Comments | amonitrate: Walking off the chessboard: part 4

amonitrate

Walking off the chessboard: part 4

Jul 16, 2010 11:45

This is the longest part! Bear with me, it's also probably the most complicated and delicate part to explain. Hopefully I did it justice.

Walking off the chessboard: Sam and Lucifer and the role of the Scapegoat in SPN

( master post)

Part 4

Perpetuating the role of Scapegoat

One of the catch-22’s that the Scapegoat faces is that rebelling against the ( Read more... )

scapegoat, meta:spn, essays

Comments 9

Sam and Adam deiseach July 16 2010, 23:06:31 UTC

That's the interesting part of "Jump the Shark" for me (one of the interesting parts, anyway): how Sam completely flips around his attitude from Season One, where he has this dialogue with Dean - "Remember when I told Dad about the monster in my closet? He gave me a .45!" "What was he supposed to do?" "I was nine! He was supposed to tell me monsters don't exist!" and Dean says something like "But that's not true ( ... )

Re: Sam and Adam amonitrate July 17 2010, 00:22:52 UTC

I don't know if I'd interpret Sam's flip on telling Adam the truth in that way. Instead I'd file that under the "truth teller" aspect of being a Scapegoat. And you're right that the truth becomes largely irrelevant as any kind of protection by that point, which I think is why being the truth teller is sort of an ambiguous position. Telling the truth about something doesn't necessarily mean anything changes, and it doesn't necessarily solve anything or fix anything.

Re: Sam and Adam deiseach July 17 2010, 18:52:02 UTC

It's the way that Sam tries to, or seems to want to, draw Adam into the Winchester life, the hunter life, that fascinates me ( ... )

keerawa August 14 2010, 19:43:07 UTC

I like the connection you draw here between Sam and Gordon, using their own 'monstrous' natures for what they consider the greater good. The way Sam keeps trying to regain control over his life, trying to act rather than just react to this framework, this role , but then slips back into it, is painful.

annspal August 17 2010, 12:27:51 UTC

I'm jumping in to particularly notice this, but appreciate your work across the series of entries. It's fascinating to me to examine the show for patterns like this. You're no doubt right to recognize everything is complicated because the boys do step outside the most rigid boundaries of their roles.

4.04
SAM [to Jack]
It doesn't matter what you are. It only matters what you do. It's your choice.

4.21
DEAN [to Sam]
Because it's not something that you're doing, it's what you are! It means-Seeing these two comments so close together is interesting because it acts like an extended debate over how identity is determined. I really don't think they're talking just about Jack and Sam. In between the two arguments, it's come out that DEAN was made a monster in hell. (I think there are all kinds of parallels to draw between Dean and family man Jack. It wasn't an accident that Jack was specifically given 30 years before the onset of monsterhood ( ... )

amonitrate August 17 2010, 13:19:51 UTC

Actually, yeah, I haven't really touched on this, but I do think that even before hell, Dean conceptualized himself as something of a monster. See 1.22 and his fear over what he won't do for his family, and he's already calling himself a freak earlier in that season ( ... )

annspal August 18 2010, 12:02:05 UTC

Possibly fanwanking, but I think there was a part of Dean who thought he was monstrous before hell that allowed him to make that deal; and what happened in hell only confirmed his fears.

I don't consider that idea fanwanking at all. :-) That terrible, inevitable deal! Dean knew how utterly wrong it was (which doesn't mean it wasn't admirable). He knows it even more now after hell.

And yet. Would he make a different choice now? He's still choosing Sam. Lord love them both, the explicit message of 5.22 was how by choosing family they passed the test.

I'm avoiding spoilers for S6 but thank goodness Sam has that stubborn belief in the possibility of redemption for monsters and family alike. I'm nervous to think it may have been burned away.

amonitrate August 18 2010, 13:08:54 UTC

I might be in the minority but I don't find it admirable. Complicated, yeah. I think the right choice, the more difficult choice in that moment, would have been to live with Sam dead. I totally get why for Dean at that time it was practically an impossibility to expect him to do so, with the way he was raised, his conditioning, etc, but one of the themes I appreciate in the show is that this kind of sacrifice is not actually the right thing to do. It does nothing but harm everyone -- the sacrificer and the one sacrificed for, you know? The chain of deals started by Mary led to the apocalypse ( ... )

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