on his last three novels, which seem to be the path Harris has chosen to take in his writing. As Harris says in the foreword to Red Dragon, “how seldom we recognize the sound when the bolt of out fate slides home” (Red Dragon xiii). With his chosen path, Harris has turned serial murderers into people we as readers not only identify with, but in many cases people begin to feel sorry for. At the beginning of Red Dragon, Harris’s want for us to understand his characters is evident with this reference : One can only see what one observes, and one observes things which are already in the mind.With this Harris places in our minds the idea that evil is already in our brains at birth, the brains all of us are born with, and not only those belonging to the people we see as “disturbed”. Harris also provides a wonderful foreshadowing with the reference to certain facts about Francis Dolarhyde and Jame Gumb, the serial killers in Red Dragon and Silence of the Lambs. Both of these men ended up killing in order to possess things they had seen and had in their minds! Dr. Lecter elaborates on this: He covets. In fact, he covets being the very thing you are. It’s his nature to covet. How do we begin to covet, Clarice? Do we seek out things to covet? Make an effort at an answer.”Harris makes us see these people, these killers, as every day, normal people on the outside. They may be evil inside, but we all have some evil. Some of us happen to show this evil. Everyone also has internal struggles and things we hide from the world. Certainly then, allowing the reader to see the killers as regular people points out that anyone can be a killer. And of course, this is often the case in society, with seemingly unobtrusive people turning out to be “psychopaths.” These killers are just a part of the natural make up of this world. All of us covet, and so it is just a foregone conclusion that some of us will covet something a little too much. An amazing revelation about Francis Dolarhyde occurs when he shows us the possibility of reforming himself and shows compassion towards another human. Francis Dolarhyde is obsessed with the Great Red Dragon in William Blake’s painting The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun. He believes that he is becoming this dragon and the Dragon becomes a voice controlling his thoughts and actions. When Dolarhyde meets a woman who proceeds to show interest in him, he decides that he doesn’t want the Dragon to control him any longer. He doesn’t feel the need to kill any more at this time and wants to develop a relationship with this woman. Dolarhyde is afraid that the Dragon will make him hurt the woman. In an attempt to stop the voice of the Dragon, Dolarhyde steals the actual painting of The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun. Dolarhyde eats the painting after he has stolen it. As F.B.I. Behavioral Science director Jack Crawford informs agent Jeff Graham what Dolarhyde did, he mentions what University of Chicago psychiatrist Dr. Alan Bloom said. “Behavioral Science called Bloom in the hospital about it. You know what he said? Bloom said maybe he’s trying to stop” (Red Dragon 398). So, Dolarhyde tries to suppress what he has become. This creates sympathy toward Dolarhyde by the reader as we imagine that maybe he isn’t completely horrible and his current actions are the dragon’s fault. Unfortunately for Dolarhyde, the Dragon and its voice do not go away and he is left trying to fight it. Now the reader begins to feel sorry for Mr. Dolarhyde. He wants to stop killing people and rid himself of these urges, but the Dragon, it seems, will not let him. Francis Dolarhyde has killed two families and somehow we sympathize with him and his struggle. The reader identifies Dolarhyde as someone with a problem and we excuse his slayings as his search for his own identity. Dolarhyde seems to relish in the idea of having the power of the Dragon and this ideal has now taken over his mind. We are made to feel that Dolarhyde is not a viscous killer, and that his actions have some justification. The justifications of the killings by Mr. Jame Gumb are less prominent and do not seem to exist to the same extent as those for Francis Dolarhyde. Jame Gumb is nicknamed Buffalo Bill because he “skins his humps” (The Silence 21). Gumb is searching, like Dolarhyde, for an identity and a direction in his life that will fulfill his need to feel powerful and important. Gumb believes he has found a purpose and a way to create a new identity for himself through the metamorphosis to a woman. Gumb becomes obsessed with the transformations of moths and butterflies, and hence got the idea for his own change. Dr. Hannibal Lecter elaborates on the nature of Buffalo Bill, as he does so well with everything, with F.B.I. trainee Clarice Starling : “Billy’s not a transsexual, Clarice, but he thinks he is, he tries to be. He’s tried a lot of things, I expect” (The Silence 165). Gumb has begun to see his female captives as objects rather than people. They are there simply for his own personal growth. He has adopted this feeling with the knowledge that he cannot become sympathetic to his victims. Gumb knows looking at himself in the whole of society and realizing what he has become would make him lose the direction and commitment needed for his change to take place. Gumb