Alex/Jean

Driver had the keys bunched in his hand, one braced and protruding between second and third fingers. Stepping directly forward, he punched his fist at alpha dog's windpipe, feeling the key tear through layers of flesh, looking down as he lay gasping for air.

In his rear view mirror he watched the young tough's buddies stand over him flapping hands and lips and trying to decide what the hell to do. It wasn't supposed to go down like this.

Maybe he should turn around. Go back and tell them that's what life was, a long series of things that didn't go down the way you thought they would.

Hell with it. Either they'd figure it out or they wouldn't. Most people never did.

You can get a LOT of characterization just from that in my opinion, just from his own inner monologue about how he views violence and misfortune. And he’s not being actively threatened here, either. Poked fun at, yes, and vaguely intimidated, but they didn’t have any weapons that Driver made note of, didn’t approach him aggressively, didn’t do anything but poke fun at his vehicle at the time.

There are so many times when Driver strikes disproportionately to what’s happening around him — and it makes sense! In his mind, it’s been shown time and time again that being weak is one of the worst things you can be, right beside being useless. So Driver does the only thing he’s learned will keep him safe: he lashes out like a dog hit one too many times.

But in spite of this view, despite violence being the only universal language that Driver consciously speaks, he also uses another one without his input — love.

Immediately after killing the guy above, Driver tells us this:

He existed a step or two to one side of the common world, largely out of sight, a shadow, all but invisible. Whatever he owned, either he could hoist it on his back and lug it along or he could walk away from it.

He tries to tell himself, because he feels “a step or two” away from everybody else and the world they live in, that he doesn’t need to tie himself down with a real life. If he has it, he has it; if he can’t have it, it wasn’t worth keeping anyways. But he proves time and time again that he loves people so, so much.

Whenever he doesn’t understand something, he’ll walk miles to phone his best friend, Manny, and ask for a word’s definition, then ask him out to drinks. Whenever Manny is drunk as hell, Driver tells him to get some sleep and then drives him home, just to make sure he gets there okay and because he cares. He refuses to take Manny’s money (despite Manny being incredibly wealthy), and is willing to drive all the way to the East Coast for free because his best friend doesn’t fly. And when Driver gets scared, both when he first came to California and at the very end of the story, right before he confronts Bernie Rose, he calls Manny so the two of them can go walk down the Santa Monica beach and talk.

Likewise, Doc is the only person we see Driver trust to help him out medically, even if Doc is suffering from alcoholism and seems to have some sort of dissociative disorder. Whenever Doc gets deathly ill from liver failure, Driver bypasses a nurse’s ‘no visitors’ order because “She also told him his friend was dying.” He tries his best to comfort Doc (even if Doc knows he’s dying), telling him he’ll be fine, promising he fed Doc’s cat — the random stray cat he paid enough attention to to know that something had happened to Doc —, asking if there’s anybody he can call for his friend and trying to get ahold of Doc’s daughter, even when she won’t pick up. And Driver wants to come back, even when Doc tells him there’s no need, because Driver is worried.

And he loves his foster parents to some extent, but more than anything, he respects them and feels so incredibly guilty for all that he’s done when it comes to them. Even just existing in their house, “living like a wren” in their attic, was something so deeply touching to him that he carried the guilt of stealing their car up until the very end. He leaves them an apology note, saying he’s sorry but also so thankful, and then later down the line, he brings them the money that he got from Nino so they can live in comfort, just as a thank you for letting him exist in peace. These are people he lived with for maybe only 3-4 years, too.

And even his biological mother, who never once called him his name and was very abusive and neglectful, gets Driver’s love. He dreams of her calling him her son, and seems almost out of it whenever he tries to go see her and is told she died not long ago. Even when he views her with some level of disdain, he still loves her, and even pities her.

Ultimately, Driver is someone who loves people as much as he’s scared of them. All he’s ever done is been hurt or used (even by his friends), and yet he loves them. It doesn’t mean he isn’t violent, because he kills, stalks, and hunts down anybody getting in his way, and he also kills people who were just existing. But that’s what makes him so interesting as a character — he lashes out because what else is he supposed to do, and he tries to leave things behind, but at the end of the day he just wants to exist. Yes, he IS a violent dog, he knows EXACTLY why he bites, but he loves the people who were willing to throw him a bone and give him a chance.