Just War and "Moral" Monsters: An Analysis of "Heart" and "The Girl Next Door"
Supernatural seems to have a sort of scale when it comes to determining the inherent nature of a thing. At eye level is humanity. Everything else seems to stem from there. Monsters are creatures that were born or transformed into a perverted form of humanity. They are physical entities--werewolves, vampires, Leviathan, etc.--and can usually be killed by something like silver. Spirits and derivatives of ghosts are human souls that died a violent death, ditched their reaper, and are typically driven mad with revenge of one degree or another. They're entirely non-corporeal and they're severely allergic to iron and salt. On the bottom of the scale are demons, who are either fallen angels (Biblically speaking, and all. Lucifer took one-third of the host of heaven with him when he fell. Read Revelation, which is certainly canon in the show.) or human souls that have been perverted by the pits of hell. The demonic “soul” comes in the form of black smoke on earth and they can possess a person without their consent. Angels are on the complete opposite end of the spectrum and seem to transcend humanity by design. They're certainly more powerful, with their fancy metaphysical wings and halos. However, angels seem to lack a fundamental aspect of DNA that runs rampant in humanity; that is, the ability to choose one's own actions and avoid the claws of destiny.
When one takes a look at the show as a whole, all down the line of 200+ episodes, one is foced to the conclusion that there is something so incredibly fundamental about human nature. It appears to be either everything's base code or everyone's drug of choice (I'm looking at you, Castiel). In every case, human nature seems to be the end goal in mind for everyone. Castiel falls in love with it and its accompanying free will while Sam and Dean fight so desperately to maintain it within themselves. Every monster they fight is either some perversion of humanity itself or attempting to decimate human nature all together, such as the Leviathan or Michael and the God Squad.
Conclusion: Human nature is inherently good. From there, each individual has the freedom to make his own choices.
That raises the question: are only humans good? Surely the show itself alludes to the possibility that monsters can be good as well. Is a monster "damned" simply because it's a monster and no longer human?
That's not entirely fair either. In “Heart”, the brothers stumble upon a number of werewolf kills in the suburbs of San Francisco: “a human by day and a freak-animal, killing machine by night,” as Dean phrases it. Werewolves are particularly dangerous. They have incredible instinct, sharp teeth, and carve the beating hearts out of their victims and devour it. Nasty stuff. Werewolves themselves, as Dean says, are incredibly rare and can only be killed with a silver bullet to the heart.
The hiccup comes when the brothers discover that Madison, an independent and innocent secretary, has absolutely no idea that she transforms into a werewolf and kills people each night. Right away, Dean is ready to shoot her, believing that it’s an open and shut case. Sam, on the other hand, has a better grasp of the human side of Madison.
SAM: I’m not putting a bullet through some girl’s chest who has no idea what’s happening.
DEAN: Sam, she’s a monster, and you’re feeling sorry for her?
SAM: Maybe I understand her.
Not only does Sam understand what it’s like to be considered a monster and have no control over it, but he also is not willing to condemn another for it. Sam was going to be a lawyer before Jessica died; he knows the basic principles of justice and he calls Dean on it. The philosophy goes like this: If a monster is corrupted by what they become after their transformation (i.e. they succumb to their nature), the principles of self-defense and just war apply. In that, the damage wrought by the aggressor must be lasting, grave, and certain, all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be ineffective, there's a reasonable prospect for success, and the use of weapons must not produce evils graver than the evil to be eliminated. Simple right? Most monsters in Supernatural fall into that category, with notible exceptions of Benny, Garth, and the like. It is morally acceptable to kill the kind of monster that falls victim to its nature and starts killing people. Should the monster resist its monster-ness, however, then the principles of just war do not apply. Those can be considered “moral monsters” and to kill one would be the equivalent of murder.
Sam always knows and tries to abide by the principles. Here, he calls Dean on it, saying he's not just going to waste an innocent. Besides, he reasons, if Dean can’t kill him, the boy with the demon blood whose nature is certainly not quite human, he has no right to waste Madison. She is, for all intents and purposes, innocent in her human form and not freely choosing to kill. She is resisting her nature and clinging to her humanity.
Sam and Dean exhaust every possible method to enable Madison to control the animal side of herself or to cure her of it completely. For a moment, they believe she’s free, but the song ends and she Hulks out again. Despite everything, it reaches a point when Madison is more of a threat to herself and everyone around her. She simply cannot control the monster side of her nature. Madison begs Sam to kill her, much like Sam later begs Dean to kill him because he does not want to live as a monster. Reluctantly, Sam takes the gun with the silver bullet and the screen fades to black as the shot is fired.
