Walking off the chessboard: part 5
Sorry for the delay in posting. Complicated couple of weeks. Thus ends the main body of this sucker, though I'm noodling with a short conclusion that talks about the traditional/biblical concept of the scapegoat. Sadly I know nothing of the bible, so it will probably be a really shallow isn't this kinda cool thing.
Walking off the chessboard: Sam and Lucifer and the role of the Scapegoat in SPN
( master post)
Part 5
How Sam and Lucifer Differ
Lucifer reacted to God's orders to put humans first by perverting a human soul into the first demon, Lilith, in an excellent example of a scapegoat perpetuating his role. As punishment for his defiance of God, he was imprisoned in hell, made the scapegoat of the heavenly family. In Sam, his chosen vessel, Lucifer believes he’s found a sympathetic ear; and it’s Sam’s role as a fellow scapegoat that Lucifer attempts to exploit to gain that sympathy.
Lucifer tries to play up the parallels between his situation and Sam’s during the confrontation in “Abandon All Hope”:
5.10
LUCIFER
I know, it's awful, but these horsemen are so demanding. So it was women and children first. I know what you must think of me, Sam. But I have to do this. I have to. You of all people should understand. ...
I was a son. A brother, like you, a younger brother, and I had an older brother who I loved. Idolized, in fact. And one day I went to him and I begged him to stand with me, and Michael-Michael turned on me. Called me a freak. A monster. And then he beat me down. All because I was different. Because I had a mind of my own. Tell me something, Sam. Any of this sound familiar?
Comparing his own relationship to Michael with Sam’s relationship with Dean, Lucifer calls up the conflict between the Winchester brothers in season 4, directly referencing Dean’s labeling Sam a monster in 4.21. And he describes the position both he and Sam fill in their families, complete with some of the typical traits of the Scapegoat.
Then in the season 5 finale, in an effort to get Sam to stop fighting him for control, Lucifer speaks some of Sam’s fears about himself aloud, and continually tries to make connections between them:
5.22
LUCIFER
I've been waiting for you... For a long, long time. Come on, Sam. You have to admit -- You can feel it, right?
SAM
What?
LUCIFER
The exhilaration. And you know why that is? Because we're two halves made whole. M.F.E.O. Literally.
SAM
This feels pretty damn far from good.
LUCIFER
I'm inside your grapefruit, Sam. You can't lie to me. I see it all -- How odd you always felt, How...Out of place In that... Family of yours. And why shouldn't you have? They were foster care -- at best. I'm your real family.
SAM
No, that's not true.
LUCIFER
It is. And I know you know it. All those times you ran away, You weren't running from them. You were running towards me. This doesn't have to be a bad thing, you know. I let Dean live, didn't I? I want him to live. I'll bring your folks back, too. I want you to be happy, Sam.
Perhaps blinded by the role he himself is playing, Lucifer severely miscalculated. Because ironically, it was breaking the final seal and releasing Lucifer that started Sam on a different path, one that would ensure he would in the end prove himself very different from Lucifer, despite their parallel family roles, which in turn led to Lucifer’s defeat.
Unlike Lucifer, Sam had at one time managed to break away from his dysfunctional family system and live as his own person, outside of the restrictions of family roles, while he was at Stanford. As is very common for children of dysfunctional families -- especially as a reaction to stressors -- Sam eventually fell back into the role he’d temporarily eschewed, but he did get that taste of himself as independent from his family.
Also unlike the Lucifer/Michael dynamic, Sam and Dean’s relationship is far more complex than the rigidity of their roles suggests on the surface. Take Dean’s admiration of Sam’s ability to stand up to their father (in “Scarecrow”), for instance. On one hand, it’s behavior typical of a Scapegoat and typically rejected as negative by the family; but Dean (at that moment, anyway) was able to recognize the positive side of the trait, as well as his own inability to follow Sam’s example. And by the time the show reaches “The Dark Side of the Moon”, Sam has started to recognize some of what makes Dean act the role he does, as The Hero/Caretaker: wondering aloud how long Dean has been cleaning up their father’s messes. Sam starts to realize that his idolized big brother is just as powerless as Sam has always felt -- and Sam moves from the weakness he accused Dean of in season 4 towards compassion.
