Clarice Starling
Encyclopedia
Clarice M. Starling is a fictional character
and the protagonist
in the novel
s The Silence of the Lambs
and Hannibal
by Thomas Harris
.
In the film adaptation of The Silence of the Lambs, she is played by Jodie Foster
, while in the film adaptation of Hannibal
, she is played by Julianne Moore
.
Clarice Starling, as portrayed by Foster, was ranked the sixth greatest protagonist in film history on AFI's
100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains
, making her the highest-ranking heroine.
s and ultimately apprehending them. 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, which 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.
She tells Lecter that she was raised in a small town in West Virginia
with her father, a police officer. When she was about 10 years old, her father was shot when responding to a robbery; he died a month after the incident. 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 (the title of the book refers to her being haunted by the screaming she heard from the lambs).
She spent the rest of her childhood in a Lutheran
orphanage
. She graduated from the University of Virginia
and applied to the FBI's training school.
During the investigation, Starling is assigned to coax Lecter into revealing Buffalo Bill's identity; Lecter gives her clues 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 during a transfer engineered by Chilton to a state prison in Tennessee
, Starling feels that he "would consider it rude" to attack her by surprise and kill her without talking to her first.
Starling deduces from Lecter's hints that Buffalo Bill's first victim had a personal relationship with him, and so goes to the victim's home in Belvedere, Ohio
, to interview people who knew her. She unknowingly stumbles onto the killer himself, Jame Gumb (he is living under the alias "Jack Gordon" when they meet). When she sees a Death's Head moth, the same rare kind that Bill stuffs in the throats of each of his victims, flutter through the house, she knows that she has found 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 turns off the electricity in the basement, and stalks Starling through the rooms wearing night vision goggles
. He is about to shoot her when she hears him behind her and opens fire into the darkness, killing him. The victim is rescued.
Weeks later, Lecter writes Starling a letter from a hotel room somewhere in Detroit asking her if the lambs have stopped screaming.
The final scene of the novel has Starling sleeping peacefully at a friend's vacation house at the Maryland
seashore.
. She takes part in a bungled drug raid, in which she returns fire after a drug kingpin fires at her, using an infant as a hostage; her superiors blame her for the resulting mess, and she is removed from active duty, mostly at Krendler's instigation. She receives a supportive letter from Lecter, who is (unknown to her at the time) residing in Florence
, Italy
. One of Lecter's surviving victims, a sadistic pedophile named Mason Verger, is searching for Lecter and has offered a huge reward, which a corrupt Florentine police inspector named Pazzi
tries to claim when he deduces Lecter's true identity in Florence.
Starling finds out that Lecter is in Florence and attempts to warn Pazzi. As Starling predicted, Lecter knows about the plot to capture him and, as a result, he kills Pazzi. Lecter then flees to the United States and immediately starts to follow Starling. Starling, meanwhile, is being harassed at the FBI by various corrupt agents, especially by Krendler, who is secretly assisting Verger in his attempt to capture Lecter. Starling attempts to find Lecter first, not only to capture him but also to save him from Verger. Krendler has been framing Starling by planting falsified letters from Lecter; this only results in her being suspended, but she is now powerless to stop Verger's men. Lecter is captured by Verger, who plans to feed him to a pack of wild boars.
Starling is aware that Lecter is being held by Verger, so she attempts to save him. She is wounded in the ensuing gunfight; Lecter rescues her and nurses her back to health. He then subjects her to a regimen of mind-altering drugs and classical conditioning
in an attempt to make her believe she is his long-dead sister, Mischa.
During this time, Lecter captures Krendler and performs a craniotomy
on him while he is still alive. During an elaborate dinner, Lecter scoops spoonfuls of Krendler's forebrain to saute with lemon and caper
s. In the novel, he feeds Krendler's brain to Starling, who finds it delicious.
Lecter's plan to brainwash Starling ultimately fails, as she refuses to have her own personality sublimated. Then, in the novel's most controversial sequence, she opens her dress and offers her breast to Lecter; he accepts her offer and the two became lovers. They disappear together, only to be sighted again three years later entering the Teatro Colón opera house in Buenos Aires
by former orderly Barney Matthews, who had befriended and respected Lecter while he was incarcerated in Baltimore. Fearing for his life, Barney leaves Buenos Aires immediately, never to return.
significantly diverges from the novel's conclusion, with no reference being made to Lecter's attempts to brainwash her. After Starling refuses to eat Krendler's brain, Lecter tries to overpower her, prompting her to handcuff herself to him in an attempt to keep him in the house before the police arrive. Realizing that the only means of escape is cutting Starling's hand off, Lecter instead chooses to cut off his own hand and escapes, leaving Starling to explain the situation to the police.
