Discover Your Own Story at the Movies: The Silence of the Lambs

Discover Your Own Story at the Movies: The Silence of the Lambs
What the heroine’s journey and flow can teach you about the wound that drives you

What Are Your Lambs?

A column by Peter de Kuster

A film about looking

Some films frighten you. The Silence of the Lambs does something rarer: it makes you look. Jonathan Demme directed it in 1991 from Ted Tally’s adaptation of Thomas Harris’s 1988 novel, and he did something unusual with the camera. Again and again the actors look straight into the lens, so that when Clarice Starling speaks to Hannibal Lecter, and he to her, they seem to be speaking to us. We do not watch this story from a safe distance. We sit in the heroine’s chair.

The film swept the 1992 Academy Awards in the five biggest categories: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor for Anthony Hopkins, Best Actress for Jodie Foster, and Best Adapted Screenplay. Only two films had done that before. Hopkins is on screen for roughly sixteen minutes and still gives one of the most famous performances in cinema. Howard Shore wrote the score, Tak Fujimoto shot it, and the supporting cast includes Scott Glenn as the FBI chief Jack Crawford, Ted Levine as the killer known as Buffalo Bill, and Anthony Heald as the pompous asylum director Dr. Chilton.

Here is the outline. Clarice Starling is a trainee at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, a young woman from a poor West Virginia background, working harder than anyone around her. Crawford sends her to interview Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a brilliant psychiatrist who is also a cannibal and is locked in a Baltimore hospital for the criminally insane. The hope is that Lecter, who understands minds like his own, can help profile “Buffalo Bill,” a killer who abducts young women and takes their skin. Lecter agrees to help, but only for a price. For every piece of insight he gives, he wants a piece of Clarice’s own life. Then the killer takes the daughter of a US Senator, a clock starts ticking, and the price goes up.

Like the other films in this series, it is fiction and it is a parable. It is also a thriller with real violence, and I will not linger on it. The portrayal of Buffalo Bill drew criticism for years, and understandably so. I read him strictly as a symbol of counterfeit transformation, a figure in a story, and not as a portrait of any group of people.

The film holds three ways of changing side by side. Clarice changes by facing her wound. Lecter changes nothing and walks free. And the killer tries to become someone else by taking from others. Here is what I want to show you: a wound can be a compass or a leash, and the difference is whether you have faced it.

Why we do this

Before we walk through the film, a word on method. Why analyze a movie through a mythic structure, and why ask you for stories? Why not just hand out tips for better focus?

Because tips do not stick, and stories do.

Advice about performance and happiness usually arrives as abstraction: set clear goals, get feedback, stay present. All true, and almost useless in the abstract. You nod, you close the tab, and on Monday nothing has changed. A story works differently. When you watch a young woman stand in a corridor of locked cells, holding her nerve, something in you recognizes it. You do not learn a rule. You remember a moment from your own life that looked like this, and once you have remembered it, you can look at it. Recognition beats instruction.

Second, the journey is a map, and maps are useful because they are simplified. The mythologist Joseph Campbell argued in 1949 that stories from many cultures share a skeleton: a person leaves the familiar world, is tested, is transformed, and returns with something to give. I have condensed Campbell’s seventeen stages into twelve, and that is the version I use. No life fits a template perfectly. But a map lets you say, “I am somewhere around here,” and half of feeling lost is having no name for where you are.

Campbell called the traveller a hero. I believe in the double journey: the hero’s journey and the heroine’s journey are one and the same path. The call, the refusal, the ordeal, the reward and the return are the same for men and for women. What differs is the traveller, and the world she has to walk through. That is why I call the journey in this film the heroine’s journey.

Third, psychologists of narrative identity, notably Dan McAdams, have shown that the story we tell about our own life shapes who we become. If your story is “things happened to me,” you are a passenger. If your story has a call, a refusal, a struggle and a return, you are the author. Asking for your story at every stage is an invitation to pick up the pen.