In season 5, Sam breaks away from the pattern Lucifer is still entangled in, and begins to take responsibility for his own actions. It’s this, more than anything (arguably more even than his love for Dean) that separates Sam from Lucifer. After all, Lucifer claims to love his brother as well. But what Lucifer can’t do is see his own culpability in the family drama. Instead, he does nothing but blame everyone else for his own actions.
Because she put it so well, I'm going to extensively quote dafnap here, with permission:
Sam left his family for college because of the same behavior Lucifer was bucking under, but instead of seeking vengeance, getting revenge for being slighted by John, Sam, unlike Lucifer, chooses a path that disconnects him from the flawed family dynamic completely. He doesn't seek out to prove John wrong, or get John to treat him as an equal, or change a system he perceives as flawed -- he removes himself from it completely.
Lucifer, in contrast, turns the first human into a demon out of revenge, out of spite. He resents the system but plays by it still, corrupted as it is. Lucifer's charge against his father is just, but he can't extricate himself from it, he can't find another vocabulary for himself -- he's still playing by the rules even as he resents them. Vengeance, ultimately, is allowing yourself to be defined by the thing you hate... Doing horrible things in the name of vengeance is "not your fault" because they started it first. It's childish.
Sam, in the end of season three into season four, follows a similar pattern. His belief that the flawed family system that brought them to this place is intact, but he can't see a way out of it anymore, he can't help but participate in it. It's almost a comfort, to have that path defined for you -- Sam seeks out vengeance in the same manner his father did ("Lillith's head on a plate. Bloody.") He can't see a way out, and in the theme of avoiding personal responsibility, doesn't want to. The path is clear -- he doesn't have to discover or forge for himself a different one. It is, ultimately,easier. Decided. Defined. No need to take responsibility for your actions if it's ultimately in the service of vengeance, a path defined by the person you're seeking vengeance on.
While Sam struggled in season 4 with some of the same rationalizations Lucifer spouts in season 5, in the end Sam managed to move beyond this line of thinking -- in season 5, Sam starts to grow up. Growing up is hard, nevermoreso than for someone from a dysfunctional family, who has no other frame of reference, no good example to emulate. Despite this, by the end of season 5 Sam is making an attempt to find a new way. Part of being a full adult is acknowledging not only the impact your family has had on you, but your own responsibility for your actions in the context of that impact.
Lucifer, however, continued to reject any responsibility for what he'd done. He refuses to grow up. While it appears at first glance that Lucifer is rejecting his role in the apocalypse -- telling Micheal they don't have to fight -- he proves he's still following his assigned role by refusing to take responsibility for his actions, and blaming his father.
5.22
LUCIFER
It's not my fault. Dad made everything. He made me who I am.
Which is true, on one level: our families help make us who we are. It can be argued that Sam's upbringing, as well as elements outside of his control, led him to releasing Lucifer; but as Ruby points out, it was Sam himself who made the decisions. Sam's upbringing might have helped create the framework of his potential destiny, but he still had the free will to make his own decisions about what he did as an adult. Same with Lucifer. And where Lucifer is still making excuses based on his family, Sam takes responsibility for his decisions, for his part in releasing Lucifer.
Sam decides to clean up his own mess, regardless of how much that mess was helped along by outside forces, because ultimately the decision to enact vengeance on Lilith? That was all Sam. The ultimate difference is that Sam rejected Lucifer's inability to take responsibility for his own actions.
5.05
SAM
Look. I know what I did. What I've done. And I am trying to climb out of that hole, I am, but you're not making it any easier.
DEAN
So what am I supposed to do, just let you off the hook?
SAM
No. You can think whatever you want. I deserve it, and worse.
Sam's not quite there yet in this passage, but he's making strides towards the greater maturity he'll show by the end of the season. This is what Lucifer was unable to accept, a point that Michael stresses during their confrontation at Stull:
5.22
MICHAEL
You haven't changed a bit, little brother. Always blaming everybody but yourself.
