The Silence of the Lambs

by

Thomas Harris

Jame Gumb/Buffalo Bill Character Analysis

Jame Gumb—also known as Buffalo Bill—is a serial killer who skins his victims and places moth cocoons in their throats. According to Hannibal Lecter, Gumb mistakenly believes he is transsexual. Because he was denied surgery at the Johns Hopkins Gender Identity Clinic for not matching the proper criteria for transsexuality, Gumb begins killing women and making a suit for himself out of their skin. Gumb perceives this process as a transformation, which is why he puts cocoons in his victim’s throats: like Gumb, the pupa in the cocoon is undergoing a transformation. Harris writes several chapters in the novel from Gumb’s perspective. In these scenes, it is clear that Gumb does not think of his victims as human beings. Instead, they are objects to be played with, stripped for materials, and then discarded. The only human Gumb shows affection for is his mother. He keeps a VHS tape that he watches repeatedly of his mother winning a beauty pageant. In reality, Gumb never knew his mother because she gave him up for adoption. Gumb also cares about his dog, Precious, and talks to her like a baby. Ultimately, Gumb is a monstrous but tragic figure with no stable sense of identity or morality.

Jame Gumb/Buffalo Bill Quotes in The Silence of the Lambs

The The Silence of the Lambs quotes below are all either spoken by Jame Gumb/Buffalo Bill or refer to Jame Gumb/Buffalo Bill. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Sexism and Law Enforcement Theme Icon
).
Chapter 8 Quotes

Considering the face again, she believed she learned something that would last her. Looking with purpose at this face, with its tongue changing color where it touched the glass, was not as bad as Miggs swallowing his tongue in her dreams. She felt she could look at anything, if she had something positive to do about it. Starling was young.

Related Characters: Clarice Starling, Jame Gumb/Buffalo Bill, Klaus
Page Number: 54
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 13 Quotes

That’s not a guess. He’s very likely right, and he could have told you why, but he wanted to tease you with it. It’s the only weakness I ever saw in him—he has to look smart, smarter than anybody. He’s been doing it for years.

Related Characters: Jack Crawford (speaker), Clarice Starling, Hannibal Lecter, Jame Gumb/Buffalo Bill
Page Number: 94
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 14 Quotes

“There’s a moth, more than one in fact, that lives only on tears,” he offered. “That’s all they eat or drink.”

“What kind of tears? Whose tears?”

“The tears of large land mammals, about our size. The old definition of moth was ‘anything that gradually, silently eats, consumes, or wastes any other thing.’ It was a verb for destruction too... Is this what you do all the time—hunt Buffalo Bill?”

“I do it all I can.”

Related Characters: Clarice Starling (speaker), Noble Pilcher (speaker), Jame Gumb/Buffalo Bill, Senator Ruth Martin
Related Symbols: Death’s Head Moths
Page Number: 106
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 22 Quotes

“What do your two disciplines tell you about Buffalo Bill?”

“By the book, he’s a sadist.”

“Life’s too slippery for books, Clarice; anger appears as lust, lupus presents as hives.”

Related Characters: Clarice Starling (speaker), Hannibal Lecter (speaker), Jame Gumb/Buffalo Bill
Page Number: 146
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 23 Quotes

“Wash yourself.”

It was the same unearthly voice she’d heard talking to the dog.

Another bucket coming down on a thin cord. She smelled hot, soapy water.

“Take it off and wash yourself all over, or you’ll get the hose.” And an aside to the dog as the voice faded, “Yes it will get the hose, won’t it, Darlingheart, yes it will!”

Related Characters: Jame Gumb/Buffalo Bill (speaker), Catherine Baker Martin, Precious
Page Number: 154-155
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 28 Quotes

To even mention Buffalo Bill in the same breath with the problems we treat here is ignorant and unfair and dangerous, Mr. Crawford. It makes my hair stand on end.

Related Characters: Dr. Danielson (speaker), Hannibal Lecter, Jame Gumb/Buffalo Bill, Jack Crawford, Catherine Baker Martin
Page Number: 181
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 32 Quotes

When her pupils darkened, Dr. Lecter took a single sip of her pain and found it exquisite. That was enough for today.

Related Characters: Clarice Starling, Hannibal Lecter, Jame Gumb/Buffalo Bill, Noble Pilcher, Senator Ruth Martin
Related Symbols: Death’s Head Moths
Page Number: 201
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 33 Quotes

He switches back to the cage just in time. The big insect’s wings are held above her back, hiding and distorting her markings. Now she brings down her wings to cloak her body and the famous design is clear. A human skull, wonderfully executed in the furlike scales, stares from the back of the moth. Under the shaded dome of the skull are the black eye holes and prominent cheekbones. Beneath them darkness lies like a gag across the face above the jaw. The skull rests on a marking flared like the top of a pelvis.

