Life and Love: Morality Under War in Supernatural
Yes, this is the one i've been talking about for about a week now. Much thanks to cmar_wingnut and germankitty, who poked a few holes in the Intro section.
Fair warning: there is no way in which I can claim that the issues of morality in war, one life over another, and a soldier’s versus a civilian’s worth are not personal to me. They are.
I’m Israeli. The price of my being able to go on a bus without being bombed is the misery of who knows how many Palestinians. Two years ago my reserve was activated for the Second Lebanon War so yeah, none of this is even remotely theoretical for me.
I’m Jewish, which means I’ve been raised on A single life saved is all of Creation saved and A danger to a [human] life postpones Mitzva.
My POV on morality in war and morality in Supernatural is probably not what constitutes common fannish opinion and maybe not what constitutes popular fannish opinion.
So yes, I’m pretty sure that the content of this essay is going to be controversial, raise a few heated discussions, and push some people’s angry buttons.
Here’s what I’m asking: be polite, please. Try to remember that not only is each of us entitled to their own opinion and their own beliefs - and this is a matter of belief more than rational opinions - but if you’re lashing out, it’s not at a person who’re being theoretical about it but at a person to whom this is hugely personal. I’m going on a limb, posting this in public space, and while I greatly value discussion and dissenting opinions - so long as we’re all being respectful, so long as we all agree to disagree and to let each person live in their own beliefs - if someone will not be polite, if someone will be oppressive with their opinions or believes, I will delete/screen comments and freeze threads if things either get out of control or look like they’re approaching that territory.
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Life and Love: Morality Under War in Supernatural
A. Introduction
[1] Means and ends
Person A shoots person B clean through the heart. Is person A bad?
Person B was just about to shoot person C. Person A prevented this by shooting person A clean through the heart. Is person A bad?
Person C is a rapist and a murderer. Person B was just about to execute him when killed by person A. Is person A bad?
Person C is person A’s lover. Person B was about to kill person C when stopped by person A shooting them dead. Is person A bad? Would it make a difference if person C was innocent and A’s lover or a murderer and A’s lover?
The answer to none of these questions is simple. The answer to none of these questions is subject to consensus, though I hope all of us here would agree that person A killing person B without any reason is murder and wrong. From that point, though, it breaks down. Even if someone’s a vile murderer beyond a shadow of a doubt, not everyone would support the death penalty for them - and all the other scenarios are more controversial.
It’s problematic to discuss the moral value of an act if there is no agreement on what constitutes a moral value. Human life is pretty much sacred in modern Western society but it isn’t an absolute - the death penalty is a handy example. I, personally, object to the death penalty out of fear for executing an innocent but others believe that no human has the right to take another human’s life even if that other human is a murderer beyond any doubt, and yet others think that the chance of executing a few innocents is worth it to not have to feed and cloth the murderers.
There are people in other villages shooting at the people of your village, occasionally killing them. The other village’s leaders aren’t interested in stopping this, are perhaps even encouraging this. You have a gun.
Would you kill people from the other village, knowing that there’s a chance you’ll kill non-combatants?
Would you kill people from the other village if you knew that you would only kill people who’d shot at your village first?
Would you kill a person from the other village who’d shot at your village’s people but hadn’t killed anyone - yet?
Would you refuse to kill anyone at all, on the grounds that you are all equally people so it doesn’t matter who dies?
Would you refuse killing on moral grounds even if you knew you’d be killed for this?
Welcome to war.
If you believe that nothing whatsoever is cause enough to kill another human being then you’re (a) in the wrong fandom and (b) encouraged to leave this discussion now. With that out of the way, then under the assumption that sometimes the taking of a human life is morally justifiable and does not constitute murder, and discussing the scenario of a war, I would argue that there is a fundamental moral difference between an offensive war - geared towards the destruction of the opponent - and a defensive war - geared towards protecting one’s people. Note that this distinction is not interchangeable with the distinction between aggressor and defender: if you happen to know that the other village’s people intend to rise and attack your village in two nights from now, going out and attacking them first is playing aggressor but initiating a defensive war. Yes, negotiating a peaceful agreement is generally preferable, but sometimes the other village’s people just want your village’s people dead.