LUCIFER
No one makes Dad do anything. He is doing this to us.
While Lucifer isn’t wrong that God had a hand in the roles he and Michael are playing, Lucifer refuses to accept any of the responsibility for what he’s done -- the creation of demons, unleashing the Horsemen, slaughtering humans, killing his brother Gabriel. Contrast this with the change in Sam's view of John, as expressed to the younger John in “The Song Remains the Same”:
5.13
JOHN
The number it must've done on your head... Your father was supposed to protect you.
SAM
He was trying. He died trying. Believe me. I used to be mad at him. I-I mean, I used to... I used to hate the guy. But now I-I... I get it. He was...just doing the best he could.And he was trying to keep it together in-in-in this impossible situation. See... My mom, um... She was amazing, beautiful, and she was the love of his life. And she got killed. And...I think he would have gone crazy if he didn't do something. Truth is, um, my dad died before I got to tell him that I understand why he did what he did. And I forgive him for what it did to us. I do. And I just-I love him.
And while I think Sam is letting John off the hook a bit here, the point is that he’s moving towards a more balanced view of his father and his family dynamic by beginning to put things into perspective, by no longer reacting against his father’s authority. And in contrast to his actions in season 4, Sam makes a decision to do things differently at the end of season 5, by saying he won’t go through with his plan to say Yes to Lucifer without Bobby and Dean’s agreement. By the finale, Sam explicitly states his choice to take responsibility for Lucifer’s release:
5.22
SAM
I let him out. I got to put him back in.
In their roles as scapegoats, both Sam and Lucifer start to question their family structures, why things are the way they are; but only Sam makes any effort to take responsibility for his own actions within that structure, and only Sam makes any effort to change things. And this is why Lucifer ultimately lost.
***Please note that in discussions to these posts (assuming there are any!) I'm going to insist that the terms be used as intended here, and not with a wider or more general definition (for example, there is a clinical definition of "depression" that differs from the more general use of the word "depression" -- this is a similar case). Minimizing arguments like "all families are dysfunctional in their way" or anything that starts to stray into rehashing of old fandom wars over Season 4 will be heavily moderated. But please feel free to ask questions!***
Walking off the chessboard: Sam and Lucifer and the role of the Scapegoat in SPN
( master post)
Part 5
How Sam and Lucifer Differ
Lucifer reacted to God's orders to put humans first by perverting a human soul into the first demon, Lilith, in an excellent example of a scapegoat perpetuating his role. As punishment for his defiance of God, he was imprisoned in hell, made the scapegoat of the heavenly family. In Sam, his chosen vessel, Lucifer believes he’s found a sympathetic ear; and it’s Sam’s role as a fellow scapegoat that Lucifer attempts to exploit to gain that sympathy.
Lucifer tries to play up the parallels between his situation and Sam’s during the confrontation in “Abandon All Hope”:
5.10
LUCIFER
I know, it's awful, but these horsemen are so demanding. So it was women and children first. I know what you must think of me, Sam. But I have to do this. I have to. You of all people should understand. ...
I was a son. A brother, like you, a younger brother, and I had an older brother who I loved. Idolized, in fact. And one day I went to him and I begged him to stand with me, and Michael-Michael turned on me. Called me a freak. A monster. And then he beat me down. All because I was different. Because I had a mind of my own. Tell me something, Sam. Any of this sound familiar?
Comparing his own relationship to Michael with Sam’s relationship with Dean, Lucifer calls up the conflict between the Winchester brothers in season 4, directly referencing Dean’s labeling Sam a monster in 4.21. And he describes the position both he and Sam fill in their families, complete with some of the typical traits of the Scapegoat.
Then in the season 5 finale, in an effort to get Sam to stop fighting him for control, Lucifer speaks some of Sam’s fears about himself aloud, and continually tries to make connections between them:
5.22
LUCIFER
I've been waiting for you... For a long, long time. Come on, Sam. You have to admit -- You can feel it, right?
SAM
What?
LUCIFER
The exhilaration. And you know why that is? Because we're two halves made whole. M.F.E.O. Literally.
SAM
This feels pretty damn far from good.
LUCIFER
I'm inside your grapefruit, Sam. You can't lie to me. I see it all -- How odd you always felt, How...Out of place In that... Family of yours. And why shouldn't you have? They were foster care -- at best. I'm your real family.
SAM
No, that's not true.
LUCIFER
It is. And I know you know it. All those times you ran away, You weren't running from them. You were running towards me. This doesn't have to be a bad thing, you know. I let Dean live, didn't I? I want him to live. I'll bring your folks back, too. I want you to be happy, Sam.
Perhaps blinded by the role he himself is playing, Lucifer severely miscalculated. Because ironically, it was breaking the final seal and releasing Lucifer that started Sam on a different path, one that would ensure he would in the end prove himself very different from Lucifer, despite their parallel family roles, which in turn led to Lucifer’s defeat.
Unlike Lucifer, Sam had at one time managed to break away from his dysfunctional family system and live as his own person, outside of the restrictions of family roles, while he was at Stanford. As is very common for children of dysfunctional families -- especially as a reaction to stressors -- Sam eventually fell back into the role he’d temporarily eschewed, but he did get that taste of himself as independent from his family.
Also unlike the Lucifer/Michael dynamic, Sam and Dean’s relationship is far more complex than the rigidity of their roles suggests on the surface. Take Dean’s admiration of Sam’s ability to stand up to their father (in “Scarecrow”), for instance. On one hand, it’s behavior typical of a Scapegoat and typically rejected as negative by the family; but Dean (at that moment, anyway) was able to recognize the positive side of the trait, as well as his own inability to follow Sam’s example. And by the time the show reaches “The Dark Side of the Moon”, Sam has started to recognize some of what makes Dean act the role he does, as The Hero/Caretaker: wondering aloud how long Dean has been cleaning up their father’s messes. Sam starts to realize that his idolized big brother is just as powerless as Sam has always felt -- and Sam moves from the weakness he accused Dean of in season 4 towards compassion.
In season 5, Sam breaks away from the pattern Lucifer is still entangled in, and begins to take responsibility for his own actions. It’s this, more than anything (arguably more even than his love for Dean) that separates Sam from Lucifer. After all, Lucifer claims to love his brother as well. But what Lucifer can’t do is see his own culpability in the family drama. Instead, he does nothing but blame everyone else for his own actions.
Because she put it so well, I'm going to extensively quote dafnap here, with permission:
Sam left his family for college because of the same behavior Lucifer was bucking under, but instead of seeking vengeance, getting revenge for being slighted by John, Sam, unlike Lucifer, chooses a path that disconnects him from the flawed family dynamic completely. He doesn't seek out to prove John wrong, or get John to treat him as an equal, or change a system he perceives as flawed -- he removes himself from it completely.
Lucifer, in contrast, turns the first human into a demon out of revenge, out of spite. He resents the system but plays by it still, corrupted as it is. Lucifer's charge against his father is just, but he can't extricate himself from it, he can't find another vocabulary for himself -- he's still playing by the rules even as he resents them. Vengeance, ultimately, is allowing yourself to be defined by the thing you hate... Doing horrible things in the name of vengeance is "not your fault" because they started it first. It's childish.
Sam, in the end of season three into season four, follows a similar pattern. His belief that the flawed family system that brought them to this place is intact, but he can't see a way out of it anymore, he can't help but participate in it. It's almost a comfort, to have that path defined for you -- Sam seeks out vengeance in the same manner his father did ("Lillith's head on a plate. Bloody.") He can't see a way out, and in the theme of avoiding personal responsibility, doesn't want to. The path is clear -- he doesn't have to discover or forge for himself a different one. It is, ultimately,easier. Decided. Defined. No need to take responsibility for your actions if it's ultimately in the service of vengeance, a path defined by the person you're seeking vengeance on.
