With a little hel(l/p) from my insomnia, I’ve finally finished the Hannibal books. Now, I should probably start at the beginning, which technically wasn’t the beginning, because I didn’t start at the beginning. Let me start over. I started this series with the second, better known title, The Silence of the Lambs, and then went back to the first book, Red Dragon. Afterward, having been warned of their quality, I read with trepidation Hannibal and Hannibal Rising.
What went wrong? How can you hit two home runs and then flounder into self-indulgent tripe?
It is my personal opinion that the author fell in love with his monster.
Now, I actually found Hannibal engaging, I mean the book, which isn’t to say the character isn’t engaging as well. Let me start over. Hannibal, the psychiatrist who has people for dinner, lives rent free inside my noggin. I have read and reread his introduction in Silence of the Lambs like a child re-watching a movie over and over again. The first book to bear his name I have read once, and I felt dirty afterward. Whereas all the books have strong sexual themes, Hannibal felt pornographic, especially (excuse me) the, er, climax.
Let me start over. In the first book, Red Dragon, Hannibal is a side character. He gradually gains prominence as the series progresses until he totally consumes the narrative by the fourth book. He is extremely interesting in the first three novels, but in the third book he loses his position as a purveyor of forbidden truth, becoming a sympathetic antihero giving people permission to embrace their darkest urges. Avoiding spoilers, I would say that in the first two books, sex (sexual deviancy) is used thematically, but in the third book, the sex is just a sick fantasy that the plot is there to facilitate. Hannibal is interesting because he represents something real, Nietzsche’s darkness looking back, but Hannibal is interesting because pornography is titillating. (Hannibal the character then Hannibal the book.)
I would say that Red Dragon discusses how the darker aspects of our nature are necessary for virtue but threaten to consume us, and that The Silence of the Lambs is a commentary on our culture’s rejection of spiritual reality and embrace of a materialistic mindset. Hannibal, the third book, joins the eponymous general’s forces to attack western civilization, which is represented as an evil, pedophilic patriarchy. The fourth book just devolves into a plodding love letter to Hannibal, ceaselessly gushing over how cool he is, which gets very boring.
So, it seems to this reader that the author falls in love with Hannibal, idealizes him, and that consequently, Hannibal the Cannibal is allowed to consume the narrative. It’s not hard to see why. Hannibal is very interesting, erudite, and his is the mouth which can speak truth others cannot. But it is a mistake to let him take the lead, or even to let him play the antihero.
“Can you stand to say I’m evil? Am I evil, Officer Starling?”
If you fall in love with Hannibal, if you let him consume you, you can no longer say the simple truth, that what he does is wrong, that he is evil. You can write a book where all the people he kills and eats are horrible people we want to see punished, you can juxtapose him with Nazi war criminals and pedophilic millionaires, but you forget the simple, forbidden truth he whispered from the depths of the asylum:
“Nothing happened to me, Officer Starling, I happened. You can’t reduce me to a set of influences.”
Tale Told 