Dr. Lecter, also called "Hannibal the Cannibal", is the brain child of Thomas Harris, appearing a series of novels and Movie adaptations of the same. Dr. Lecter was introduced in the novel "Red Dragon". Dr. Lecter makes very few appearances in the story but whenever he appears, he blows up your mind. Dr. Lecter is a Psychiatrist by profession and Psychopath by make. Killing is his passion.When he writes to Will Graham, the one who trapped Dr. Lecter, that God Likes to kill and we are all made up of God's image, we get the feeling that he knows what he is doing. His strength is his ability to find out the Achilles heel of the people whom he confronts, that too in no time at all. He finds out that Will Graham is afraid of himself and his unique gift to reproduce the thoughts of psychopaths and manipulates the same when he says that Will Graham and himself are alike and that is the reason why Will could crack the mystery. When Will thinks in the end that man is haunted, and to kill and be killed is perfectly natural and that the concept of murder was invented by man and applies only to man, the reader gets the impression that Dr. Lecter was in fact right in saying that he and Will are alike. The fact that in the story 'Red Dragon' both the hunter (Will) and the hunted (Francis Dolarhyde alias Red Dragon alias Tooth Fairy) both communicates with Dr. Lecter is by itself a memento to his brilliance. However, they are not the only ones who communicate with Dr. Lecter. He has pen friends everywhere, Psychiatry students often come to him and he spends his leisure time contributing invaluable literary materials and articles to world famous psychiatry journals and publications. He also have various Books in his name on a variety of subjects including cooking. He loves reading. The best punishment that can ever be awarded to him is denial of books and literature. He himself writes to Will towards the end of "Red Dragon" that any civilized society would either kill him or give him books.
Dr. Lecter's religious orientations are open for debate. He says that we are all made from images of God. He writes a Message to the Dragon in the manner in which one would cite verses from Bible. However, no mentioning of him praying or reading a Bible could be found anywhere. Also, the message to the dragon actually does not contains anything from the Bible and was only a Book Code, which is cracked with reference to the books that he had authored. It could be safely concluded that he is just smartly utilizing religion to manipulate people's mind.
