54 pages • 1 hour read
Thomas HarrisHannibal
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1999A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Inheritance and Generational Trauma
Mason Verger knows a great deal about breeding. As the inheritor of a vast fortune and the privilege that this attends, he has also inherited his father's interest in breeding pigs. As such, he knows how to select for certain behaviors in one generation so that they manifest in the next. The privileged, spoiled, rich young man breeds a group of pigs especially for the purpose of his revenge, turning his father's fascination into a weapon against his enemies. Margot Verger, raised in a similar environment with similar genetics, does not exhibit the same inherited behaviors. Rather, all she inherits is trauma at the hands of her brother and father. She does not believe that she is defined by her family, though, ironically, she is forced to acquire her brother's sperm to produce a Verger child for the purposes of financial inheritance. Margot and Mason wrestle with their inheritance, behavior, and wealth, which determines their actions into adulthood, often recreating trauma from the past.
Pazzi and Starling share a similar relationship to generational trauma. They are both law enforcement officers who come to take a conflicting attitude toward institutions, as determined by their ancestry. Pazzi comes from a family of famous conspirators who were publicly executed in Florence. Given the fame of his family, everyone knows him for a traitorous legacy. As such, he resents the institutions—the police force and the media—that force him to carry his family shame around. Unlike Pazzi who inherits family shame, Starling seems to inherit her father’s deep moral investment in law and order as she follows in his footsteps as a law enforcement officer. However, Starling's father died when she was young, and that trauma has such a lasting effect on her that she tries to recreate her father in multiple authority figures. This trauma is only compounded as each of these father figures is also lost. As Lecter suggests, she is like a deep roller pigeon who runs the risk of rolling too deeply and hurting herself. She runs the risk of investing too much in the institutions that did not protect her father. Ultimately, she and Pazzi both abandon their lingering investment in law enforcement. Pazzi embraces the treachery of his past and sells Lecter to Mason, while Starling abandons her inherited profession and joins Lecter.
As a singular character, Lecter seems to exist outside the boundaries of inherited behaviors or generational trauma. Any psychologist who has interviewed him, Barney mentions, is forced to admit that there seems to be no precedent for his actions. Lecter seems to transcend scientific ideas such as expected behaviors, which is why so many people refer to him in supernatural terms such as pure evil or satanic. Locked inside Lecter's mind palace, however, is a deep reserve of violent, cannibalistic trauma. The death of Mischa is revealed as the ultimate of generational traumas. Specifically, her death creates such an imprint that readers are invited to question whether Lecter was destined to recreate this trauma through his own criminal behavior. The novel investigates the idea of inherited trauma and concludes that a person's environment has a far greater influence on their expected behavior than any genetic material. In the battle between nature and nurture, Hannibal arrives at the decision that nurture is the far more influential of the two.
The Relationship Between Gender and Revenge
Mason Verger’s lust for revenge is closely related to his sense of sexuality and masculinity. He feels a need to revenge himself against Hannibal Lecter, not just for his self-inflicted disfigurement but because revenge gives him a sense of power that he has lost in his physical paralysis. Within the context of the novel’s interest in sexism and misogyny, Mason’s unwavering pursuit of revenge against Lecter strikes similar notes to Captain Ahab’s pursuit of the white whale in Moby Dick—a text long interpreted for its masculine metaphors. Notable as well is Mason’s elaborately planned method for exacting his revenge. He plans for specially bred pigs to devour Lecter alive. Mason is not content to simply kill Lecter, but he needs for Lecter’s body to completely disappear. Lecter destroyed Mason’s ability to physically abuse—his potency—so Mason must remove Lecter from existence. He could easily have paid to kill Lecter in a quick and easy fashion, both before and after Lecter's escape from incarceration. The elaborate nature of the revenge demonstrates that the act itself is what has meaning, rather than Lecter's death.
Less spectacular is Krendler’s desire to revenge himself against Starling, who outshines him and caught James Gumb when he could not. Yet Krendler’s inability to resist throwing sexist insults at Starling—even taking the time to plan those insults out—suggests something deeper than jealousy. Her gender seems to offend him most, especially in her rejection of his sexual advances, and while he does not invest in his revenge the same way as Mason, his ongoing relationship with Mason creates a parallel that highlights their similar anxieties over their threatened masculinity.