Was Madison a monster? Certainly, but one who had absolutely no control over the darker half that was obstructing her human nature. Was it right for Sam to kill her? Or for her to ask that of Sam? To some extent, yes. She was a viable and uncontrollable threat to the people around her. That falls in line with the self-defense part of the equation. There was no doubt that Madison would one day kill another innocent if she was allowed to live. Further, Sam and Dean explored every possible option to save her or cure her. There was simply no way for Madison to control the beast inside her without completely destroying everything that made her human. Putting her down was a last resort. There was no way to guarantee the safety of everyone around her and there was absolutely no way of saving her from the monster inside her. Tragically, Sam did the right thing.
On the other end of the spectrum, in “The Girl Next Door”, Dean is asked to make a moral call (which is always a dangerous thing to ask Dean Winchester to do) in regards to killing another seemingly moral monster. This episode is set five years down the road, after the averted apocalypse, and after Lucifer broke Sam’s brain. Theoretically, the brothers should be operating on the same level at this point. However, Dean’s base code is fundamentally different than Sam’s; killing the monster of the week has always been his prerogative. Unless that monster of the week just so happens to be his younger brother, Dean is content with saving the morality questions to Sam.
In the episode, Sam leaves an injured Dean behind to go hunt a kitsune, a Japanese monster that feasts on human pituitary glands. After following the trail of several murdered drug dealers, Sam comes face to face with his childhood friend, Amy. Naturally, she’s the monster. Amy readily admits to the murders of the dealers and then gives Sam a valid reason why: her son was dying and he needed fresh meat to survive. In every other instance since Sam last saw her, she gets the food she needs by taking the pituitary glands of cadavers at the morgue where she works as a mortician. Outside of extraordinary circumstances, Amy doesn’t kill anyone. In fact, Sam credits her with saving his life when they were kids.
Moral? Well, she's trying to be.
Nonetheless, without Sam’s knowledge, Dean tracks Amy and her son to a motel room. “But people... They are who they are. No matter how hard you try, you are what you are. You will kill again. Trust me, I'm an expert. Maybe in a year, maybe ten. But eventually, the other shoe will drop. It always does.” Then he stabs her through the heart.
Was Dean justified in killing Amy? To an extent, most certainly not. Amy was a moral monster; she didn’t kill humans under normal circumstances and was working day and night to overcome her nature as a monster. For Amy, killing humans was a moral wrong and was only done as a last resort. Though it doesn’t completely excuse the murder of any human, even when she was forced to kill, she killed the worst of humanity. In her mind, she was trying to minimize the damage. Plus, Sam begged Dean to trust his judgment of Amy and to let her go. Even with Lucifer screaming in his brother’s head, Dean is supposed to trust Sam implicitly and their relationship bore the weight of Amy’s murder for a long time down the road.
On the other hand (and the only way Dean is capable of perceiving the situation), Amy had a body count. Even if they were despicable people, they were still human and they were gratitously made into monster food. The worst part of killing even the most terrible people is that it eliminates the possibility of future change. Future choices, moral or otherwise, that could drastically change the course of many lives. It's a crime to cut any life short; to rob someone of all the days that never came and what could have been. By killing them or any human, Amy was deliberately ending a life and thus nullifying their potential change. That is morally wrong. Although they were drug dealers and presumably the scum of the earth, they were still human and possessed a human nature. On a scale of inherent moral goodness, that gives the drug dealers a leg up on Amy, who was born a monster. Maybe that adds to the argument.
The reason she killed those people was to save her son, and if there's one thing Dean knows, it's how far someone is willing to go to save someone they love. Amy might promise not to kill again, but Dean knows that, if her son's life is in danger again, she'd do absolutely anything to protect him the same way Dean would do anything to protect his brother. Love is the greatest motivator on Supernatural. Sam and Dean have both sacrificed themselves to save each other on more than one occasion. Dean's justification for killing Amy wasn't just about her potential to kill, it was about the inevitability of a bad outcome.
I'll leave actual morality of the act to the jury, but the ramifications when Sam finds out are horrendous. It becomes the stake, along with Sam’s hallucinations of Lucifer, that drives the brothers apart for the season. Not only did Dean fail to trust his brother again, but he also murdered Sam’s friend, who was doing the best she could to both overcome her nature and saved the one thing that she loved most in this world.