A Character Analysis of Freddy Krueger
What kind of serial killer is the Springwood Slasher?
Wes Craven’s timeless fictional slasher has been a household name since he first burst onto the scene in 1986. Over nearly a dozen movies, a handful of cameos and television features, and even a few novelizations, he’s evolved into a complicated character.
He’s a brutal, psychotic killer, yet he can also be a wisecracking sadist, or even a loving father. He’s every bit as complex as any real world slasher you’ve ever seen on the news.
Freddy’s Life and Death
In A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors and A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: Dream Master, we learn of Freddy’s sordid birth and the life he led before he was killed, to rise again as the dream-stalking villain that we know.
His mother was Sister Mary Helena, a nun who was raped by 100 dangerous inmates, and who later hung herself. Freddy followed in the footsteps of these men, killing numerous children and becoming known as “The Springwood Slasher,” before the parents of his victims burned him to death alive.
Yet before he died, Freddy also had a wife and a child, and he lived a relatively normal life even while he performed his sadistic crimes. Like many real serial killers, Freddy was smart enough to pretend he was an average man, and he was able to keep his homicidal tendencies a secret for a while.
The Murderous Hedonist
There’s a reason why Freddy feels like a real serial killer. Wes Craven took some of his inspiration from the many high profile cases of the late 70’s and early 80’s, so Freddy is the fictional descendant of killers like Richard Ramirez and Ted Bundy. He is, in a very real way, “the bastard child of 100 maniacs.”
Freddy comes from hurt and hatred, and we soon learn that he knows nothing else. He not only enjoys killing, he takes great pride in crafting traps and custom nightmares for his victims, so he can scare them as much as possible.
He loves the hunt, which is why he drags the process out as long as possible, taunting his prey, and even flirting with them in his sadistic way. Freddy doesn’t kill people because he thinks it’s right, or because he’s mentally ill. He kills people because he can, and he wants to.
This might seem like a thin motive, but it’s actually very common for serial murderers to feel this way. Since the late 1980’s, the FBI has classified serial killers according to motive into four categories. They are either “visionaries,” “mission-driven,” “hedonistic,” or “power/control- oriented.”
Freddy is a classic hedonistic serial killer. He is motivated by the thrill. We can see from how he creates perfectly terrifying nightmares for each victim that killing is an art form to him. Freddy takes his time when he performs his murders, and he smiles and cracks jokes as if there’s nothing else he’d rather be doing, because there isn’t.
In short, Freddy Krueger is a mirror image of the very real, very terrible killers that stalk the quiet neighborhoods and empty throughways of our own world. He has the ability to pretend to be normal, but on the inside, he’s a brutally sadistic artist, and his medium is death.