Thomas Harris' The Red Dragon

A central question implicit in Thomas Harris' 1981 thriller Red Dragon is whether serial killers, or psychopaths, are born or made. What plays the largest role in pathological criminal acts, nature or nurture, or a combination of both. The controversy of nature versus nurture is based on definitions of human behavior as evolving from two opposing theories. Nurture theorists contend that behavioral development is learned and that deviant or criminal behavior is based in cognitive behavior that begins with child rearing. Nature theorists on the other hand contend that behavioral development is attributed to genetic inheritance.

In Harris' viewpoint, the answer is largely nurture with regard to rapist serial killer Francis Dolarhyde, dubbed the Tooth Fairy by the media, and The Red Dragon by himself. The psychiatrist Dr. Bloom terms Dolarhyde "the child of a nightmare" (Harris, 1981, p. 202). In the case of serial killer psychiatrist Dr. Hannibal Lecter the answer is largely nature. As Lecter tells FBI special agent Will Graham, "We don't invent our natures, Will; they're issued to us along with our lungs and pancreas and everything else. Why fight it?"(Harris, 1981, p.348). Not all children who live through a traumatic childhood like Dolarhyde's become psychopaths or serial killers, although no doubt the early shaping of Dolarhyde's psychosexual and moral development impacted his youth and adulthood. So the question remains, how much of Dolarhyde was shaped by his genes and

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e's no traceable motive�." (Harris, 1981, p. 8). Tabloid reporter Freddy Lounds characterizes the Tooth Fairy as a "psychopathic slayer of entire families in Birmingham and Atlanta" (Harris, 1981, p. 115). He is dubbed the Tooth Fairy because of the many tooth marks he leaves on his victims and for dicing them with shards of broken mirrors. Incidents of Dolarhyde killing animals (cats and chickens) as a youngster, as well as bed wetting, pathological lying, and a lack of empathy and remorse are presented by Harris as examples of traits characteristic of psychopaths. As a man he exhibits other traits such as a grandiose sense of self by identifying himself as the powerful Red Dragon he saw in a William Blake painting, an identification he believes will bring him Glory. His paranoia is shown in several incidents such as one with co-worker Eileen who he believes (with no concrete evidence) "did not appreciate him. No one did, actually" (Harris, 1981, p. 92). Although there may be a genetic influence that creates a psychopathic personality, Harris leans toward the environmental factors by cataloging a list of horrors that made up Dolarhyde's childhood, and by getting inside the mind of a child who grows up to become a vicious serial

Category: Literature - T