Childhood hides the undertones of a person's destiny.
"Lucky people are cured by childhood all their lives; unfortunate people are cured of childhood all their lives",
Many times, the reason why a person is suffering is that he cannot get out of the trauma of childhood, which is certainly worthy of people's sympathy, but personal misfortune can never become a reason for a person to be willing to degenerate and an excuse to hurt others.
Hello everyone, today brings you Thomas Harris's novel The Silence of the Lambs
Clarice Starling is a trainee agent majoring in criminal psychology.
Having just graduated from school, he was sent by his superiors to work with Hannibal, a psychiatrist and ogre, to solve a murderous serial murder case.
For Starling, who has no experience in handling cases, this is a once-in-a-lifetime learning opportunity and a very difficult task test.
She wanted to use Hannibal's expertise and keen brain to help her solve the case as quickly as possible, so that she could be promoted from a humble intern to a highly valued federal investigation agent.
However, Starling also knew that Hannibal would not be a good collaborator, even if the other party was only a prisoner at the moment
Hannibal's name, Starling has long heard of, he once tore the face of a nurse, drank and ate on other people's livers, and carved a police officer with a knife into an abstract painting of Picasso.
It can be said that anyone who has met Hannibal has no good end, but the "good position" is in danger, in order to change her fate and prove her value, Starling accepted this challenge.
So, a pure student who had just come out of the ivory tower and a super demon who could capture the human soul embarked on the road of joint case handling
In fact, getting Hannibal to agree to find the murderer together is not an easy task.
This fierce and sharp old man, just by external conversation, saw through Starling's ambition and humble past in disguise.
Hannibal used to take pleasure in analyzing the suffering of others, so his condition for helping Starling solve the "Buffalo Bill case" was to let Starling speak out about the most secret pain in her heart.
In order to gain Hannibal's support, Starling agreed to the other party's request, and in the process of solving the case, she gradually opened her own childhood experience
Starling came from a poor family, and her misfortune began with the death of her father.
Starling's father was an unorganized patrolman, and during a mission, he had an argument with two thieves who had stolen from the pharmacy and was shot and killed.
Originally, her father, who died in the line of duty, should have been compensated, but that day, Mr. Mayor came to her house in plain clothes and took her father's documents with him.
As a result, the family that had lost its pillar of strength also completely lost the source of life, and the mother was forced to make a living, so she had to foster the ten-year-old Starling to her aunt's house
However, Starling had only lived in her aunt's house for two months before leaving.
Hannibal asked, "Did the family abuse you?" ”，
Starling shook her head and explained, "No, one night I heard screams like children, I was scared, but I had to go downstairs to see, I saw a flock of lambs waiting to be slaughtered, at first I wanted to rescue them, but I opened the floodgates, they wouldn't go, they just stood there confused, refused to go",
Starling told Hannibal that she had wanted to flee with a lamb, but was caught by the patrol because of hunger and the weight of the lamb.
Eventually, the lamb was slaughtered and she herself was sent to an orphanage.
Starling said she thought she could save at least one lamb, but she didn't think she could, so she blamed herself so much that she often heard the lamb's screams in her sleep to this day.
Starling's story is over, but Hannibal doesn't take pleasure in it.
He guessed more than once at the inflection point of the story that the pain of the little girl in front of him was because he was hurt by others, but he did not want Starling's pain to blame himself because of his inability to save the weak.
In the face of such an ending, the eyes of the cruel ogre Hannibal could not help but moisten, he had long ceased to trust human nature, but at this moment, Starling's honesty and kindness once again deeply touched his soul.
So he decided to help Starling rescue the woman Catherine who had been abducted by bill the buffalo, because only then could the lamb in Starling's heart stop screaming
When Starling accepted the case, 5 women had already been killed by Bill the Buffalo, and without exception, they were all partially skinned after death.
So, Starling speculated that Buffalo Bill might have a hatred for women, and argued that "if the murderer regarded Catherine as a person, not an object, he would have a hard time poisoning his hands".
However, Hannibal rejected this speculation, and from the clues provided by Hannibal, Stalin learned that Bill the Buffalo was a serious transsexual who had tried to operate on three transgender institutions, but unfortunately did not succeed.
Subsequently, Starling found a silkworm pupae at the throat of the two deceased,
After investigation, the silkworm pupae is called the skeleton moth, and Hannibal told Starling that the skeleton moth is characterized by transformation, and Bill also wants to change.
Here, the author also mentions a moth that eats the tears of mammals.