The fourth reason is the one this film makes unforgettable. Behind almost every goal we chase there is a reason we rarely examine, and often it is a wound. It may be an old loss, a fear, a promise made as a child. That wound can give us extraordinary drive. It can also drive us without our knowing. Stories let us ask, safely, what is behind our goals.

What flow is, and what it isn’t

The psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (roughly “chick-sent-me-high”) spent decades asking people when life felt best. Surgeons, chess players, climbers, dancers and factory workers described the same experience: total absorption in a demanding activity, effortless yet difficult, in which time seemed to vanish. He called it flow. Its conditions are strikingly consistent:

  • Challenge matched to skill: hard enough to stretch you, not so hard it crushes you.
  • Clear goals: you know what you are doing, moment to moment.
  • Immediate feedback: you can tell how it is going.
  • A sense of control: your actions matter.
  • Deep concentration, with action and awareness merging.
  • Loss of self-consciousness: the inner critic goes quiet.
  • A transformation of time: hours pass like minutes.
  • An autotelic quality: the activity is its own reward.

This film is a study in two of them: concentration and the autotelic quality. Clarice’s work is full of moments of complete absorption, of reading a room, a body, a set of clues. And the film asks why she works the way she does. Is the work its own reward, or is she trying to quiet something?

The psychologist Robert Vallerand draws a useful line here. He distinguishes harmonious passion, which you choose and control, from obsessive passion, which controls you. From the outside they can look identical. Both work hard, both concentrate. But one leaves room for the rest of your life, and the other slowly takes it.

In the earlier columns in this series I asked you to check flow’s direction (the bridge), its source (the sled), and its freedom (the road). This film adds a fourth check: the wound. What is driving you? Is it a compass, pointing you toward something you love, or a leash, dragging you back to something you fear?

The cast of archetypes

Campbell borrowed archetypes from Carl Jung: recurring roles that appear in stories everywhere. We will meet the Heroine, who grows; the Mentor, who guides, sometimes wisely and sometimes darkly; the Herald, who announces change; the Threshold Guardian, who tests whether you are serious; the Shadow, what the heroine could become or refuses to face; the Trickster, who teaches by cunning; and the Ally, who walks beside. Archetypes are roles, not people. In this film, Lecter is at once a mentor, a trickster and a warning.

Now, the journey.

1. The Ordinary World

The film opens in the woods. Clarice runs a training course alone, mist in the trees, her breathing loud and even. She is at home in this effort. There is a clear goal, immediate feedback in every stride, and a sense of control. Then a call summons her back, and the film cuts to an elevator, where she stands surrounded by taller men, small in the frame, eyes forward.

That single sequence gives us her ordinary world: a place where she can be fully herself while she moves, and a world of hierarchy and glances the moment she stops. She is bright, poor, determined and underestimated. Her friend Ardelia Mapp, her roommate and classmate, is the only warmth in it.

Archetypes: the Heroine, an outsider trying to belong; the elevator men as the “normal” world. Flow lens: Clarice shows all the signs of natural flow while she runs, but the culture around her keeps interrupting it. Notice how often talented people are pulled out of their best state by rooms that do not know what to do with them.

Your story: Where were you most yourself, and who or what pulled you out of it?

Try this: Write down one activity in which you feel entirely yourself. Then list what usually interrupts you, and one small step to protect it.

2. The Call to Adventure

Jack Crawford asks to see her. He has a job he says is a routine one: a questionnaire for a prisoner in Baltimore. The prisoner is Dr. Hannibal Lecter. The real purpose is to reach into the mind of a killer through the mind of a man who understands him.

Notice what kind of call this is. It is not an ambush, as it was for the prisoners at the bridge. It arrives from outside, yes, but it fits something inside her. She says yes because it matters, because it is the work she trained for, and perhaps because a part of her has been waiting for a task big enough.

Archetypes: Crawford as herald and light mentor, though he is not telling her everything. Flow lens: a clear goal arrives from outside and lands on a real value, so it does not feel imposed. This is how a call becomes a calling.

Your story: When did a task arrive that felt strangely like it was meant for you?

Try this: Recall a job or role you said yes to almost instantly. Write down what it matched in you, a value, a skill or a wound.

