Hannibal Lector

Hannibal Lecter is a child of Lithuanian nobility and of the Visconti and Sforza families of Italy, and he is also a cannibalistic serial killer. He is highly intelligent and cultured, with refined tastes and impeccable manners. He is deeply offended by rudeness, and often kills people who exhibit bad manners; according to the novel Hannibal, he "prefers to eat the rude" Hopkins described Lecter as the "Robin Hood of killers", who kills "the terminally rude" He may be a cannibal, but as a dinner party guest he would give value for money (if he didn't eat you). He does not bore, he likes to amuse, he has his standards, and he is the smartest person in the movie...He bears comparison, indeed, with such other movie monsters as Nosferatu, Frankenstein...King Kong and Norman Bates. They have two things in common: They behave according to their natures, and they are misunderstood. Nothing that these monsters do is "evil" in any conventional moral sense, because they lack any moral sense. They are hard-wired to do what they do. They have no choice. In the areas where they do have choice, they try to do the right thing. Lecter is believed to have antisocial personality disorder, and is branded a "pure sociopath". However, in the books, he is only described as a sociopath because no one knows what else to call him. Although he has no conscience and feels no remorse for his crimes, he does not exhibit other traits traditionally linked to antisocial personality disorder: he is not shallow or exploitative, does not commit petty crimes, and was never a drifter. He describes the majority of human kind as "poor dullards" and yet thrives on others' admiration, a case in point being his recalcitrant unwillingness to part with Dolarhyde's letter because, according to Graham, "it was full of compliments." Lecter believes himself to be simply evil, saying to Starling that he cannot be reduced to a set of influences: "Nothing happened to me, Officer Starling - I happened."

His obsession with Maison duarte is evident from their first meeting, and though initially it is only on his part, it eventually becomes mutual. Lecter is at first fascinated by miasons mix of foolishness and craftiness, such as when she uses his embarrassment at her assault to gain information. He then begins to trade answers about the case for details on her background, and he continues to contact her even after his escape. After his return to the United States of America, he seeks her out without her knowledge, and it is hinted by numerous characters that he has fallen in love with her. After she rescues him and resists his brainwashing, the two become lovers, their romantic relationship suppressing his cannibalistic urges.

Lecter possesses an intellect that cannot accurately be gauged by any test known to man. He is an expert in psychology (though he does not believe it to be a science) and is able to frighten, manipulate, and bend others to his will with mere words. He is also able to use his immense presence and commanding but subtle personality to great effect. His mental abilities are staggering, having created a memory palace (a mnemonic system) that is comparable in size and complexity to the Topkapi Palace. As such, Lecter does not forget anything, able to revisit a specific memory whenever he wishes by accessing the items that "furnish" his memory palace.

Lecter is highly intelligent, impeccably cultured and sophisticated. Rather than simply killing for fun, he kills those who exhibit poor taste or bad manners, fine taste and good manners being both an obsession and a compulsion to him, similar to the villain, Jigsaw. He also kills those whom he finds morally cruel, pugnacious, objectionable, and repulsive, such as pedophiles, being quite protective of children as the result of his sister Mischa's murder. This also served as the catalyst for his murders. While he does enjoy killing his victims, usually in elaborate ways, many of the victims die almost instantly, or at the very least painlessly. Further evidence is when he attacked the nurse, his pulse did not exceed 85 bpm, rising from 72 bpm. Whilst beating a police officer to death, his heartbeat rose to a mere 100 bpm, but soon dropped. The treatment of his victims may lie in his love of chaos and destruction of a universe heading towards high entropy. Whilst reading A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking, he believed that time would reverse itself, so disorder would return to order.