For the rest of this discussion, “war” will be used to mean a defensive war unless otherwise stated.
[2] For all that we let in
There’s something inherently frustrating about coming back from a war. There’s an anger, a terrible anger that all returning soldiers must deal with, and this anger is directed at the civilians, the very people the soldier fought to protect and save. Taken to an extreme, this is the problem - how would you feel about having saved someone who morally condemns you for having done what was necessary to save them?
This anger is directed even at people who don’t condemn you for having preferred their lives to somebody else’s. It’s there because why was it you who had to pay the price of blood, and not they? This question may seem weird to those of you who live in countries where military service is wholly voluntary but I assure you, your country’s soldiers have at some point angsted through this, too.
The answer to this question is simple and terrible: it’s not just the lives of the civilians that you protect as a soldier but also their civilian identity - their innocence, if that’s how you want to call it, their not having someone’s life and death on their hearts.
And here’s why this can and does break people’s hearts. What’s said above, a more brutal phrasing of it would be that any soldier is a sacrifice on the altar of someone else’s innocence. A sacrifice, however, is one thing that a soldier cannot afford to be. You’re no good to your unit-mates dead, you’re no good to the people back home dead; people who think that sacrificing themselves has some moral value make really bad soldiers. Good soldiers want to live or they won’t stay alive very long.
Imagine being this kind of person, who’d live for something rather than die for it, someone who implicitly gets that their life are no less innately holy than the lives of the people you’re protecting. Now imagine realizing you’re a sacrifice for them.
If you enlisted of your own initiative and volition, then there’s a decent chance that you knew the moral contract you’re signing alongside the legal one, and you decided that it’s worth it to you. This is wholly different for people whose draft was not of their own initiative.
B. Moral dilemmas in the first three seasons of Supernatural
[1] Mission worth dying for, love with living for
The world of Supernatural is introduced to us as a world at war right from the get-go. Some moral prerogatives are given to us as postulates, not to be doubted: that the spirits of people aren’t “people”, that clearly intelligent and feeling creatures such as vampires are not “people” either, that there’s a line between “us” and “them” and that killing “them” in the name of protecting “us” is morally justified. This is the worldview of the first season - clear-cut and simple, so long as we’re all agreed on the idea that not all killing is murder.
Clear-cut until Faith, that is, where the question of one human life versus another is raised. The treatment of this dilemma is murky - we’re explicitly told that humans shouldn’t make such calls, but Roy’s character is making a good point: Dean is a soldier. You save a soldier, you save all the people they’re going to save in the future. You save a civilian - well, unless a family member would have committed suicide over their death, that’s just one life on your tab. Arguably, Dean’s life are worth more than Marshall’s and Layla’s both.
This, however, didn’t seem to be the moral directive Sam was operating on: Sam seemed to be operating on an “us versus them” distinction among humans - Dean, as a brother, was worth to him more than a stranger or two.
Episodes 14 and 15 - Nightmare and The Benders - give rise to a dilemma that will accompany us into the next seasons: are humans ever “them” and not “us”? Are humans ever not worth protecting, or are perhaps even worth killing? In Nightmare we’re shown a moment of conflict - Dean doesn’t draw a line between human and non-human murderers, but Sam would rather pardon Max is at all possible. In The Benders, though, there is reasonable grounds for Sam and Dean to believe that Kathleen killed Pa Bender without his trying to escape, and Sam doesn’t so much as squeak. This could be for either of two reasons, both of them derived from Sam’s “Family before strangers” ethics: either because Pa Bender had been offensive towards Sam and Dean, or because he didn’t remind Sam of himself as much as Max did.
