SPN meta: Dean and His Deal
Dean and His Deal
Why he made it, what it's done to him, and whether he'd do it again
We're coming up on the end of Dean's year, and we've had fifteen episodes to find out how he handles living under a death sentence. Before Our Darling Show closes the book on this chapter, I'd like to throw in my summary of what this arc has meant for Dean's character. References episodes up to 3.15.
First off - the why of it. I've seen a broad spectrum of opinion on this point, painting Dean as a hero laying down his life out of love, as a nonentity following Daddy's orders, or as a pathetic, broken man less afraid of hell than of being alone. I think it's unfair to the character (and to the complexity the writers and Jensen Ackles have given him) to name any one motivation as The Big Damn Reason. I see a few major Big Damn Reasons that can be given different weight depending on one's personal interpretation. In no particular order:
1) Dean loves Sam, and he wants him alive and well. Shocking, I know.
2) Dean routinely risks his life for random strangers, and he was willing to stand still and let a reaper take him instead of Layla Rourke. The value he puts on his life is so low, Dean would trade it for Sam's and think he'd fleeced the other guy.
3) Two men died for Dean in the eighteen months preceding "All Hell Breaks Loose." "[He's] not even supposed to be here," and the deal is a way to set some cosmic balance right.
4) Sam is his responsibility. This has been meta'd so thoroughly that I'll just let it stand.
5) The final command (or deathbed wish) of the man currently burning in hell for Dean's sake was, "Save Sam or kill him." Dean can't do the latter, which just leaves "Save him." He owes Daddy Winchester his life; why not pay up following his orders?
6) Dean does not handle failure very well. He was raised by a Marine in the intense can-do spirit of the military: failure is not an option. But this means he has no road map for when he does fail, which is bound to happen when he takes responsibility for things beyond his control.
I find it very telling that the latter half of Dean's speech to Sam's body is about Dean. "I failed... I let you down... What am I supposed to do?" Dean was in a lot of pain when he went to that crossroads, but he didn't go there to end his own misery. He went to fix his own screw-up.
7) He figures he's damned anyway. The deal says nothing about whether he belongs in the pit, only that he's agreed to show up. And yet Dean feels the need to yell at his demonic dream self: "I don't deserve to go to hell!" That indicates to me that at some point, he believed otherwise. Because he's a gluttonous fornicator? Nah. Daddy Winchester is the only higher authority Dean recognizes, and Dean's just broken Commandment Number One: take care of Sammy.
8) Finally, something I haven't seen mentioned before: Daddy Winchester set the precedent. It's been pointed out that Dean was massively hypocritical in making that deal after all the angsting he did about dead things staying dead. This is true. But it's also relevant that Dean's hero and role model considered soul-selling an acceptable course of action. There's no leadership like example, John.
Any one of these Big Damn Reasons might have been countered by good sense, by Dean's own principles, or by a good smack with Bobby's trucker hat. But taken together? That's a whole lot of pressure in the deal-making direction.
Second - what effect has the deal had on our poor woobie?
1) Obviously, it's freaked him all to hell. We've watched him plow through every coping mechanism he's got, ricocheting from manic denial to suicidal recklessness to open desperation. The only thing we haven't seen him try is shivering in the fetal position on the bathroom floor. (He only does that off camera.)
2) His relationship with Sam has changed. In Fresh Blood, Sam asks for emotional honesty, and Dean drops the bravado. In DaLDoM, Sam asks him to figure out why he won't fight for his own life, and Dean finally shows some willingness to do so.
I think in both cases, Sam's telling him, "I won't think you're a pansy-ass bitch for wanting to live. Promise." And Dean responds to that. He allows himself to be vulnerable in front of Sam, partly because he’s in such an extreme situation, but also because the Boyz aren’t solely defined by their roles as elder and younger anymore. Now they are comrades in arms, equal partners. In TIOMS, big brother says "I'm not gonna let you," and little brother says, "How are you gonna stop me?" And Dean acknowledges that he can't give orders to a grown man and an equal.
