Will Graham (character)

For the American Christian evangelist, see Will Graham (evangelist).

Hannibal Tetralogy character
File:Graham38.jpg File:Willgraham.jpg
Will Graham
Gender	Male
Ethnicity	White American
Relationships	Molly Foster Graham (wife) Willy Foster (stepson in novel) Kevin Graham (biological son in Manhunter) Josh Graham (biological son in Red Dragon (2002))
Current status:	Alive
Portrayed by:	William Petersen (Manhunter) Edward Norton (Red Dragon)

Will Graham is a fictional character in Thomas Harris' 1981 novel Red Dragon. He is an FBI profiler with the ability to empathize with serial killers. In the book, as well as the two film versions of it, Graham is portrayed as being disturbed, even disgusted, by his ability. He is the man responsible for the original capture of the serial killer Hannibal Lecter and the man who is assigned to locate killer Francis Dolarhyde after his unique gift sees him pulled out of retirement.

Although successful, Graham is seriously injured by Dolarhyde and traumatised by the incident. Other than passing mentions in Harris' sequel The Silence of the Lambs, he does not appear in any other book of the Hannibal series. In the film adaptations, Manhunter and Red Dragon, he is portrayed by William Petersen and Edward Norton, respectively.

Profile

This history is based on the novel by Thomas Harris, not any of the screenplays in which Will Graham appears:

Red Dragon establishes Graham's backstory. He had been a homicide detective in New Orleans who had grown up poor in several places, including Biloxi and Lake Erie. He leaves New Orleans to attend graduate school in forensic science at George Washington University. After attaining his degree, Graham goes to work for the FBI's crime lab. Following exceptional work both in the crime lab and in the field, Graham is given a post as teacher at the FBI Academy. During both his field work while at the crime lab and the Academy, Graham is given the title of "Special Investigator" while he is in the field.

In 1975, he tracks a serial killer in Minnesota, who had been stabbing young women, many of them college coeds, for eight months. He eventually catches the killer, Garrett Jacob Hobbs, known as the "Minnesota Shrike", at the suspect's home, repeatedly slashing his own daughter's throat. As Graham appears, Hobbs' wife is on the apartment landing, bleeding from multiple stab wounds, and clutches at Graham before he breaks down the door. He then shoots Hobbs to death with a .38. Hobbs' daughter survives and eventually goes on with her life following intensive psychotherapy. Graham is profoundly disturbed by the incident and is referred to the psychiatric ward of Bethesda Naval hospital. After a month in the hospital, he returns to the FBI.

In 1977, he begins to track down another serial killer known as the "Chesapeake Ripper", who is removing his victims' organs. He notices that a victim with multiple stab wounds has a healed stab wound; according to his medical records, from a hunting accident 10 years previous. He tracks down the doctor who treated the victim in the emergency room, now renowned psychiatrist Dr. Hannibal Lecter, to see if he remembers any suspicious circumstances surrounding the patient. Lecter is polite and helpful but claims not to remember very much. Graham, not satisfied, returns to see the doctor in his office, and seeing some antique medical books, realizes that Lecter is the killer he seeks. Graham goes to Lecter's outer office and makes a phone call to the FBI's Baltimore Field Office. Lecter, who has removed his shoes, sneaks up on Graham and slashes his abdomen with a linoleum knife, nearly disemboweling him. FBI agents and Maryland State Troopers arrive and arrest Lecter, and Graham spends months recovering in a hospital. It was only after a while in the hospital that he realized what had tipped him off — the antique medical diagram Wound Man, whose wounds match exactly those of the Ripper's victim. Graham's capture of Lecter makes him a media celebrity, and he is revered as a legend at the FBI. A tabloid reporter, Freddy Lounds, sneaks into the hospital where Graham is recuperating, photographing Graham's wounds, and humiliating him in the National Tattler. Graham retires after his recovery.

Three years later, Graham, now living with his wife Molly Foster, whom he met a year after the incident with Lecter, and her son Willy in Sugarloaf Key, Florida, is persuaded by his former boss, Jack Crawford, to come out of retirement and help the FBI again in catching a killer nicknamed "The Tooth Fairy". The Tooth Fairy, actually a man named Francis Dolarhyde, had killed two families on a lunar cycle, the first in Birmingham and the second in Atlanta. After studying the crime scenes, Graham consults Lecter on the case, but Lecter only taunts him, and later sends Graham's address to Dolarhyde in code, threatening the safety of his wife and stepson. The family are moved first to a cottage owned by Crawford's brother, but Molly later decides to take Willy to stay with her late first husband's parents in Oregon. Graham resumes tracking Dolarhyde and uses Lounds in an attempt to break the coded communication between Lecter and Dolarhyde by giving Lounds false information and also attributing fake insults against Dolarhyde to Lecter, which ultimately results in Dolarhyde kidnapping and brutally murdering Lounds. After linking him to a video production company, Graham, Crawford, and FBI agents arrive at Dolarhyde's home to arrest him, only to find that the killer had set it on fire while his blind girlfriend, Reba McClane, was inside; he then apparently committed suicide. Graham rescues and consoles McClane, and returns home, believing Dolarhyde's reign of terror is over.

However, Dolarhyde's apparent suicide is revealed to have been a ruse. Dolarhyde attacks Graham and his family at their Florida home, stabbing Graham in the face before being killed by Graham's wife. Graham and his family survive, but he is left disfigured. Will Graham is briefly referred to in The Silence of the Lambs, the sequel to Red Dragon when Clarice Starling notes that “Will Graham, the keenest hound ever to run in Crawford’s pack, was a legend at the (FBI) Academy; he was also a drunk in Florida now with a face that’s hard to look at...” Crawford tells her that "[Graham's] face looks like damned Picasso drew it."

Films

Graham has been portrayed twice on screen; in Manhunter by William Petersen and again in Red Dragon by Edward Norton.

In both adaptations, his eventual facial disfigurement is downplayed, and he appears to survive with a relatively happy ending, the last scene of Red Dragon showing him reading a letter from Lecter on a boat with his wife and son. Red Dragon also changes the nature of his connection to Lecter; while in the novel he merely met Lecter for the first time while questioning him about the patient, in the film he and Lecter apparently have an older friendship, with Will often consulting Hannibal on several of his cases until Hannibal's true nature is revealed, prompting him to return to Hannibal for information when hunting Dolarhyde.

External links

• William L Petersen as Will Graham in "Manhunter"