Silence Of The Lambs Essay

Submitted By Baru-Belin
Words: 1319
Pages: 6

Dr. Hannibal Lecter is a man that severely lacks ethical and moral stability. What works even more to his discredit is his complete disregard for the law and his apathetic attitude for human life. Trying to convince Dr. Lecter that harming other human beings is a horrible offensive of nature would be a task but there are several possible ways one might go about it. Though Dr. Lecter is a psychopath, he’s seemingly a logical, understanding man that can be reasoned with to a certain level, thus bringing to his attention certain reasons for why killing is wrong might deter his wrong doing. For one, an explanation of why killing is bad in today’s society may go along way for Dr. Lecter. No one in society likes to fear that someday they may be brutal harmed or killed by another human being. If Lecter had to in fact face the same fate that he has damned others with his mind set on violence against people may be different. One would imagine to him murder is not all the frightening when he himself is doing the killing but what if he understood what it is like to be on the other side of the knife? Maybe his attitude would be different or at the very least he would start to become more sympathetic to the people that he hurt and why no one should have to deal with such pain. On the other hand one might find it easier to convince Lecter on the criminal penalties involved with the harming of other people, many in which he is familiar with. Throughout the majority of the film Lector is in prison for the crimes he has committed. What is not known until the end of the film is that the entire time he had a plan of escape. What is not known though is how he would have reacted to his prison sentence if he did not a plan of escape and in the end would have had to spend the rest of his life in prison. Granted, this is a film so the actual chances of him ever actually escaping a maximum security prison is slim to none even for a genius like himself, so if in actuality he would have remained in prison for the rest of his life, would he have regretted would he had done? That cannot be known of course but it goes without saying that at some point within prison that he would have had at least a small amount of regret for the crimes he had committed. If not for moral reasons, he would have definitely had the regret of getting caught and going to prison. If someone would have told him years before any of his murders took place that prison is the absolute worst place to end up he may have reconsidered his actions. Of course he must have had an understanding of prison but if someone would have told him that his actions would eventually have him confined to a straitjacket and mouth guard he may not have been a criminal. Another way of convincing Dr. Lecter that the harming of a human beings is wrong would be switched perspective. Switch perspective is a way of showing someone the consequence of their action by altering their perspective on a situation. For instance, the people that Lecter hurt were not close to him in any intimate way which made it easy for Lecter to not even think about what he was doing while in the act of the crime but on the other hand, what if that had been his daughter? Or mother? If someone would force Lector to see his crimes with a brand new set of eyes there is a chance he would recognize the wrong in his ways. This is not to say that he would not hurt someone if they were related to him but there is reason to believe that at the very least there are people in his life that he finds to be important and if those people were to be killed in a similar fashion to how Lecter himself kills there might be some type of moral awakening within Lecter that would show him the actual ugliness of murder. There is yet an entirely different way of going about convincing Dr. Lector that murder is wrong and that is by using ethical subjectivism to convince him. Ethics are different for people all around the world and what’s more is the fact