Red Dragonby Thomas Harris
Red Dragon is a fascinating book that takes the unusual step of getting into the killer's POV early and often. The unique narrative gives the reader greater insight into Francis Dolarhyde's motivations and beliefs, and at times almost paints him as a sympathetic character. However, that very structure makes the novel a little unsatisfying in some ways.
Compared to some other killers in fiction, Dolarhyde is a nuanced character. He undergoes some change throughout the course of the book and has a fleshed out history. He fits many of the profiles for serial killers (childhood trauma, sexual repression, sadism, etc.) but the change in his character when he meets Reba starts to unravel his perception of himself. It was an interesting way to take a more or less stock "serial killer" character and turn him into an actual person, with actual emotions and relationship issues. It was as though not only did the reader learn that Dolarhyde was more than just a cardboard cutout of a monster, so did Dolarhyde.
What was unsatisfying about it was the way he went right back to where he started. He sees Reba with another man and snaps, and all the tension from his character building arc abruptly stops. The scene between him and Reba in his house near the end of the novel sort of worked, until it turned out that he was merely faking the whole thing as a way of escaping capture. What previously looked like real emotional trauma turned out to be fake, and the fact that the reader didn't get to see Dolarhyde preparing for this switcharoo (where previously we had a front row seat to his side of the story) felt like a cheat. It really undermined a lot of the other work that had been done on that character.
Will Graham is also an interesting character, and his ability to mirror the thinking patterns of others is pretty fascinating. Harris does a great job with the reasons that sort of ability would be more of a curse than a gift - particularly given Graham's line of work. It's odd how he feels that being able to empathize with a killer makes him a villain as well -- an uncomfortable line of thinking, considering we're writers trying to train ourselves to do the very same thing.
I'm not going to say much about Lecter in this post, mostly because I'll have more about him when we watch Silence of the Lambs. One thing that does fascinate me about him is the way he was handled in the film version of Red Dragon, released in 2002. He gets a much bigger role in the film, acting as an advisor to Graham, presumably to parallel the relationship he later develops with Starling. He's really quite a minor character in Red Dragon, but he's definitely the breakout of the group, and it's neat to see him retroactively become a major character in that version of the story.
Have you seen the 1986 made-for-tv version of this called "Manhunter?" It stars Brian Cox as Hannibal Lechter. How different would SOTL have been if it had been Brian Cox instead of Sir Anthony Hopkins?
ReplyDeleteI haven't seen the whole thing, but when I was writing this I did watch clips of his scenes with William Peterson. I liked what I saw - he seemed almost bored, spread out in his cell talking to Graham on the phone. It was a lot different from Hopkins' brooding portrayal.
Delete"The unique narrative gives the reader greater insight into Francis Dolarhyde's motivations and beliefs, and at times almost paints him as a sympathetic character. However, that very structure makes the novel a little unsatisfying in some ways."
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with your statement here. The narrative allows a good insight into the character, which gives the reader a POV that couldn't have provided without looking through the killer's eyes. But like you say, the novel can be unsatisfying in that there may be too much given away. There is a certain mystery that surrounds serial killers and by providing too much about the killer early on, this is lost. Perhaps if the novel was entirely through the killer's eyes, this wouldn't have been so, but because he's not the protagonist, too much is lost and the mystery, and the intrigue that goes along with that, goes missing.
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ReplyDeleteTotally agree with you about the second half of the novel. We get all of this info on Dolarhyde to the point where I actually start to care about the bastard then… nothing. He’s just a killer who kills because that’s what killers do. And this is one of few cases where I’ve liked the movie better than the book. I think that’s because the movie has way more Lecter, like you said. The book feels like the first part of a series that doesn’t know where it’s going. Based on Lecter’s small part I’m guessing that Harris didn’t consider him a major character until the next book.
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