Hannibal Lecter. The Elegant Cannibal and His “Creator”

Any literary character is either created by one specific person or is “glued together” from different characteristics of different people according to the author’s ideas. Movie scripts are often based on real events and use real prototypes. But what about Hannibal Lecter? The author of the character, American writer and journalist Thomas Harris, has long believed that Lecter does not have a specific prototype. Until 2013…

We in the Baltic states can be a little proud of Hannibal Lecter, because according to the author, he was born on January 20, 1933 in neighboring Lithuania, where he lived through both the Nazi and Soviet occupations. Hannibal’s father was a Lithuanian of noble birth, while his mother came from an Italian noble family – that’s how this decidedly non-Lithuanian boy got his name “Hannibal”.

The horrors that Hannibal experienced in his childhood left him with an irreversible impact, as the Nazis murdered his parents and sister in front of the boy, the latter of whom was boiled in boiling water and Hannibal was forced to eat. After this, the boy stopped talking and later experienced violence and ridicule in a Soviet orphanage – this is where the murderer’s later hatred for rude people arose. Speaking of the role played, Mr. Anthony Hopkins Some say Hannibal Lecter is the “Robin Hood of Killers” who kills the “terminally ill”.

Thomas Harris long denied that Lecter had any specific prototype, because as a young reporter he had seen his fair share of “inspirational” types while describing and interviewing in prisons.