The silence of the Lambs
The Silence of the Lambs ( english The Silence of the Lambs ) is a 1988 published novel by the US author Thomas Harris . It is about the FBI student Clarice Starling, who searches for the serial killer Jame Gumb aka Buffalo Bill, and kills him, thereby saving his prisoner from death. Buffalo Bill seizes young women to have their skin peeled off; from the skin he tailors a female body shell. Starling relies on the help of another serial killer in their search for Buffalo Bill, the incarcerated psychiatrist Hannibal Lecter , whose passion is to eat people and who has taken a liking to Starling without any cannibalistic ulterior motives.
The title refers to a childhood trauma of Starling, the sound of bleating lambs being slaughtered. Starling has nightmares in which she is woken up by the bleating of lambs; these dreams will only cease - the lambs will only be silent - when she has succeeded in keeping Gumb's captives from being slaughtered.
The book became a bestseller. Directed by Jonathan Demme , it was from a screenplay by Ted Tally filmed ; the film plot adheres closely to the novel. The film was released in theaters in 1991.
The Silence of the Lambs is part of a series of novels by Thomas Harris about Hannibal Lecter. The first was Roter Drache in 1981 , followed by The Silence of the Lambs in 1988 , and the third book was published in 1999 by Hannibal ; In 2006 the last volume so far was published, which is also called Hannibal Rising in the German translation . In the chronology of the overall plot about Hannibal Lecter, the series begins with Hannibal Rising - his childhood and youth - followed by the Red Dragon , followed by the plot of The Silence of the Lambs . The narrative of the relationship between Lecter and Starling that begins in The Silence of the Lambs continues in Hannibal .
The serial killer Ed Gein , who also influenced films such as Psycho and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre , is the model for the character of Buffalo Bill .
action
The narrative begins at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia. Jack Crawford, head of the behavioral research department, has not made any progress in the case of "Buffalo Bill". "Buffalo Bill" is the nickname invented by the police for a murderer who holds his victims, voluptuous young women, captive for a few days, then murders them and then removes parts of their skin. Crawford lets Clarice Starling come to; she has been studying at the academy for a few months and has degrees in psychology and criminology. For a study on serial killers, she is supposed to meet the brilliant psychiatrist Dr. Getting Hannibal Lecter to answer a questionnaire developed by Crawford. Lecter is a serial killer himself; it is characterized by the fact that it consumes its offerings ("Hannibal the cannibal"); He has been in custody for eight years in the maximum security wing of a hospital for mentally disturbed offenders. Crawford has an ulterior motive for his assignment. He suspects that Lecter knows more about Buffalo Bill than the FBI and wants to get this information on the way through the attractive Starling.
Starling visits Lecter in hospital jail. Lecter refuses to fill out the questionnaire and instead confronts Starling with an astute diagnosis of her psychological weaknesses. When she leaves, disappointed, Lecter's cell neighbor hurls his sperm in her face. Lecter is outraged, calls Starling back and promises her that he will give her what she wants most: professional success. He gives her a first clue about Buffalo Bill: She should search a certain Raspail's car.
Crawford hires Starling to investigate the lead and soon finds out that Benjamin Raspail was Lecter's last victim. She determines the warehouse in which Raspail's car is kept and discovers the preserved head of a corpse in it. In another conversation with Lecter, she learns that the corpse is Raspail's lover, a sailor by the name of Klaus. Lecter asks Starling to make Crawford an offer that he will be willing to help him find Buffalo Bill if Crawford arranges for him to be moved to a cell with a window.
There is a series of conversations between Starling and Lecter that give the novel its structure. Lecter, fascinated by Starling, provides her with pieces of puzzling information about Buffalo Bill. In return, she reveals to Lecter the traumatic experiences of her childhood.
Buffalo Bill's sixth victim is found. Starling examines the corpse and discovers in the throat the pupa of an insect that entomologists at the National Museum of Natural History have identified as the black witch hawk ( Ascalapha odorata ); since the shell has already broken, although it is still winter, the butterfly must have been bred. Later a moth pupa is also found in Klaus' throat, in this case that of a skull owl . The FBI concludes that Klaus may be another victim of Buffalo Bill.
