Archetypes: Switch Protagonists (The Silence of the Lambs)

Here's something you can do with character archetypes that is both illuminating and fun: Switch Protagonists. Not literally, but as an exercise in getting to know your characters better, imagine each one of the primary ones as a Protagonist. For example, let's look at The Silence of the Lambs (1991). My character archetype breakdown for that movie looks like this:

Protagonist: Clarice Starling
Nemesis: Buffalo Bill
Attractor: Catherine Martin (Buffalo Bill's final kidnapping victim)
Mentor: Hannibal Lecter
Trickster: Dr. Frederick Chilton (Director of Baltimore Hospital for the Criminally Insane)

While Hannibal Lecter may have been selected by the AFI as the #1 movie villain, he does not function as Clarice's Nemesis. What she wants to do is save Catherine Martin. The character standing in the way of that is Buffalo Bill. In fact, Lecter helps Clarice, not only providing critical information to help her track down Buffalo Bill, but also acting as a wisdom figure in guiding Clarice into what she needs to do: Confront her nightmares and the painful memories of her past. By mustering up the courage to do that, Clarice taps into the power she has -- but has been repressed by her fears. Once she does confront those fears, she taps into a power which enables her to take on and shoot down Buffalo Bill. So Lecter's primary function with Clarice is as a Mentor, providing wisdom for her psychological process.

What propels Clarice to keep pushing the case forward, even when Jack Crawford and the others have been led on a fool's errand, far away from Buffalo Bill, is her increasing identification for Catherine Martin:

* Catherine is a single white southern woman; so is Clarice
* Catherine is a victim (kidnapped); Clarice is a victim as well, her father having died when Clarice was a child
* The person who victimizes Catherine is a criminal (Buffalo Bill); the people who victimized Clarice were two criminals (who shot and killed Clarice's father)

For these reasons, I think Clarice projects herself onto Catherine Martin: By saving Catherine, she can somehow 'save' herself (Clarice). Or as Hannibal Lecter puts it, "And you think if you save poor Catherine, you can make them stop, don't you? You think if Catherine lives, you won't wake up in the dark ever again to that awful screaming of the lambs."

Clarice forms an emotional connection with Catherine Martin - and that is the function of an Attractor character.

Chilton as Trickster? He provides one test after another for Clarice: Hitting on her for a date in their first meeting; trying to stop Clarice from seeing Lecter when she pays an unscheduled visit to the prison; secretly taping conversations with Lecter and Clarice; cutting a deal with Senator Ruth Martin (Catherine's mother) which undercuts the deal Clarice and the FBI negotiated with Lecter; catching Clarice in Memphis and forcing her to leave her last conversation with Lecter before he can answer her repeated question, "Tell me his name" (i.e., the identification of Buffalo Bill) .

But per the exercise, what if we switched things around and imagined that Hannibal Lecter is the story's Protagonist? What character archetype breakdown might we get? How about:

P: Lecter
N: Chilton
A: Starling
M: Buffalo Bill
T: Jack Crawford / FBI

Lecter's goal? He wants to get out of prison. Who's the first line of defense? Chilton. When Lecter causes Miggs to swallow his tongue, Chilton strips Lecter's room bare of all his drawings and artifacts, then blares a TV evangelist at Lecter. When Lecter negotiates his deal with Clarice, he states, "I want to be in a federal insitutation, away from Chilton. Chilton = Lecter's Nemesis.

Is Lecter romantically inclined toward Starling? It seems clearly so in the movie. Further proof: Thomas Harris' sequel "Hannibal" in which Lecter and Starling are lovers. She's Lecter's Attractor.

I would argue the Mentor is Buffalo Bill for it's the clues BB gives and the influence of his crimes that provide the opportunity for Lecter to escape.

And Trickster? Jack Crawford and the FBI. Crawford literally prepares a test ("questionnaire") for Clarice to bring to Lecter. Crawford essentially uses Clarice under false pretenses to gain information re Buffalo Bill - very tricky. Crawford sends Clarice back to Lecter, offering him a deal from the FBI - but the deal doesn't actually exist.

Okay, now what if we shifted the Protagonist function to Buffalo Bill?

P: Buffalo Bill (Jamie Gumb)
N: Clarice Starling
A: The female version of Jamie Gumb
M: Moths
T: Catherine Martin

What is Buffalo Bill's goal? To become a woman. When he is rejected for a sex change operation, he starts to kidnap and kill young women, skinning them in order to sew together his own female body suit. Catherine Martin is another step toward that goal. Clarice intends to save Catherine. Hence, Clarice is BB's Nemesis.

Re the Attractor: There is a very telling sequence in the movie in which Gumb dresses up as a woman and dances in front of a video-camera, exposing his 'feminized' body -- makeup, wig, even to the point of tucking his penis between his thighs, then standing proud, fully nude as if he has a vagina. It's that persona to which Gumb is most emotionally attached and, therefore, in my view his Attractor.



Mentor: There is a scene (which I can't find on YouTube) where Gumb extracts a moth from its larval cocoon and talks to it saying, "So beautiful... so powerful." Lecter amplifies the significance of the moth to Buffalo Bill:

LECTER
The significance of the moth is
change. Caterpillar into cocoon into
beauty... Billy wants to change,
too, Clarice. But there's the problem
of his size, you see. Even if he
were a woman, he'd have to be a big
one...

The moth represents change, a living symbol of what Gumb wants to do -- therefore functioning as Gumb's Mentor.

And the Trickster? How about Catherine Martin who tricks Gumb's dog -- "Precious" -- down into her pit and threatens to kill the dog, presenting a major test for Gumb.

As a writing exercise for your own stories, you can not only shift Protagonists in order to identify character archetypes upon which you can more fully develop their personalities, you can also dig deeper into each of your primary characters, seeing the world through their eyes. How much more interesting might you find your Nemesis character, or your Mentor, Attractor, or Trickster if you imagine that they are the story's Protagonist?

I leave you with this hysterical Legos take-off on The Silence of the Lambs wherein the 'Protagonist' Jamie Gumb confronts his 'Trickster' Catherine Martin -- as an opera.