Dexter Morgan

Dexter Morgan
File:Dexter Morgan.jpg‎
First appearance	Darkly Dreaming Dexter
Created by	Jeff Lindsay
Portrayed by	Michael C. Hall (Adult) Devon Graye (Teenager) Dominic Janes (Child) Maxwell Huckabee (Toddler)
In-universe information
Gender	Male
Occupation	forensics expert serial killer
Family	Joe Driscoll (Father) Laura Moser (Mother) Brian Moser (Older Brother) Harry Morgan (Adoptive Father) Doris Morgan (Adoptive Mother) Deborah Morgan (Debra in TV series)(Adoptive Sister) Rita Bennett (Spouse)
Children	2 step children (Astor, Cody) Expecting son with Rita Bennett

Dexter Morgan is a fictional character in a series of novels by Jeff Lindsay, including Darkly Dreaming Dexter (2004), Dearly Devoted Dexter (2005), and Dexter in the Dark (2007).

In 2006, the first novel was adapted into the Showtime TV series Dexter. In the TV series, Dexter is played by Michael C. Hall.

Character overview

Dexter is a forensic blood spatter analyst for the Miami-Metro Police Department, but in his own time Dexter is a serial killer. He was taught by his adoptive father, Harry, to only kill other killers who have escaped the traditional legal system, or were never suspected in the first place.

Character history

Dexter's backstory is established in the first novel. He begins killing neighborhood pets as a child. His adoptive father, Harry, finds the animals' remains and recognizes that young Dexter is a sociopath with an innate need to kill. Harry decides to train Dexter to channel his violent urges in a "positive" direction: he teaches his son to be a cautious, meticulous, and efficient killer and shows him how to leave no clues. Harry also teaches Dexter to live a public life that discourages suspicion, faking emotions and reactions that are expected of him, but which he never actually experiences. Most importantly, Harry gives the boy a system of ethical principles that Dexter comes to call "the Code of Harry." The central tenet of that code is to only kill people who are, themselves, killers.

Dexter claims his first victim at age 19. Harry, who is dying of coronary artery disease in a hospital, gives Dexter "permission" to kill one of the nurses, who was murdering patients with overdoses of morphine.

Also featured in the series are Dexter's adoptive sister, Debra, a police officer; his girlfriend and later wife, Rita; and Rita's two young children, Astor and Cody.

The first novel and first season of the television show are concerned with Dexter's discovery of his repressed past: When Dexter was three years old, he and his older brother Brian witnessed the violent murder of their mother by drug dealers and were left in a shipping container with her dismembered body in two inches of her blood, leaving both boys emotionally numb and prone to violence. Harry Morgan took Dexter from the scene. Brian, having been put in a mental institution for disturbed children, grows up to be a serial killer, and leaves clues for Dexter as a form of "friendly competition" between them. When Dexter finally deduces the killer's identity, he allows Brian to escape. (In the TV series, Dexter reluctantly kills him when Brian makes it clear that he will not rest until he has killed Debra, whom he views as a rival for Dexter's affection.)

In the TV series, during a fight with his nemesis, Sgt. James Doakes, Dexter demonstrates considerable skill in hand to hand combat. Subsequently, Doakes learns that Dexter trained in jujitsu in college. He also learns that Dexter was top of his class in medical school, but gave up a medical career in order to become a forensics scientist.

Dexter's personality and sociopathy

Dexter Morgan is driven to kill to satisfy an inner voice he calls "the Dark Passenger." When that voice can no longer be ignored, he "lets the Dark Passenger do the driving." When talking about his "work" in the TV series he explains the code as, "My intention was never to save lives, but save lives I did."

In Dexter in the Dark, the third novel of the Dexter series, it is revealed through third person narrative of an entity referred to as "IT" that the Dark Passenger is an independent agent inhabiting Dexter, rather than a deviant psychological construction. "IT" is revealed to be Moloch, a god which was worshipped in Biblical times. The Dark Passenger is one of ITs many offspring: IT had many children (formed through human sacrifice), and IT learned to share ITs knowledge with them. Eventually, there were too many, and IT killed the majority, some of whom escaped into the world.

Dexter considers himself emotionally divorced from the rest of humanity; in his narration, he often refers to "humans" as if he is not one of them. Dexter makes frequent references to an internal feeling of emptiness, and says he kills to feel alive (primarily in the TV series). Dexter claims to have no feelings or conscience and that all of his emotional responses are part of a well-rehearsed act to conceal his true nature. He has no interest in romance or sex; he considers his relationship with Rita to be part of his "disguise".

There are holes in Dexter's emotional armor, however. He acknowledges loyalty to family, particularly his late adoptive father: "If I were capable of love, how I would have loved Harry." Since Harry's death, Dexter's only family is his sister, Debra, Harry's biological daughter. At the end of the first novel, Dexter admits that he cannot hurt Debra or allow Brian to harm her because he is "fond of her". In the final episode of the TV show's second season, he finally admits that he needs the people in his life.

Dexter likes children, finding them to be much more interesting than their parents. The flip side of this affection is that Dexter is particularly wrathful when his victims prey on children. In Dearly Devoted Dexter, Dexter realizes that Rita's son Cody is showing the same signs of sociopathy as Dexter himself did at that age, and looks forward to providing him with "guidance" similar to that which Harry provided him; In his way, he sees Cody as his own son. This also gives him a reason to continue his relationship with Rita; as of Dearly Devoted Dexter, he is engaged to her because of a misunderstanding (Rita finds a ring in Dexter's pocket that actually came from a severed finger). The beginning of the third book reveals that Cody is not the only one with violent impulses, as both children pressure Dexter to "teach" them. Dexter has come to accept his role as stepfather to both children very seriously in Dexter in the Dark, albeit in his typical fashion. For example, while on a stakeout, he begins to wonder if Cody had brushed his teeth before bed and if Astor had set out her Easter dress for photo-day at her school. These thoughts distract him while he is waiting for an intended victim, which thoroughly annoys him. In the TV series, Dexter also takes a detour in his code of only killing murderers in order to dispose of a pedophile who is stalking Astor.