wants to make a change, but he is also afraid and therefore denies immorality of his actions by looking at these women as things. The brutality and hatred of these murders becomes a direct result of the internal struggle Jame has with who and what he really is. Lecter also points out that Gumb was probably rejected from a number of centers which perform transsexual surgery. We are led to believe then that Gumb may not be killing anyone had he just been an accepted applicant for transsexual surgery. The problem with Gumb’s transformation lies in the fact he is killing women, which are the very things he believes will bring him new life. Looking back to Francis Dolarhyde, the source of power and identity he found for himself came through this image of the Great Red Dragon, which Dolarhyde saw himself becoming. The reference to the Great Red Dragon refers back to the Bible and the Book of Revelation. The painting by William Blake which Dolarhyde began to identify with was inspired by the Bible. Here is a section from the Book of Revelation that describes evil coming down to earth: Then a war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels waged war upon the dragon. The dragon and his angels fought, but they had not the strength to win, and no foothold was left them in heaven. So the great dragon was thrown down, that serpent of old that led the whole world astray, whose name is Satan, or the Devil--thrown down to the earth, and his angels with him. (The Book 326)The Bible describes this Great Red Dragon as a powerful figure, with seven heads and ten horns. The number seven is a symbolic number representing totality or perfection, and it is usually reserved for descriptions of Christ or God. The message that evil is present and will come regardless of the power of God before the Judgement Day is clear in this passage of Revelation. Dolarhyde is certainly a representation of the Devil in some way and therefore is an inevitable part of life on earth. There will be evil itself appearing before the Judgement, so why not now in the form of Francis Dolarhyde? Whether Dolarhyde read the Book of Revelation or not, this dragon and its power as described in the Book of Revelation were very attractive to a man who felt ridiculed and abandoned by society. If you look at the painting The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun, you can see Dolarhyde being the Dragon. A large masculine figure overshadowing a woman glowing with the rays of the sun. Dolarhyde always looked for a certain glow emitted from the mother of the family he planned to kill next. “Mother in the water holds to the ladder and looks up at the camera. Her curly black hair has the gloss of pelt, her bosom swelling shining wet above her suit, her legs wavy below the surface, scissoring” (Red Dragon 281). Dr. Lecter mentions an imago when giving Clarice Starling hints as to how Starling might be able to catch Buffalo Bill: “Do you know what an imago is, Clarice?”As we discover, Jame Gumb places a moth chrysalis in the throats of his victims. We also learn that Gumb killed a man who’s head was in a car that Lecter hinted Starling should go find. This murder occurs well before Gumb kidnaps his first female victim. The head in the car was also found with a moth chrysalis in the throat. This moth happened to be a death’s head moth, which may very well be Gumb’s signal that he is going to bring about a change in himself, and that this change will involve death. Dr. Lecter points out the significance of the chrysalis is change and that Gumb thinks he needs a change. Lecter’s reference to the psychoanalysis definition of an imago also foreshadows a discovery we learn about Jame Gumb later in the novel. A lost relationship to Klaus for Gumb would not only set off Gumb to kill Klaus, but it may have been what led Gumb to make this change to a woman. Gumb becomes a symbol of a moth, whose old definition was “anything that gradually, silently eats, consumes, or wastes any other thing” (The Silence 106). Gumb is in his own chrysalis and wants to emerge as something different, something more beautiful and distinguishable than his previous encasing. Just as Dolarhyde is becoming the Great Red Dragon, Gumb is becoming a death’s head moth. Of extreme importance in the development of the Dragon in Dolarhyde and the moth in Gumb are the childhoods of both men, particularly Dolarhyde’s. The physical appearance of Dolarhyde was one of the things that makes him feel inferior to others. No one ever smiled at the sight of Francis. “He was born with bilateral fissures in his upper lip and in his hard and soft palates. The center section of his mouth was unanchored and protruded. His nose was flat” (Red Dragon 250-251). Francis’s mom cannot even stand to look at him and drops him off at an orphanage. She then tries to go on with her life pretending her baby was born dead. Francis Dolarhyde’s grandmother finds out that indeed Francis was born alive. She goes to the orphanage Francis was staying at and takes him home with her. Francis has a strange relationship with his grandmother. Life at home is full of threats from Grandmother and Francis wanting to please his grandmother, but never seeming to know how. Francis has a deep affection for his grandmother, however, he does not know how to show it. In one of the more