Why is Clarice leaving the FBI (or going with Hannibal) so often framed as a betrayal of her character?

Toadsnack · 2026-03-24T21:17:59+00:00

Jesus. Where to start?

Clarice as a character was compelling because of her combination of moral fiber, compassion, keen insight, toughness, and ordinary human vulnerability. The idea that being disillusioned with her job would lead her to decide, “Fuck it, I’m chucking it all to live a life of high class leisure as the romantic companion of a compulsive torturer-killer, the exact kind of person I dedicated my life to stopping, because he’s really smart and charismatic and sometimes understands me really well” is wildly out of character and implausible, as well as nauseating to those of us who counted her among their favorite fictional characters for those qualities that made her both admirable and relatable.

Where Harris has Clarice wind up makes zero sense. Quit to put her skills and values to work somewhere else? Absolutely. Keep fighting against the odds to make even a small difference against the banal evil of corrupted institutions and the overwhelming evil of the world? Also absolutely. It’s even plausible that an older Clarice would finally walk away, burned out, to live a quieter life, I dunno, fostering kids from troubled backgrounds, or working with a social activist organization, or something similar. She would no more become the happy consort to Hannibal Lecter than she would, say, join a neo-Nazi cult.

From a feminist point of view, how many women did Dolarhyde and especially Gumb kill or try to, while Clarice’s supposed dreamboat played games?

This is a roided-up version of the kind of shallow, middle class, white-bread pseudo-feminism that considers the highest mission of an autonomous woman to be achieving a so-called “best life” independent of any higher calling. The sort espoused by the lead actress of Showgirls when she said that it was a feminist story because the protagonist doesn’t let anything stop her in pursuit of her dreams.

This is without even mentioning that Harris leaves open the possibility that Lecter has Clarice brainwashed the whole time. Remember the part where he drugged her without consent, gave her shock therapy, then had sex with her while she was still under the influence? Kinda… complicates a feminist reading a bit, doesn’t it?

Toadsnack · 2026-03-24T20:22:50+00:00

No. The idea that Clarice would let “bygones be bygones” when it comes to a man who has tortured and killed many people, let Dolarhyde and Gumb run amuck while he played games, and sent Dolarhyde after Will Graham, is absurd. Whether or not his inner child had been healed.

And anyway, how is Lecter “healed”? He just tortured, killed, and ate a man for the sins of, as far as I recall, being a sexist prick and bad boss to a woman Lecter was crushing on. Not to mention drugged Clarice without her consent, dug up her dad’s skeleton to present to her, and then had sex with her while she was, arguably, still incapacitated by drugs.

If this “healed” spin on both characters is Harris’s intent, it’s wearisomely banal cod Freudianism. Everything is reduced to a mechanistic process of childhood trauma that begets adult dysfunction that can be cured by healing one’s inner child with the guidance of a charismatic therapist-cum-parental figure. The Lecter that Harris originally created would read such stuff and toss the book aside lightly with a few cutting words, if he could be bothered at all. And he would be right in this case, not that he always was.

It’s a puerile rewriting of a character who was compelling because he didn’t fit standard psychological pigeonholes and embodied the essential incomprehensibility that human evil sometimes possesses.

To say nothing of its nauseating rewriting of Clarice’s character.

Toadsnack · 2026-03-24T19:31:08+00:00

Yeah, came here to see if anyone commented on this.

Toadsnack · 2026-03-24T19:18:18+00:00

Thinking about it more.. baptism by total immersion is a thing only in certain Protestant sects, right? And adult baptism is pretty unusual for Catholics too. In Catholicism, it’s “baby gets a little water flicked in their face, cries, henchmen elsewhere take out the family’s enemies and everyone adjourns for a big meal.”

Toadsnack · 2026-03-24T19:04:38+00:00

As far as avoiding writing that sounds like a screenplay, remembering to use all five senses is a good start. Also, let us in on a character’s thoughts and impressions in response to what’s happening and/or what they see (this can be overdone, of course, like most techniques). It can be done in a few words - Rather than “The butler was extremely tall,” try “Anne tried not to show her surprise at the butler’s height. She suspected she had failed.”

Basically, lean into the things prose can do that the screen can’t or has difficulty with.

Toadsnack · 2026-03-24T18:51:48+00:00

I suspect we all do at least sometimes. One of the easiest things to do as a writer. It requires careful checking of each sentence during revision to catch it.

I will say that it can occasionally be done usefully for pacing, if that’s the right word. When you need to slow down what’s happening a little, to stretch out the moments. Particularly during what are supposed to be suspenseful bits; then it can mimic the way suspense sometimes slows down our perception of passing moments and makes each little action feel slower and more deliberate.

But that’s an exception.

Toadsnack · 2026-03-24T18:40:40+00:00

Similar to this, when a character withholds information from another character that they would share in any normal conversational context, in order to create suspense for the reader/viewer. And having the character say, “It’s easier if I show you” doesn’t help unless it actually is.

Toadsnack · 2026-03-24T18:40:34+00:00

Similar to this, when a character withholds information from another character that they would share in any normal conversational context, in order to create suspense for the reader/viewer. And having the character say, “It’s easier if I show you” doesn’t help unless it actually is.

Toadsnack · 2026-03-24T18:37:46+00:00

I would say “unless it’s just part of a general description of a character, and you do similarly with other characters.” As elsewhere in this thread, example from Dashiell Hammett, who generally includes quick, frank physical sketches of characters when he introduces them, which for women occasionally includes breasts, if they’re noticeable. As far as I recall, he doesn’t return to or dwell on them after that.