Animals don't like Dexter, which can cause noise problems when Dexter stalks a victim who has pets. He is quoted as once having a dog who barks and growls at him until he is forced to get rid of it, and a turtle, which hides in its shell until it dies of starvation rather than have to deal with him.

Dexter's modus operandi

Dexter's modus operandi differs between the books and the television series. In the television series it entails seizing the victim from behind and injecting them with an anesthetic (specified to be an animal tranquilizer called etorphine hydrochloride, or M99), which renders his victims temporarily unconscious. The injection is a tradition established with his first victim, the hospital nurse. He uses the alias Patrick Bateman (the serial killer protagonist of Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho) to procure these tranquilizers. Other times, Dexter incapacitates his target by using either his arms or a garrote to cut off blood flow to the brain. In the books, as in the opening scene in the television series' pilot episode, he sneaks up on his victim, wraps a fishing line noose around his victim's throat and has him drive to the pre-selected place he intends to kill them.

When victims wake up, they are naked and secured to a table with plastic wrap. The room around them is also completely swathed in clear plastic tarp to leave no signs of the murder. Dexter confronts them with narrative evidence of their crimes before killing them. In the novels, the method usually involves an extended "exploration" with various sharp knives; in the television series, Dexter's favored method usually involves an immediately fatal wound to the heart, neck, or gut, with a variety of weapons. He occasionally varies his methods; he kills Brian by cutting his throat with a silverware dinner knife; he stabs gang lord Little Chino in the chest with a machete; and impales Lila West with a knife. He also kills his mother's killer, Jimenez Santos, with a chainsaw, in the same manner in which his mother was killed.

Just before the murder, Dexter collects trophies from his victims so he can relive the experience. Dexter's trophy signature is to slice the victim's cheek with a surgical scalpel underneath the victim's right eye and to collect a small blood sample, which he preserves between two laboratory slides. In the TV show, Dexter keeps blood slides from all his victims neatly organized in a wooden filing box, which he hides inside his air conditioner; in the novels he keeps them in a rosewood box on his bookcase.

He disposes of bodies by dismembering them into several sections and wrapping them in a garbage bag, which he seals with duct tape and weighs down with rocks from the dock where he keeps his boat. He then takes the wrapped bags out on his boat and dumps them overboard into the ocean at a defined location; in the TV series, his dumping ground is a small oceanic trench just offshore. In one episode, it is inadvertently discovered by scuba divers, so he changes tactics, taking the bodies further offshore, where they will be intercepted by the Gulf Stream and carried out to sea.

In the novels, Dexter typically wears a white silk mask while killing. On the show, Dexter once obscured his face with plastic wrap but usually leaves his face uncovered. However, he always wears a distinctive outfit while killing which includes a dark gray, long-sleeved shirt, brown cargo pants, and black gloves.

Dexter's biological family

In both the television show and first novel in the series, Dexter and his older brother Brian are trapped as children in a storage container at the docks in Miami, Florida, for two days. They are surrounded by corpses, starving, and sitting in a puddle of blood. One of the corpses is their mother. A small-time criminal had murdered her with a chainsaw, something which both Dexter and Brian had witnessed. Dexter is adopted by the investigating detective, Harry Morgan, while Brian is left to the child welfare system. Dexter does not find this out until he is an adult, when he encounters his brother at the end of a homicide investigation (as portrayed in the first novel and the final episode of the series' first season). His joining of the Morgan clan is somewhat different in the books. For example in the novels, Harry is never identified as the investigating officer who found Dexter. Also in the second season it is revealed Harry had been having an affair with Brian and Dexter's mother, and had known about the boys the entire time and his motivating the boys mother to turn on her "bosses" (and his affair) led to her death. This never happens in the books. At the end of the first book it is implied that Harry knew about Dexter having a brother the entire time but chose not to adopt him because he was older, and more likely to be tramautized than Dexter, but it is never flat out said, and therefore is open to interpretation. In the TV series both are stated through out the different seasons to be facts.

In the novels, Dexter's brother is known simply as Brian; when Dexter was little, he had trouble saying Brian, so he called his brother "Biney". In the television series, Dexter's mother's name is Laura Moser. She is killed with a chainsaw, along with three other people, in front of her two sons.

In the TV series his father's name is given as Joe Driscoll; however, Dexter cannot find any record of a Joe Driscoll's existence before 30 years ago. The lone point of contact between father and son comes when a young Dexter sends his father a thank you card (which his father treasured his whole life) for a blood transfusion he received after an accident (it is revealed that Dexter has a rare blood type). As Harry convinced Driscoll to donate the blood secretly, Dexter had no idea where it had come from. It is implied that Brian murdered Driscoll with an injection of insulin to mimic a heart attack, as it is revealed that Driscoll had been visited by a cable repair man prior to his death, and an elderly neighbor recognizes Brian as the repairman. However, the body is cremated before Dexter can obtain proof. Near the end of the first book Brian and Dexter meet in a storage container similar to the one they were held in as children and Brian reaccounts what happened. He says that one of the bodies they were surrounded by could have been their father for all they knew, possibly implying they didnt know their father, were not close to him, or the bodies were so mangled it would be hard to tell which was which.

External links

• Dexter Morgan at the Internet Movie Database
• Character profile at The New York Times