English Project Som.docx

English Project Topic:- The Silence Of The Lambs by Thomas Hasrris Efforts by:- Som Dutt Vyas Roll no. 21 B.A. LL.B. (Hons.) 1st Semester 2017-2022

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MAHARASHTRA NATIONAL LAW UNIVERSITY AURANGABAD ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

“It is not possible to prepare a project report without the assistance and encouragement of our teachers , mentors and close ones. This one is certainly no exception.” On the very outset of this report , I would like to extend my sincere and heartfelt obligation towards all the people who have been a part of this project right from its inception. The writing of this project has been one of the most significant academic tasks and without the support , patience , and guidance of the people involved , this task would not have been completed. It is to them I owe my deepest gratitude. I am ineffably indebted to our Vice Chancellor (sir) Professor S. Surya Prakash sir, for his conscientious guidance and encouragement to accomplish this project. I hereby take this opportunity to add a special note of thanks for my English professor Miss Mahenaz Haque ma’am who undertook to act as my mentor despite her many other academic and professional commitments. Her wisdom, knowledge and commitment to the highest standards inspired and motivated me. Without her insight , support , and energy , this project wouldn’t have kick-started and neither would have reached fruitfulness. I extend my gratitude to Maharashtra National Law University, Aurangabad for giving me this opportunity to embark on this project. I also acknowledge with a deep sense of reverence , my gratitude towards my parents and family members , who have always supported me morally as well as economically. I also feel heartiest sense of obligation to my library and staff members who helped me in collection of data and resource material and also in its processing and drafting of the project. I am thankful to all of my friends who directly or indirectly helped me to complete the project report. This project is dedicated to all those people , who helped me while doing this project. Thanking you Som Dutt Vyas Student, MNLU-A B.A. LL.B. (Hons.) 1st SEMESTER (2017-2022 )

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Table Of Contents:       

About the author Major works by author About the book Plot summary Major characters Reception of the book Writing style My viewpoint

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About the author:William Thomas Harris III (born April 11, 1940) is an American writer, best known for a series of suspense novels about his most famous character, Hannibal Lecter. All of his works have been made into films, the most notable being The Silence of the Lambs, which became only the third film in Academy Award history to sweep the Oscars in major categories. Harris was born in Jackson, Tennessee, but moved as a child with his family to Rich, Mississippi. He was introverted and bookish in grade school and then blossomed in high school. He attended Baylor University in Waco, Texas, where he majored in English and graduated in 1964. While in college, he worked as a reporter for the local newspaper, the Waco TribuneHerald, covering the police beat. In 1968, he moved to New York City to work for Associated Press until 1974 when he began work on Black Sunday.

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Major works by author:-

 Black Sunday:The novel is a thriller about a plot by terrorists to commit mass murder during the Super Bowl in New Orleans, and law enforcement efforts to stop them. Harris wrote the novel after watching the 1972 Munich Olympics hostage crisis where Palestinian terrorists took Israeli athletes hostage and murdered them. It was the first novel by Harris, and achieved only moderate success until it was sold to Hollywood. The 1977 film adaptation was a moderate critical and financial success, and sparked interest in the novel.  Red Dragon:Red Dragon is a novel by American author Thomas Harris, first published in 1981. The plot follows FBI profiler Will Graham, who comes out of retirement to investigate a serial killer nicknamed The Tooth Fairy, who is murdering entire families. The novel

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introduced the character Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a brilliant psychiatrist and cannibalistic serial killer to whom Graham turns for advice.