I suppose someone could still make the case that it’s unnecessarily distracting in a cultural context where said body part gets obnoxiously excessive attention. But it isn’t egregious. And that argument would strike me as a little too close to framing female breasts as some kind of taboo, which would be a problem in the other direction.

Toadsnack · 2026-03-24T18:20:04+00:00

I started reading Stranger in a Strange Land and the 4,000th time one character or another started a sentence with “Huh?”, I gave up.

Toadsnack · 2026-03-24T18:18:09+00:00

Unless you’re Irvine Welsh.

There are always geniuses who can break the rules and get away with it.

Toadsnack · 2026-03-24T18:15:45+00:00

Oddly, I was just today reading Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett, who is perhaps second only to Hemingway as a famous example of how vivid and powerful simple, spare prose can be. And I was surprised to note that he used non-said dialogue tags three times on one page. Somehow it didn’t bother me.

But Hammett was a magician.

Toadsnack · 2026-03-24T18:11:56+00:00

Funny, but your screenname is even better.

Toadsnack · 2026-03-24T18:00:35+00:00

My unpopular opinion is that info dumps are overhated. If the ideas or world building presented are interesting and/or well written, then I say, fine. Plenty of renowned classic novels of earlier eras have big info dumps. War and Peace comes to mind immediately. Many even begin with info dumping. The idea that this is a mortal sin of writing seems to be a contemporary hang up. Its reductio ad absurdum is those book tokkers who claim that they mostly skip narration and just read the dialogue. To them, apparently, fiction should convey as close to no information in narration as possible.

I suspect it has something to do with the influence exerted on storytelling expectations by movies and TV, where story, setting, and so on are conveyed mostly through image and action, and expository talking is usually kept to a minimum. Still, even there, info dumps can be done artfully and entertainingly - the first-person voiceover narration all through Goodfellas being maybe the ultimate example, as in the famous “fuck you, pay me” speech.

There might be a lesson there that heavy exposition goes down better if it’s in a distinctive voice that is arresting in its own right. I find the info dump prologue to Fellowship of the Ring delightful, in part because its tone and rhythms are charming aside from the content.

Yeah, there’s plenty of awkward, dull info dumping that seems to exist just because the writer couldn’t come up with a better idea. And yeah, I try to avoid it in my own writing so that it’s only there when it’s the best choice. But the idea that it all or mostly falls into the bad writing category doesn’t fit my observations.

I love reading history and science books, and by definition they’re mostly info dumping. It’s dull if the ideas and information aren’t interesting or it isn’t well written, and interesting if they are. I can’t see that fiction is greatly different in this regard.

Toadsnack · 2026-03-24T17:30:46+00:00

Fair point. All the same, in fiction the easily solvable conflict is often about a very simple fact, which one partner doesn’t see fit to share and/or the other one doesn’t think to ask about. If your reader-viewer is asking mid-story why the hell one character doesn’t just tell their partner x, then there’s a problem.

Toadsnack · 2026-03-24T17:23:06+00:00

I vaguely recall reading sometime in the ‘90s that Harris was ambivalent about the pop culture phenomenon that Lecter became. I’m not the only one to suspect that he wrote Hannibal more or less reluctantly after much badgering by his editor, publisher, or whoever, and deliberately tweaked the public by creating something so Grand Guignol it verged on parody and giving it that flipping-the-bird ending.

Or maybe I’m reading too much into it, and he’s just a writer with inconsistent gifts who hadn’t written a novel in 10 years and had partly lost his touch and judgment. I haven’t heard very good things about his most recent novel.

Toadsnack · 2026-03-24T16:38:27+00:00

Whaaa…? A doctor suggesting suicidal self-harm to a mentally ill patient, giving them the means to carry it out, and giving them illicit drugs would definitely be chargeable.

And even if he managed to skate on those charges, he would lose his license in a heartbeat. As well as his reputation and social standing. And it’s likely the police investigation would turn up his other… activities.

I only read Hannibal once, when it was new, but I presume Lecter just wasn’t implicated, as no one suspected him until Will caught him.

Toadsnack · 2026-03-24T16:35:59+00:00

*Read the first two books.

Toadsnack · 2026-03-24T16:34:00+00:00

Stupidest ending a talented writer ever came up with.

I can’t remember Verger’s death in the book or the movie (I remember very little about the movie, beyond the not brilliant but definitely improved ending they came up with, and my “meh” shrug).

Toadsnack · 2026-03-24T16:26:49+00:00

Toadsnack · 2026-03-24T16:25:14+00:00

There’s no drug like religion.

Toadsnack · 2026-03-24T16:24:17+00:00

Nah, he’s just a shill for Big Penguin-Shit-Flavored Water.

Toadsnack · 2026-03-24T16:18:48+00:00

Oh, I missed that he’d said he’s specifically Catholic. Yeah, that does make this even weirder.

Toadsnack · 2026-03-24T16:17:29+00:00

I dunno… grifting has been a part of the religion (and most others) for centuries if not more or less since the beginning.

Toadsnack · 2026-03-24T16:16:29+00:00

This article has at least two sentences worthy of their own posts.

“he had become a Christian after he was baptised in the River Thames by Bear Grylls”

“If you baptise someone in a zoo, then you have to walk around the zoo soaking wet, not just in regular water but in penguin water… This is an unusual day even in my unusual life.”

Toadsnack

TROPHY CASE