A skull stacked upon a pelvis, all drawn on the back of a moth by an accident of nature.

Related Characters: Hannibal Lecter, Jame Gumb/Buffalo Bill, Catherine Baker Martin
Related Symbols: Death’s Head Moths
Page Number: 205
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 35 Quotes

“He covets. In fact, he covets being the very thing you are. It’s his nature to covet. How do we begin to covet, Clarice? Do we seek out things to covet? Make an effort at an answer.”

“No. We just—”

“No. Precisely so. We begin by coveting what we see every day. Don’t you feel eyes moving over you every day, Clarice, in chance encounters? I hardly see how you could not. And don’t your eyes move over things?”

Related Characters: Clarice Starling (speaker), Hannibal Lecter (speaker), Jame Gumb/Buffalo Bill, Catherine Baker Martin
Page Number: 227
Explanation and Analysis:

Do you think if you caught Buffalo Bill yourself and if you made Catherine all right, you could make the lambs stop screaming, do you think they’d be all right too and you wouldn’t wake up again in the dark and hear the lambs screaming?

Related Characters: Hannibal Lecter (speaker), Clarice Starling, Jame Gumb/Buffalo Bill, Catherine Baker Martin
Related Symbols: Lambs
Page Number: 230
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 48 Quotes

I’m as good as anybody you’ve got at the cop stuff, better at some things. The victims are all women and there aren’t any women working this. I can walk in a woman’s room and know three times as much about her as a man would know, and you know that’s a fact.

Related Characters: Clarice Starling (speaker), Jame Gumb/Buffalo Bill, Jack Crawford
Page Number: 299
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 49 Quotes

He had in the past hunted young women through the blacked-out basement using his infrared goggles and light, and it was wonderful to do, watching them feel their way around, seeing them try to scrunch into corners. He liked to hunt them with the pistol. He liked to use the pistol. Always they became disoriented, lost their balance, ran into things. He could stand in absolute darkness with his goggles on, wait until they took their hands down from their faces, and shoot them right in the head. Or in the legs first, below the knee so they could still crawl.

Related Characters: Jame Gumb/Buffalo Bill, Catherine Baker Martin
Related Symbols: Death’s Head Moths
Page Number: 302
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 59 Quotes

Jame Gumb was news for weeks after he was lowered into his final hole.

Reporters pieced together his history, beginning with the records of Sacramento County:

His mother had been carrying him a month when she failed to place in the Miss Sacramento Contest in 1948. The “Jame” on his birth certificate apparently was a clerical error that no one bothered to correct.

When her acting career failed to materialize, his mother went into an alcoholic decline; Gumb was two when Los Angeles County placed him in a foster home.

At least two scholarly journals explained that this unhappy childhood was the reason he killed women in his basement for their skins. The words crazy and evil do not appear in either article.

Related Characters: Jame Gumb/Buffalo Bill
Page Number: 357
Explanation and Analysis:
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Jame Gumb/Buffalo Bill Quotes in The Silence of the Lambs

The The Silence of the Lambs quotes below are all either spoken by Jame Gumb/Buffalo Bill or refer to Jame Gumb/Buffalo Bill. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Sexism and Law Enforcement Theme Icon
).
Chapter 8 Quotes

Considering the face again, she believed she learned something that would last her. Looking with purpose at this face, with its tongue changing color where it touched the glass, was not as bad as Miggs swallowing his tongue in her dreams. She felt she could look at anything, if she had something positive to do about it. Starling was young.

Related Characters: Clarice Starling, Jame Gumb/Buffalo Bill, Klaus
Page Number: 54
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 13 Quotes

That’s not a guess. He’s very likely right, and he could have told you why, but he wanted to tease you with it. It’s the only weakness I ever saw in him—he has to look smart, smarter than anybody. He’s been doing it for years.

Related Characters: Jack Crawford (speaker), Clarice Starling, Hannibal Lecter, Jame Gumb/Buffalo Bill
Page Number: 94
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 14 Quotes

“There’s a moth, more than one in fact, that lives only on tears,” he offered. “That’s all they eat or drink.”

“What kind of tears? Whose tears?”

“The tears of large land mammals, about our size. The old definition of moth was ‘anything that gradually, silently eats, consumes, or wastes any other thing.’ It was a verb for destruction too... Is this what you do all the time—hunt Buffalo Bill?”

“I do it all I can.”

Related Characters: Clarice Starling (speaker), Noble Pilcher (speaker), Jame Gumb/Buffalo Bill, Senator Ruth Martin
Related Symbols: Death’s Head Moths
Page Number: 106
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 22 Quotes

“What do your two disciplines tell you about Buffalo Bill?”

“By the book, he’s a sadist.”