Entomologists also explain to Starling that the original definition of a moth is "something that eats or consumes anything else gradually and silently", which is a verb that originally means destruction.
Starling felt that Bill had become this kind of moth that ate other people's tears, and her task was to catch the moth.
But as the investigation progresses, Starling and Hannibal discover that Bill the bison was also a lamb to be slaughtered, but unlike Starling, Bill has grown from a lamb to a butcher.
Bison Bill, formerly known as Jaime Gam, likes to sew, raise moths, eat hormones, love makeup, and desire to become a woman, but the transgender hospital repeatedly refuses his requests, so Bill decides to transform himself.
He left the downtown area to a remote village and lived in a small two-story building with a dungeon.
Bill the Bison has a fat puppy here and loves him very much, but he is not soft on killing women when confronted with captives
Buffalo Bill collectively called them leather goods, and most of these leather goods were somewhat chubby women of his stature.
Bill took them captive and imprisoned them in his dungeon, and when the furs were hungry to a certain extent, he killed people to get the skins and finished sewing.
Therefore, Bill insisted on killing 6 women in a row, just to get the skin of different parts of their bodies, and then make a perfect human skin dress, becoming a beautiful woman like a mother.
Bill's mother is a woman who is crazy and drunk because of the disillusionment of her acting dreams,
In fact, for his mother, Bill only has a vague impression, but the impact of the lack of maternal love in childhood makes Bill unforgettable.
When he was a child, Bill the Bison, a child without a home, has been circulating in different family rooms since he can remember, and later because he can't bear to be abused, he was picked up by his grandparents.
However, when Bill was 12 years old, he brutally killed his grandparents, he was not a born criminal, but he could no longer learn to love people because of lack of love, and became a poor person who could not see the future and could not walk out of the past
Buffalo Bill has a habit of taking the puppy over and over again before each killing.
Although the woman he thought was not actually his own mother,
But none of this mattered, all Bill wanted was to use a woman as a reference, to turn herself into a mother's image, and then to protect her childhood self like a puppy he had raised.
In Bill's consciousness, he can be infinitely close to the beauty of his mother, and he can also be infinitely close to his mother's love.
Therefore, every time Bill kills a woman, he must put a cocoon in their mouth, using this to imply that their sacrifice is for their own transformation.
Therefore, every time Bill the Bison takes the skin, he has to be naked for a moment to show his rebirth, but Bill's good dream has not yet been completed, and he is killed by The female agent Starling who finds the door by Shunto
Until he fell in a pool of blood, looking up at the ceiling, Bill still could not get rid of the nightmare of his childhood, still clinging to becoming a beautiful woman,
Looking at the lights, a moth with big wings flashing in unison, the breathless Bill did not want to say: If it could be so beautiful, what would it feel like?
Psychologists believe that the reason why a person has serious psychological problems is largely due to their lack of love or abuse in childhood.
In other words, "all aberrant behavior is an arrogant child's dissatisfaction with the world", because he has not been educated and warmed, and only in adulthood is he delusional to respond to the indifference and cruelty of the world in his own way.
But in fact, these behaviors are ultimately nothing more than a self-protection mechanism.
And also suffering from childhood misfortunes, Starling can soar to become an angel to protect the weak, and Buffalo Bill has fallen into a demon of the world, because they have a different starting point in childhood.
Although Starling was born into poverty, her parents loved her very much when she was alive.
Later, although her father died, Starling was reduced to a confused and helpless lamb, and she was also maligned by relatives and friends, but her world was not a moment really dark.
Even in the orphanage, Starling was always accompanied by a blind horse named Hannah.
Hannah was met by Starling in her aunt's ranch, and during that time, whenever she heard the screams of lambs at night, she would ride Hannah to a far place and hide.
Starling had seen the lamb she was holding slaughtered, so she didn't want Hannah to be the next.
Later, Hannah was left in the orphanage where she stayed, but Starling never stopped running.
She studied hard, tried hard to get scholarships, and longed for one day she could go from being a victim of slaughter to a protector who could protect others.
Deep inside Starling's heart, the weak lamb never stopped screaming, until she successfully rescued catherine from the hands of the buffalo Bill, and the lamb in her heart finally quieted down.
Those who were loved in childhood will give back to the world with love, and children who have never been treated well will never learn to be kind.
This is the biggest difference between Starling and Bill the Buffalo, and the closest distance between angels and demons
At the end of the story, Hannibal successfully escaped from prison, and the agents who had previously cooperated with him had been killed, but this time, the ogre did not intend to visit Starling.
Instead, I wrote a short note: Clarice Starling, with you here, the world is more exciting!