The situation comes to a head when Catherine Martin, daughter of a Senator, is kidnapped by Buffalo Bill in Memphis. Starling tells Lecter that Crawford is ready to enter into the deal he has proposed; she claims the offer has been discussed with the senator, which is not true. Lecter doesn't trust the offer and makes Starling a counter offer: She tells him about her worst childhood memories, but he'll help her catch Buffalo Bill. Starling immediately gets involved and tells him about her father's death, which happened when she was ten years old. He was a police officer ( marshall ) - in fact he was a night watchman ( night marshall ), Lecter finds out - and he was shot by drug addicts because his gun jammed. In return, Lecter explains why Buffalo Bill wanted to kill Catherine Martin: "for a vest with tits." In another conversation, Lecter gives her the hint that Buffalo Bill probably made an application for sex reassignment at a special clinic, but it was rejected. In return, she tells him that after her father's death, her mother sent her to live with relatives who owned a ranch for horses and sheep. She owned her own horse there and feared it would be slaughtered.
When Starling left, Lecter recalls. Raspail was not only his last victim, but his patient too. In the therapy sessions, Raspail had told him about Buffalo Bill, who was actually called Jame Gumb; Raspail had even introduced Lecter to Gumb. Raspail had been friends with Gumb at first, but had left him because of Klaus; out of jealousy, Gumb had murdered Klaus; he had sewn an apron out of his skin. Lecter also knows what the moths are all about. Gumb once watched a moth pupa transform into a moth. That was an enlightenment for him; since then he had the impression that he knew exactly what to do.
The head of the hospital where Lecter is incarcerated, career-oriented doctor Dr. Frederick Chilton, begins eavesdropping on Starling and Lecter's conversations. Knowing that Crawford's offer was based on a lie, he gets in touch with the Senator and makes Lecter a competing proposal: Lecter should reveal the identity of Buffalo Bill to him, and the Senator wants to get him a cell with a window. Chilton wants to be the one who managed to get Lecter to divulge the information. Lecter agrees, but insists on giving the senator the name in person. Chilton flies with the bound and highly guarded Lecter to Memphis to see the Senator. Lecter tells her, or at least that is what he claims, the name of the murderer, namely "Billy Rubin". Crawford later finds out the name is wrong; “ Bilirubin ” is a dye found in feces - Lecter makes fun of Chilton and the Senator.
On Crawford's behalf, Starling searches Catherine Martin's home in Memphis. She is forced to stop the investigation when the Senator appears, accompanied by a prosecutor who informs Starling that Crawford has been withdrawn from the investigation. Starling takes the opportunity that Lecter is temporarily incarcerated in Memphis for one last conversation. Although she no longer has access to him, she manages to deceive the guards. Lecter gives her another clue about Buffalo Bill. You have to start from the first principles. What need does Buffalo Bill satisfy? He desires. He desires to be what Starling is, namely a woman. And how do you start to desire? By desiring what you see every day.
In return, Starling tells him about her worst childhood memory. When she lived on her relative's farm, she woke up one night to bleat the spring lambs that were being slaughtered. This was the reason why she ran away with her horse. She still, she tells Lecter, occasionally wakes up because she hears the lambs bleating. He asks her if she thinks that the lambs will be silent after she caught Buffalo Bill and saved Catherine Martin, and he asks her to let him know if the lambs are silent. In parting, Lecter hands her back the Buffalo Bill file he had received from Crawford. When Lecter hands her the dossier, their index fingers touch; his eyes crackle at the touch.
The narrative repeatedly inserts images of the activities of Jame Gumb alias Buffalo Bill and Catherine Martin: Catherine is held captive by Gumb in an empty well in the basement of his house; he makes her wash and put lotion on herself; In a completely darkened basement room where he breeds moths, he observes through infrared glasses how the pupa of a skull hawk turns into an imago , a winged and reproductive butterfly; Catherine tries to lure Gumb's beloved poodle into the well, which, after a failed attempt, finally succeeds; Gumb watches video footage of his naked mother and plans to cut a second skin out of Catherine’s skin. Just as the pupa of a butterfly goes through the metamorphosis to the imago, Gumb wants to transform herself into a woman with the help of the woman’s skin.
In the Buffalo Bill file, Starling finds a note from Lecter that the locations of the bodies are "desperately arbitrary." She begins to interpret his clues. The remark about the places where the corpses were found is supposed to show her that the first site was unplanned, i.e. indicates the crime scene, and that the other sites are so scattered because they are supposed to cover up this fact. And the sentence that you first want what you see every day should bring you to the fact that Buffalo Bill has to live in the same place as his first victim, Fredrica Bimmel.
Starling visits Fredrica's place of residence, Belvedere, Ohio , speaks to the victim's father and girlfriend, and learns that Fredrica was a seamstress. Still in Belvedere, Starling goes in search of Fredrica's main customer; in their house she finally comes across Jame Gumb. She recognizes that he is the one she is looking for when a skull owl climbs out of his dressing gown. In the lightless cellar in which Gumb breeds his moths, a duel takes place between Starling and Gumb. Gumb watches Starling, who cannot see, through the night vision device; she is guided by the click of his weapon, shoots him and frees Catherine Martin.