3. The Refusal of the Call

Clarice never says no. That is what makes her refusal interesting. Vogler notes that a refusal can be doubt rather than an objection, and here the doubt is silent. She is a trainee, sent alone to see the most dangerous mind in the country, and it is clear she is being used as a way to reach him. She swallows the doubts and says yes with a straight face.

Many of us live this way. We do not refuse; we comply, with our real hesitations folded away somewhere. That kind of silent yes protects us, and it also cuts us off from the honest feedback that would tell us whether we are ready.

Archetypes: the Heroine and her inner guardian, the voice that says “keep it together.” Flow lens: control is protected by concealment. Concealment costs energy that could go into the task.

Your story: What doubt did you swallow so that you could say yes?

Try this: Choose one doubt you are carrying about a current task. Say it out loud to someone who can help, and notice what happens to it.

4. The Mentor and the Threshold Guardian

Crawford is a mentor of the practical kind: a senior man with a mission and an eye for talent. He gives her a goal and a warning to keep her conversations with Lecter about the case, and not about herself. He is also not fully honest about how he is using her. Good mentors are often both.

Dr. Chilton, the asylum’s director, is the threshold guardian at the gate. He is smooth, vain and condescending, and he treats her as an obstacle to his own ambitions. Every heroine meets a Chilton: someone who controls the door and enjoys doing so.

Archetypes: Crawford as mentor with a hidden agenda; Chilton as threshold guardian. Flow lens: a good mentor makes the goal clear, and Crawford does that. But a goal is only as good as the truth attached to it.

Your story: Who gave you a clear goal, and did they tell you the whole truth about it?

Try this: Write your current goal and then list what you do not know about who benefits from it. Ask one question this week to fill in one gap.

5. Crossing the Threshold

The descent begins. Clarice is taken down through the hospital’s levels, deeper each time, past cells and warnings, to a dungeon at the bottom. At the end of the corridor, behind glass, stands a man perfectly at ease. He has been waiting.

Lecter reads her within seconds: her accent, her shoes, the way she keeps her hands. He sees what she has tried to hide. He is courteous and terrifying, and he sets the terms: he will trade. Insight for insight, a secret for a secret. She says yes.

Archetypes: the heroine crosses into the special world; Lecter is the dark mentor and trickster. Flow lens: attention is total. The stakes are high and every word counts. Time slows. Notice, though, that this is concentration under threat, not the joy of flow. It is one of its close cousins.

Your story: When did you walk into a room where you did not know the rules, and what happened to your attention?

Try this: Before the next unfamiliar situation, write one sentence: “The one thing I need to notice here is ___.” Let it steer your attention.

6. Tests, Allies, Enemies

The tests begin, and they come from every side. In the ward, a prisoner named Miggs insults her in the most degrading way. In a storage unit in Baltimore, following Lecter’s clue, she finds something horrifying. In a small West Virginia funeral home, surrounded by local lawmen who would rather she left, she stands beside a victim’s body and finds a moth pupa lodged in the throat.

She is tested by cruelty, by gatekeepers and by her own fear. She passes because of a particular skill: she keeps looking. Ardelia Mapp is her ally, and Crawford, imperfect as he is, backs her up. Lecter, meanwhile, is playing a game of his own.

Archetypes: Mapp as ally; Chilton and the lawmen as enemies; Lecter as trickster. Flow lens: skill and challenge are still being calibrated, and the feedback is harsh, but it is real. She learns by looking at what is in front of her. Every test teaches her a rule.

Your story: Which early tests taught you your real strengths?

Try this: After your next difficult day, write down one thing you noticed that others missed. Name it as a skill.

7. The Approach

Then a young woman, Catherine Martin, the daughter of a US Senator, is abducted, and the clock starts. Crawford brings Clarice back to Lecter with an offer he does not intend to keep, a supposedly better prison in exchange for the killer’s location. Lecter smells the lie and holds out for what he actually wants: Clarice herself.