It’s a big shift. Can you imagine season one Dean saying to Sam, “I’m scared. I’m really scared”? Yeah, me neither.
3) The deadline has forced some issues Dean was previously content to ignore. As a twenty-something in a high-risk job, he lives in the moment, and he probably never expected to see old age. But there's nothing like a death sentence to reshuffle your priorities.
I wasn't fully convinced that Dean actually wanted domesticity until DaLDoM. But there was a picnic and a sundress and wine-not beer, wine-in pretty glasses. That’s twice now we've seen him dream of a woman looking him straight in the eyes and saying, "I love you, Dean."
That's not a passing fancy. If he survives, he may not be content to go the way of Rufus Turner. And I could definitely be persuaded, given some of his dialogue in Kids are Alright, that it was Dean's fast-approaching death that led him to reconsider what he actually wanted out of life.
4) Now that Dean’s thrown himself down the pit, he has a year to contemplate exactly what he’s throwing. In DaLDoM, he looks some of those much-meta’d self-worth issues in the face. And then he yells at them, steals their shotgun, and riddles ‘em with buckshot.
Dad wasn’t infallible, and he didn’t always do right by his Boyz. Sometimes he asked too much, and sometimes he put the hunt before his sons. But Dean doesn’t have to act out Dad’s issues, and he doesn’t deserve hell for “letting” Sam die.
He has a right to live. This is big. This negates some of Dean’s reasons for making the deal in the first place.
Finally - would he do it again? I’m being specific here, because this is an altogether separate question from “Does he regret it?” For the record, I believe the answer to the latter is no. Sam is alive, and I doubt Dean will ever be sorry for that. But given what he knows now and how this year has changed him, would he still be able to say with perfect honesty, “I’d do it again in a heartbeat?”
1) “I couldn’t live with you dead.” This is probably as true now as it was in AHBL2. Now more than ever, Sam is Dean’s whole world. (Because Our Darling Show keeps killing off all the cool people.)
However, this by itself does not equal deal-making. Being unable to live with someone’s death does not necessarily mean resurrecting them. There are a lot of ways to get oneself killed, and not all of them involve pacts and hellhounds.
2) His “sloppy, needy,” “pathetic, self-destructive,” “screwed in the head” issues are different now. Not gone, because you don’t banish twenty years of baggage with one dreamwalk and some shouting. I doubt he’ll ever truly be free of them. But Dean’s somewhat more self-aware now, and he’s realized that some of his Big Damn Reasons are a load of horse shit.
3) In the end, I think the heaviest weight on the scales is the knowledge that he will eventually become a demon. Now it’s not just his life he’s endangering. He’s adding to the ranks of hell, and one day people will die because of him.
Way back in IMToD, we saw that Dean would rather go God-knows-where than become what he hunts. In TIOMS, we saw it again: he’ll suffer interminably before he’ll lose his humanity. (In hell that’ll happen anyway, but the sonsabitches are gonna have to beat it out of him first.)
The only question is: how strong is this principle? We’ve seen Dean break his own rules for Sammy time and again. Is this a line he wouldn’t cross?
My guess (my hope) is that this barrier holds. In The Benders, Dean risked Sam instead of a “civilian.” He once pointed a gun at Sam’s head to prevent him from hurting Jo. He refused to sacrifice Nancy in the full knowledge that Sam was unlikely to survive the night. He’ll give anything for Sam, except those things that aren’t his to give. (Like, for instance, a gallon of someone else’s blood. Sam, I’m looking at you, you scary bastard.)
I doubt Dean himself could say with any certainty what he’d choose if he had it to do over again. There are too many threads tugging in too many directions. And he’s never been the introspective type anyway.
But given the chance to act?
I don’t think he’d kiss that pretty demon twice.
Follow-up question: When he bargained with Azazel, did John know about the becoming-a-demon clause? This has been buzzing in my head since Malleus Maleficarum, and I bet Our Darling Show will never tell us.
