Background of the Study
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The author of this novel, Jeffry P. Freundlich was born on July 14, 1952 in Florida and later became a writer under the pen name Jeff Lindsay. He graduated
and attended Ransom Everglade School in South Florida, Middleburry College in Vermont and graduate school in Carnegie Mellon. He grew up in Florida, and
knows the area and feel of Miami which really helps set the background for the Dexter book series.
This novel was inspired when Jeff was speaking in a room full of insurance agents, real estate agents, and other shady people of the sort. He noticed
all the fake emotions and fake smiles of people who didn‘t really want to be in there. He started taking notes on napkins and that night, the idea of Darkly
Dreaming Dexter was created. In the 1970‘s, at Carnegie Mellon in theater he had a directing teacher from Romania who taught him the concept ―illegal laughter‖
which means to make the audience laugh but feel like they did something wrong for laughing. He strives to make Dexter witty and funny, but creep the reader out.
The first book of the series Darkly Dreaming Dexter won the 2005 Dilys Award and the 2007 Book to TV award. It tells about Dexter who works for the
Miami Metro Police Department as a forensic blood spatter pattern analyst. He was adopted at the age of three by Miami police officer Harry Morgan and wife
Doris due to the murder of his mother. Although his parents loved him, but he did not love himself or everybody around him, he never feels his heart beats and he
has no emotions. But he found himself satisfied, his heart beats when he kills something. He realizes that he had always found gratification
“to be hatred, in hating and being hated”, not love.
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His urges to kill are directed by an inner voice
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Freud claims that there are two instincts: Eros and Thanatos. Love and sex are Eros instinc while hate and aggressively are Thanatos instinct
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he refers to as the Dark Passenger, who keeps prodding him to kill. Kill makes the voice satisfied for a while, but always comes back. This feeling for kill then
develop to be source of his anxiety when he did not kill something. After several years, he realizes that his urge to kill is about to grow. And
from several talks with his father, he knows that he should kill people who have gotten away with murder as a way to channel his homicidal urges in a positive
direction. He kills murderers, rapists and other undesirables he believes have escaped justice. His job as a blood spatter expert for the Miami police department
puts him in the perfect position to identify the latest crimes and keep an eye open for his next victim.
Therefore, the writer is interested to analyze Dexter Morgan using Psychoanalysis theory. It is caused by her strong enthusiasm to know about the
psychoanalysis particularly in exploring the literature. On the other hand, in various ways, a psychoanalysis approach has opened new possibility to the study
of human mental cases in connection with literature. Then, the writer uses theory of psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud to discuss further about
Dexter‘s psychopathic personality in the Darkly Dreaming Dexter a novel by Jeff Lindsay.