Hannibal Rising

Okay, so I’m kinda disappointed after reading Hannibal Rising. It did not live up to my wild expectations, which really sucks cause I think Thomas Harris did a disservice to all the Hannibal lovers out there. I have read all of the previous novels with Hannibal in it and when I found out that Harris was finally going to write about how Hannibal became Hannibal, I was super-dooper excited. Finally readers were going to get an in-depth look in Hannibal’s dark psychosis and understand what drives him to perform his evil deeds. Instead, Harris half-assed it and left his readers wanting more. I know I did.

I guess I set my expectations too high. I thought this book was going to show Hannibal right before his capture and the criminal actions leading up to it. I figured Harris would touch upon his childhood to show it shaped Hannibal into that man he is now, but Hannibal Rising mainly focuses on Hannibal’s childhood. We learn that Hannibal’s family is bourgeois and even at a young age possess superb intelligence. It is during World War II and his family must flee to their cabin to escape the Nazi’s. His family is eventually killed during a bombing raid and a group of renegade Nazi’s (is that even real?) hold Hannibal and his little sister, Mischa, captive.

To make a long story short, those group of men starving for food, end up killing Hannibal’s sister and eat her. Hannibal eventually escapes and is traumatized over what happens and is sent to live with his Uncle and his wife. Hannibal has nightmares over the incident, but cannot recall what happened to his sister. He discovers the truth and vows revenge upon the men.

And there we see Hannibal emerge as the cold calculating killer as he hunts down each man for retribution. Hannibal achieves his revenge and that’s where the story ends. But there are still so many unanswered questions surrounding him. I can understand that he seeks vengeance, but why does he continue to kill as an adult. What propels him to continue this behavior? Does he find pleasure in killings? Is it all just a game against the authorities? Did murder become an obsession for him?

I was left with so many unanswered questions after reading this book. And while those events of his childhood were important in shaping who he becomes, I feel the young man Hannibal in this book is completely different from the cold, calculated Hannibal Lector from The Silence of the Lambs. That older Hannibal had more charisma and charm and that’s why he was able to lure his victims into a false security of trust before he struck them down. This Hannibal is a mere shadow of what is to come, and perhaps that is what Harris intended all along. Overall I’m still dissatisfied with the beginning of Hannibal Lector and expected a much more chilling and compelling story.