So begins the film’s central bargain. Lecter asks about her past, and she tells him: how her father, a small-town marshal, was killed; how she was sent to relatives on a ranch; how one dawn she heard the lambs being slaughtered, took one and ran, and was caught. She never saved it. She still wakes in the dark hearing them scream. Lecter listens as if it were a gift, and in a sense it is.

This is the film’s tender heart, and the film’s key question: what is behind her drive? Lecter puts it plainly. She wants to save Catherine so that the screaming will stop.

Archetypes: Lecter as dark mentor collecting the price; the Wound revealed. Flow lens: goal clarity is at its peak: a name, a deadline, a life. But a goal that arrives with a wound attached carries extra weight. It can sharpen you, and it can burn you.

Your story: What did you have to give up, or tell, in order to get what you needed?

Try this: Write your current goal and complete the sentence “Underneath, I want this because ___.” Then read it back and ask whether the reason is a compass or a leash.

8. The Ordeal

Everything comes apart. Lecter is moved to a new cell far from Baltimore, and there, with cruel calm, he escapes. He kills the two guards in a scene of horror and disappears into a crowd. Clarice’s only source, her unlikely guide, is gone, and with him the leverage that might have saved Catherine.

The ordeal is not only the violence. It is the sudden emptiness after it. Clarice has trusted a dark mentor and paid with her own history, and now the mentor has vanished, free, and more dangerous than before. She must go on with what she has learned and without the one who taught it.

Archetypes: the dark mentor abandons the heroine; the heroine faces the cost of the bargain. Flow lens: challenge now exceeds skill, feedback has stopped and control is gone. What you feel here is anxiety, and it is honest. It is also the beginning of the moment when you stop borrowing wisdom and start relying on your own.

Your story: When did a guide or a source of strength disappear when you most needed it?

Try this: Write a list of three things you learned from the person you lost or outgrew, and how you could practise them alone.

9. The Reward

In a quiet house in Ohio, Clarice does what she does best. She reads the traces. The home of the first victim holds a dressmaker’s dummy with pinned marks, patterns for cutting and stitching, and the pieces fall together. She understands, for the first time, what the killer is doing and why he is doing it. He is making something.

This is the film’s purest flow scene. She is alone, absorbed, going through evidence with total concentration. The feedback is immediate, since each object confirms or corrects her idea. The challenge exactly matches her ability, and time falls away. The reward is not a prize but an understanding.

Here is a mirror I want you to try. Put this stage beside stage 11: your clearest moment of insight, and your darkest moment of not seeing. Same person, same skill. Ask what the difference was.

Archetypes: the heroine seizes the “sword,” the knowledge that will let her fight. Flow lens: nearly every condition is present: clear goal, feedback, control, concentration, altered time. Here the source is right: a skill she has built and a purpose she believes in.

Your story: When did you lose yourself in reading a problem and finally see the pattern?

Try this: List the last time you felt total absorption in solving something. Note which flow conditions were present, and which you could set up again tomorrow.

10. The Road Back

The film now cross-cuts its two stories. Crawford leads an FBI assault team to what they believe is the killer’s home. Clarice, sent to ask routine questions in Ohio, rings a doorbell and comes face to face with him. She is alone, without backup, and a man she does not yet suspect is standing in front of her.

Demme’s editing is merciless. We know what she does not, and every second stretches. The road back for a heroine usually means escape. Here it means pursuit, and it leads downward, into a house whose secrets lie below.

Archetypes: the hero is hunted by the shadow. Flow lens: time distorts and attention narrows to a point. This is the flip side of flow: the same narrowing that gave her joy in Ohio now brings fear.

Your story: When did you find yourself alone with the thing you had been chasing?

Try this: Before a high-stakes moment, take one breath and name the one thing you must protect. Values named in advance are easier to act on under pressure.

11. The Resurrection

In the killer’s basement, a maze of rooms and shadows, Clarice follows him down. Then the lights go out. He is wearing night-vision goggles, and she cannot see. She stands in the dark, gun raised, hearing him breathe. He circles, savoring it. Then she hears the tiny click of his revolver’s hammer, turns toward the sound, and fires.