Although she won the Academy Award For Best Actress
for playing Starling in The Silence of the Lambs, Jodie Foster
decided not to reprise her role in Hannibal. Julianne Moore
portrayed the character in the sequel, with Anthony Hopkins
himself recommending her for the role after his previous experience working with her in the film Surviving Picasso
.
Fictional character
A character is the representation of a person in a narrative work of art . Derived from the ancient Greek word kharaktêr , the earliest use in English, in this sense, dates from the Restoration, although it became widely used after its appearance in Tom Jones in 1749. From this, the sense of...
and the protagonist
Protagonist
A protagonist is the main character of a literary, theatrical, cinematic, or musical narrative, around whom the events of the narrative's plot revolve and with whom the audience is intended to most identify...
in the novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
s The Silence of the Lambs
The Silence of the Lambs (novel)
The Silence of the Lambs is a 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.- Plot summary :The novel takes...
and Hannibal
Hannibal (novel)
Hannibal is a novel written by Thomas Harris, 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...
by Thomas Harris
Thomas Harris
Thomas Harris is an American author and screenwriter, best known for a series of suspense novels about his most famous character, Hannibal Lecter...
.
In the film adaptation of The Silence of the Lambs, she is played by Jodie Foster
Jodie Foster
Alicia Christian "Jodie" Foster is an American actress, film director, producer as well as a former child actress....
, while in the film adaptation of Hannibal
Hannibal (film)
Hannibal is a 2001 psychological thriller film directed by Ridley Scott, adapted from the Thomas Harris novel of the same name. It is a sequel to the 1991 Academy Award-winning film The Silence of the Lambs that returns Anthony Hopkins to his iconic role as serial killer Hannibal Lecter...
, she is played by Julianne Moore
Julianne Moore
Julianne Moore is an American actress and a children's book author. Throughout her career, she has been nominated for four Oscars, six Golden Globes, three BAFTAs and nine Screen Actors Guild Awards....
.
Clarice Starling, as portrayed by Foster, was ranked the sixth greatest protagonist in film history on AFI's
American Film Institute
The American Film Institute is an independent non-profit organization created by the National Endowment for the Arts, which was established in 1967 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act...
100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains is a list of the 100 greatest screen characters chosen by American Film Institute in June 2003. It is part of the AFI 100 Years… series. The series was first presented in a CBS special hosted by Arnold Schwarzenegger...
, making her the highest-ranking heroine.
The Silence of the Lambs
In The Silence of the Lambs, Starling is a student at the FBI Academy. She hopes to work at the Behavioral Science Unit, tracking down serial killerSerial killer
A serial killer, as typically defined, is an individual who has murdered three or more people over a period of more than a month, with down time between the murders, and whose motivation for killing is usually based on psychological gratification...
s and ultimately apprehending them. Her mentor, FBI director Jack Crawford
Jack Crawford (character)
Jack Crawford is a fictional character who appears in the Hannibal Lecter series of books by Thomas Harris, in which Crawford is the Agent-in-Charge of the Behavioral Science Unit of the FBI in Quantico, Virginia. He is modeled after John E...
, sends her to interview Dr. Hannibal Lecter
Hannibal Lecter
Hannibal Lecter M.D. is a fictional character in a series of horror novels by Thomas Harris and in the films adapted from them.Lecter was introduced in the 1981 thriller novel Red Dragon as a brilliant psychiatrist and cannibalistic serial killer...
, a brilliant psychiatrist and cannibalistic
Cannibalism
Cannibalism is the act or practice of humans eating the flesh of other human beings. It is also called anthropophagy...
serial killer. He is housed in a Baltimore
Baltimore
Baltimore is the largest independent city in the United States and the largest city and cultural center of the US state of Maryland. The city is located in central Maryland along the tidal portion of the Patapsco River, an arm of the Chesapeake Bay. Baltimore is sometimes referred to as Baltimore...
mental institution. Upon arriving at the asylum for her first interview with Lecter, the asylum manager Frederick Chilton
Frederick Chilton
Dr. Frederick Chilton is a fictional character appearing in Thomas Harris' novels Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs.-Red Dragon:...
makes a crude pass at her, which 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.
