The pervasiveness of wickedness in its many forms in human life is an important concern of Thomas Harris in Hannibal.

Closely associated to this is the fascination that evil and violence hold for human beings. Present in the novel is the cerebral and entertaining savagery of Dr. Hannibal Lecter whose wickedness is swift, brilliant, and retributive. But the reader is also reminded of the violence of all past human history, well represented in revered works of art and literature, classical mythology and the Bible. Violence, it would seem, is the human heritage. When the reader first sees Dr.

Lecter in Florence, he is standing beside Donatello's bronze statue of Judith and Holofernes, "her sword forever raised to strike the drunken king . .. Holofernes gripped by the hair." Glowing in the moonlight over the Palazzo Vecchio are the marble statues depicting rape and murder and the reader is...