Why he made it, what it's done to him, and whether he'd do it again
We're coming up on the end of Dean's year, and we've had fifteen episodes to find out how he handles living under a death sentence. Before Our Darling Show closes the book on this chapter, I'd like to throw in my summary of what this arc has meant for Dean's character. References episodes up to 3.15.
First off - the why of it. I've seen a broad spectrum of opinion on this point, painting Dean as a hero laying down his life out of love, as a nonentity following Daddy's orders, or as a pathetic, broken man less afraid of hell than of being alone. I think it's unfair to the character (and to the complexity the writers and Jensen Ackles have given him) to name any one motivation as The Big Damn Reason. I see a few major Big Damn Reasons that can be given different weight depending on one's personal interpretation. In no particular order:
1) Dean loves Sam, and he wants him alive and well. Shocking, I know.
2) Dean routinely risks his life for random strangers, and he was willing to stand still and let a reaper take him instead of Layla Rourke. The value he puts on his life is so low, Dean would trade it for Sam's and think he'd fleeced the other guy.
3) Two men died for Dean in the eighteen months preceding "All Hell Breaks Loose." "[He's] not even supposed to be here," and the deal is a way to set some cosmic balance right.
4) Sam is his responsibility. This has been meta'd so thoroughly that I'll just let it stand.
5) The final command (or deathbed wish) of the man currently burning in hell for Dean's sake was, "Save Sam or kill him." Dean can't do the latter, which just leaves "Save him." He owes Daddy Winchester his life; why not pay up following his orders?
6) Dean does not handle failure very well. He was raised by a Marine in the intense can-do spirit of the military: failure is not an option. But this means he has no road map for when he does fail, which is bound to happen when he takes responsibility for things beyond his control.
I find it very telling that the latter half of Dean's speech to Sam's body is about Dean. "I failed... I let you down... What am I supposed to do?" Dean was in a lot of pain when he went to that crossroads, but he didn't go there to end his own misery. He went to fix his own screw-up.
7) He figures he's damned anyway. The deal says nothing about whether he belongs in the pit, only that he's agreed to show up. And yet Dean feels the need to yell at his demonic dream self: "I don't deserve to go to hell!" That indicates to me that at some point, he believed otherwise. Because he's a gluttonous fornicator? Nah. Daddy Winchester is the only higher authority Dean recognizes, and Dean's just broken Commandment Number One: take care of Sammy.
8) Finally, something I haven't seen mentioned before: Daddy Winchester set the precedent. It's been pointed out that Dean was massively hypocritical in making that deal after all the angsting he did about dead things staying dead. This is true. But it's also relevant that Dean's hero and role model considered soul-selling an acceptable course of action. There's no leadership like example, John.
Any one of these Big Damn Reasons might have been countered by good sense, by Dean's own principles, or by a good smack with Bobby's trucker hat. But taken together? That's a whole lot of pressure in the deal-making direction.
Second - what effect has the deal had on our poor woobie?
1) Obviously, it's freaked him all to hell. We've watched him plow through every coping mechanism he's got, ricocheting from manic denial to suicidal recklessness to open desperation. The only thing we haven't seen him try is shivering in the fetal position on the bathroom floor. (He only does that off camera.)
2) His relationship with Sam has changed. In Fresh Blood, Sam asks for emotional honesty, and Dean drops the bravado. In DaLDoM, Sam asks him to figure out why he won't fight for his own life, and Dean finally shows some willingness to do so.
I think in both cases, Sam's telling him, "I won't think you're a pansy-ass bitch for wanting to live. Promise." And Dean responds to that. He allows himself to be vulnerable in front of Sam, partly because he’s in such an extreme situation, but also because the Boyz aren’t solely defined by their roles as elder and younger anymore. Now they are comrades in arms, equal partners. In TIOMS, big brother says "I'm not gonna let you," and little brother says, "How are you gonna stop me?" And Dean acknowledges that he can't give orders to a grown man and an equal.
