Clarice Starling: Between Two Worlds

Is she gonna strike the match

That'll surely light the flame

Is she carryin' a torch

For a love in vain

Is she gonna break the locks

Take a look inside the box

Knowing that she could release

Pandora's shame...

Welcome to the game...

What's in a name?

The odyssey of Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal has been most interesting, to say the least...and, in Hannibal, especially, not without controversy. In Silence, she is a rising star with the FBI, nearly at the top of her class in Quantico, VA, when she receives the assignment that will forever alter her life.

This beautiful protege of Behavioral Science "guru" Jack Crawford has not emerged from her law-enforcement training unscathed, even when her journey begins. She lost both of her parents very young---her father, also a lawman, was murdered while trying to stop a robbery, and she has never gotten over it. In fact, his death is the reason she chose a law-enforcement career in the first place. But because she is a woman, she has been the target of contempt and sexual harassment everywhere she goes. The day she goes to the hospital in Baltimore, Frederick Chilton ends up holding the bag---and a festering grudge---when she refuses to date him. When she goes with Jack Crawford to examine the body of Fredrica Bimmel in a West Virginia funeral home, the local cops are taken aback at having to take orders from her. In the asylum's basement, "Multiple" Miggs harasses her, throwing semen on her face when she tries to leave. And even Jack Crawford is guilty---he concocts the lie that Clarice uses to get the psychological profile on Jame Gumb from the man he sent her to visit...

Dr. Hannibal Lecter.

It is all too clear that, from the moment they meet, they are soulmates. In Hannibal, that point is further driven home when she learns the truth about his family---and his feelings. But it is their first meeting that first drops the clues. At first he toys with her, testing her strength before telling her to "run along"...but this, too, is a test. Miggs tossing the semen on her face, and her strength in facing that insult, convince Hannibal that there is more to her than meets the eye. Miggs' actions also infuriate him---later that night, before Clarice goes to the storage garage to solve the "Hester Mofet" riddle, she is informed of Miggs' death. Hannibal was so furious that he had coaxed Miggs into committing suicide by swallowing his own tongue.

Crawford's words were, "Lecter did it to amuse himself." Not likely. Both Clarice and Crawford suspect this, but say nothing more about it...even when they go to West Virginia.

In Silence, the first glimpses of Clarice's own insanity are revealed...via flashbacks from her childhood. After she first leaves the asylum, she begins hallucinating...seeing her father coming home from work. At the funeral home in West Virginia, she relives her father's funeral---and Crawford has to "wake her up," so to speak, to get her mind back on business. It is during this trip that she begins to realize that Crawford has no real faith in her abilities. She is furious when she overhears him tell the other officers to go easy on her because she is a woman, but says nothing about it. She also begins to suspect that he is using her---and Hannibal---to solve the "Buffalo Bill" case when, he claims, he only meant for her to do a simple interview. Naturally, Hannibal sees through this right away...but lets her lie to him, knowing she is doing what Crawford wants her to do.

Then leave it to Chilton to throw a monkey wrench into the works. Still furious that Clarice rejected him, and suspicious of Hannibal's true feelings for her, he gets Hannibal shipped to Memphis. Of course, Hannibal is upset that Clarice lied to him about being sent to an island hospital...but again, he is able to forgive her. When she visits him in Memphis, he is glad to see her...he is not really angry with her...but he keeps up the facade.

Better hide your heart

Better hold on tight

Say your prayers

'Cause there's trouble tonight...

"People will say we're in love," he says when he sees her. She has returned the drawings, and has also returned to keep up her end of the "quid pro quo" agreement they had made---in exchange for the profile on Jame Gumb, she tells him about her childhood. In doing this, she is beginning to face up to her long-buried heartache, to who she really is...in Hannibal, the full scope of her rage and her insanity explodes to the surface, never to be controlled again. Behind the psychiatric sadist mask, what Hannibal does is for her own good...

When pride and love

Battle with desire

Hide your heart

'Cause you're playin' with fire...

And when he hands her the case file, there is the moment that will forever cause her flesh to burn...that will cause her body and soul to forever ache with desire...

And I don't understand...

How the touch of your hand...

How I would be the one to fall...

The final proof of his forgiveness is in their final contact for the next seven years. "I have no plans to call on you, Clarice, the world's more interesting with you in it," he tells her during that fateful phone call. And he means every word.

Seven years later, she will join him.

And I will be the one to hold you down...

Kiss you so hard...

I'll take your breath away...

And after I wipe away the tears...

Just close your eyes, dear...

Song lyrics taken from Unsigned Letter by Garth Brooks as Chris Gaines, Sweet Surrender by Sarah McLachlan, Possession by Sarah McLachlan, and Hide Your Heart by KISS.

Walking the Tightrope Between Sanity and Passion...