 The Silence of the Lambs:This novel by Thomas Harris. First published in 1988, it is the sequel to Harris' 1981 novel Red Dragon. Both novels feature the cannibalistic serial killer Dr. Hannibal Lecter, this time pitted against FBI Special Agent Clarice Starling. Its film adaptation directed by Jonathan Demme was released in 1991 to box office success and critical acclaim. According to Anthony Hopkins, the right way to watch the movies of this epic trilogy is to start with the Silence of the Lambs  Hannibal:Published in 1999. It is the third in his series featuring Dr. Hannibal Lecter and the second to feature FBI Special Agent Clarice Starling. The novel takes place seven years after the events of The Silence of the Lambs and deals with the intended revenge of one of Lecter's victims. It was adapted as a film of the same name in 2001, directed by Ridley Scott. Elements of the novel were incorporated into the second season of the NBC television series Hannibal, while the show's third season adapted the plot of the novel.  Hannibal Rising:A novel by American author Thomas Harris, published in 2006. It is a prequel to his three previous books featuring his most famous character, the cannibalistic serial killer Dr. Hannibal Lecter. It is Harris' fifth and most recent novel. The novel was released with an initial printing of at least 1.5 million copies and met with a mixed critical response. Audiobook versions have also been released, with Harris reading the text. The novel was adapted (by Harris himself) into a film of the same name in 2007, directed by Peter Webber.

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About the book ''The Silence of the Lambs'', a fictional novel by Thomas Harris, tells the terrifying tale of an FBI agent's mind-bending encounters with a serial cannibalistic killer, while searching for the kidnapper and killer of many missing women. In The Silence of the Lambs, when Agent Clarice Starling meets Hannibal Lector, she faces the clever, intelligent, and strategic mind of a brilliant psychiatrist who prefers to dine on people rather than pasta. In her search for a serial killer, Clarice must know how that kind of thought process works, and the twisted mind of Hannibal Lector is the perfect place for her to learn.

Plot Summary Clarice Starling, a young FBI trainee, is asked to carry out an errand by Jack Crawford, the head of the FBI division that draws up psychological profiles of serial killers. Starling is to present a questionnaire to the brilliant forensic psychiatrist and cannibalistic serial killer, Hannibal Lecter. Lecter is serving nine consecutive life sentences in a Maryland mental institution for a series of murders. Crawford's real intention, however, is to try to solicit Lecter's assistance in the hunt for a serial killer dubbed "Buffalo Bill", whose modus operandi involves kidnapping overweight women, starving them for about three or four days, and then killing and skinning them, before dumping the remains in nearby rivers. The nickname was started by Kansas City Homicide, as a sick joke that "he likes to skin his humps." Throughout the investigation, Starling periodically returns

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to Lecter in search of information, and the two form a strange relationship in which he offers her cryptic clues in return for information about her troubled and bleak childhood as an orphan. When Bill's sixth victim is found in West Virginia, Starling helps Crawford perform the autopsy. Starling finds a pupa in the throat of the victim, and just as Lecter predicted, she has been scalped. Triangular patches of skin have also been taken from her shoulders. Furthermore, autopsy reports indicate that Bill had killed her within four days of her capture, much faster than his earlier victims. On the basis of Lecter's prediction, Starling believes that he knows who Buffalo Bill really is. She also asks why she was sent to fish for information on Buffalo Bill without being told she was doing so; Crawford explains that if she had had an agenda, Lecter would have sensed it and never spoken up. Starling takes the pupa to the Smithsonian, where it is eventually identified as the Black Witch moth, which would not naturally occur where the victim was found. In Tennessee, Catherine Baker Martin, daughter of Senator Ruth Martin, is kidnapped. Within six hours, her blouse is found on the roadside, slit up the back: Buffalo Bill's calling card. He traps her in an oubliette and begins to starve her. Crawford is advised that no less than the President of the United States has expressed "intense interest" in the case, and that a successful rescue is preferable. Crawford estimates they have three days before Catherine is killed. Starling is sent to Lecter with the offer of a deal: if he assists in Catherine's rescue and Buffalo Bill's capture, he will be transferred out of the asylum, something he has continually longed for. However, Lecter expresses skepticism at the genuineness of the offer. After Starling leaves, Lecter reminisces on the past, recalling a conversation with Benjamin Raspail, a former patient whom he had eventually murdered. During therapy sessions, Raspail told Lecter about a former lover, Jame Gumb: after Raspail left Gumb and began dating a sailor named Klaus, Gumb became jealous and murdered Klaus, using his skin to make an apron. Raspail also revealed that Gumb had an epiphany upon watching a moth hatch. Lecter's ruminations are interrupted when Dr. Frederick Chilton – the asylum's administrator and Lecter's nemesis – steps in. A listening device allowed him to record Starling's offer, and Chilton has found out that Crawford's deal is a lie. He offers one of his own: If Lecter reveals Buffalo

