DEXTER MORGAN

'Dexter Morgan' is a fictional character in a series of novels by Jeff Lindsay, which include ''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.

Contents

Character overview

Character history

Dexter's personality and sociopathy

Dexter's killing signature

Dexter's biological family

Character overview

Dexter is a blood spatter expert for the Miami-Dade Police Department, and a serial killer. He was taught by his foster father to only kill those he feels deserve to die. These are usually violent criminals (serial killers, rapists, child molesters, etc) who Dexter thinks have escaped justice.

Character history

Dexter begins killing neighborhood pets as an adolescent. Harry finds the animals' remains, and recognises that young Dexter is a sociopath with an uncontrollable need to kill. Harry decides to train Dexter to channel his violent urges in a "positive" direction: He teaches his adopted 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. Most importantly, Harry gives the boy a system of ethical principles that he 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 human victim at age 19. Harry, who is dying of cancer in a hospice, 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 detective; his girlfriend, Rita; and Rita's two young children, Astor and Cody.

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".
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 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, and he considers his relationship with Rita to be part of his "disguise".
There are chinks in Dexter's emotional armor, however. He acknowledges loyalty to family, particularly his dead foster 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 Morgan, Harry's natural 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." He also appears to care more for Rita than he admits.
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 the boy with "guidance" similar to that Harry provided him with; he sees Cody as his own son. This also gives him a reason to continue his relationship with Rita.
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 Dexter 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 Dexter.

Dexter's killing signature

Dexter's preferred style of killing entails seizing the victim from behind and injecting them with an anesthetic. In the television series this is specified to be an animal tranquilizer called etorphine hydrochloride, or M99, that renders his victims temporarily unconscious. The injection is a tradition established with his first victim, the hospice nurse. He uses the alias Patrick Bateman (the serial killer protagonist of Bret Easton Ellis' ''American Psycho'') to procure these tranquilizers.
When the victim wakes up, they are naked and secured to a table with plastic wrap. The room around them is also completely covered 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 is a battery-powered saw to the neck, with no apparent torture beforehand.
After the initial murder, Dexter collects trophies from his victims so he can relive the experience. Dexter's trophy signature is to slice the victim's cheek near the eye and collect a blood sample, which he preserves on a laboratory slide. In the television show, Dexter keeps blood slides from all his victims neatly organized in a wooden filing box that he keeps hidden inside an air conditioner in his apartment; in the novels he keeps the box of blood slides on a bookcase.
He disposes of the body by dismembering it in several sections, wrapping each section in a garbage bag and sealing it with duct tape. He then takes those individually wrapped sections out on his boat and dumps them overboard into the ocean at a defined location.

Dexter's biological family

Within both the television series 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, sitting in a two inch deep 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. Both boys suffer irreparable psychological damage, and are left emotionally numb and prone to violence. 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).
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". Neither parents' name has so far come up.
In the television series, Dexter's mother's name is Laura Moser. She is killed with a chainsaw, along with three other people, right in front of her two sons. His father's name is given as Joe Driscoll, however this may be an assumed name as there is no record of Joe Driscoll's existence before 30 years ago. It is implied that Brian murdered Driscoll with an injection of insulin to mimic a heart attack, but the body is cremated before Dexter can obtain proof.