Damon Salvatore
Personality Profile: A Beautiful Monster
Damon Salvatore, a paradox of all things devastatingly horrible and strikingly beautiful. In the television series, The Vampire Diaries, Damon Salvatore continuously battles between the complexities of being a hero and a villain. Of all the characters on the show’s landscape, Damon is without a doubt the most fascinating and the most complicated. His demonic tendencies, full of bloodlust, juxtaposes with a bone-deep sorrow that is saturated in his own history as son, brother, and vampire all compose of the enigma of his character. Damon Salvatore is the walking wounded; every sin and pleasure of vampirism is etched on his skin, all of the unrequited desires of immortality rest within his character and he acts them out repeatedly, in the form of his unrequited love and humanity that threaten to pour out from his calloused demeanor. His complexity lies is in his emotions; the real emotions, not the ones he pretends to have; not even the ones he reluctantly admits to having, but the ones that he subconsciously feels, the ones that he could never really put into words no matter how much he dare tried. It is these emotions that drive Damon’s actions and reactions, and it is these emotions that make him feel as though he can’t control himself. The contradictory nature of Damon charges us to look at him as a way to uncover the definition of what it means to be monstrous, not just the operational definition but in a more humanistic aspect and how that definition is often unstable and not entirely inhuman. Using the social-cognitive and trait theories, the analysis of personality will demonstrate why Damon Salvatore is so conflicted by his constant struggles of allowing his emotions to guide his decisions; battling between being beauty and the beast.
To start off, by looking at the character of Damon Salvatore from the Social-Cognitive perspective, we can see how the situation, the environment, personal thoughts and feelings
Damon Salvatore, a paradox of all things devastatingly horrible and strikingly beautiful. In the television series, The Vampire Diaries, Damon Salvatore continuously battles between the complexities of being a hero and a villain. Of all the characters on the show’s landscape, Damon is without a doubt the most fascinating and the most complicated. His demonic tendencies, full of bloodlust, juxtaposes with a bone-deep sorrow that is saturated in his own history as son, brother, and vampire all compose of the enigma of his character. Damon Salvatore is the walking wounded; every sin and pleasure of vampirism is etched on his skin, all of the unrequited desires of immortality rest within his character and he acts them out repeatedly, in the form of his unrequited love and humanity that threaten to pour out from his calloused demeanor. His complexity lies is in his emotions; the real emotions, not the ones he pretends to have; not even the ones he reluctantly admits to having, but the ones that he subconsciously feels, the ones that he could never really put into words no matter how much he dare tried. It is these emotions that drive Damon’s actions and reactions, and it is these emotions that make him feel as though he can’t control himself. The contradictory nature of Damon charges us to look at him as a way to uncover the definition of what it means to be monstrous, not just the operational definition but in a more humanistic aspect and how that definition is often unstable and not entirely inhuman. Using the social-cognitive and trait theories, the analysis of personality will demonstrate why Damon Salvatore is so conflicted by his constant struggles of allowing his emotions to guide his decisions; battling between being beauty and the beast.
To start off, by looking at the character of Damon Salvatore from the Social-Cognitive perspective, we can see how the situation, the environment, personal thoughts and feelings
References: Myers, D. G. (2013). Personality. Psychology (10th ed., pp. 514-551). New York, NY: Worth Publishers. Williamson, K. (Executive Producer), & Plec, J. (Executive Producer). (2009). The Vampire Diaries [Television series]. U.S.A: CW. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97Tmb2r_Glg&list=PL838697E2349B091E http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rRSwL8CU-Q&list=PL838697E2349B091E