CATEGORY: MOVIES [Hidden plot related]
We already know that one reason Lecktor wants to do away with Will Graham is to get revenge for the fact that Will was responsible for his capture and imprisonment. However, there is also an 'allegorical' reason Lecktor wants to defeat Will, which is much more important than just getting some form of revenge. Recall from part 26 that Lecktor has not only set up things up within Will's unconscious so that Will is to believe he can acquire the power of God, i.e., so that he can become the Light, Jesus, but that Will is also to associate this power with the ability to kill. By doing all of this, Lecktor is attempting to prevent Christ's second coming.
The biblical book of 2 Thessalonians tells us that the second coming of the Lord (Jesus) will be preceded by the rising up of a "man of lawlessness." 2 Thessalonians 2 reads,[a]
[The day of the Lord] will not come unless the rebellion comes first and the lawless one is revealed, the one destined for destruction. He opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God...the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will destroy with the breath of his mouth, annihilating him by the manifestation of his coming. The coming of the lawless one is apparent in the working of Satan...
Hannibal Lecktor is a personification of Satan. St. Augustine, in City of God Book 20, chapter 19, identifies this "lawless one" as the Antichrist:
No one can doubt that [this was written of] Antichrist and of the day of judgment, which he here calls the day of the Lord, nor that he declared that this day should not come unless he first came who is called the apostate - apostate, to wit, from the Lord God. And if this may justly be said of all the ungodly, how much more of him? But it is uncertain in what temple he shall sit, whether in that ruin of the temple that was built by Solomon, or in the Church; for the apostle [St. Paul] would not call the temple of any idol or demon the temple of God.
What Lecktor has done is not only manipulated Graham's unconscious, but 'set up' a situation within it: If Will loses the final confrontation with Dollarhyde, then he will not be around for Jesus to come through him. But Dollarhyde represents the killer within Will, and if Will defeats him, he will have defeated the killer within himself, and thus can no longer do as God does (i.e., he cannot kill), so he cannot become the Light. Either way, Lecktor wins. Once Hannibal's plan to have Will murder his own family fails to be realized, he hopes that Dollarhyde will defeat Will, but even failing that, Will will still not be able to become Jesus, or more correctly, Jesus will not have come through Will. Hannibal Lecktor will have defeated the second coming of Christ, and will therefore not have to worry about Christ being an impediment to whatever future plans he has in mind as a personification of Satan.
a. 2 Thessalonians is St. Paul's second letter to the people of Thessalonica.
City of God (Dods)
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
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Marcus Aurelius's Meditations - from Wikisource (except where otherwise noted); portions from Wikisource used on this blog are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.
Saint Augustine's Confessions and City of God from Wikisource (except where otherwise noted); portions from Wikisource used on this blog are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.
Saint Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologica from the 'Logos Virtual Library' website (except where otherwise noted), compiled and edited by Darren L. Slider; believed to be in public domain.