Silence of the Lambs: the Marcus Aurelius Principle

"First principles. What is it in itself, what is its nature?"

I took a test in Facebook on who would have been the author that would write my life story, and the results said that it would be "a crime if Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of Sherlock Holmes, would not write my story." Indeed I have been in love with detective and psycho-thriller movies since I was a child. Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal, Saw series, Detective Conan, all these movies have always thrilled me because they are not really horror movies which recently have become a series of scenes that just scares you but with empty stories. I just watched Silence of the Lambs after five years and still gave me the chills by Dr. Hannibal Lecter, Hannibal the Cannibal.

I have read that the movie, which is inspired by the book Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris is based on real life serial killers, where Hannibal Lecter played the role of the real-life cannibal Albert Fish, while Buffalo Bill or Jame Gumb reflected three serial killers including Ted Bundy. I have read a lot about Albert Fish during high school, where he kidnapped children and ate them. Since then, I continued to read about different serial killers and their untold stories of horror and their identities as men of severe violence.

The story starts with FBI student Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) who also has divine interest in behavioral science. A job comes up and the head of the Behavioral Sciences department Dr. Jack Crawford (Scott Glenn) asked Clarise to profile serial killers including Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins), their "most prized asset". The covert assignment is to use Clarise extract information from Hannibal regarding the Buffalo Bill case files, where up until then the FBI has not able to pin down the horrible serial killer who kills women. Jack Crawford is right: Hannibal knows who Buffalo Bill is. Clarise, who wants nothing but to help pin down the serial killer agrees to a deal with the cannibal Hannibal quid pro quo: Hannibal gives her clues about Buffalo Bill and Clarise tells him about her worst memory of childhood. 

Clarise was able to successfully find the wanted serial killer with Hannibal's anagrams and Marcus Aurelius principle techniques and saved Catherine Martin, the last girl Buffalo Bill kidnapped that time. 

I have always loved how Clarise solved the case files and I learned a lot about the stories behind serial killers who were victims of their childhood themselves. When I read more about the psychology of serial killers and mass murderers I found out that most of them were victims of violence during their childhood and therefore they become something horrible and terrible that they themselves were not able to escape from. 

I have been attracted to different psycho-thriller movies these days despite my current condition, but then the very reason I crave them is I can familiarize with these horrible things and compare them to my own demons, and realize that such people in such movies are far worse than what I am experiencing now. 

In the end, as I have always believed, bad guys are never born as killers in the first place.