“Life’s too slippery for books, Clarice; anger appears as lust, lupus presents as hives.”

Related Characters: Clarice Starling (speaker), Hannibal Lecter (speaker), Jame Gumb/Buffalo Bill
Page Number: 146
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 23 Quotes

“Wash yourself.”

It was the same unearthly voice she’d heard talking to the dog.

Another bucket coming down on a thin cord. She smelled hot, soapy water.

“Take it off and wash yourself all over, or you’ll get the hose.” And an aside to the dog as the voice faded, “Yes it will get the hose, won’t it, Darlingheart, yes it will!”

Related Characters: Jame Gumb/Buffalo Bill (speaker), Catherine Baker Martin, Precious
Page Number: 154-155
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 28 Quotes

To even mention Buffalo Bill in the same breath with the problems we treat here is ignorant and unfair and dangerous, Mr. Crawford. It makes my hair stand on end.

Related Characters: Dr. Danielson (speaker), Hannibal Lecter, Jame Gumb/Buffalo Bill, Jack Crawford, Catherine Baker Martin
Page Number: 181
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 32 Quotes

When her pupils darkened, Dr. Lecter took a single sip of her pain and found it exquisite. That was enough for today.

Related Characters: Clarice Starling, Hannibal Lecter, Jame Gumb/Buffalo Bill, Noble Pilcher, Senator Ruth Martin
Related Symbols: Death’s Head Moths
Page Number: 201
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 33 Quotes

He switches back to the cage just in time. The big insect’s wings are held above her back, hiding and distorting her markings. Now she brings down her wings to cloak her body and the famous design is clear. A human skull, wonderfully executed in the furlike scales, stares from the back of the moth. Under the shaded dome of the skull are the black eye holes and prominent cheekbones. Beneath them darkness lies like a gag across the face above the jaw. The skull rests on a marking flared like the top of a pelvis.

A skull stacked upon a pelvis, all drawn on the back of a moth by an accident of nature.

Related Characters: Hannibal Lecter, Jame Gumb/Buffalo Bill, Catherine Baker Martin
Related Symbols: Death’s Head Moths
Page Number: 205
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 35 Quotes

“He covets. In fact, he covets being the very thing you are. It’s his nature to covet. How do we begin to covet, Clarice? Do we seek out things to covet? Make an effort at an answer.”

“No. We just—”

“No. Precisely so. We begin by coveting what we see every day. Don’t you feel eyes moving over you every day, Clarice, in chance encounters? I hardly see how you could not. And don’t your eyes move over things?”

Related Characters: Clarice Starling (speaker), Hannibal Lecter (speaker), Jame Gumb/Buffalo Bill, Catherine Baker Martin
Page Number: 227
Explanation and Analysis:

Do you think if you caught Buffalo Bill yourself and if you made Catherine all right, you could make the lambs stop screaming, do you think they’d be all right too and you wouldn’t wake up again in the dark and hear the lambs screaming?

Related Characters: Hannibal Lecter (speaker), Clarice Starling, Jame Gumb/Buffalo Bill, Catherine Baker Martin
Related Symbols: Lambs
Page Number: 230
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 48 Quotes

I’m as good as anybody you’ve got at the cop stuff, better at some things. The victims are all women and there aren’t any women working this. I can walk in a woman’s room and know three times as much about her as a man would know, and you know that’s a fact.

Related Characters: Clarice Starling (speaker), Jame Gumb/Buffalo Bill, Jack Crawford
Page Number: 299
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 49 Quotes

He had in the past hunted young women through the blacked-out basement using his infrared goggles and light, and it was wonderful to do, watching them feel their way around, seeing them try to scrunch into corners. He liked to hunt them with the pistol. He liked to use the pistol. Always they became disoriented, lost their balance, ran into things. He could stand in absolute darkness with his goggles on, wait until they took their hands down from their faces, and shoot them right in the head. Or in the legs first, below the knee so they could still crawl.

Related Characters: Jame Gumb/Buffalo Bill, Catherine Baker Martin
Related Symbols: Death’s Head Moths
Page Number: 302
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 59 Quotes

Jame Gumb was news for weeks after he was lowered into his final hole.

Reporters pieced together his history, beginning with the records of Sacramento County:

His mother had been carrying him a month when she failed to place in the Miss Sacramento Contest in 1948. The “Jame” on his birth certificate apparently was a clerical error that no one bothered to correct.

When her acting career failed to materialize, his mother went into an alcoholic decline; Gumb was two when Los Angeles County placed him in a foster home.

At least two scholarly journals explained that this unhappy childhood was the reason he killed women in his basement for their skins. The words crazy and evil do not appear in either article.

Related Characters: Jame Gumb/Buffalo Bill
Page Number: 357
Explanation and Analysis: