Dean’s entire identity is wrapped up in the mission his father gave him as a child: saving people, hunting things. Maybe that explains why Sam was able to have a relationship with Jess while Dean failed with Cassie. Sam was more than his history and experience as a hunter, and so he could close off that part of himself to offer Jess just the student, the normal college guy.
Dean, on the other hand, came clean with Cassie when he realized he was in love, and he was punished for it. That’s Cassie’s fault, not his, sure, but the fact remains that without his identity as a hunter, Dean has no identity. Dean is, in most ways, exactly what he looks like: a guy with a sly smirk and a hot car, no job, no home, and no education that means anything to the folks he calls “civvies” (“Long-Distance Call,” 3-14).
The only thing Dean has that matters to him is his love and loyalty to his family. And that’s the basis for Dean’s biggest sacrifice of all. When Sam was killed in the first part of “All Hell Breaks Loose” (2-21, 2-22), Dean gave up the only thing he had to get him back: his life.
John made the same sacrifice to save Dean in “In My Time of Dying” (2-1), of course, but I think the circumstances were a little different. John wasn’t quite at the end of his life, but he’d spent a lot of years fighting one battle. The cynic in me is also convinced that the act was more reparation than selfless generosity; he knew how much he took from his sons when they were growing up, and trading his life for Dean’s was pretty clearly motivated by guilt, at least in part.
Sam was willing to sacrifice himself, too, during “Croatoan” (2-9). Faced with the unsettling fact that he had been somehow marked by the demon who killed Mary, Sam was ready to die rather than turn into the kind of creature they hunt. In the end, that sacrifice wasn’t necessary, and it’s notable that when Sam did die in “All Hell Breaks Loose,” he was angry at Dean for bringing him back. Did he feel guilty, too, for what Dean had done? I’m not sure he did. Sam is a lot more objective about freedom of choice than his brother is.
Nothing’s easy for the Winchesters. Dean brought Sam back from the dead, sure, but it turned out that Sam may be Hell’s answer to a Boy King. Dean gave up his natural life for a single year on earth, but was that sacrifice or selfishness? He got to live every remaining day with the one person he loves, yes, but it meant Sam was facing the possibility of a lifetime without his brother.
John knew that he was making a choice, when he took his very young sons on the road, even if he didn’t feel good about all of them. Sam, too, is pretty clear about who he is and what he chooses to do, not only in leaving for Stanford, but in giving up Stanford after Jess’s death, and even in fighting against an army of demons calling him their Great Evil Hope in season three. We know John made a conscious choice to take up the hunt after Mary’s death, even acknowledging it as vengeance. John and Sam, as often as they tangled, are far more alike than either of them liked to admit, and it’s this ownership and knowledge of their choices that connects them.
Dean, though, is another matter. And that brings us back to that pesky nature versus nurture debate. Sam lived the same life Dean did until he was eighteen and left for college, but Sam’s identity isn’t tied entirely to hunting, or to his family’s traditions or expectations. Dean, on the other hand, is nothing but hunter, and not, it seems, a completely original one, at least in the darkest, nastiest corners of his head.
In “Dream a Little Dream of Me” (3-10), Dean was confronted with his dream self, and boy, was he a lot more vicious than “our” Dean ever is. Calling Dean as “mindless and obedient as an attack dog” and “Daddy’s blunt little instrument,” Dream Dean made sure to point out that the few things that identify Dean outside of hunting aren’t even his own. “You car? Dad’s. Your favorite leather jacket? Dad’s? Your music? Dad’s.”
In the end, what Dean has sacrificed, consciously or not, is himself. As the third season wound down, Dean was finally realizing what he’d given up. For all his enthusiastic pleasure-grabbing at the beginning of the season, with no thought for cholesterol levels or the possibility of STDs, by the time we reached “Long-Distance Call,” Dean was afraid. Dean was going to Hell, where he would become what he hated most, and he knew, as he told his dream self, that he didn’t deserve it. And yet he didn’t back down-he didn’t allow Sam to turn him into some twisted zombie version of himself, and he didn’t run when the Hell Hounds finally came slobbering and growling to tear him to shreds.
