Hannibal Lector, the character created by Thomas Harris, is a psychiatrist with psychopathic, cannibalistic characteristics. Despite these features, which would make him (a) despicable (character) from the moral point of view, the public actually feels certain empathy towards him. What reasons could there be for this? The article ventures a hypothesis which brings moral and ethical tension into play suggesting a possible path to rescue one of the most monstrous literary figures of all times.