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Chapter 36
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Silence of the Lambs, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Sexism and Law Enforcement
The Nature of Evil
Class and Shame
Manipulation
Summary
Analysis
Sargent Tate, the commanding officer at the Memphis courthouse, sends a custodian to check up on Pembry and Boyle when he does not hear from them. The custodian attempts to take the elevator up to the fifth floor, where they are holding Lecter, but the elevator does not work. Suddenly, gunshots ring out in the building. Sargent Tate and his men immediately move into action. Tate sends men to guard every door and then gathers men around the stairs to figure out what is going on.
Again, the Memphis police are way out of their depth. Rather than send an officer—or multiple officers—to check on Lecter, Sargent Tate sends a custodian. Quickly, he realizes he made a mistake when he hears gunshots. Given that the penknife excited Lecter more than the gun, it seems unlikely he used the gun to shoot someone. Instead, the gun feels like a distraction—yet another bit of clever manipulation from Lecter.
Themes
Tate and his men make their way up the stairs floor by floor in search of Lecter. As they move up, they don’t find anything abnormal except that the elevator is open on the third floor. However, when they reach the fifth floor, they find what they believe to be Pembry and Boyle’s bodies on the floor. One man, Officer Jacobs, gets to Boyle’s corpse first and confirms that he is dead. Meanwhile, Tate checks up on Pembry, who is actually Lecter in disguise. When he sees Lecter breathing, he assumes Pembry is still alive and calls for paramedics. The paramedics come upstairs, quickly slap bandages over Lecter’s apparent wounds, and then take him downstairs without a second glance.
While examining the Pembry and Lecter, the officers never think to check for bullet wounds, despite having heard gunshots. They also don’t realize that Pembry is actually Lecter, though, on that count, it is hard to blame them. However, once again, all of their behavior demonstrates exactly what Crawford and Starling worried about. They were not ready for Lecter, and now it looks like he is about to escape.
Themes
Meanwhile, Tate and his men continue sweeping the building searching for Lecter, not realizing that they already let him slip by. While in the elevator, Jacobs sees blood dripping from the ceiling. He gestures to his fellow officers, and soon everyone thinks Lecter is bleeding on top of the elevator. Everyone positions themselves around the elevator, trying to ensure Lecter has nowhere to go. When an officer opens the elevator shaft, he sees what looks like Lecter with a gun in his hand. He orders Lecter to drop the gun, but the figure in the elevator does not do anything. Then, he throws a stun grenade. Again, the figure in the elevator does not move. Eventually, the officers realize that the figure is not Lecter at all; it is Pembry.
In a novel that sees characters constantly manipulating one another, Lecter’s escape plan is the cleverest of all. Although Crawford often remarks that Lecter’s intellectual ego is his weak spot, it is also his strongest feature. Here, he manages to fool an entire building full of trained police officers, and they fall for his trick every step of the way. Not only does Lecter manage to escape, but he also buys himself time to get a reasonable distance away from the courthouse before anyone realizes what has happened.
Themes
