Hannibal

“DEATH ANGEL: CLARICE STARLING, THE FBI'S KILLING MACHINE.”

The reporting on the shootout reveals the way in which Starling is framed as a criminal from the early stages. The Tattler talks about Starling as if she were another serial killer, rather than a federal agent. This framing is an early foreshadowing of Starling's later alliance with Lecter, as they are both portrayed in the same lurid fashion in the press.

“You are a warrior.”

Lecter's message to Starling reveals his sympathies for her, juxtaposed against the scorn of the world. While the FBI wants to investigate Starling and the press wants to scandalize her, Lecter provides her with assurances that she is a strong, independent person. His comments are sincere and supportive, which makes them all the more confusing for Starling given their author. Her relationship to Lecter is changing as she begins to realize the way in which they are both separated from society in some fashion.

“Officer Starling is a deep roller, Barney. We'll hope one of her parents was not.”

Lecter's discussion with Barney reveals the importance of inherited behaviors. Starling does not know whether her parents would or should be considered deep rollers (pigeons). Her fate, in this sense, is ordained by her genes, though she has no way to know whether she is doomed to die by rolling too deep. The constant struggle against genetic, hereditary fate is a running theme in the novel.

“Any pig will eat a dead man, but to get him to eat a live one some education is required.”

The pigs that Mason Verger breeds to eat Lecter are, themselves, a product of inherited tendencies. Mason learns about pig breeding from his father; he received an education in this version of genetics from his father, which he is now implementing by giving pigs an education through a breeding program. The behavior and the idea are both examples of hereditary behaviors replicating themselves.

“Now Rinaldo Pazzi, a Pazzi of the Pazzi, hating the government as much as his ancestor ever did, disgraced and out of fortune, listening for the whisper of the axe, came to this place to decide how best to use a singular piece of luck.”

Pazzi, like Mason, the pigs, and Starling, is a product of a long line of inherited behaviors. Like many of the characters in the novel, he struggles to get away from his family past. Though he does not mean to do so, he finds himself settling into a living which echoes that of his forebears. This inherited behavior foreshadows his execution, which is a cynical mockery of his ancestor's public execution.

“Pazzi was a very old soul, writhing on a spike of ridiculous circumstances.”

Pazzi suffers more than one death. The public shaming he experiences during the Il Mostro case is the death of his reputation. He is made to publicly suffer under “ridiculous circumstances” that drive him toward increasingly desperate behaviors. Pazzi is doomed to be repeatedly executed, in terms of his ancestors, his reputation, and—finally—his corporeal form.

“Shaitan, Son of the Morning, I've seen him now.”

At several points throughout the novel, Lecter is referred to as the literal devil. People look into his eyes and fear him as though he is the embodiment of evil. Due to their desperation, however, they are pushed back into his vicinity. Romula, like Tommaso later in the novel, fears Lecter as though she has looked in Satan's eyes, but, due to her desire to help her child, she is willing to confront the devil one more time.

“If you have to be kidnapped for ransom, wealthy Italians will tell you, it's better to fall into the hands of the Sards.”

Appropriately for Mason, he selects a group of kidnappers who are, through inherited professions, predisposed toward kidnapping. His pig-breeding hobby is built on selecting the right genetic hallmarks and cultivating them to produce the perfect pigs. His kidnappers, therefore, have been chosen over the centuries to exhibit the exact behaviors he requires. Like everything, Mason views his choice of criminal associates with an eye toward hereditary inevitability.

“Not unless you want me to tell you. It doesn't fall under the Humane Slaughter Act.”

Mason compares his criminal pursuit of Lecter to his corrupt challenge to the Humane Slaughter Act. His comment ironically references his distaste for any government oversight into how he slaughters the animals in his businesses. Lecter, Mason is suggesting, is nothing more to him than one of his animals. Likewise, his animals mean nothing to him, and their well-being is not his concern. Mason's irony suggests that he is very much in need of government oversight but that he is rich enough to avoid it.

“The grapevine said he'd be retiring at the end of the year—all Crawford's cronies were retiring.”

Crawford's institutional support is gradually slipping away as those around him retire. The FBI is becoming unrecognizable to him as the familiar faces are no longer seen around the office. Crawford feels as though he is losing his grip on the organization based on the people around him, laying the foundations for his own inevitable retirement.

“His prayer to see her again did not go entirely unanswered - he did see a few of Mischa's milk teeth in the reeking stool pit his captors used between the lodge where they slept and the barn where they kept the captive children who were their sustenance in 1944 after the Eastern Front collapsed.”

One of Lecter's formative memories is the sight of his dead sister's teeth after she has been eaten by another human being. His complete lack of morality and his penchant for cannibalism can be traced back to this moment of brutality. He became severed from the world in a moral sense, no longer invested in adhering to social expectations and determined to prove himself better—at least in an aesthetic sense—than the people who murdered his sister.

