Clarice Starling
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Clarice Starling is a fictional character in the novels The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal by Thomas Harris.
In the movie adaptation of The Silence of the Lambs she is played by Jodie Foster, while in the movie adaptation of Hannibal she is played by Julianne Moore. (Foster refused to appear in Hannibal unless the ending was changed, and by the time Harris was finished writing the alternate ending, Foster had already moved on to another project.)
In The Silence of the Lambs, Starling is in her mid-twenties and a student at the FBI training school. She hopes to work at the Behavioural Science Unit, tracking down serial killers. As a chore, she is asked to interview Hannibal Lecter, a cannibalistic serial killer and psychiatrist who is held in an insane asylum. After a shaky start, Lecter forms a bond with Starling and eventually offers help in catching Buffalo Bill, a serial killer who is currently on the loose.
We also learn some of Starling's history. She was raised in a small town in West Virginia. When she was about nine years old, her father—a night watchman—was shot dead by robbers. She went to live on a farm with a foster family, from which she briefly ran away in horror when she witnessed horses and lambs being slaughtered. (The title of the book refers to the screaming she heard from the lambs, and Dr. Lecter's correct assumption that she was trying to find a way to silence the screams, which had haunted her for years afterward.)
She spent the rest of her childhood in a Lutheran orphanage. She graduated from the University of Virginia at the top of her class and became a star student of the training school, attracting the attention of FBI Chief of Behavioural Science Jack Crawford, who selected her to interview Lecter.
Upon arriving at the asylum for her first interview with Lecter, Starling is the subject of the crude and lewd attentions of Lecter's captor, the asylum manager Frederick Chilton. She rebuffs him, much to his annoyance, which probably helps her bond with Lecter, who also despises Chilton.
During the investigation, Starling and Lecter form a strange relationship in which Lecter demands personal details about her life in return for his consultation (in the form of cryptic, riddling information designed to help Starling figure it out for herself.) The two grow to respect each other, so when Lecter escapes, Starling feels sure that he won't come after her.
Acting on a hunch that one of Buffalo Bill's victims had a personal relationship with him, Starling goes to the victim's home in Belvedere, Ohio to interview people who knew her, and unknowingly stumbles onto the killer himself, a man named Jame Gumb. When she sees a Death's Head moth (the same kind that Bill stuffs in his victims' throats) flutter through Gumb's house, she knows she has her man and tries to arrest him. Gumb flees and Starling follows him into his basement, where his latest victim is alive and screaming for help. Gumb stalks Starling wearing night vision goggles and is about to kill her when she hears him from behind and opens fire, killing him. The victim is rescued. Lecter writes Starling a letter from a hotel room somewhere in Detroit wishing her good luck in silencing the screaming of the lambs.
In Hannibal, Starling is aged 32 and a full-fledged FBI agent with a 5.0 liter Ford Mustang. A bungled drug raid leaves Starling suspended from duty, at which point she receives a letter from Lecter, who is in Florence, Italy, soaking up the cultural delights of the old city. One of Lecter's surviving victims, the billionaire Mason Verger, is after Lecter and has offered a huge reward, which an Italian detective named Pazzi tries to claim by hunting Lecter. Lecter finds out about the plan, kills Pazzi, and flees back to the US. He stalks Starling, although without homicidal intentions, whilst Starling is being harassed and chased out of the FBI by various antagonistic agents (including Paul Krendler, who hates Starling after she turned down his attempt at seduction.) Starling tries to hunt down Lecter herself, partly to capture him but mainly to save him from Verger's sadistic grasp.
When Starling is wounded in a gunfight at Verger's farm (in which Verger is killed), Lecter nurses her back to health and attempts to transform her into a surrogate for his sister, Mischa, through a regimen of mind-altering drugs, brainwashing and psychological conditioning. Lecter utterly underestimates her strong independent streak, however; she mocks Lecter's devotion to his sister and tells him that he should brainwash himself into becoming Mischa if he truly wanted her back. Then, in the novel's most controversial sequence, Clarice takes off her shirt and offers her breast to Lecter. Lecter accepts Clarice's offer and the two become lovers. Starling domesticates her old foe, quieting his violent impulses with sex.
Lecter kidnaps and lobotomizes Krendler, and he and Starling feast on his brain. They run off together and disappear, although Lecter's former guard Barney reported seeing them together in Buenos Aires in 2000.
In the movie version of Hannibal, screenwriters Steve Zaillian and David Mamet, with endorsement from Harris, changed the ending (which was controversial among both critics and fans) to portray Starling as trying to apprehend Lecter rather than giving in to him; she handcuffs herself to him and calls the police. Lecter threatens her with a meat cleaver, with which he then chops off his own hand so he can escape.
|
The Hannibal Tetralogy |
|
|
The Books Red Dragon | The Silence of the Lambs | Hannibal | Hannibal Rising The Films Manhunter | The Silence of the Lambs | Hannibal | Red Dragon |
Main Characters Secondary Characters |
|
Other |
|
