Inspector Pazzi just hit the jackpot. He was working a case involving a missing professor and seemed bored with the assignment, until he noticed his co-worker recording a surveillance tape that had someone in it that looked familiar, a Dr. Fell as he knew him. Turns out this Dr. Fell was actually Hannibal Lecter and Mason Verger a surviving victim of Lecter’s was going to pay a ransom for Hannibal’s whereabouts. Pazzi cashes in, and takes his wife Allegra to the opera.

Hannibal spots him, and goes up to Pazzi and Allegra to talk about the opera. It was by Dante, the poem that Allegra reads is not actually correct, but it is pretty good. Harris modified the original just a bit to fit better in his work, Harris’s version goes like this:

He woke her then, and trembling and obedient

She ate that burning heart out of his hands;

Weeping, I saw him then depart from me.

Could he daily feel a stab of hunger for her

And find nourishment in the very sight of her?

I think so.

Would she see through the bars of his plight

And ache for him?

The dynamic between Clarice and Lecter is interesting. She meets Lecter as a student at the FBI academy. She was to learn from him. Lecter becomes interested in her, she has a moral compass and a sense of duty for the innocent that Lecter admires. She divulges her childhood trauma to Lecter and he can’t help but be attracted to her plight and duty to protect those who cannot protect themselves. He feels he needs her to calm his own demons of childhood from his lost sister Mischa who was killed in the war by disbanded Soviet soldiers looking for loot.

Hannibal Lecter asks Clarice if she would ever beg him to stop, “if you loved me, you’d stop,” to test her character and see if she could be manipulated, even when facing their complex, twisted bond. Her refusal to use their connection to control him—”Not in a thousand years”—impressed him, and he ultimately chose not to harm her in that moment. He was testing whether she would abandon her moral principles to save herself, and her response demonstrated the same unwavering integrity he admired in her from the start. 

The very sight and presence of Clarice was all the gratification Lecter was seeking.

Author: admin

Obviously my interests include philosophy. I think thinking and thought are the beginning of every great thing. It’s how we understand and perceive the world. Periodically I’ll change things up and blog about something math or computer science related or even a blog about mythology. I am not political, trendy, or savvy, but I do like a good story. That is why I try and find a movie clip that hints or encompasses what I want to blog about. Sometimes the relevance is there, sometimes it’s a reach and I just really love the movie that I put in the post. The intent and purpose of my blog is to make you think, make me think and together our thoughts can be shared in a collection of material.