It’s a big shift. Can you imagine season one Dean saying to Sam, “I’m scared. I’m really scared”? Yeah, me neither.
3) The deadline has forced some issues Dean was previously content to ignore. As a twenty-something in a high-risk job, he lives in the moment, and he probably never expected to see old age. But there's nothing like a death sentence to reshuffle your priorities.
I wasn't fully convinced that Dean actually wanted domesticity until DaLDoM. But there was a picnic and a sundress and wine-not beer, wine-in pretty glasses. That’s twice now we've seen him dream of a woman looking him straight in the eyes and saying, "I love you, Dean."
That's not a passing fancy. If he survives, he may not be content to go the way of Rufus Turner. And I could definitely be persuaded, given some of his dialogue in Kids are Alright, that it was Dean's fast-approaching death that led him to reconsider what he actually wanted out of life.
4) Now that Dean’s thrown himself down the pit, he has a year to contemplate exactly what he’s throwing. In DaLDoM, he looks some of those much-meta’d self-worth issues in the face. And then he yells at them, steals their shotgun, and riddles ‘em with buckshot.
Dad wasn’t infallible, and he didn’t always do right by his Boyz. Sometimes he asked too much, and sometimes he put the hunt before his sons. But Dean doesn’t have to act out Dad’s issues, and he doesn’t deserve hell for “letting” Sam die.
He has a right to live. This is big. This negates some of Dean’s reasons for making the deal in the first place.
Finally - would he do it again? I’m being specific here, because this is an altogether separate question from “Does he regret it?” For the record, I believe the answer to the latter is no. Sam is alive, and I doubt Dean will ever be sorry for that. But given what he knows now and how this year has changed him, would he still be able to say with perfect honesty, “I’d do it again in a heartbeat?”
1) “I couldn’t live with you dead.” This is probably as true now as it was in AHBL2. Now more than ever, Sam is Dean’s whole world. (Because Our Darling Show keeps killing off all the cool people.)
However, this by itself does not equal deal-making. Being unable to live with someone’s death does not necessarily mean resurrecting them. There are a lot of ways to get oneself killed, and not all of them involve pacts and hellhounds.
2) His “sloppy, needy,” “pathetic, self-destructive,” “screwed in the head” issues are different now. Not gone, because you don’t banish twenty years of baggage with one dreamwalk and some shouting. I doubt he’ll ever truly be free of them. But Dean’s somewhat more self-aware now, and he’s realized that some of his Big Damn Reasons are a load of horse shit.
3) In the end, I think the heaviest weight on the scales is the knowledge that he will eventually become a demon. Now it’s not just his life he’s endangering. He’s adding to the ranks of hell, and one day people will die because of him.
Way back in IMToD, we saw that Dean would rather go God-knows-where than become what he hunts. In TIOMS, we saw it again: he’ll suffer interminably before he’ll lose his humanity. (In hell that’ll happen anyway, but the sonsabitches are gonna have to beat it out of him first.)
The only question is: how strong is this principle? We’ve seen Dean break his own rules for Sammy time and again. Is this a line he wouldn’t cross?
My guess (my hope) is that this barrier holds. In The Benders, Dean risked Sam instead of a “civilian.” He once pointed a gun at Sam’s head to prevent him from hurting Jo. He refused to sacrifice Nancy in the full knowledge that Sam was unlikely to survive the night. He’ll give anything for Sam, except those things that aren’t his to give. (Like, for instance, a gallon of someone else’s blood. Sam, I’m looking at you, you scary bastard.)
I doubt Dean himself could say with any certainty what he’d choose if he had it to do over again. There are too many threads tugging in too many directions. And he’s never been the introspective type anyway.
But given the chance to act?
I don’t think he’d kiss that pretty demon twice.
Follow-up question: When he bargained with Azazel, did John know about the becoming-a-demon clause? This has been buzzing in my head since Malleus Maleficarum, and I bet Our Darling Show will never tell us.