15 Murder is perhaps the single most serious criminal offense. Depending on
the circumstances surrounding the killing, a person who convicted of murder may sentenced to many years in prison.
According to Clarkson 1994 the precise definition of murder varies jurisdction to jurisdiction. The Law of murder is set out in common law. The legal
definition of murder is ‘the unlawful killing of a human being in the Queen’s peace, with malice aforethought’ which has been interpreted by the courts as
meaning Intention to kill or intention to cause GBH Grievous bodily harm.
3.2 The Main Characters
There are 2 killers in this Novel; Dr. Hannibal Lecter and JameGumb. There are also other two protagonist in this novel; Clarice Starling and Jack
Crawford. In this part the writer would to tell the description of main characters in this novel.
Dr. Hannibal Lecter or most commonly called Lecter was a small and
sleek man, but was deceptively strong. His left hand had a condition called mid ray duplication polydactyly, i.e. a duplicated middle finger. Lecters eyes were a
shade of maroon, and reflected the light in pinpoints of red. He also had small white teeth and dark, slicked-back hair with a widows peak.
He did not fit any known psychological profile, though Frederick Chilton classified him as a pure sociopath”. However, unlike subjects with sociopath,
Lecter did not showany pleasure from killing, which would have resulted in an accelerated heart rate. When he killed two police officers upon his escape from
16 custody, his heart rate did not exceed 90; the heightened rate of 90 was due to the
exertion of beating one of the officers to death with a police baton. Lecter simply described himself as being evil, stating that psychiatry is puerile, and wrong to
categorize different kinds of evil as different behavioral conditions. According to Vary 2010 Lecter then supported this by stating that the
inconsistencies in his behavior were traits of pure evil, and that he did not possess a behavioral abnormality. Dr. Lecters unique intellect and memory was the
product of a well-developed ArsMemoriae, or Memory Palace, a form of mnemonic discipline.
JameGumb Buffalo Bill is a character and the primary antagonist of
Thomas Harriss 1989 novel The Silence of the Lambs. He is a serial killer who murders overweight women and skins them so he can make a woman suit for
himself. 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 Raspails new lover, Klaus, and flays him.
Gumbwants to become a woman but being too disturbed to qualify for gender reassignment surgery. He kills women so he can skin them and create a
woman suit for himself. He is described as not transgender, but merely believing himself to be because he hates his own identity.
Jack Crawford is the AgentinCharge of the Behavioral Science Unit of
the FBI in Quantico, Virginia. Crawford is stumped in trying to determine who Buffalo Bill is, and is forced to once again call upon Lecter for assistance. This
17 time, however, Crawford sends an FBI trainee, Clarice Starling, to interview him.
By way of information obtained from Lecter, Crawford and the FBI attempt to track down the killer, JameGumb. However, the address they obtain for him is out
of date. Gumb had killed the employer of one of his former victims and moved into her house to use its large basement, which contains a disused and empty well.
He uses the well as a make shift holding space for his victims. Realizing that Buffalo Bill probably knew his first victim, FredricaBimmel, Starling sets about
interviewing everyone close to her and ends up stumbling upon Gumbs house. By the time Crawford and his men arrive, Starling has single handedly killed Gumb
and rescued his intended victim. Crawford is struggling under a double burden, as he is caring for
his terminally ill wife, Bella, at home while leading the investigation into the Buffalo Bill case.
Clarice Starling is a student at the FBI Academy. Her mentor, FBI
director Jack Crawford, sends her to interview Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a brilliant psychiatrist and cannibalistic serial killer. He is housed in a Baltimore mental
institution. Upon arriving at the asylum for her first interview with Lecter, the asylum manager Frederick Chilton makes a crude pass at her, whom she rebuffs;
this helps her bond with Lecter, who also despises Chilton. As time passes, Lecter gives Starling information about Buffalo Bill, a currently active serial killer being
hunted by the FBI, but only in exchange for personal information, which Crawford has specifically warned her to keep secret from Lecter.
18 According Schneider 2012 Clarice toldLecter that she was raised in a
small town in West Virginia with her father, a town marshal. When she was about 10 years old, her father was shot when responding to a robbery; he died a month
after the incident. Her mother subsequently worked as a hotel chambermaid, but was unable to support her entire family without a life insurance settlement from
her husbands death. Starling was sent to live with her uncle on a Montana sheep and horse farm, from which she briefly ran away in horror when she witnessed the
lambs being slaughtered. She spent the rest of her childhood in a Lutheran orphanage. Starling
attended the University of Virginia as a double major in psychology and criminology. During that time, she spent two summers working as a counselor in a
mental health center. Starling first met Jack Crawford when he was a guest lecturer at UVA. His criminology seminars were a factor in her decision to join
the FBI.
3.3 The motives Dr. Hannibal for Killing People
