Brenno

I made two posts in the past about Driver and how people mischaracterize him a lot, making his character a yandere, stalker, abuser and someone who hurts people because he likes it. I said that so many times that I think people can't take it anymore (sorry for that i just really against the romanticization of SA). But now I want to talk about the other way around, because sometimes people forget that even though Driver isn't an abuser, he is in fact a weird person. To the point where he is just portrayed as a small little baby. He is neither of those two things, he is a character who exists somewhere between being a strange person who commits crimes and someone who is loving toward others.

Ignoring the fact that Driver is a socially awkward person loses the point of his character. He is supposed to be weird in the eyes of other people who don't know him, giving them that impression that he is someone you should avoid. It is also something that Driver learns during his life, he understands that he needs to be alert to his surroundings since he was a kid. Not only when he was helping his dad to rob, but also when his mom killed his dad, because at that moment Driver realises that his mom could also kill him. The fact that she wasn't that affectionate towards him fueled the idea that Driver should pay close attention to the things around him.

He keeps doing that his whole life, even though he isn't in danger he still pays attention to every single detail. In the book he watched his neighbours so much that he memorized their routine by only looking through the window. He recognized other people's patterns so he could understand them easily, probably something he learned to understand his mother too. By what the book shows us about her, she was a quiet woman, not making her emotions clear to Driver, so he learns how to spot the patterns in her behaviour to be able to read her.

Driver spent so much time trying to survive and be prepared for imminent danger that he didn’t have time to build a personality, another thing that people would find unsettling about him. His autonomy is basically nil, most of his choices throughout the movie are made or influenced by other people, he just does whatever Shannon tells him to do because he lost the ability to do it. Yes there are some small things he does because he wants to, like driving, but they are so little because he never had the opportunity to have an actual life.

He is also really methodical, following things to the letter. Driver have to follow his routine to have a sense of control. We see in the movie that he is clearly nervous when things don’t go as he planned, he loses the only control he has over his life in seconds. It is something other people don’t understand about him, how he needs to do all those things to feel safe, even though it is something that is not that important. Driver likes the sense of security that following these patterns gives him, because he can let his guard down a bit.

Also he does stalk people, but what people get it wrong when portraying it is the fact that Driver stalks people because he needed to. Not because he liked to do it, all the crimes he committed after the failed robbery came from the need to protect the people he loves and himself (Kinda similar to what his mother did when he was a kid). The point of his character is that he is capable of killing others, but it's something that he hates to do, he feels like he doesn't deserve to be around irene and benicio because he is dangerous.

The difference from Irene, Shannon and even Standard is that they see past that. They understand that Driver is not as dangerous as people think, he can be gentle in his own silent way, he doesn't show his emotions in a conventional way and some people may feel uncomfortable with that. The point of his character is that he is weird and violent, but he can be kind and protect the people he loves at the same time. He is in between these two things, he is a complex character that can't be fit into an exact box. All his sides have to be taken into account to create a good portrayal of his character.

I wrote all this just to explain how Driver is autistic

The next one is going to be grace :3