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Bill's identity, he will indeed get a transfer to another asylum, but only if Chilton gets credit for getting the information from him. Lecter insists that he'll only give the information to Senator Martin in person, in Tennessee. Chilton agrees. Unknown to Chilton, Lecter has previously hidden in his mouth a paperclip and some parts of a pen, which were mistakenly given to him by untrained orderlies over his many years at the asylum. He fashions the pen pieces and paperclip into an improvised lockpick, which he later uses to pick his handcuff locks. In Tennessee, Lecter toys with Senator Martin briefly, enjoying the woman's anguish, but eventually gives her some information about Buffalo Bill: his name is William "Billy" Rubin, and he has suffered from "elephant ivory anthrax", a knifemaker's disease. He also provides an accurate physical description. The name, however, is a red herring: bilirubin is a pigment in human bile and a chief coloring agent in human feces, which the forensic lab compares to the color of Chilton's hair. Starling tries one last time to get information from Lecter as he is about to be transferred. He offers a final clue – "we covet what we see every day" – and demands to hear her worst memory. Starling reveals that, after her father's death, she was sent to live with a cousin on a sheep and horse ranch. One night, she discovered the farmer slaughtering the spring lambs, and fled in terror with one of the slaughter horses whom she named Hannah. The farmer caught her and sent her to an orphanage, where she spent the rest of her childhood, along with Hannah. Lecter thanks her, and the two share a brief moment of connection before Chilton forces her to leave. Later on, she deduces from Lecter's clue that Buffalo Bill knew his first victim. Shortly after this, Lecter escapes by killing and eviscerating his guards, using one of their faces as a mask to fool paramedics. Starling continues her search for Buffalo Bill, eventually tracking him down and killing him, rescuing Catherine. She is made a full-fledged FBI agent, and receives a congratulatory telegram from Lecter, who hopes that "the lambs have stopped screaming". While writing the letter, Lecter notes to himself that, while he will track down Chilton, Clarice assumes, correctly, he will not come after her. He also predicts correctly that saving Catherine Martin may have granted Clarice some relief, but that the silence will never become eternal,

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heralding her motives for a continued career at the FBI. Clarice eventually finds rest even after Lecter's letter, sleeping peacefully "in the silence of the lambs".

Major Characters: Clarice Starling:-

Clarice is a young girl who is enrolled in the police academy. She is in the top of her class and wishes to attend work for Jack Crawford in Behavioral Science. She is very quiet, but also hardworking and not afraid to go after what she wants. She is a round character because we see many different sides of her in novel. She shows her raw and determined side at the beginning as she’s running through the forest training. There is another instance where she shows her softer, scarred side when she imagines her father in the coffin and goes go to the time when she was a little girl and he died. Clarice is also a dynamic character. She changes all throughout the novel. She starts off and a young, gentle girl just trying to make it through school and fulfill her dreams. She slowly shifts into a woman police officer none the less. Clarice deals with an internal conflict throughout the whole novel. She deals with the emotional turmoil of her childhood and she strives to overcome it. She lost her father at ten years old and was sent to live with her aunt, uncle, and cousins on their farm. She also endured an external conflict with Dr. Hannibal Lector. Dr. Lector was a psychiatrist with a twisted mind who got a rise out of eating his patients. 10

Clarice visited Lector multiple times trying to persuade him to assist her in finding the newest serial killer, Buffalo Bill. They developed a sort of odd relationship, talking about her life, his life, and going through the persuasion process. Clarice went through many significant actions throughout the novel. The events included her losing her father, finding the screaming lambs and running away, and also her tracking down Buffalo Bill, despite everyone else’s thoughts and opinions, and killing him.