She tells Lecter that she was raised in a small town in West Virginia
West Virginia
West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian and Southeastern regions of the United States, bordered by Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Ohio to the northwest, Pennsylvania to the northeast and Maryland to the east...
with her father, a police officer. When she was about 10 years old, her father was shot when responding to a robbery; he died a month after the incident. Starling was sent to live with her uncle on a Montana
Montana
Montana is a state in the Western United States. The western third of Montana contains numerous mountain ranges. Smaller, "island ranges" are found in the central third of the state, for a total of 77 named ranges of the Rocky Mountains. This geographical fact is reflected in the state's name,...
sheep and horse farm, from which she briefly ran away in horror when she witnessed the lambs being slaughtered (the title of the book refers to her being haunted by the screaming she heard from the lambs).
She spent the rest of her childhood in a Lutheran
Lutheranism
Lutheranism is a major branch of Western Christianity that identifies with the theology of Martin Luther, a German reformer. Luther's efforts to reform the theology and practice of the church launched the Protestant Reformation...
orphanage
Orphanage
An orphanage is a residential institution devoted to the care of orphans – children whose parents are deceased or otherwise unable or unwilling to care for them...
. She graduated from the University of Virginia
University of Virginia
The University of Virginia is a public research university located in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States, founded by Thomas Jefferson...
and applied to the FBI's training school.
During the investigation, Starling is assigned to coax Lecter into revealing Buffalo Bill's identity; Lecter gives her clues 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 during a transfer engineered by Chilton to a state prison in Tennessee
Tennessee
Tennessee is a U.S. state located in the Southeastern United States. It has a population of 6,346,105, making it the nation's 17th-largest state by population, and covers , making it the 36th-largest by total land area...
, Starling feels that he "would consider it rude" to attack her by surprise and kill her without talking to her first.
Starling deduces from Lecter's hints that Buffalo Bill's first victim had a personal relationship with him, and so goes to the victim's home in Belvedere, Ohio
Belvedere, Ohio
Belvedere is a populated place near Bloomingdale in Jefferson County, Ohio, United States.Belvedere, Ohio is also the name of a fictional town depicted in the novel The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris, as well as the 1991 motion picture based on the novel....
, to interview people who knew her. She unknowingly stumbles onto the killer himself, Jame Gumb (he is living under the alias "Jack Gordon" when they meet). When she sees a Death's Head moth, the same rare kind that Bill stuffs in the throats of each of his victims, flutter through the house, she knows that she has found 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 turns off the electricity in the basement, and stalks Starling through the rooms wearing night vision goggles
Night vision goggles
A night vision device is an optical instrument that allows images to be produced in levels of light approaching total darkness. They are most often used by the military and law enforcement agencies, but are available to civilian users...
. He is about to shoot her when she hears him behind her and opens fire into the darkness, killing him. The victim is rescued.
Weeks later, Lecter writes Starling a letter from a hotel room somewhere in Detroit asking her if the lambs have stopped screaming.
The final scene of the novel has Starling sleeping peacefully at a friend's vacation house at the Maryland
Maryland
Maryland is a U.S. state located in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware to its east...
seashore.
Hannibal
In Hannibal, Starling is in her early thirties and a full-fledged FBI agent, although her career has been held back by a vengeful superior, Paul Krendler, at the Department of JusticeUnited States Department of Justice
The United States Department of Justice , is the United States federal executive department responsible for the enforcement of the law and administration of justice, equivalent to the justice or interior ministries of other countries.The Department is led by the Attorney General, who is nominated...
. She takes part in a bungled drug raid, in which she returns fire after a drug kingpin fires at her, using an infant as a hostage; her superiors blame her for the resulting mess, and she is removed from active duty, mostly at Krendler's instigation. She receives a supportive letter from Lecter, who is (unknown to her at the time) residing in Florence
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
, Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
. One of Lecter's surviving victims, a sadistic pedophile named Mason Verger, is searching for Lecter and has offered a huge reward, which a corrupt Florentine police inspector named Pazzi
Pazzi
The Pazzi family were an ancient, noble Tuscan family who had given up their titles so that members could be elected to public office. Their main trade, during the 15th century was banking. They are linked to the "Pazzi conspiracy"—to assassinate Giuliano de' Medici and simultaneously attempt...
tries to claim when he deduces Lecter's true identity in Florence.
