THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS The novel The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris is said to fall under the genre of psychological horror. The stories that fall under the genre of horror include a few essential elements: a villain or one seen as evil to create an initial story line. The foil is the next element; a foil is a person who tries to stop the villain from going through with the evil plan or plot. These two elements naturally lead to conflict between the two persons or groups and then from this conflict suspense, the last element is added. Suspense is important to keep the reader interested and to keep the story line going. When psychology is added to a story, the definition of horror is changed completely. There are still those few essential elements above but there is also a few more added. The story now has something to do with the mind and how it works, and there is really no definition for that. The mind and its workings are a mystery to us and that mystery of the mind adds to the suspense and therefore the idea of psychology and horror are able to go together and become one. This essay will prove that The Silence of the Lambs is indeed a psychological horror according to the five criteria above along with other sources. The first element to a psychological horror is a villain, and the villain is The Silence of the Lambs is Mr. Jame Gumb. He is a white male in his mid thirties, most serial killers are white male, unemployed, intelligent and experience financial difficulty.(Bonata, 3) Gumb is all of these things, he is unemployed but a very skilled seamstress, and using these skills is making himself a second skin out of women who he is able to take control of and render them powerless. He is also very intelligent but is anable to interact with other people and therefore remains unemployed. He experienced financial difficulties until he was the recipient of a large sum of money from an inheritance. The unconscious fear of wom...
