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	Blood Spatter Analyst Serial Killer
Family	Joe Driscoll (Father in TV series) Laura Moser (Mother in TV series) Brian Moser (Older Brother) Harry Morgan (Adoptive Father) Doris Morgan (Adoptive Mother) Deborah Morgan (Debra in TV series) (Adoptive Sister) Rita Morgan (Wife)
Children	Astor Bennett (Stepdaughter) Cody Bennett (Stepson) Harrison Morgan (Son in TV series)

Dexter Morgan is a fictional character in a series of novels by Jeff Lindsay, including Darkly Dreaming Dexter (2004), Dearly Devoted Dexter (2005), Dexter in the Dark (2007) and Dexter by Design (2009).

In 2006, the first novel was adapted into the Showtime television 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 free time, he is a serial killer. He was taught by his adoptive father, Harry, only to kill those "who deserve it"; mainly, 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 suspects that young Dexter is a psychopath 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 not leave any clues. He 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 tenets of that code are to only kill people who are, themselves, killers.

Dexter claims his first victim at age 18. Harry, who is dying of coronary artery disease in a hospital, gives Dexter "permission" to kill one of the nurses, who is murdering patients with overdoses of morphine.

Also featured in the series are Dexter's adoptive sister, Deborah, a police officer; Rita, his girlfriend and later wife; 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 own mother and three others by drug dealers and were left in a shipping container, surrounded by four dismembered bodies and soaked in two inches of blood, leaving both boys emotionally numb and prone to violence. Harry Morgan took Dexter from the scene and adopted him. Brian, meanwhile, was put in a mental institution for disturbed children, and grew up to be a serial killer and daytime prosthetist at a Miami hospital. Years later, he 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 Deborah, 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 forensic scientist.

Dexter's personality and psychological profile

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. However, in the fourth season episode 'Road Kill,' Dexter ultimately concludes that if to feel remorse is human, then he must be human as well.

Dexter makes frequent references to an internal feeling of emptiness and says he kills to feel alive. Dexter claims to have no feelings or conscience and that all of his emotional responses are part of a well-rehearsed act to conceal who — or what — he really is. 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, Deborah, Harry's biological daughter. At the end of the first novel, Dexter admits that he cannot hurt Deborah 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. In the fourth season, Dexter hunts a female police officer who he discovered murdered her own husband and young daughter. While he is preparing to kill her, Dexter finds himself admitting that he does not want to lose his new family. He appears to be nearly overwhelmed by this emotional revelation, before quickly finishing his victim.

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; in Dearly Devoted Dexter, he gets 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 from hunting 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 once owned a dog that barked and growled at him until he was forced to get rid of it and a turtle that hid in its shell until it died of starvation rather than having to deal with him.

Dexter's modus operandi

Dexter's modus operandi serves not only to maximize the satisfaction he derives from his victims, but to minimize, if not eliminate, any forensic clues and evidence, and ensure that he does not target innocents. Dexter spends a significant amount of time selecting each victim according to his adoptive father's code, following them to learn their routines and (in the TV series only) meets them prior to killing them to establish if they are likely to kill again. He then ritually prepares a kill site, located in a place that would fit the way in which they lived (e.g. killing a boxer in a boxing ring and a gambler in a Casino's storage shed), completely enclosed in clear plastic tarpaulin to catch all spilled blood so as to leave no signs of the murder, often adorning it with evidence or photos of his victim's crimes, and in some cases the actual exhumed corpses of their victims.

The actual capture of his victims differs between the books and the television series. In the television series it usually entails approaching 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 hands 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 hides in the back seat of his victim's vehicle, then wraps a noose of fishing line around his victim's throat when they sit down. Unlike the TV series, in the books Dexter always wears a mask to keep them from identifying him, while in the show he has only worn a mask with an intended victim once. He then uses the threat of asphyxiation to force his victim to drive them to his prepared kill site. This was only used once in the Television series with the very first kill of the series -- a pedophiliac preacher.

Once they arrive, he will either strangle them into unconsciousness or use the noose to drag them to the kill site proper. In such cases he anesthetizes them once he has informed them of his judgment. When victims awaken, they are naked and secured to a table with plastic wrap and, for stronger victims, duct tape. If he has not already done so, he confronts them with narrative evidence of their crimes. 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 to fit particular victims; 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, in the same manner in which his mother was killed; by dismembering him with a chainsaw.

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.

Ultimately, he dismembers the bodies of his victims into several sections, wraps them and the plastic sheeting in biodegradable garbage bags, then adds rocks from the dock where he keeps his boat as anchor weight and seals them with duct tape. He then takes the wrapped bags out on his boat and disposes of them by dumping 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 books, lesser detail is placed on his methods, with Dexter usually improvising depending on the victim. He has dumped some victims into the ocean due to the victim owning a boat and doing the same with his victims, but uses anchors to weight the bags. Another is disposed of by dumping the body in a vat of hydrochloric acid.

Dexter's biological family

Both the television show and first novel in the series reveal that Dexter and his older brother Brian were trapped as children in a storage container at the docks in Miami, Florida, for two days. They were surrounded by corpses, starving, and sitting in a puddle of blood. One of the corpses was their mother. A small-time criminal had murdered her with a chainsaw, something which both Dexter and Brian had witnessed. Dexter was adopted by the investigating detective, Harry Morgan, while Brian was 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. His joining of the Morgan clan is somewhat different in the books; for example, Harry is never identified as the investigating officer who found Dexter. The show also deviates from the books by portraying the boys' mother as a police informant with whom Harry was having an affair at the time of her death. At the end of the first novel, 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 traumatized.

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.

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 for a blood transfusion he received after an accident (it is revealed that Dexter has a rare blood type, AB Negative). 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 (and is afterwards "visited" by him, in order to silence her). 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 recounts what happened. He says that one of the bodies they were surrounded by could have been their father for all they knew.

In the novel, Brian escapes Miami after killing Laguerta and so far never appeared in the books. In the shows, however, Dexter catches and tearfully kills his brother, knowing he would never stop trying to kill Debra or other innocent people.

Dexter's Dark Passenger

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."

In Dexter in the Dark, the third novel of the 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. Later, Dexter realizes the Dark Passenger is related to Moloch, a Middle Eastern deity worshipped in Biblical times. The Dark Passenger is one of Moloch's many offspring; IT had many children (formed through human sacrifice), and IT learned to share Moloch's knowledge with them. Eventually, there were too many, and Moloch killed the majority; however, some of them escaped into the world. In the novel, Dexter learns of the Dark Passenger's true nature when it briefly "leaves" him, frightening him into researching possible reasons for its existence.

External links

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