Red Dragon

Severely burned but not dead, Lounds asks for Graham to visit him in hospital. Graham and Crawford travel to the burns center in Chicago. The doctor warns them that Lounds’s wounds are “fatal” (223) but says that the reporter may live long enough to answer questions. Graham approaches Lounds’s bed, learning that Lounds regained consciousness briefly to share the license plate number of the van and accuse Graham of setting him up. Graham notices Wendy in the hallway and invites her to see Lounds. As she talks soothingly to him, Lounds stirs briefly, then dies.

Crawford and Graham visit the Chicago Police Department. Captain Osbourne is annoyed with the FBI for bringing the Tooth Fairy to his city and causing panic. He reveals that the license plate number given to them by Lounds was stolen from a television repair van. Due to the timing and the circumstances of Lounds’s kidnapping, Graham reasons that the Tooth Fairy’s “home” (232) must be relatively close. His reasoning is interrupted by a call from the Tattler: A secretary has reported a call and “swears it was Lounds’s voice” (233), speaking about the strength of the Great Red Dragon.

Flanked by heavy guards, Chilton confiscates Lecter’s books as punishment for contacting Dolarhyde. Having accidently read a rejection slip from a professional journal that was intended for Chilton, Lecter mocks Chilton who, in turn, confiscates Lecter’s toilet seat. At the FBI laboratory, Zeller examines the evidence from Lounds’s kidnapping. His team identifies the gasoline used to burn Lounds and posits that the wheelchair was stored in “a cool, dark place” (237). Zeller sends the results, the evidence, and a package for Graham to Chicago via courier.

In Chicago, Graham plans to attend Lounds’s funeral “in the hope that the killer would come to see Graham grieve” (238). Graham feels exhausted. The news reports now refer to the serial killer as “the Dragon” (239). Graham calls Molly, who is scared and wants to take Willy to his grandfather’s home in Oregon. As they end the conversation, Graham notices that she has “never called him darling before” (241). The new nickname irks him. Drinking alcohol, he tries “hard to understand the Dragon” (243).

The narrative skips back to June 14, 1938. In Springfield, Missouri, Marian Dolarhyde Trevane is pregnant. She is poor and alone when she gives birth to Francis, who is born with “born with bilateral fissures in his upper lip and in his hard and soft palates” (244). A nurse devises a special instrument to allow him to feed. When Marian sees the baby, she screams. She abandons Francis at the hospital. Francis receives cosmetic surgery, but the results are “not good” (246). At the orphanage, Francis is mocked. Marian annuls her marriage and starts a new, successful life. Her ex-husband learns about the circumstances of Francis’s birth and, in a drunken stupor, tells Marian’s estranged mother about their “hidden son” (248). Grandmother Dolarhyde adopts Francis. Through abusive methods, she teaches him to speak. They focus on the word “mother” (250). Meanwhile, Marian marries a wealthy lawyer named Howard Vogt. Grandmother Dolarhyde drags Francis to Marian’s new home and to all her new husband’s political rallies. She explains to everyone “who he was and where he came from” (251). Vogt loses his election.

Grandmother Dolarhyde runs a nursing home. She accepts money from the county to house “elderly, indigent persons” (253). Marian refuses to help her. Francis plays with Mah-Jong tiles among the elderly patients. He makes friends with the cook, Queen Mother Bailey. He urinates in his bed and rushes into his grandmother’s room. When she puts in her dentures, she says that she has “never seen a child as disgusting and dirty” (255) as Francis. She places a pair of “bright sewing scissors” (256) on his penis and threatens to cut it off if he ever makes his bed “dirty” (257) again. In the present day, the 42-year-old Francis Dolarhyde wakes up in the night. Feeling the need to urinate, he places his grandmother’s dentures in his mouth and walks to the bathroom, exactly as his grandmother taught him.

In the winter of 1947, Francis notices his grandmother beginning to change. She takes a greater interest in hosting her residents. Her “general health” (259) declines, and she loses weight. At dinner, she speaks frankly about personal matters, such as how she required dentures at a young age. Some days, Francis can ride a short distance to the road on the wagon belonging to Queen Mother Bailey’s husband. These rides are the highlight of his day. Occasionally, he plays with a “red-haired listless” (261) girl who lives nearby. One day, the two children show each other their “private parts” (262). The game is interrupted by Queen Mother Bailey, chasing a headless rooster through the yard. Grandmother watches through an upstairs window. Later, Grandmother threatens to cut off his penis. Wracked with fear, he becomes convinced that Queen Mother Bailey told his grandmother what happened and that she and her husband laugh at him. Feeling ashamed, determined to protect his grandmother, he takes a hatchet from the kitchen and kills a chicken. The act of violence makes him feel a “sweet and easy peace” (265). Francis kills more chickens. Grandmother’s health deteriorates rapidly. She insults and slaps Queen Mother Bailey, who quits. She calls Francis’s mother before she leaves. Francis wonders “how it feels to kill a mule” (268).

Two weeks later, Francis’s mother is summoned to the house by a local sheriff. Grandmother’s deteriorating mental state has led to the ruination of the house. Marian summons a doctor. Francis watches the doctor take his “glassy-eyed” (269) grandmother away in a wheelchair. Marian cleans the house, speaking briefly to Francis, and then calls the authorities to take the residents away. After, she takes Francis away. His grandmother is sent to “a private nerve sanatorium” (270). Francis is introduced to his stepsiblings, who bully him for his speech and his background. They blame him for their father losing his money. They smash his face into a mirror, leaving him “wet with blood and spit” (272).

While Freddy Lounds’s funeral takes place, Dolarhyde reviews “dozens of home movies he has copied at the plant and brought home to audition” (273). He is searching for his next victims, studying home movies from various families. The Sherman family from Tulsa catches his eye. Though he can clearly imagine his “rampant” (276) attack on the Shermans, his memories of the past are blurry. He lived with his mother for a month, not remembering that he was sent back to the orphanage because he hanged his stepsister’s cat. He is sent away to an orphanage where he regularly abuses and tortures animals. Later, he served in the military in lieu of facing criminal charges for trying to break into a woman’s house “for a purpose never established” (277). In the military, he learned to process film and received more cosmetic treatment. He left the military in 1961 to take care of his grandmother. He worked in a commercial film processing lab and hired a woman to take care of his grandmother at her old house. His grandmother died in 1970 and he ignored his mother at the funeral. For the nine years after his grandmother’s death, he was “untroubled and he troubled no one” (279). Aged 40, not satisfied with his well-honed body, he became enraptured with the William Blake painting The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun. The painting inspired him to fulfil his “true urges” (281). He tattooed the dragon on his back and had a custom set of dentures made which perfectly replicated his grandmother’s dentures. Then, he killed the Jacobis and then the Leeds family. Next, he will kill the Shermans and continue to grow in “strength and Glory” (282).

Dolarhyde seeks out infrared film that he plans to use while murdering the Sherman family. In the lab, he meets a visually impaired woman named Reba McClane. Dolarhyde appreciates being able to talk in the dark. When the light comes on, he notices her “handsome prairie face” (286). He tells her that he plans to use the special infrared film to shoot “nocturnal animals” (287) at the zoo. After he leaves, Reba reflects on the “strange man” (287) who did not seem to pity her or even mind that she is blind.

The Tattler pays for Freddy Lounds’s funeral. Nursing a hangover, Graham studies the crowd and the large media presence. Wendy explains that she has agreed to a paid interview with the Tattler but tells Graham that she refused the reporters’ attempts to blame Lounds’s death on him. Graham feels “lonely” (291).