The Death’s Head Moths in The Silence of the Lambs symbolize Jame Gumb’s perverted desire to transform himself into a woman via a horrifically violent path. Jame Gumb—also known as Buffalo Bill—is a serial killer who murders women and makes a “woman suit” out of the victims’ skin. According to Hannibal Lecter, Gumb thinks he is transsexual, even though he is not. Gumb believes he will have completed his transformation when he completes the suit. Gumb leaves moth cocoons in the throats of his victims to represent the journey he feels he is undertaking: he thinks of himself as a pupa in the process of transforming into a moth. Gumb’s favorite moth is the Death’s Head Moth, a rare Malaysian species from that has a pattern on its wings that looks like a human skull. The specificity of the Death’s Head Moth is important because it directly relates Gumb’s desire to transform to a common symbol for death. In Gumb’s mind, the only way he can transform is through degrading and destroying other people’s bodies.
Death’s Head Moths Quotes in The Silence of the Lambs
“There’s a moth, more than one in fact, that lives only on tears,” he offered. “That’s all they eat or drink.”
“What kind of tears? Whose tears?”
“The tears of large land mammals, about our size. The old definition of moth was ‘anything that gradually, silently eats, consumes, or wastes any other thing.’ It was a verb for destruction too... Is this what you do all the time—hunt Buffalo Bill?”
“I do it all I can.”
When her pupils darkened, Dr. Lecter took a single sip of her pain and found it exquisite. That was enough for today.
He switches back to the cage just in time. The big insect’s wings are held above her back, hiding and distorting her markings. Now she brings down her wings to cloak her body and the famous design is clear. A human skull, wonderfully executed in the furlike scales, stares from the back of the moth. Under the shaded dome of the skull are the black eye holes and prominent cheekbones. Beneath them darkness lies like a gag across the face above the jaw. The skull rests on a marking flared like the top of a pelvis.
A skull stacked upon a pelvis, all drawn on the back of a moth by an accident of nature.
He had in the past hunted young women through the blacked-out basement using his infrared goggles and light, and it was wonderful to do, watching them feel their way around, seeing them try to scrunch into corners. He liked to hunt them with the pistol. He liked to use the pistol. Always they became disoriented, lost their balance, ran into things. He could stand in absolute darkness with his goggles on, wait until they took their hands down from their faces, and shoot them right in the head. Or in the legs first, below the knee so they could still crawl.
Well, Clarice, have the lambs stopped screaming?
You owe me a piece of information, you know, and that’s what I’d like.
An ad in the national edition of the Times and in the International Herald-Tribune on the first of any month will be fine. Better put it in the China Mail as well.
I won’t be surprised if the answer is yes and no. The lambs will stop for now. But, Clarice, you judge yourself with all the mercy of the dungeon scales at Threave; you’ll have to earn it again and again, the blessed silence. Because it’s the plight that drives you, seeing the plight, and the plight will not end, ever.
I have no plans to call on you, Clarice, the world being more interesting with you in it. Be sure you extend me the same courtesy.
Death’s Head Moths Symbol Timeline in The Silence of the Lambs