Does this make Dean more of a hero than his brother, or his father, or even other hunters like Bobby, who certainly have made their own sacrifices that keep them awake at night? No. Even someone operating from a solid home base, with money to fall back on, is making a huge sacrifice in risking their lives.
But what’s most interesting to me is Dean’s lack of self-awareness. When Sammy was lying dead in Cold Oak during the second part of “All Hell Breaks Loose,” Dean blamed himself. He told Sam that he screwed up: “I guess that’s what I do, let down the people I love.” And yet Dean is the one who never gave up, who never abandoned his father, who saved Sam a dozen times over, who moments after this speech sacrificed the only thing he had left to give his brother back his life.
All of the Winchesters are heroes. Dean is simply the only one who doesn’t know it.
AMY GARVEY is a former editor who now works on the other side of the desk as a writer, and watches a lot of TV. She’s currently working on her next romance novel, saving up for her own vintage Impala, and stocking up on rock salt, as Sam and Dean have taught her to-just in case. Check out her Web site at www.amygarvey.com.
In the modern world, not all heroes wear capes, or even carry guns. Aid workers, paramedics, doctors, parents, teachers, social workers-unlike soldiers or police officers or firefighters, whose heroism lies in acts of overt courage, these modern heroes demonstrate their heroism through acts of kindness, compassion, and selflessness.
So is fighting evil, slaying monsters, and generally holding back the things that go bump in the night enough to qualify the Winchesters as “heroes”? Or does their real strength lie somewhere else?
Sheryl A. Rakowski examines how the word “hero” is defined in the world of the Winchesters.
SHERYL A. RAKOWSKI
A POWERFUL NEED
Heroism, Winchester-Style
“They don’t need you. Not like you need them.”
-YELLOW-EYED DEMON, “Devil’s Trap” (1-22)
The day little Sammy Winchester learned there was no such thing as Santa Claus, his big brother tried to soften the blow with another revelation: “We have the coolest dad in the world. He’s a superhero” (“A Very Supernatural Christmas,” 3-8). Dean was just a boy himself when he issued that naïve affirmation, but it wasn’t a sentiment he’d be quick to outgrow. That unshakable faith in his father became so central to Dean’s personal worldview, so essential to his sense of well-being, that it constituted a lifeline for him, keeping the powerful currents and crashing waves that enervate mortal existence from pulling him away and dragging him under. But when John made his deal with the devil in an effort to save his eldest son, he severed that lifeline. Dean was left feeling abandoned and disconcertedly betrayed. It seems likely he would have felt the same no matter what John’s bargain had been, even if John had forgone the additional cruel blow of the “Sam bombshell”… . If the devotedly vigilant big brother could not save the youngest Winchester, Dean would have to kill him. Kill Sammy. On the surface of it, you had to wonder what was going through crazy John’s head when he extracted that heartbreaking promise.
Perhaps, though, there was a method to his madness.
That’s not how it appeared at first, of course. In the initial weeks after their father’s death, Sam spent a lot of time worrying about his older brother, and with good reason. Dean was “erratic” and “scary.” He was “tail-spinning” (“Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things,” 2-4). Little brother tried to extend himself as another lifeline but that tether seemed flimsy somehow, a
s if it were frayed and unraveling before our eyes. Little did we know, John’s final words had damaged the fraternal bond that was Dean’s last remaining connection to family, and with it his last, best survival instinct in a world too filled with “random, unpredictable evil” (“Houses of the Holy,” 2-13). As a result, when season two approached its climax and Sam’s self-appointed guardian watched in horror as Sam was stabbed in the back, history was poised to repeat itself. It was almost hard to imagine the concept of free will being applicable to Dean as he followed in his father’s desolately sacrificial footsteps. “I couldn’t live with you dead,” he eventually confessed to his younger brother, “couldn’t do it” (“The Magnificent Seven,” 3-1). Given the who, the what, and the when of the situation, Dean might just as well have said that winter cannot help but follow autumn-daylight is always an antecedent to the dark of night. He’d get no arguments from me.