 Hannibal Lecter:-

Hannibal Lecter,M.D., is arguably the most famous cannibal serial killer in fiction. He has enjoyed monstrous success ever since author Thomas Harris first breathed life into him. He is the quintessential villain turned anti-hero turned monster. A man of impeccable taste, his vast intellect, mastery over the arts, and talent in the kitchen are unimpeachable. He is as precise with the scalpel as he is with his insight into the human mind. A killer, through and through, he still follows a moral code; imparting a unique style of chaotic justice on the people around him. He is precise and methodical, thinning the herd and eliminating threats to his territory; just as any other apex predator would. Lecter is portrayed as intellectually brilliant, cultured and sophisticated, with refined tastes in art, music and cuisine. He is frequently depicted preparing gourmet meals from his victims' flesh, the most famous example being his admission that he once ate a census taker's liver with "big Amarone". He is well-educated in Anatomy, Chemistry and Physics and also speaks several languages, including Italian, German, Russian, Polish, French, Spanish, and, to some extent, Japanese.6 He is deeply offended by rudeness, and frequently kills people who have bad manners. Prior to his capture and imprisonment, he was a member of Baltimore, Maryland's social elite, and a sitting member of the Baltimore Philharmonic Orchestra's board of directors.

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In The Silence of the Lambs, Lecter is described through Starling's eyes: "small, sleek, and in his hands and arms she saw wiry strength like her own". The novel also reveals that Lecter's left hand has a condition called mid ray duplication polydactyly, i.e. a duplicated middle finger

 Jack Crawford:-

Jack Crawford is the head of the FBI's Behavioral Science Services. He's well-respected, and Clarice idolizes him as a father figure of sorts. A father who sends his daughter to interview the most dangerous and demented man on the planet, evidently. Despite Hannibal Lecter's insinuation that there's something sexual between them, we know Clarice doesn't feel that way. She wants to earn Crawford's respect, not a way into his pants. We don't know what he's thinking, though. His character is mainly used for exposition and driving the plot forward. It's Crawford who sends Clarice to interview Lecter. It's he who brings Clarice along when a new victim's body is found. But we do know that the respect goes both ways between them. He admires her determination in the Academy, saying "You grilled me pretty hard, as I recall, on the Bureau's Civil Rights record doing the Hoover years." And when he says, "I gave you an A," she corrects him: "A-minus, sir." He likes her brave frankness. This doesn't mean he isn't using her, though. He knows Lecter would respond to a female, and he uses Clarice to present the fake offer to Lecter. But can someone use a person and still respect them? We think Crawford can. He congratulates her and shakes her hand when she graduates, and tells her, "Your father would have been proud today." And Crawford is proud, too.

 Buffalo Bill:-

Jame Gumb (known by the nickname Buffalo Bill) is a character and the primary antagonist of Thomas Harris's 1988 novel The Silence of the Lambs and its 1991 film adaptation, in which he is played by Ted Levine. In the film and the novel, he is a serial

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killerwho murders overweight women and skins them so he can make a "woman suit" for himself. According to the novel, Gumb was born in California on October 25, 1949, and abandoned by his mother – an alcoholic sex worker who misspelled "James" on his birth certificate – and taken into foster care at age two. The screenplay omits Gumb's backstory, but does imply that he had a traumatic childhood. Lecter summarizes Gumb's life thus: "Billy was not born a criminal, but made one by years of systematic abuse." The novel goes on to tell of Gumb living in foster homes until the age of 10 before being adopted by his grandparents, who became his first victims. The story then puts him in Tulare Vocational Rehabilitation, a psychiatric hospital where he learns to be a tailor. Later, Gumb has a relationship with Benjamin Raspail. After Raspail leaves him, he kills Raspail's new lover, Klaus, and flays him. Both the novel and film depict Gumb as a tortured and self-hating individual. Believing himself to be transgender, he wants to become a woman but is too psychologically disturbed to qualify for gender reassignment surgery. He kills women so he can skin them and create a "woman suit" for himself. Modus operandi:Gumb's modus operandi is to approach a woman, pretending to be injured and asking for help, then knock her out in a surprise attack and kidnap her. He takes her to his house and leaves her in a well in his basement, where he starves her until her skin is loose enough to easily remove. In the first two cases, he leads the victims upstairs, slips nooses around their necks and pushes them from the stairs, strangling them. He then skins parts of their body (a different section on each victim), and then dumps each body into a different river, destroying any trace of evidence.