This is the film’s death and rebirth. The moth in the story is the killer’s emblem, and it is a false one. He believes that transformation can be taken, stitched together from other people. Clarice transforms the honest way: she goes through the dark and comes out different. She survives by listening, by trusting her senses and her training, and by not looking away.

It is also flow’s shadow made visible. The killer is a man absorbed in his craft, patient and precise, with the same concentration and the same loss of self-consciousness we admire in a surgeon or a musician. It is a chilling reminder from the first column of this series: flow is morally neutral. Absorption is not a virtue. What you are absorbed in is.

Archetypes: the shadow is confronted and destroyed; the heroine is reborn. Flow lens: challenge is at its maximum and skill is just enough, with everything narrowed to sound. It is a terrible instance of the same channel that gives us our best hours.

Your story: When did you have to get through a dark stretch using only what you already knew?

Try this: Write down three skills or habits that have carried you through a hard time. Thank them by name.

12. The Return with the Elixir

Graduation day at the FBI Academy. Clarice, in her formal dress, receives her badge among her classmates. Crawford is there, quieter than usual. A phone call finds her at the reception, and it is Lecter, calling from far away. He is polite, of course. He says he is about to dine with an old friend, and the camera follows him through a crowd as he trails a familiar figure.

The film does not tell us whether the lambs have stopped. That is exactly right. The elixir is not the end of the pain. It is a new relationship to it. Clarice has faced her wound, spoken it aloud, and used it to save a life. She carries it differently now: no longer as a leash, but as a compass. And she has learned that the world still holds Lecters, and that she can walk through it with her eyes open.

Archetypes: the heroine returns changed; the trickster remains at large. Flow lens: the elixir is awareness. A wound that is named and faced can become a source of purpose. A wound that is denied becomes a master.

Your story: What did your journey teach that you would hand to someone else?

Try this: Write a letter to someone a few years behind you on your road. Tell them what to go after, and what wound to name before it names them.

What I ask of you

Across this series I have offered you four checks on your best hours. The Bridge on the River Kwai asks about direction: who is this for? Citizen Kane asks about source: am I moving toward something, or trying to get something back? Thelma & Louise asks about freedom: did I choose this, and what am I paying to keep choosing it? The Silence of the Lambs asks about the wound: what is driving me, and is it a compass or a leash?

The map never changed. A man at a bridge, a man in a palace, two women on a road and a young woman in a basement all walked the same stages in the same order: the call, the refusal, the ordeal, the reward and the return. The journey is the same for all of us. Only the traveller and the terrain differ, and knowing that lets you borrow courage from any story.

Turn your wound into a compass. You do not have to heal it before you begin. You only have to look at it, name it, and ask whether it is choosing your goals or you are.

So here is my invitation. Take one stage, the one that stung when you read it, and write your own story. Two hundred words is enough. What was the call, what were you afraid of, and what did you hear in the dark?

Some of you will do this alone, and that is a good start. But a story is easier to see from the outside. Clarice needed a Crawford and even a Lecter, and their bargains cost her dearly. You can do better: a guide who knows the map, and who asks for nothing but your story.

Walk your own journey with me

I offer online story coaching, one to one, in a single 90-minute session. Together we will lay your own story over the twelve stages of the heroine’s and hero’s journey: where you are on the map, where flow already shows up in your life, and where it is missing. Then we ask the question the film asks: what is driving me, and is it time to change how I carry it?

You leave with a clearer view of your own journey, and with one or two concrete next steps toward a life in which your drive is your own.

Send me a short email with the stage that stung the most, and we will find a time. You do not need to have your story figured out. That is what the session is for.

Turn your wound into a compass, and if you would like company while you do, I would be glad to walk through your film with you.

Peter de Kuster

Peter de Kuster is the founder of The Hero’s Journey & Heroine’s Journey project and the author of the Hero’s Journey and Heroine’s Journey book series. For over 20 years he has combined storytelling and marketing expertise to help professionals build careers and lives around the story that is most their own. He holds MBAs in Marketing and in Financial Economics, and a university degree in Sociology and Communication Sciences. More at www.theherojourney2016.com.