Count Dracula and Hannibal Lecter: Identity and Horror Compared

Introduction

Many people are familiar with Dracula by Bram Stoker and The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris. Both are typically referred to as horror stories guaranteed to give any reader a good scare. Nevertheless, the two novels offer two very different flavors of horror. Bram Stoker, for instance, did not simply set out to provide a Victorian audience with a thrill ride. His goal was to inflict horror on every individual. To achieve this, he implemented gory and gruesome themes throughout. Many symbols and themes — particularly those surrounding the main antagonist Dracula — were woven into the novel in order to teach a lesson. Strangely enough, Dracula also does a remarkable job of resembling other forces of evil throughout literary and religious tradition.

The Silence of the Lambs, on the other hand, takes a different direction. This novel falls under the genre of psychological horror. Stories in the horror genre typically comprise a few essential elements: a villain of extreme evil to generate the central conflict; a foil — a character who endeavors to stop the villain from carrying out an evil plan; and suspense, the final component that keeps the reader engaged and the storyline moving forward. Both novels do an excellent job of depicting these two fundamentals, which naturally produce conflict between the opposing forces, and from that conflict comes suspense. When psychology is introduced to the story, as in The Silence of the Lambs, the meaning of horror is altered entirely from what is found in Dracula.

In Bram Stoker's Dracula, the author displays various elements of horror rooted in the supernatural. Dracula possesses superhuman strength — equivalent, according to Van Helsing, to that of twenty strong men — and, being undead, is immune to conventional means of attack. The Silence of the Lambs is different because its horror is psychological. The story directs attention to the mind and how it functions, and the mystery of that inner world generates the suspense. Dracula is essentially a supernatural killer, whereas Hannibal Lecter is a natural-born one.

Dracula is considered the perfect symbol of otherness for the Victorian era. He comes from Transylvania in the East, a region full of strange beliefs and superstitions. Though the Romanians are rooted in Christianity, the Christians of the Victorian era regarded Eastern Christianity as a more primitive structure rather than a modern form of the faith. In Silence of the Lambs, religion plays no role in the novel at all. In Stoker's novel, Dracula does not speak perfect English and admits this flaw himself, fearing he will be recognized as an outsider. His physical features are also far removed from what was considered attractive in England. Hannibal's physical features, by contrast, are entirely normal — very average-looking for a killer. Both novels depict the profiles of two savage killers: one more supernatural, the other wholly natural. Yet both are driven to destroy. This thesis offers an analysis of Count Dracula and Hannibal Lecter — their identities, their similarities, and their differences as the central characters of their respective narratives.