Reception of the book The novel was a great success. Craig Brown of The Mail on Sunday wrote, "No thriller writer is better attuned than Thomas Harris to the rhythms of suspense. No horror writer is more adept at making the stomach churn". The Independent wrote, "Utterly gripping", and Amazon.com wrote, "...driving suspense, compelling characters,...a well-executed thriller..." Children's novelist Roald Dahl also greatly enjoyed the novel, describing it as "subtle, horrific and splendid,

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the best book I have read in a long time". Author David Foster Wallace used the book as part of his curriculum while teaching at Pomona College and later included the book as well as Harris's Red Dragon on his list of ten favorite novels. John Dunning says of Silence of the Lambs: [it is] "simply the best thriller I've read in five years". Accolades:

The novel won the 1988 Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel.

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The novel also won the 1989 Anthony Award for Best Novel.

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It was nominated for the 1989 World Fantasy Award.

Film adaptation Following the 1986 adaptation of Red Dragon (filmed as Manhunter), The Silence of the Lambs was adapted by Jonathan Demme in 1991. The Silence of the Lambs became the third film in Oscar history to win the following five Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Screenplay. It stars Jodie Foster as Clarice Starling and Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter.

Writing Style

The point of view in The Silence of the Lambs shifts from character to character, as needed to heighten the drama. Predominantly, the story is told from Starling's first person point of view. However, Starling cannot be present during some of the critical scenes, such as Gumb's abduction of Catherine Martin. Therefore, the author switches to both Catherine's and Gumb's points of view to communicate these vital details. The author's choice to avoid using an omniscient narrative point of view lends to the suspense. By switching the point of view back and forth between the characters, the author makes sure the reader is always more in the know than the investigators. However, it would not serve the author's purpose to give too much away too soon. Thus, he omits the omniscient narrator. By restricting the point of view to the actual knowledge of the characters Fellow novelist Stephen King has remarked that if writing is sometimes tedious for other authors, to Harris it is like "writhing on the floor in agonies of frustration", because, for Harris, 14

"the very act of writing is a kind of torment". Novelist John Dunning said of Harris, "All he is is a talent of the first rank."

My Viewpoint Plotlines surrounding the FBI and its special crime investigation units have become one of the most dry, dull and horribly overdone novel themes. The rush that once came with reading about the advanced technology that American law enforcement agencies used, and the classic confrontation between the villain and the protagonist while an armed and dangerous SWAT team wait nearby, has faded. The Silence of the Lambs stands alone in being, I personally believe, the only FBI-centred novel worth reading.

Clarice Starling, still doing her years at the training academy and a part of the Bureau's behavioral sciences unit, is called upon to participate in one of the goriest, strangest cases the Bureau has ever seen. She is sent to talk to Hannibal Lecter, an ex-psychologist who is currently residing in a high security mental asylum. Lecter, having been sentenced to a whole life in an asylum due to his cannibalistic tendencies, establishes an odd sort of relationship with Starling. They work together, to track the movements and the thoughts of a fast-moving psychopath. A strange partnership emerges as secrets from Starling's past are revealed. It isn't the fact that there's a man capable of murder on the loose that scares her, it's the man who's safe behind bars that does. There's your run-of-the-mill crime novels, and then there's The Silence of the Lambs. Reading the former would be a great way to pass the time of day and learn the elaborate terms used in criminology. The latter will haunt you till the very end and raise your perceptions of a good mystery novel.

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Harris' eye for detail is incredible. He is gifted with the rare ability to inject a haunting sense of nonchalance into the oddest of scenarios. The questions that are left running through the reader's mind at the end of novel are almost painful. This is possibly one of the only novels I've read, where the chain of events and level of description almost rivals the characters themselves (Hannibal Lecter excepted). There are two brilliantly villainous characters in this book. The rather obvious one being the murderer who the FBI pursues throughout the novel. The rather less obvious one being the genius locked up in the asylum, who helps in solving the case and has thoughts, sinister beyond imagining, running through his head.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

 The Silence Of The Lambs by Thomas Harris  www.study.com  www.supersummary.com  www.gradesaver.com 16

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