Seven Mile Bridge, Marathon, FL
Note: Page numbers are from 1981 Putnam edition. Numbers in brackets refer to page numbers in the 2000 Dell paperback edition.
[Dolarhyde's] blood's AB positive. A, B ... Alpha, Beta. Compare this to Pazzi's being called "analfabeta" or illiterate. (See Hannibal Section II.)
Stop living like a cave fish
"...all her friends are in Arlington." In Hannibal, Clarice lives in Arlington. The National Cemetery is in Arlington.
"...this freak seems to be in phase with the moon."
The Jacobis in Birmingham. The first person with the name Jacobi that comes to mind is actor Sir Derek Jacobi who starred as Claudius in the TV production of Robert Graves' I, Claudius. I, Claudius is mentioned in Hannibal. Interestingly, Jacobi trained at the Birmingham Repertory Company (in England).
Moths batted softly at the screens. Moths are important to The Silence of the Lambs.
He was really obsessed with the dogs. In the foreword, Harris also tells us of the dogs who kept him company out in the cotton field.
When Graham finished with the dogs, Molly helped him pack. Dogs ... pack... ha.
Before fingerprinting came to be used by law enforcement, a system of body measurements, devised by Alphonse Bertillon (see epigram), was one means used to identify repeat offenders. Photographs were also used and kept in Rogue's Galleries. Neither method was particulary accurate. But while knowledge of fingerprints was available, it took a while for them to catch on. The first instance in literature of a fingerprint being used to solve a crime was in Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi. The first instance of fingerprinting being used to solve a real murder was nine years later, 1892, in Argentina.
In Twain's story, two robbers have murdered a man's wife and daughter. The man suspects the culprits are soldiers from a nearby camp. He poses as a fortune teller and goes to the camp claiming he can read the future in thumbprints - a spinoff of palmistry I imagine. He paints the client's thumb red, presses it on a piece of paper, then later compares it to a bloody thumbprint left behind at the crime scene. Ultimately he is able to identify the guilty parties.
Twain also uses fingerprints in Pudd'n Head Wilson.
I'm drowning in a whiskey river
Bathing my mem'ried mind
In the wetness of its soul
Feeling the amber current
Flowing from my mind
And leaving a heart you left so cold
a sculpture called The Praying Hands - presumably based on Albrecht Durer's hand study.
Jennifer Cody reminded me that Oral Roberts University has a bronze monument of the Praying Hands. I lived in Tulsa, OK for a couple of years and drove past it countless times. It's quite a sight, the largest bronze sculpture in the world.
a set of teeth, upper and lower. In Hannibal, we are given the specifics of pig dentition. "...three crushing pairs of molars, upper and lower, for a total of forty-four teeth." These teeth remind Graham of a jack-o'-lantern. In Hannibal, the battlements of the Palazzo Vecchio remind Pazzi of jack-o'-lantern teeth.
There are other things that come in upper and lower, such as letters which come in upper and lower case. The designation comes from back in the days of movable type when the letters were stored in special drawers, called cases. Capital letters were kept in the upper drawer, small letters were kept in the lower drawer. Mark Twain worked setting type in a printing house.
As for the jack o'lantern, since I'm on a Mark Twain kick these days I did a search on Mark Twain and jack-o'-lanterns, and came across a few instances, such as in Huckleberry Finn, where he talks about chasing these jack-o'-lanterns. Obviously he wasn't talking about carved pumpkins. What he was referrng to was a phenomenon known technically as Ignis Fatuus, Foolish Fire, mysterious lights which occur in marshlands. They are also known as will-o'-the-wisps. One explanation for these lights is that they are ignited swamp gases, such as methane. Another is that they may be related to St. Elmo's Fire, but nobody knows for sure. You cannot catch a jack-o'lantern. Someone who is chasing jack-o'-lanterns is chasing after something they can never have. This reminds me of Wile E. Coyote, whom Harris mentions in SOTL and Hannibal, who is forever chasing the Roadrunner to no avail.