“I've always figured he was a homosexual.”

Krendler completely misunderstands Lecter as a person. He interprets Lecter’s aesthetic and consumer tastes as signs of being gay, which, in Krendler’s misogynistic worldview, is another marker of Lecter’s depravity. He sees Lecter’s taste as feminine and worthy of his contempt.

“Ouch—I didn't mean to blaspheme.”

Mason has done many terrible things in his life. He is a corrupt, criminal, child abuser whose wealth insulates him from any serious repercussions. Mason's belief in God is more of a whimsy than a conviction, as he is willing to sin in many different ways and then criticize himself for blaspheming. While Mason is willing to break many of the Christian commandments, he only jokes about breaking one. Everything, including morality, is a joke to him.

“Kind of special to us.”

For the other female government officials, Starling is something of a hero. They recognize the institutional bias against women and the way in which it has affected Starling's career, so they offer their sympathies to her. Though their sympathies and their thanks are not worth much in material terms, they do provide a sentimental validation for Starling's suffering and help assure her that she is not as alone as she sometimes feels.

“He knew that the thing they would do, the evil they would destroy, would be all the credit he would ever need in the hereafter.”

Carlo feels a need to ascribe a higher purpose to his actions beyond money and revenge. By helping to kill Lecter, he assures himself, he will be acting in a moral fashion. To Carlo, the participation in the execution of an “evil” man like Lecter is creditable and ordained by God, even if he has had no such guidance from a priest or from scripture. Carlo—like many of the characters—invents a moral code to justify his personal desires.

“Getting rid of Starling didn't bother him so much. He believed there was an emotional element in women that often didn't fit in with the Bureau.”

The sexist agenda within government agencies is not limited to Krendler. Starling faces prejudice from many people, including those that she nominally trusts. High-ranking members of the FBI—an organization dedicated to investigating crimes and preserving justice—is staffed by men who consider women too emotional to work to the same level. This emotional, patriarchal bias reveals the limitations imposed on female agents like Starling by her less intelligent, overly emotional male counterparts and demonstrates the inherent misogyny that is rife in the FBI.

“What would he do after he had killed Dr. Lecter?”

Mason tries to tell himself not to think about what he will do after he kills Lecter. To do so would be a tacit admission that he lives for nothing other than revenge. He gets no real pleasure from the world other than the suffering of others, so the end of his revenge would leave him with nothing left to do. The vapidity of Mason's existence is a subject he would rather ignore.

“And what difference would one more murder charge make to me?”

Lecter haggles with the only resource he has left: his monstrous reputation. Lecter casts such a long and terrible shadow that others can hide their crimes in his shade. He promises Margot that she will be able to blame her brother's murder on him as he has nothing left to lose. Another murder means nothing to him, especially as he would happily kill Mason Verger himself if he had the opportunity. He offers Margot the perfect excuse to enact the cathartic execution that her entire life has built toward.

“There was a terrible beauty in them, grace and speed.”

Even though the pigs have been bred to be ferocious instruments of torture, Starling can recognize their beauty. The pigs are not responsible for their breeding, nor for the terrible ends to which people have turned their existence. Her ability to recognize the beauty in the terrifying pigs foreshadows her relationship with Lecter.

“When he faced them and they smelled no fear, they trotted back to the easy pickings on the ground.”

When Lecter carries Starling through the pig pen, the pigs examine him and allow him to pass. The pigs recognize in Lecter another being shaped by violence. They recognize that he does not fear them, adding to the sense that Lecter is not entirely human. He does not feel like other humans do, and he certainly does not smell like other humans. He is something else, something removed from humanity, so he is allowed to pass by where any other person would be eaten alive.

“Starling was herself and not herself.”

As Starling recovers after being rescued by Lecter, she loses her sense of self. Her understanding of the world has been inversed: Rather than saving Lecter, he saved her; rather than being saved by government authorities, she has been betrayed by them. The respect for institutions and authority that once defined her has fallen away, revealing a new and very different Starling.

“This is what time has reduced him to.”

Lecter presents Starling with the bones of her father, exhumed from his grave. These physical remains are a metaphor for the difference between memory and reality. In reality, her father is nothing more than dusty bones. In memory, he is a dominating figure in Starling's psyche. By synthesizing these two versions of her father, she can come to some kind of cathartic resolution regarding his death, a resolution that has eluded her for many years.

“You're not Starling. You've got the spot on your face, but you're not Starling.”

Krendler, even with his skull partially removed, is able to recognize the change that Starling has undergone. Since he lacks empathy and intelligence, however, he lacks the ability to characterize how she has changed. He sees the visual of Starling but does not understand her new, powerful, confident disposition. The therapy sessions with Lecter have changed Starling into a new version of herself, one that remains aesthetically the same while having changed in a psychological sense.