While Sam struggled in season 4 with some of the same rationalizations Lucifer spouts in season 5, in the end Sam managed to move beyond this line of thinking -- in season 5, Sam starts to grow up. Growing up is hard, nevermoreso than for someone from a dysfunctional family, who has no other frame of reference, no good example to emulate. Despite this, by the end of season 5 Sam is making an attempt to find a new way. Part of being a full adult is acknowledging not only the impact your family has had on you, but your own responsibility for your actions in the context of that impact.
Lucifer, however, continued to reject any responsibility for what he'd done. He refuses to grow up. While it appears at first glance that Lucifer is rejecting his role in the apocalypse -- telling Micheal they don't have to fight -- he proves he's still following his assigned role by refusing to take responsibility for his actions, and blaming his father.
5.22
LUCIFER
It's not my fault. Dad made everything. He made me who I am.
Which is true, on one level: our families help make us who we are. It can be argued that Sam's upbringing, as well as elements outside of his control, led him to releasing Lucifer; but as Ruby points out, it was Sam himself who made the decisions. Sam's upbringing might have helped create the framework of his potential destiny, but he still had the free will to make his own decisions about what he did as an adult. Same with Lucifer. And where Lucifer is still making excuses based on his family, Sam takes responsibility for his decisions, for his part in releasing Lucifer.
Sam decides to clean up his own mess, regardless of how much that mess was helped along by outside forces, because ultimately the decision to enact vengeance on Lilith? That was all Sam. The ultimate difference is that Sam rejected Lucifer's inability to take responsibility for his own actions.
5.05
SAM
Look. I know what I did. What I've done. And I am trying to climb out of that hole, I am, but you're not making it any easier.
DEAN
So what am I supposed to do, just let you off the hook?
SAM
No. You can think whatever you want. I deserve it, and worse.
Sam's not quite there yet in this passage, but he's making strides towards the greater maturity he'll show by the end of the season. This is what Lucifer was unable to accept, a point that Michael stresses during their confrontation at Stull:
5.22
MICHAEL
You haven't changed a bit, little brother. Always blaming everybody but yourself.
LUCIFER
No one makes Dad do anything. He is doing this to us.
While Lucifer isn’t wrong that God had a hand in the roles he and Michael are playing, Lucifer refuses to accept any of the responsibility for what he’s done -- the creation of demons, unleashing the Horsemen, slaughtering humans, killing his brother Gabriel. Contrast this with the change in Sam's view of John, as expressed to the younger John in “The Song Remains the Same”:
5.13
JOHN
The number it must've done on your head... Your father was supposed to protect you.
SAM
He was trying. He died trying. Believe me. I used to be mad at him. I-I mean, I used to... I used to hate the guy. But now I-I... I get it. He was...just doing the best he could.And he was trying to keep it together in-in-in this impossible situation. See... My mom, um... She was amazing, beautiful, and she was the love of his life. And she got killed. And...I think he would have gone crazy if he didn't do something. Truth is, um, my dad died before I got to tell him that I understand why he did what he did. And I forgive him for what it did to us. I do. And I just-I love him.
And while I think Sam is letting John off the hook a bit here, the point is that he’s moving towards a more balanced view of his father and his family dynamic by beginning to put things into perspective, by no longer reacting against his father’s authority. And in contrast to his actions in season 4, Sam makes a decision to do things differently at the end of season 5, by saying he won’t go through with his plan to say Yes to Lucifer without Bobby and Dean’s agreement. By the finale, Sam explicitly states his choice to take responsibility for Lucifer’s release:
5.22
SAM
I let him out. I got to put him back in.
In their roles as scapegoats, both Sam and Lucifer start to question their family structures, why things are the way they are; but only Sam makes any effort to take responsibility for his own actions within that structure, and only Sam makes any effort to change things. And this is why Lucifer ultimately lost.
***Please note that in discussions to these posts (assuming there are any!) I'm going to insist that the terms be used as intended here, and not with a wider or more general definition (for example, there is a clinical definition of "depression" that differs from the more general use of the word "depression" -- this is a similar case). Minimizing arguments like "all families are dysfunctional in their way" or anything that starts to stray into rehashing of old fandom wars over Season 4 will be heavily moderated. But please feel free to ask questions!***