It may seem like I’m on a path to an analysis of destiny versus free will. I’m not, although I think it would be another fascinating framework for a Supernatural discussion. Instead, the point that I’m reaching for is this: Whether or not Dean’s offering up life and soul to resurrect Sammy was a matter of choice, it certainly was not a surprise.
“Now, if it’s the last thing I do, I’m gonna save you.”
-DEAN WINCHESTER, “Born Under a Bad Sign” (2-14)
Perhaps it was because Sam was entrenched in his own personal crisis that he was able to find the reassurance he needed in those words, spoken, it seems now, a lifetime ago. But if tail-spinning Dean had said the same thing weeks earlier, before he revealed the specter of fratricide John had invoked, Sam would likely have demonstrated the same deep concern felt by many of us who were on the outside looking in. You didn’t need to be a Psychic Kid to have a sense of foreboding, nor did you have to be a literature major to read the writing on the wall. But seemingly, the one thing you couldn’t be and still have a grasp of the legacy of John Winchester’s final hours was John himself. How could he not know that in authoring his deal with the Yellow-Eyed Demon to “save” Dean, he was creating the recipe for his son’s self-destruction?
For those of us drawn to the Winchester family saga, it may be a bit of a challenge to decide whether John earned that ticket to Hell by pulling Dean back into the land of the living the way he did. What’s less debatable, however, is that he painted a big red bull’s-eye on himself as a target for criticism with respect to the “save Sam or kill him” admonition. No doubt many a fan has linked the words “straw,” “camel,” and “back” to that particular plot twist. I know I did. But perhaps Papa John was on the receiving end of a bit more criticism than he was due. As Sam observed in “Dream a Little Dream of Me” (3-10), no one can save Dean if he doesn’t want to be saved. Would it be a huge surprise if John understood that too? When Dad yanked his eldest back from the brink, a question was left unanswered. Would our heroic and world-weary young soldier have given himself over to the rest he yearned for and deserved, or would his sense of duty, born out of love and fear for his family, have held him back? The doctors made it clear how hard Dean was fighting to hang on. Sam told his father he could feel his comatose brother’s spiritual presence.
Did John sense what was transpiring between Dean and the reaper that had come to collect his soul? If so, he may have realized death was not the greatest threat Dean was facing, and saving his son’s life may not have been his mission after all. Suppose John knew in his heart the choice Dean was about to make, or thought he did, and that it would leave his son trapped in a nightmarish solitary confinement of his own making. The immediate threat to Dean was his inclination to accept a disembodied existence in a soul-eroding netherworld and, being ill-equipped to push his son toward Heaven, John’s only option was to pull him back to Earth. His deal was a stop-gap measure. It rescued his son from becoming hopelessly and irretrievably lost, but it only forestalled the danger Dean posed to himself as a result of his desperate need to hold on to his family, no matter the cost.
Simply put, a desperate need is a “powerful weakness.” But the latter turn of phrase has an almost paradoxical ring to it, which can stimulate a curious mind. Moreover, since these are Winchester men we’re talking about, any characterization that is “simply put” is also inherently suspect. Perhaps additional insight can be gleaned from turning the spotlight away from weakness and refocusing the discussion on what has, by implication, presumably been lost, stolen, or given away: strength.
“You’re stronger than Dean. You’re better than him.”
-CROSSROADS DEMON, “Bedtime Stories” (3-5)
John’s strength of will combined with that special brand of firepower he brought to the table (namely, the Colt) were all the resources he needed to buy Dean’s life back. But if his “twisted and broken” son (“The Magnificent Seven”) were to throw that gift away at the first opportunity, what good would that do anyone? Clearly, it wasn’t enough to merely give Dean his life; John also had to buy his son some time-time enough to want to be saved. More than that, Dean had to find the personal strength to value his own salvation more than he valued his connection to his family. And herein may lie the rationale for Dad’s vexing “final words,” because the kind of time his son needed doesn’t come easy or cheap. Apparently, however, it can come with a certain amount of irony attached. If Sam could hold his brother together for those first rocky months after their father’s death, Dean’s devotion to his family could do the rest, at least for a time. John had damaged the fraternal connection between his boys, but the significance of that fraying lifeline is, to a certain extent, a matter of perspective. Dean could be compelled to hold on tight, not because he was concerned about being set adrift himself but because his kid brother, securing the other end, might be lost if he let go.
