Dexter in the light of psychoanalytic criticism | مركز سمت للدراسات

Dexter in the light of psychoanalytic criticism

Date & time : Sunday, 8 August 2021

Written by: Badr Almutairi

Edited by: Dr. Alaa Alghamdi

 

Dexter asks major questions when it comes to issues such as moral conflicts which underly the idea of the series, the idea of fighting evil through evil itself, and does evil justify whether it is harnessed to fight a greater evil? Or does evil turn into good if it’s based on purification?

   Intensely highlighting the focus of the story, Dexter’s character.

  A blood-spatter analyst at Miami police station ostensibly, and the serial killer nicknamed the Bay Harbor killer. Who also acts as the narrator, and that’s an important factor in the conduct of the recipient’s opinion. Dexter, who suffers from communication disorders, has chosen the recipient (viewer) to be the sole listener of his true voice, creating a high intimacy between them; The recipient, in turn, takes the view of the purged serial killer.

Dexter starts from the first minutes by introducing himself:

“My name is Dexter, Dexter Morgan. I don’t know what made me the way I am, but whatever it was left a hollow place inside. People fake a lot of human interaction, but I feel like I’ve fake them all, and I fake them very well. And that’s my burden.”

    A simple description gives the recipient the character’s troubled nature and raises questions about this thing from which he created a psychopathic character and left this void. Dexter lived most of his life ignorant of the answer to his question, discovering his answer with the recipient by the other picture of him (his brother the ice truck killer).

    Who deliberately stirred up his brother’s memory until Dexter realized later that everything that had formed his character was a tragic event in his childhood that his memory removed it but remained in his unconscious.

Unconsciousness and the displacement technique in (Harry code)

     Freud divided the soul into three sections: The ego (the mind), the id (wishes and desires), the superego (the conscience), And with the human attempt to restrain (the id) because of the (superego).

     Passions and desires accumulate until they form a stored in the (unconscious), and until they are satisfied, several defensive mechanisms arise. We mention what matters to us, which is (displacement), which replaces the idea rejected by the superego with a polite idea that can be justified With Dexter who realizes what he has become of this monster, a horrific incident which he went through when he was a little child of three years with his older brother, Two children witnessed their mother being torn apart by an electric saw and then for three days locked in a truck that turned into a (bloodbath).  Dexter didn’t realize it because his adoptive father had manipulated his memory to hide what had happened, claiming to protect him. Harry (his adoptive father)

  • He realized later in his late childhood years that what happened could not be erased and that’s what the young witnessed would leave a big impact on him, but that’s the way Dexter takes pleasure in killing his victims is the same way in which his mother was killed!.
  • (Harry) is formed in the image of the voice of the conscience and the superego trying to refine the id (love of murder and blood) in Dexter, and since the principle of killing is socially, morally and legally rejected, while the (beast) within Dexter cannot restrain this desire that arose due to the (unconscious)And what he went through during his childhood, Harry created a (law) that disciplines and justifies this desire.

Harry code text

  •      Harry’s code states that within Dexter there is a beast that yearns to kill and blood that cannot be curbed, and in turn there is an evil that cannot be stopped by the law and that can only be fought by another evil.. Why not harness the beast within him to fight this evil if the result is fewer criminals and purification of the  Society? Although the act itself is still under the principle of crime and murder?
  •      Harry’s code with Dexter interacts with him, but he ignored the human side of Dexter – who thought himself a monster who had no humanity because of what Harry drew for him and tried to convince him of it – but Dexter, after realizing that Harry also could not stand his brutality and died as a result, tried to free himself from the chains of his beast, and allowed himself to be a human coming to life, contrary to what Harry thought, but what was waiting for him is another struggle between his humanity and his killer beast.

Between the Dark passnger and humanity

Dexter tries to create a balance between his humanity and his dark side, or as he calls it (The dark passenger )On the other hand, we see Dexter struggles as a husband, a brother, a father, and a friend while not ignoring his dark passenger. But once he reached what he had always wished for in the stage of humanity, we find that he realized that this human awareness is nothing but a burden on him.

Dexter talks to himself:

  • ”As much as I may have pretended otherwise, for so long, all I wanted was to be like other people, to feel what they felt. But now that I do, I just want it to stop.”
  • On many occasions, Dexter conveys an intense picture of the true burden when he discovers how to be a human being. When his boat, which has always been the companion of his dark side “Slice of life”, wrecks, it announces the crash of the monster which proves the victory of his human side in the end.
  • Dexter said:
  • “I destroy everyone I love. And I can’t let that happen to Hannah, to Harrison. I have to protect them from me. “
  • Eventually, Dexter couldn’t live with his humanity, declaring his escape out of fear, which raises the question in the recipient’s mind, can evil turn into good? Or does the Dark passenger, even as he’s gone, only keep the wreckage from his humanity?

 

 

Alaa Alghamdi: Associate Professor of English – Taibah University

@ayghamd

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