Unlike the men who seem to be undone by their relentless pursuit of revenge and retainment of masculine power, Margot and Starling each exact revenge in ways that are far more about creating justice in the world rather than obtaining power. Margot wants revenge on her brother for a lifetime of abuse, and while she does bodybuilding to have some kind of power and control in her life, she aims to recreate a family rather than explicitly exact revenge on Mason. Indeed, Margot lets Lecter take credit for Mason’s death at her hands. Similarly, Starling does not explicitly seek revenge against the men and institutions that have wronged her. Even though she struggles with office politics, she tolerates Krendler’s slimy personality and resolutely stands strong in the face of great injustice. Her resolve is admired by the other female law enforcement officers, one of whom confesses that she and other women consider Starling to be special. Ultimately, her revenge comes in the form of abdication. After yet another example of corrupt, sexist institutions betraying her, she turns her back on the police, the FBI, and law enforcement. She does not fight back; she merely withdraws into the shadows.
Worth noting as well is the line that Lecter seems to frequently traverse in his relationship to revenge. Unlike Mason and Krendler who seek revenge to regain power, Lecter often exacts revenge more like the women of the text. Krendler’s death scene is domestic, and Lecter invites him to dinner. Indeed, Lecter seems unconcerned that Krendler is unaware of what is happening to him, whereas Mason needed Lecter to know who was torturing him. Yet Hannibal does illustrate Lecter’s vulnerabilities that he tries to overcome through highly spectacular murder and show of power. Lecter’s memories of Mischa and his projection of her onto Starling frame all his murderous deeds as revenge against a world that took his sister away. In this way, he seems almost paternal, striving to avenge and protect these women in a possessive way.
Violence as an Art Form
Hannibal explores the idea of violence as an art form, particularly through the competing methodologies of Mason Verger and Hannibal Lecter. For Mason, violence is a brutal and self-satisfying impulse. He often abuses children, including his own sister, and has no compunction about inflicting violence on anyone else. This violence, however, is rarely for public consumption. It is quick, dirty, and inelegant. By contrast, Lecter is equally as invested in violence, but he treats everything as a public art performance. Whether he is recreating medieval medical paintings, reenacting historical executions, or arranging his victim in a Norse sacrificial pose, his violence has an artistic element that distinguishes him from Mason. When Mason does want to plan something more elaborate, he needs years. He breeds an entire litter of specialized pigs because he envies Lecter's capacity for artistic violence and wishes to replicate it. Still, Mason is a brutal, impulsive, and uncultured man. He commits acts of violence, but they contain no narrative elements, which often attend Lecter’s acts. Lecter, conversely, has the cultural knowledge and the creativity to craft artistic expressions of violence at a moment's notice. Both men may share a penchant for violence, but the artistic quality of their violence separates them.
The branches of law enforcement portrayed in the novel also explore the concept of violence as an art form, particularly in terms of sporting achievement. Starling and Brigham are presented sympathetically in the novel. They are both champion markspersons who have elevated their shooting technique to near artistic heights. Their talent shows a healthy respect for the violence they are capable of inflicting on other people. When Starling fires her gun, she does so knowing how hard she has worked on her talent for hitting the right spot. There is more to her violence than simple, visceral pleasure or—as evidence by the contrasting local police officers—a habitual means to an end. Most law enforcement officers do not respect the fact that they are the entrusted enforcers of state violence. Only those who show violence the healthy respect it deserves, like Starling, are those who receive sympathetic portrayals in the novel.
The portrayal of violence as an art form or an expression of refined sporting talent does signify the important social meaning of violence. Rather than simple murders, Lecter's attacks are works of art that go down in the institutional history of the FBI. He becomes part of a public discourse through his work, which appears on the nightly news and the front page of the tabloids. Similarly, Starling's violent shootout receives similar coverage. There is an attempt to frame both Starling and Lecter in the same manner in the press, referring to Starling as a “DEATH ANGEL” (23), replicating the lurid headlines that accompanied Lecter's crimes. In contrast, Mason's violence does not make the front page. He lacks spectacle and panache, operating from the shadows for his own personal pleasure. The link between violence and art is not always desired (as in the case of Starling), but it is necessary to win sympathy from the narrative of the novel. In Hannibal, anything done well—from murder, to cooking, to driving, to shooting—is worthy of at least some modicum of respect. In contrast, those who lack any flair or intellectualism are villainized.
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