Red Dragon (novel)

Red Dragon

First US hardback edition cover
Author	Thomas Harris
Language	English
Series	Hannibal Lecter
Genre	Thriller Crime Horror
Publisher	G.P. Putnams, Dell Publishing (USA)
Publication date	October 1981
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages	480 pp (first edition, hardback)
ISBN	ISBN 0-399-12442-X (first edition, hardback)
OCLC	7572747
Dewey Decimal	813/.54 19
LC Class	PS3558.A6558 R4 1981
Followed by	The Silence of the Lambs

Red Dragon is a novel by Thomas Harris, first published in 1981. It was the first novel to feature Harris's character Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a brilliant psychiatrist and cannibalistic serial killer. The novel was adapted as a film, Manhunter, in 1986 which featured Brian Cox as Lecter. Directed by Michael Mann, the film was critically well received but fared poorly at the box office. After Harris wrote a sequel to the novel, The Silence of the Lambs, in 1988 (itself turned into a highly successful film in 1991), Red Dragon found a new audience. A second sequel, Hannibal, was published in 1999 and adapted into a film in 2001. Both film sequels featured Anthony Hopkins in the role of Hannibal Lecter, for which he won an Oscar for Best Actor in 1991. Due to the success of the second and third films, Red Dragon was remade as a film directed by Brett Ratner in 2002, this time with Hopkins playing Lecter. The remake kept the title of the original novel.

The title refers to the figure from The Great Red Dragon Paintings by William Blake, (though Harris refers to one of these, "The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun", he actually describes another, "The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun").

Plot

In 1980, a serial killer popularly nicknamed the Tooth Fairy stalks and murders seemingly random families during sequential full moons. He kills the Jacobi family in Birmingham on Saturday June 28 and the Leeds family in Atlanta on July 26. Two days after the latter murder, Special Agent Jack Crawford seeks out his protégé, Will Graham, a brilliant profiler who was the agent who actually captured Hannibal Lecter three years earlier, but retired after Lecter almost killed him. Crawford goes to Sugarloaf Key and pleads with Graham for his assistance, and Graham reluctantly agrees. After checking over the crime scenes, with only minimal insight, he realizes that he must once again visit Lecter and seek his help in capturing the Tooth Fairy.

The Tooth Fairy is actually a disturbed man named Francis Dolarhyde. Calling himself The Great Red Dragon (because of his obsession with the William Blake painting "The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun"), Dolarhyde is unable to control his violent, sexual urges. These conditions were born from the systematic child abuse he suffered at the hands of his grandmother.

Graham continues to run into complications, the first being Freddy Lounds, a tabloid reporter who follows Graham relentlessly for leads on the Tooth Fairy story. Further complicating the investigation is the secret correspondence between Lecter and Dolarhyde, where Lecter provides Dolarhyde with Graham's home address, endangering Graham's wife and child, who are evacuated to a remote farm which belongs to Crawford's brother. Graham discovers the secret communication and tries to intercept it without Lecter's knowledge but the doctor is quick to realize that the Feds are onto him and his protégé and humiliates the authorities by upping the stakes: in return for his help in capturing the Tooth Fairy, he requests a first-class meal in his cell and having his book privileges returned.

Hoping to lure the Tooth Fairy into a trap, Graham gives Lounds an interview in which he characterizes the killer as an impotent homosexual. This provokes Dolarhyde, who kidnaps Lounds, forces him to recant his allegations, sets him on fire and deposits his charred but alive body outside his newspaper's offices.

At about the same time, Dolarhyde falls in love with a blind co-worker named Reba McClane. Dolarhyde's new-found love conflicts with his homicidal urges, which manifest themselves in his mind as an alternate personality he calls "The Great Red Dragon". After beginning a relationship with Reba, Dolarhyde attempts to stop the Dragon's "possession" of him; he goes to the Brooklyn Museum, beats a museum secretary unconscious, and eats the original Blake watercolor of The Red Dragon.

Graham eventually realizes that the killer knew the layout of his victims' houses from their home cine films, which he only could have seen if he worked for the film processing lab that develops home movies. Dolarhyde's job gives him access to all home movies that pass through the company. When he sees Graham interviewing his boss, Dolarhyde realizes that they are on to him and goes to see Reba one last time. He finds her talking to a co-worker, Ralph Mandy, a man whom she actually dislikes. Enraged, Dolarhyde kills Mandy, kidnaps Reba and, having taken her to his house, sets the place on fire. He intends to kill her and then himself, but finds himself unable to shoot her. After Dolarhyde apparently shoots himself, Reba escapes.

However, it turns out Dolarhyde did not shoot himself but left behind the body of Arnold Lang, a gas station attendant, in order to stage his own death. Dolarhyde then surprises Graham at his Florida home, where he proceeds to stab Graham in the face, permanently disfiguring him. Graham's wife, Molly, then fatally shoots Dolarhyde.

After recovering, Graham receives a letter from Lecter, which bids him well and hopes that he isn't "very ugly". However, Crawford intercepts the letter and destroys it.

Characters

• Will Graham
• Francis Dolarhyde a.k.a. "The Red Dragon"
• Jack Crawford
• Dr. Hannibal Lecter
• Freddy Lounds
• Reba McClane
• Ralph Mandy
• Arnold Lang - a gas station attendant and one of Dolarhyde's victims
• Molly Graham
• Willy Graham

Editions

The original hardcover and paperback editions mentioned Lecter being held in the "Chesapeake" hospital. After the publication of the sequel, The Silence of the Lambs, one reprint of Red Dragon has the name of the hospital changed to the "Baltimore" hospital in order to maintain continuity with the sequel. In all following editions, the name is changed back to "Chesapeake".

Adaptations

• The first film, released in 1986 under the title Manhunter, was written and directed by Michael Mann and focused on FBI Special Agent Will Graham, played by William Petersen. Lecter (renamed Lecktor) was played by Brian Cox.
• In 1996, Chicago's Defiant Theatre produced a full stage version of the novel at the Firehouse theatre, adapted and directed by the company's artistic director, Christopher Johnson. The production included projected "home movies" as were described in the novel, including reenacting the violent murders. Dolarhyde's inner "dragon" was personified by an actor in an elaborate, grotesque costume and seduces the killer to continue on his violent path.
• The second film, which used the title Red Dragon, appeared in 2002. Directed by Brett Ratner and written by Ted Tally (who also wrote the screenplay for The Silence of the Lambs), it starred Edward Norton as Graham and Anthony Hopkins as Lecter.

External links

• The Hannibal Lecter Studiolo