GITS Script Reading and Analysis Series: “The Silence of the Lambs” — Characters

We continue our analysis of the script The Silence of the Lambs today by considering the characters in the story. Here is a list of most of the characters from the script in order of appearance:

Clarice Starling (fractured FBI agent in training)

Jack Crawford (senior FBI official)

Dr. Frederick Chilton (head, Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane)

Hannibal Lecter (prisoner)

Ardelia (fellow FBI agent in training)

Buffalo Bill (serial killer)

Catherine Martin (kidnap victim)

Senator Martin (kidnap victim’s mother)

Screenplays are unique narrative forms for many reasons, one of which, I contend, is that each character in a script should have a function. Depending upon the genre or circumstances in a story, you may be able to drop in a secondary or tertiary character who pretty much exists for pure entertainment value, but that is not the case with primary characters. A screenplay is a blueprint to make a movie and the interplay of character functions is a critical aspect of that blueprint.

There are five primary character archetypes we see in movies all the time. They are:

Protagonist: The lead character, the character through whose perspective the story is told, the character who typically goes through the most significant metamorphosis.

Nemesis: Provides opposition to the Protagonist, often represents the Protagonist’s shadow, their dark impulses, tied somehow to the Protagonist’s goal.

Attractor: Characters who are most intimately tied to the Protagonist’s emotional development, often a love interest, Heart.

Mentor: Characters who are most intimately tied to the Protagonist’s intellectual development, wisdom, Head.

Trickster: Characters who test the Protagonist, switching allegiance from ally to enemy, enemy to ally, intentionally or not helping to prepare the Protagonist for their Final Struggle.

So an interesting way to approach analyzing the characters in The Silence of the Lambs is: (1) Cull through the above list, picking out the most important characters. These represent the story’s primary characters. Why do you think they qualify as a primary character? What about who they are and what they do elevate their status to such importance? (2) Look through the lenses of Protagonist, Nemesis, Attractor, Mentor, and Trickster to consider what the respective narrative functions are for each primary character.

If you are uncertain as to a character’s potential archetype, ask yourself this: When all is said and done, what is the most fundamental narrative function this character provides to the story? Strip the character all the way down to that core essence. It is almost always a determining factor in understanding their archetypal role in a story.

Here are some interesting thoughts about the story’s characters from screenwriter Ted Tally, excerpted from the book “Screenwriters’ Masterclass”:

First of all, I just thought it was so smart, so literary and knowing, and not just in a technological, police-procedural, serial-killing way–which Tom [Harris] is extremely knowledgeable about. It’s so knowing about people and human nature and character, and the dialogue is so good. It was “the thriller” raised to literature. And the story is just so unpredictable; to have the twinned killers, two bad guys instead of one, and the whole intricacy of the criminal plot. But, above all, it was the relationship between this young woman and this mad psychiatrist which was not like anything I’d ever seen. Jonathan and I were talking about it and he said, “This is new, dramatically; there has never been a relationship of two main characters like this.”

And then, for reasons I’m not even sure of, I felt very moved, and still do, by Clarice Starling. By her courage and vulnerability–and I probably respond more to courage in a main character than any other quality. She’s in a male world, and she’s a student, and she’s orphaned… I was just deeply moved by her. And Thomas Harris had so artfully worked in mythic underpinnings–it just had this feeling that there’s the orphaned young woman making her way in the world, and there’s the good stepfather in Crawford and the evil stepfather who’s Lecter who are taking on her education. That’s a huge part of the story, in fact it’s the emotional heart of the whole story; her search for a missing father and her attempt to replaced that void which is never going to go away. The whole thing of saving the lamb and being able to save Catherine Martin is all tied up with her inability to save her own father when she was a child.

See you in comments!

For Day 1 of our analysis of The Silence of the Lambs, go here.

For Day 2 of our analysis, focusing on structure, go here.

[Remember next week (10/2–10/6), we will be reading Toy Story 3. You may access the script here.]

NOTE: THIS SERIES AND THE USE OF SCRIPTS IS STRICTLY FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES!

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