Lecter has an equally perverse, fascination. He also uses Clarice to obtain Buffalo Bill's case files so that he can view the grisly details of the serial killings. Such files presumably include the same graphic phots of partially skinned womenh that we see on Crawfors's office walls. The narration de-emphasizes this grim aspect of Lecter's activities by only showing Lecter poring over some official-looking forms and giving Clarice her vital clue a note on a map-rather than, say, scrawiling the information on a photo of a butchered body. Playing down Lecter's fascination with the most awful aspects of the case has at least two effects. It makes him a more ambigueous and compelling character, one to whom Clarice can plausibly relate, and it renders the one big scene of his violence all the more shocking.
Ultimately, however, Lecter is not parallel to Clarice. She understands him not because she is in any way like him but because she is smart and desprate and inquiring. She uses his fascniation with her to elicit clues concerning Bill. In the end, Lecter essentially takes Buffalo Bill's place. .
Clarice Sterling faces two opponents. Jame Gumb is the obvious villain, the subject of Clarice's search. Through much of the film Lecter simply leads a vicarious existence as a serial killer, studying Gumb from a distance. Lecter in a sense asapires to become the character he spies upon - and he succeeds. .
Gumb has progressively isolated himself from the world. THre is a hint that he has at some point been in the Far East.True, the fact that he is obsessed with a rare breed of mothe from Suriname would not necessarly imply hta the had been there. But when he kidnaps Catherine Martin, he is wearing a tacky Japonese souvenir jacket that might suggest that he had traveled in Asia. Later Gumb has apparently lived, at least briefly, in two cities. Gumb 's single indirect bruch with Lecter came when he was in Baltimore, where Lecter had preacticed psychiatry.
