Red Dragon by: Thomas Harris

 

Thomas Harris’ 1981 thriller Red Dragon is a book that owes its identity to a lot of sources.  From Agatha Christie’s The A.B.C. Murders, to the many horror performances of Vincent Price, to a general history of problematic tropes in media to Red Dragon is a thriller to captivate the masses.  The main plot of the novel is actually not nearly as well remembered as the minor character of Dr. Hannibal Lector, a cannibal and serial killer kept in captivity.  Now I, like most others am most familiar with the character through Anthony Hopkins’ portrayal in the Jonathan Demme’s adaptation of the sequel novel, The Silence of the Lambs.  Despite being a minor character, the main thrust of the novel is this interplay between Lector and protagonist Will Graham.  Lector as a character is coded to be queer, he is an example of a queer monster, only a precursor to a lot of the transphobia at the center of The Silence of the Lambs, yet his presence is what elevates Red Dragon from pulp to be a fascinating book.  The interplay between Lector and Graham is underscored with this constant tension of two people who clearly hate each other, one of them has scarred the other despite being put behind bars, the animosity is further brought to the forefront as this deep respect.  Harris does not intend this to be read as attraction in any way, but between every line Lector has in the novel, and much of Graham’s perspective are two people who have this deep attraction to each other.  Will Graham as a character is portrayed as equally disturbed as the killers he investigates and rounds up, that’s why Red Dragon largely works, while Lector on the other hand as presented in this novel knows exactly what he is and is confident in that identity.

 

The fact that Lector doesn’t have a diagnosable psychosis is where Harris’ problematic queer theming elevates the novel further.  The actual serial killer, the Tooth Fairy, is playing to the equally ableist tropes of people with dissociative identity disorder are dangerous killers.  Harris reveals who the killer is to the reader at approximately the halfway point, to go into how he was abused by practically everybody in his childhood and how he has developed an obsession with a William Blake painting.  That Blake painting provides the figure for what the novel calls the dominant personality, again Harris using largely outdated language and not treading DID as a proper thing, but a source or horror.  Except of course, that isn’t entirely true.  Harris wouldn’t spend so much time in the head of our killer if we weren’t at the very least supposed to sympathize with how society has abandoned him.  Adding into the queer theming it is arguable that the Tooth Fairy as a serial killer is an interplay with the repressive force of society, something that Demme would clearly elevate in his adaptation of The Silence of the Lambs.  This is a killer who has used the cycle of the moon to perform his killings, is heterosexual but completely maladjusted and is sent into a rage when mischaracterized as queer potentially.  Harris in a way is reversing what would largely be expected by the genre of thrillers: queer characters are often the killers whenever they would appear, or someone’s queerness would be used as a twist or motivation, Robert Bloch’s Psycho being the most culturally ubiquitous example.

 

It's all of this theming that makes Red Dragon actually work.  This is a great example of a thriller making the reader uncomfortable because Harris is interplaying with problematic ideas and aspects of society that clearly captivated people.  This is a novel that became a bestseller and within three years was adapted into a film that I sadly have not seen.  Reading it myself, there was this captivation and just a further need to see what Harris actually laid down for Demme to adapt in The Silence of the Lambs.  8/10.