“If it’s the last thing I do, I’m gonna save you,” Dean promised (“Born Under a Bad Sign”), and on reexamination maybe that wasn’t the reflexive death sentence it appeared to be at first. As long as doubt exists that his little brother has been well and truly saved, Dean isn’t free to go anywhere. His word is his bond. That bond is driven by his need. And his need is his weakness, but it is also his strength. Dean would be lost without that which he needs most, his family, and yet in so many ways, he is a better man, a bona fide hero, because of them.
In the shifting priorities set by the ebb and flow of the Winchester brothers’ trials and tribulations, Dean’s need for his family has been a constant, rarely out of sight and never on a holiday. Evidence of it goes all the way back to the pilot episode, which highlighted Dean’s dependence on family against a backdrop of Sam’s apparent independence. The elder brother could only handle three weeks being completely cut off from loved ones before he sought out the only family member he could find. In contrast, his younger sibling had apparently been incommunicado for two years, and the corresponding familial rift might be there still if an outside force, going by the name of Yellow Eyes, hadn’t conspired against it.
Thus, when we were first introduced to the Winchester brothers, Sam gave no evidence of needing his family. He was a normal, albeit over-achieving, pre-law student taking a self-actualized path to what would no doubt be a productive, well-adjusted, and chaos-limited life. There’s no way anyone would have attached the label “needy” to this kid. On the contrary, direct and indirect references to how smart and strong Sam is, and to the power he possesses, have been made by multiple characters. Of course, while many a lawyer could be said to fall into the category of everyday heroes, they aren’t in the same league as a Winchester when he’s saving people and hunting things. Normal life is not without challenges for normal people, but is it a daunting, life-or-death test of heroism and strength of character? Not so much.
“If I’m gonna fight this war after you’re gone, then I gotta change.”
-SAM WINCHESTER, “Malleus Maleficarum” (3-9)
As a consequence of his girlfriend Jessica’s death, Sam made a partial, temporary commitment
to hunting. It wasn’t until he lost Dad too that he gave himself over to it completely. In death as in life, it seems the only way the boys know how to connect with their father is through the family business. Even before Sammy fully embraced “the life,” however, signs that he wouldn’t be able to breeze through it on autopilot abounded. Bouts of insomnia led to the recognition that the job isn’t something Sam can leave at the door the way his big brother can. No one in their right mind chooses to become a hunter, hunting chooses them, and that choice is predicated on devastating personal loss. What separates the heroes of the hunting community from the “serial killers” Bela Talbot was more familiar with (“Red Sky at Morning,” 3-6) is how they respond to having their hearts laid bare, cut into, torn asunder.
The first member of the Winchester clan we observed in a proactive state of denial over an impending family tragedy wasn’t Dean or even John; it was Sammy, in “Faith” (1-12). When Dean’s heart was literally damaged beyond repair, Dean mused aloud that little brother was not about to let him die in peace. Sam, whose heart was also breaking, albeit metaphorically, responded with a resolute, “I’m not gonna let you die, period.” He wasn’t kidding. The desperate young man managed to pull a rabbit out of his hat on that first occasion in which Dean found himself living on borrowed time. Regrettably, however, the miracle Sam conjured amounted to nothing more than trading one life for another and, although Sam claimed ignorance, you couldn’t help but wonder: Would he have done the same even if he had known the price beforehand? Later, “Bobby” enticed a coldly obsession-driven Sam to return to the “Mystery Spot” by dangling the prospect of him getting his dead brother back, and we got a disturbing glimpse of what the answer to that question might be.
In the Hunt: Unauthorized Essays on Supernatural Page 12