Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Silence of the Lambs, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Sexism and Law Enforcement
The Nature of Evil
Class and Shame
Manipulation
Summary
Analysis
Still at Quantico, Starling wakes up in the middle of the night because she has her recurring nightmare about the crying lambs. Try as she might to distance herself from the Buffalo Bill case, it will not leave her mind. She is annoyed that Senator Martin and Krendler are treating her so callously, and she feels the need to prove herself to them. Starling knows that some of her feelings come from her insecurity about her background, which she is still trying to outgrow.
Starling dreams about the crying lambs because she knows Catherine Martin is out there, desperate for help, and there is nothing she can do to rescue her. Like the lambs Starling’s relatives used to slaughter, Catherine is innocent and about to suffer a cruel fate.
Themes
Realizing she cannot sleep, Starling grabs the Buffalo Bill case file and takes it to the laundry room to read. In it, she finds a note Lecter left about the apparent randomness of abductions. Unlike Starling and Crawford, Lecter does not think the locations of the abductions were random at all. Starling calls Burroughs and tells him as much, though he is unsure what to do with this new information.
Starling’s problem is that she must sort through the demented minds of both Buffalo Bill and Hannibal Lecter to discern a pattern. To do so involves contorting her mind in ways that are foreign and uncomfortable. However, even then, nothing comes to her.
Themes
Starling returns to the case file because she still hasn’t made any progress. When she does, she realizes that Buffalo Bill might have known his first victim because that is what the evidence and Lecter seem to suggest. Again, Starling calls Burroughs with her theory. Burroughs says that the authorities already thoroughly investigated Ohio, where the first victim’s body surfaced, and so no one will be going back there any time soon. Additionally, Burroughs tells Starling about Bella’s death. When Starling gets off the phone with Burroughs, she cries while thinking about her parents and the cruelty of the world.
Every time Starling feels like she is about to make a breakthrough, her path leads her to another dead-end that the authorities already examined. When Starling learns about Bella’s death; it is too much for her. Since the higher-ups took her off the case, it seems like the entire world is going to hell and there is nothing she can do about it. Starling knows what it means to lose someone important, and she empathizes with Crawford.
Themes
