AN EXERPT FROM RED DRAGON......

[Ash]

I feel it is necessary to give you at least a small idea of why Francis Dolarhyde (the villain in Red Dragon) is the way he is (if you haven't read it already).  Please read this excerpt from the novel by Thomas Harris.  I typed it word for word from the book.  The scene in this passage takes place when he is a small abandoned (by his mother)boy taken in by his cruel grandmother.  It is one part of the novel that seems to stick out in my mind the most.   Keep in mind that he was born with an abnormality in his soft pallet and has a hairlip and speaks irregularly.  
    December 1943,
    Francis Dolarhyde, five years old, lay in bed in his upstairs room in Grandmother's house.  The room was pitch dark with it's blackout curtains against the Japanese.  He could not say "Japanese."  He needed to pee.  He was afraid to get up in the dark.
    He called to his grandmother in bed downstairs.
    "Aayma.  Aayma."  He sounded like an infant goat.
    He called until he was tired.  "Mleedse Aayma."
    It got away from him then, hot on his legs and under his seat, and then cold, his nightdress sticking to him.  
    He didn't know what to do.  He took a deep breath and rolled over to face the door.  Nothing happened to him.  He put his foot on the floor.  He stood up in the dark, nightdress plastered to his legs, face burning.  He ran for the door.  The doorknob caught him over the eye and he sat down in wetness, jumped up and ran down the stairs, fingers squealing on the banister.  
    To his grandmother's room.  Crawling across her in the dark and under the covers, warm against her now.  
    Grandmother stirred, tensed, her back hardened against his cheek, voice hissing.  "I've never sheen......."
    A clatter on the bedside table as she found her teeth, clacket as she put them in.  "I've never seen a child as disgusting and as dirty as you.  Get out, get out of this bed."
    She turned on the bedside lamp.  He stood on the carpet shivering.  She wiped her thumb across his eyebrow.  
    Her thumb came away bloody.
    "Did you break something?"
    He shook his head so fast droplets of blood fell on Grandmother's nightgown.
    "Upstairs.   Go on."
    The dark came down over him as he climbed the stairs.  He couldn't turn on the lights because Grandmother had cut the cords off short so only she could reach them.  He did not want to get back in the wet bed.  He stood in the dark holding onto the footboard for a long time.  He thought she wasn't coming.  The blackest corners in the room knew she wasn't coming.
    She came, snatching the short cord on the ceiling light, her arms full of sheets.  She did not speak to him as she changed the bed.  
    She gripped his upper arm and pulled him down the hall to the bathroom.  The light was over the mirror and she had to stand on tiptoe to reach it.  She gave him a washcloth, wet and cold.
    "Take off your nightshirt and wipe yourself off."
    Smell of adhesive tape and the bright sewing scissors clicking.  She snipped out a butterfly of tape, stood him on the toilet lid and closed the cut over his eye.
    "Now," she said.  She held the sewing scissors under his round belly and he felt cold down there.
    "Look," she said.  She grabbed the back of his head and bent him over to see his little penis lying across the bottom blade of the open scissors.  She closed the scissors until they began to pinch him.
    "Do you want me to cut it off?"
He tried to look up at her, but she gripped his head.  He sobbed and spit fell on his stomach.
    "Do you?"
"No, Aayma.  No Aayma."
    "I pledge you my word, if you ever make your bed dirty again I'll cut it off.  Do you understand?"
    "Yehn, Aayma."
"You can find the toilet in the dark and you can sit on it like a good boy.  You don't have to stand up.  Now go back to bed."

[Chadzilla]

What are YOU looking at?

[Ash]

If any of you have read the book....does this part stand out in your mind?  It does for me.   After reading the book, I actually woke from a real life dream early in the morning not long ago hearing Francis Dolarhyde's young voice saying, "Yehn Aayma.  Yehn Aayma."  
  Creepy I know....but that was exactly what Thomas Harris was going for all along.
  He's a magnificant writer and I highly suggest you pick up all 4 of his books.

[Chadzilla]

Duh.

[Ash]

For me, this part was not about potty training.  It was a very serious look into the eventual Becoming of the Red Dragon.  This part of the book was just a small piece of what he had become, and what he was Becoming.  It shows just how messed up in the head he really was.  To know the full truth of his obsession with "The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed by the Sun" you have to read the book(I'm talking to everyone who HASN'T read it).  I wonder what it tasted like?  (He had a re-print) How old was the painting again?

[Private Joker]

I did NOT need to read that...