I’ve recently (a few weeks ago!) finished watching a couple of seasons worth of episodes of Dexter. Than I found that the show is based on a book, so I decided to read those too.
The first book is Darkly Dreaming Dexter. It is already different from the first season and I am okay with the differences. Well, I am not one to get very upset if things change when moving from print to screen. I can usually flow with the changes.
Dexter knows himself to be a polite, neat monster, faking all human emotions. Than these lines jumped out at me:
I genuinely wouldn’t care if every human in the universe were suddenly to expire, with the possible exception of myself and maybe Deborah. Other people are less important to me than lawn furniture. I do not, as the shrinks put it so eloquently, have any sense of the reality of others.
But kids-kids are different.
So are kids not human than? Only the adults mean less than lawn furniture to Dexter? Maybe Dexter is not nearly the monster he thinks he is?
From a character development point of view, giving Dexter some feeling for kids makes him less repulsive a main character. That could be enough reason to put that in. But is that the reason?
I don’t know and I am slightly puzzled now.
Related articles
- Darkly Dreaming Dexter (The Best Book) (hschoeppich.wordpress.com)
- Shabooty Interview Series: Jeff Lindsay (Dexter) (shabooty.com)
- Darkly Dreaming Dexter (dontreadbooks.com)
Story Treasury 
After digesting the book a bit, I think it’s a little bit of lazy writing.
The writer clearly needed his character to be likeable and, I guess he thought having him like kids would be a good way to do that.
Interesting how t’s kind of the opposite of how in horror movies wherein the cop out shortcut to making something scary is to put a kid in danger.
It probably is. Kids in danger is kind of a scary thing for most people.