Character Analysis
(Avoiding Spoilers)
Grew Up… in small-town West Virginia. She was raised by her father, a police officer who was killed in action when his daughter was about ten years old. Clarice then went to stay with her uncle on a farm, but soon ran away after something happened to scar her deeply.
Living… as a student at the FBI Academy. Clarice is a fresh new recruit who is smart and hard-working – at the top of her class, in fact. That dedication is why the young rookie is tasked with interviewing Hannibal Lecter, an imprisoned killer whose intelligence is unmatched. Hannibal has information about Buffalo Bill, a serial killer on the loose, and Clarice must win his cooperation to crack the case.
Profession… FBI agent-in-training. Clarice hopes to join the Behavioral Science Unit as a psychological investigator, and with her high grades, she's well on her way there.
Interests… psychology, catching criminals, and aiding her mentor, FBI director Jack Crawford. Jack, who has as much respect for Clarice as she does for him, helps her rise quickly through the ranks of the FBI and first assigns her to Hannibal Lecter.
Relationship Status… single. Clarice is a serious young woman who's dead-set on having a good career before tackling romance. When Hannibal taunts her by asking whether she's interested in Jack, Clarice coolly responds with, "That doesn't interest me, Doctor."
Challenge… catching Buffalo Bill. He’s a deranged serial killer who abducts and skins plus-size women. Luckily for Clarice, Bill also leaves a calling card in his victims' throat: a moth pupa belonging to the rare Death's-head Hawkmoth.
Personality… quiet, pensive, and intelligent. Although outwardly cool and collected, Clarice is slow to give up personal information, especially to a man as dangerous as Hannibal Lecter. Yet when Hannibal offers her information in exchange for details on her personal life, Clarice may have to overcome her past to solve her first case.
Get to Know her in...
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After having successfully eluded the authorities for years, Hannibal peacefully lives in Italy in disguise as an art scholar. Trouble strikes again when he is discovered leaving a deserving few dead in the process. He returns back to America to once again make contact with now disgraced Agent Clarice Starling who is suffering the wrath of a malicious FBI official/rival as well as the media.
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FBI trainee Clarice Starling ventures into a maximum-security asylum to pick the diseased brain of Hannibal Lecter, a psychiatrist turned homicidal cannibal. Starling needs clues to help her capture a serial killer. Unfortunately, her Faustian relationship with Lecter soon leads to his escape, and now two deranged killers are on the loose.
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A serial murderer known only by a grotesquely apt nickname--Buffalo Bill--is stalking women. He has a purpose, but no one can fathom it, for the bodies are discovered in different states. Clarice Starling, a young trainee at the FBI Academy, is surprised to be summoned by Jack Crawford, chief of the Bureau's Behavioral Science section. Her assignment: to interview Dr. Hannibal Lecter--Hannibal the Cannibal--who is kept under close watch in the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Dr. Lecter is a former psychiatrist with a grisly history, unusual tastes, and an intense curiosity about the darker corners of the mind. His intimate understanding of the killer and of Clarice herself form the core of Thomas Harris' The Silence of the Lambs--and ingenious, masterfully written book and an unforgettable classic of suspense fiction.