There are also less scientific theories about these marsh lights. For instance, there's the story of Jack (or Will, the stories are nearly identical), a worthless drunk who sells his soul to the devil but ends up tricking the devil out of the bargain. When Jack (or Will) eventually dies, he finds Heaven closed to him because he was a bad person. He is also barred from Hell as the devil wants nothing to do with him either. So Jack (or Will) is destined to spend eternity wandering the Earth with only a candle in his turnip lantern (or a lighted wisp). The jack-o'-lantern is the symbol of a damned soul.
tailor's notch. Jame Gumb was a tailor.
"Snaggletoothed son of a bitch." There was a Hanna-Barbera cartoon character named Snaggletooth who appeared in a number of cartoons like Quick Draw McGraw and Augie Doggie. I'm not sure but he may have later become Snagglepuss, the pink lion who said, "Exit, stage left even" and "Heavens to Murgatroid!"
Kurt Vonnegut. This author of Slaughterhouse Five has been said to look like Mark Twain and he spoke at the Mark Twain Memorial in 1979. But I don't think he looks like Mark Twain.
Evelyn Waugh. Another humorist and author. Waugh also wrote travel books.
The minute I saw it was green I was sorry, and began to reflect -- reflection is the beginning of reform. If you don't reflect when you commit a crime then that crime is of no use; it might just as well have been committed by someone else. You must reflect or the value is lost; you are not vaccinated against committing it again.
I began to reflect. I said to myself: "What ought a boy to do who has stolen a green watermelon? What would George Washington do, the father of his country, the only American who could not tell a lie? What would he do? There is only one right, high, noble thing for any boy to do who has stolen a watermelon of that class: he must make restitution; he must restore that stolen property to its rightful owner." I said I would do it when I made that good resolution. I felt it to be a noble, uplifting obligation. I rose up spiritually stronger and refreshed. I carried that watermelon back -- what was left of it -- and restored it to the farmer, and made him give me a ripe one in its place.
Now you see that this constant impact of crime upon crime protects you against further commission of crime. It builds you up. A man can't become morally perfect by stealing one or a thousand green watermelons, but every little helps.
A swineherd of my acquaintance.
Dr. Lecter's eyes are maroon. Aside from being a brownish-red color, maroon can also refer to a group of runaway slaves from the West Indies. (Dumas' grandmother was a West Indian slave.) The word comes from cimarron = wild, untamed, unbroken. To be marooned is to be stranded in some awful place.
Francis Dolarhyde. It's interesting that a man who has trouble with sibilants would be known as Francis rather than Frank. Dolarhyde is more commonly spelled with two 'L's and often with an "I" instead of the "Y".
Dolarhyde = buckskin? Buckskin like Buffalo Bill? Hmm.
Here's an interesting bit on the name Dollarhide, from the noted genealogist William Dollarhide:
The "R" was added in spelling only in North Carolina, and became DOLLARHIDE. I believe that the name originally was De La Hyde, which derives from the early english-latin, "of the land" and was spelled de la Hyde as early as 1066, the time of the Norman invasion of England. And in Ireland a Delahoyde family flourishes. In fact, in the 1880s and 90s when great numbers of Irish were coming to this country several families with the Delahoyde surname came into the midwest area. In several cases they lived in the same areas where members of the Dollarhide family lived.
The name Dolarhye may also indicate that he hides his dolor (pain or sorrow). It also brings to mind Mr. Hyde, Dr. Jekyll's alter ego. Francis, being a somewhat feminine name ties in with his emasculation traumas as a child. [Thanks to Joseph Cunningham]
[Dolarhyde] always wore red goggles outside the dark room. Mason Verger wore a goggle on his good eye. Jame Gumb wore night vision goggles. According to my OED, goggles is a disease of sheep.
Eileen has a suck mark on the back of her knee. In SOTL, when Gumb undresses Catherine, there's a "suck mark" on her breast. [Thanks Jennifer Maxwell]
Dolarhyde put steel wool in his ears to keep his thoughts from glowing out. Real wool, of course, comes from sheep.