Dexter’s Double

The TV show Dexter, is about how a splatter analyst for the Miami Metro Police Department battles with his inner psychotic urges to kill. Dexter’s father notices these urges surfacing during Dexters younger years as a child. His father teaches him how to blend in with normal society suppressing these urges by following a moral code. This is to only kill other killers causing harm to others as well as never getting caught and blending in with his community so that no one will ever look at him as a suspect. Dexter has done well at keeping his “dark passenger” (this is what he calls his urges or double consciousness) satisfied and hidden. That is until he meets a girl by the name of Rita and all of his preconceptions about being a psychopath and feeling no emotion fly out the door. Eventually marrying Rita, Dexter starts to actually care for her creating conflict between his hidden identity and his true emotions. It seems like all of us have some type of dark passenger, not necessarily in a negative sense but in the way of having two different ideas or thoughts within. Throughout the rest of the show, Dexter keeps fighting to balance his inner urges with his normal life as a father and splatter analyst. He dives into fully submitting to his dark passenger and realizes the moral code his father instilled within him is there for an obvious reason. Dexter has to balance both consciousnesses and understand that fulfilling his urges the right way is the only way he can stay out of trouble.