Character Analysis Of Dexter

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The Showtime television show, Dexter, is a crime drama that revolves around the idea of an anti-hero through the romanticizing of vigilante-style justice and the mind of a psychopath. The main protagonist, Dexter, lives the double life as a blood splatter analyst for the Miami Metro Police Department and as a serial killer. In this show, Dexter is a fairly unique criminal because he is a criminal killing other criminals. In the pilot episode, Dexter is revealed to be diagnosed as a psychopath by his adoptive father, Harry, whose career as a police officer provided him insight into the signs of sociopathic behavior. As a boy, Dexter was shown to be helpless to his urge to kill. Harry would always find his son killing small animals and acting …show more content…

Since childhood, Dexter has felt the strong urge to kill directed by an inner voice called “the Dark Passenger”. With his superficial emotions and lack of capacity for deep emotional attachments, that inner voice urging him to kill, sometimes cannot be ignored. In addition, Dexter’s homicidal behaviors, in a way, have been justified through a set code of moral ethics. His adoptive father trains Dexter to allow himself to only kill people who are themselves murderers. And since childhood, Dexter has followed his father’s code and kills his victims after he has enough evidence to prove their …show more content…

The crime Dexter demonstrates certain techniques of neutralization with the star criminal Dexter. One technique is known as the denial of responsibility; this technique states that the responsibility of the resulting action does not lie on the individual who committed the action. The perpetrator believe that it is not his, or her, fault; Dexter is similar, he emphasizes over that he was just born the way he was and that is why he acts the way he does. Another technique Dexter uses is denial of a victim, he believes that because all of his victims were once, or still are, criminals that there is no victim. In Dexter’s mind, all of his victims were deserving of their ultimate death because of the criminal acts. The final technique demonstrated in the show Dexter is the appeal to higher loyalties which is when the responsibility is negated by a much higher power or belief. In Dexter’s situation his bond with his father is what has aided in his ability to commit these crimes and also get away with it. He upholds Harry’s code to take care of the criminals for which the legal system could not, and also be able to get away with

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