Starling finds out that Lecter is in Florence and attempts to warn Pazzi. As Starling predicted, Lecter knows about the plot to capture him and, as a result, he kills Pazzi. Lecter then flees to the United States and immediately starts to follow Starling. Starling, meanwhile, is being harassed at the FBI by various corrupt agents, especially by Krendler, who is secretly assisting Verger in his attempt to capture Lecter. Starling attempts to find Lecter first, not only to capture him but also to save him from Verger. Krendler has been framing Starling by planting falsified letters from Lecter; this only results in her being suspended, but she is now powerless to stop Verger's men. Lecter is captured by Verger, who plans to feed him to a pack of wild boars.
Classical conditioning
Classical conditioning is a form of conditioning that was first demonstrated by Ivan Pavlov...
in an attempt to make her believe she is his long-dead sister, Mischa.
During this time, Lecter captures Krendler and performs a craniotomy
Craniotomy
A craniotomy is a surgical operation in which a bone flap is temporarily removed from the skull to access the brain. Craniotomies are often a critical operation performed on patients recording, brain imaging, and for neurological manipulations such as electrical stimulation and chemical...
on him while he is still alive. During an elaborate dinner, Lecter scoops spoonfuls of Krendler's forebrain to saute with lemon and caper
Caper
Capparis spinosa, the caper bush, is a perennial winter-deciduous species that bears rounded, fleshy leaves and large white to pinkish-white flowers. A caper is also the pickled bud of this plant...
s. In the novel, he feeds Krendler's brain to Starling, who finds it delicious.
Lecter's plan to brainwash Starling ultimately fails, as she refuses to have her own personality sublimated. Then, in the novel's most controversial sequence, she opens her dress and offers her breast to Lecter; he accepts her offer and the two became lovers. They disappear together, only to be sighted again three years later entering the Teatro Colón opera house in Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
by former orderly Barney Matthews, who had befriended and respected Lecter while he was incarcerated in Baltimore. Fearing for his life, Barney leaves Buenos Aires immediately, never to return.
Films
In the film adaptation of The Silence of the Lambs, Starling's role remains relatively unchanged from the book but HannibalHannibal (film)
Hannibal is a 2001 psychological thriller film directed by Ridley Scott, adapted from the Thomas Harris novel of the same name. It is a sequel to the 1991 Academy Award-winning film The Silence of the Lambs that returns Anthony Hopkins to his iconic role as serial killer Hannibal Lecter...
significantly diverges from the novel's conclusion, with no reference being made to Lecter's attempts to brainwash her. After Starling refuses to eat Krendler's brain, Lecter tries to overpower her, prompting her to handcuff herself to him in an attempt to keep him in the house before the police arrive. Realizing that the only means of escape is cutting Starling's hand off, Lecter instead chooses to cut off his own hand and escapes, leaving Starling to explain the situation to the police.
Although she won the Academy Award For Best Actress
Academy Award for Best Actress
Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role is one of the Academy Awards of merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry...
for playing Starling in The Silence of the Lambs, Jodie Foster
Jodie Foster
Alicia Christian "Jodie" Foster is an American actress, film director, producer as well as a former child actress....
decided not to reprise her role in Hannibal. Julianne Moore
Julianne Moore
Julianne Moore is an American actress and a children's book author. Throughout her career, she has been nominated for four Oscars, six Golden Globes, three BAFTAs and nine Screen Actors Guild Awards....
portrayed the character in the sequel, with Anthony Hopkins
Anthony Hopkins
Sir Philip Anthony Hopkins, KBE , best known as Anthony Hopkins, is a Welsh actor of film, stage and television...
himself recommending her for the role after his previous experience working with her in the film Surviving Picasso
Surviving Picasso
Surviving Picasso is a 1996 Merchant Ivory Film starring Anthony Hopkins as the painter Pablo Picasso. It was shot in Paris and southern France.It was directed by James Ivory and produced by Ismail Merchant and David L. Wolper...
.