Lecter has since managed to kill his guards and two male nurses in Memphis and to escape by ambulance; he has changed his face through silicone injections. In the last chapter of the book he writes three letters; one to Barney, his guard at the asylum, to whom he thanks, one to Chilton, with the message that he will visit him soon, and one to Starling, with the message that he will not visit her because the world is there with her than without her, and with the request to let him know by newspaper advertisement whether the lambs are now silent. Finally, the narrator takes a look at Clarice Starling, who sleeps peacefully - in the silence of the lambs.
Several love stories are told in the novel. The focus is on the relationship between Lecter and Starling, which, at least from his side, is a kind of love affair; when she visits him without an assignment from Crawford, he says ironically: “People will say we're in love.” Then there is the jealous drama between Jame Gumb and Benjamin Raspail, which takes place in the past of the novel ends in a murder. Furthermore, a love affair develops between Starling and one of the entomologists at the Natural History Museum; In the last paragraph of the story, they spend the weekend together with his relatives, and the narrator asks whether they had sex with each other. Parallel and opposite to this story of a beginning, the story of the relationship between Crawford and his beloved wife Bella is told. Bella is terminally ill at the beginning of the novel; her dying, her death and her burial pervade the novel. At the end of the story, another love affair is mentioned, albeit briefly: Gumb's first victim, Fredrica Bimmel, was in love with her killer.
style
The novel is a police thriller with elements of the horror novel and the classic detective story.
The plot is mainly told from the perspective of Clarice Starling, but also from the perspective of other characters: Hannibal Lecter, Jack Crawford, Jame Gumb alias Buffalo Bill, Catherine Martin and Tate, a police officer who watches Lecter's escape. Some chapters are written entirely from the perspective of a single actor; in others - for example in the final duel between Starling and Gumb - the perspective changes quickly back and forth.
As in most of his novels, Harris occasionally alternates fluently between the simple past and the present tense . He also integrates the thoughts and deliberations of his protagonists seamlessly into the text, without using quotation marks or italics.
Awards
- Bram Stoker Award / Best Novel 1988
- Nomination for World Fantasy Award / Best Novel 1989
- Grand prix de littérature policière 1991
- Prix Mystère de la critique 1991
Translations
There are two translations into German; both were published by Heyne-Verlag. The first translation from 1990 is by Marion Dill, the second translation was done by Sepp Leeb and published in 1999.
filming
In 1991 the novel was filmed under the same title ; Ted Tally's script follows closely the novel. Jonathan Demme directed; Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins played Clarice Starling and Hannibal Lecter. The film was awarded five Oscars : for the best film, the best director, the best leading actress, the best leading actor and for the best script based on a template.
Stage play
With “Silence! The Musical ”was created in 2012 under the direction of Jon and Al Kaplan, an off-Broadway parody for the musical stage.
literature
expenditure
- Thomas Harris: The Silence of the Lambs . St. Martin's Press, New York 1988, ISBN 0-312-02282-4 .
- Thomas Harris: The Silence of the Lambs . From the American by Marion Dill. Heyne-Verlag, Munich 1990, ISBN 3-453-03781-2 .
- Thomas Harris: The Silence of the Lambs . Translated from the American by Sepp Leeb. Heyne-Verlag, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-453-05136-X
- Thomas Harris: The Silence of the Lambs . Audiobook, abridged version. Editing and direction: Margrit Osterwold, read by Hansi Jochmann . Heyne-Verlag, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-453-17050-4 (the reader is the spokesperson for Jodie Foster / Clarence Starling in the German dubbed version of the novel)
Secondary literature
- Daniel O'Brien: The Hannibal Files. The Unauthorized Guide to the Hannibal Lecter Trilogy. Revised edition. Reynolds & Hearn, Richmond (USA) 2009, ISBN 978-1-905287-70-3
- David Sexton: The strange world of Thomas Harris. Short, London 2001, ISBN 978-0-571-20845-6
- Philip L. Simpson: Making murder. The fiction of Thomas Harris. Praeger, Santa Barbara (USA) 2010, ISBN 978-0-313-35624-7
- Benjamin Szumskyj (ed.): Dissecting Hannibal Lecter. Essays on the novels of Thomas Harris. McFarland, Jefferson (USA) 2008, ISBN 978-0-7864-3275-2
- Laurenz Volkmann: 'A terrible beauty is born': Grotesque metamorphoses of postmodernism in Thomas Harris' Hannibal Lecter Trilogy , contribution to the Gradnet Conference 2000
References