bizarre scenes in the novel Red Dragon, Francis first begins to learn what it is like to kill: He imagined that burglars were breaking in and he protected Grandmother and she took back what she said. “You’re not a Child of the Devil after all, Francis. You are my good boy.” . . . .Francis began to kill animals more and more as he began to enjoy the power it gave him and the release it provided from his horrifying childhood. Francis was raised to follow directions and be good, but his grandmother did this using terrible threats and pounding misconceptions as to the consequences of Francis’s actions. Francis witnessed his own mother disown him twice, once after birth and again when Francis’s grandmother took Francis to see his mother and she ignored him. Grandmother also took care of older people at her house and Francis was left with nothing to do but watch them. Francis’s only friend, the black cook Mother Bailey, left after Grandmother slapped her in the face. When Mother Bailey became angered from the slap, Grandmother marched upstairs, slammed her door, and could be heard cursing and throwing objects. After Grandmother suffered a stroke and was sent to a nerve sanatorium, Francis would be reunited with his mother. He would go to live with her, his step dad, and his three stepbrothers and sisters. When Francis’s stepfather becomes sick all the time, the two oldies stepchildren confront Francis. They claim their father lost his election and is sick because of Francis’s ugly face. The event that followed would all but make little Francis snap. Ned grabbed Francis by the ears and held him close to the mirror over the dressing table.If there was a childhood that would create a serial murderer, the childhood of Francis Dolarhyde would do it. Once again, the reader is left feeling for Francis and what has happened to him and we are routing for him to pull through during this period of his life. The persecuted Francis would get his revenge immediately against Ned and Victoria. “He was sent away at the age of nine for hanging Victoria’s cat” (Red Dragon 283). When Francis Dolarhyde is still a young man and killing animals as oppose to people, the killings always bring him is peace. The killing is also done out of love. Francis believes he has to kill in order for the love he feels to not overflow. This problem results from Francis growing up with a misconceived idea of what love is. Francis believed that Grandmother loved him, she was the only person to ever smile at Francis when someone first saw him. She also took him out of the orphanage. Grandmother may very well have loved Francis, but it was not with the care that a child needs. Grandmother treated the upbringing of Francis like an obligation that she wished she never had to take. Francis learned to see love as something violent. Grandmother cursed and threatened to cut off the genitals of Francis, but Francis felt that she loved him. When Francis killed something, he felt a love toward the object or objects. The things he killed were opening up to him, allowing Francis to become an intimate part of their lives. When Francis felt this love, he was at peace. After Francis Dolarhyde had gone years without hurting anything, the image of The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun changed everything. “Few demonic images in Western art radiate such a nightmarish charge of sexual energy” (Red Dragon 286). Dolarhyde now knew the direction he would take in his life, he would become the Dragon. The Dragon conveyed power, respect, and was not something to be laughed at or taken lightly. Dolarhyde “had known since the age of nine that essentially he was alone and that he would always be alone” (Red Dragon 286). Dolarhyde accepted that he would be alone because he is unique. The Dragon gave Francis something to channel his sexual and social frustrations into and was something he was not afraid to look at. When Dolarhyde kills for the Dragon, his feeling of isolation is gone. Dolarhyde is a strong man with large muscles and works out all the time, yet he is never happy with his appearance. Dolarhyde has one mirror in his home, which happens to be the house of his late grandmother. This mirror is in the attic next to his weight bench and barbells, the place where Dolarhyde tries to gain power and a presence. While Dolarhyde is working out however, next to the only mirror in his home, he still wears a mask over his head. Since his childhood, Dolarhyde has had work done on his face and mouth and looks fairly normal, but he still does not feel comfortable seeing his own face. As Dolarhyde starts killing entire families in his becoming to the Red Dragon, he has a pattern he goes through. After Dolarhyde kills the family, except the mother, he smashes all of the nearby mirrors. Everyone except the mother is lined up along a wall and their eyes opened. They are an audience as Dolarhyde begins to work on the mother. What he does is never mentioned, although most of the wounds on the mothers appear to be postmortem. When Dolarhyde is finished with the mother, she is left bitten and torn, full with shards from the broken mirrors. And we are brought back to the childhood of Francis Dolarhyde. Francis is inflicting pain that he once received as a child on someone else.
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