The end of the season gives us two dilemmas is very close succession: is it justified to kill the human Meg in order to exorcise the demon in her body? Does Dean have the right to either John or Sam from sacrificing themselves to a cause they very obviously find worthy enough?
I admit to not really understand why the first is even a question - for one, the true responsibility for Meg’s death seems to lie with the demon, for one. Also, unless Sam, Dean and Bobby were willing to consciously allow a demon to roam free the human world they had no choice but to exorcise the demon and bring about Meg’s death.
The second dilemma, though, is a whole other matter. Yes, Sam was probably going to achieve nothing by running into the burning house, so arguably Dean had that reason from stopping him at that point. But what of when Sam had the Colt trained on the YED and the body it was inhabiting at that times - John’s? John was not a civilian. He knew what was going on, and he deemed his life an acceptable price for the YED’s even before it was as direct as the demon in his body and one of his sons with a kill-all gun. In asking that Sam not kill John, Dean - the quintessential soldier who’d life and kill in the name of defending civilians - had declared a value more sacred to him than human life. Whether you call this value “family” or “love”, Dean very obviously care for it more than he does for the sanctity of life.
Which brings us directly to the first moral dilemma of the second season: John’s exchanging his life, his soul and the Colt for Dean’s life. If he was still attempting to bring the YED’s demise he was incredibly roundabout about it - arguably Sam and Dean make a better team than John and Sam, but the Colt? I think that John was acting on his interpretation of Dean’s prerogative: family above mission. He saved one son’s life, and he seemingly gave another son’s soul a better chance - because “saving” Sam is something Dean’s far more fitting to achieve then John, which whom Sam could barely agree on the time of day.
The next dilemma was introduced to us in episode 3 of the season, Bloodlust, and has stayed with us since: are non-humans ever “us”, worthy of protection, and not “them”, whose killing is not murder? Sam effectively claimed a vampire - Lenore - as essentially human, as one of “us”, and Dean implicitly agreed with him. Put in different terms, the show just became less racist, allowing for judgment based on the individual and not the species. Also, Gordon’s character - compared to Hannibal Lecter by Ellen - harked back to an idea that was introduced in the episode The Benders in the first season: “not all humans are good,” which in war terms translates to “not all humans are worth defending.” This, however, was a minor point here compared to Sam’s defense of Lenore, who’s arguably not a subject of identification for him.
Speaking of Sam, that’s another moral dilemma of the season right there, and one the show illustrated many solutions to. On the one extreme of the spectrum we have Gordon, who deems Sam’s psychic powers alone reason enough to tag him as “them”, and furthermore perceived Sam as inherently evil by virtue of certain demons counting on him, ignoring Sam’s will and choice just as he ignored Lenore’s. Ellen is the middle ground: suspicious, but not considering Sam “fair game” just yet. (While Bobby’s position was never explicitly shown, implicitly he seems to be in the same general area of Ellen.) Dean is the other extreme, refusing to kill Sam or allow Sam to kill himself even under the seemingly hopeless prospect in Croatoan, where it seemed certain that Sam would go violently insane and will either kill or convert Dean.
[2] Love and life
Recap: up until now, we had characters acting on different prioritizing of three values - mission, life and love. It’s hard to tell what John’s precise balance was, but there are good evidence that Sam hold mission at the highest priority (was willing to both die and kill John for it) and life at the lowest (his actions in Faith). As for Dean, the one thing we know for sure is that mission takes the lowest priority. The balance between love and life had been, until this point, unclear: when he placed the value of John’s life above the value of the YED’s death in Devil’s Trap, he seemed to be considering the YED’s death more a matter of vengeance and less a matter of saving lives, seeing as they’d just saved Rosie and her mom without killing the YED.
Then comes that scene in Croatoan, when Dean allows a seemingly-doomed-to-go-homicidal Sam to live and goes so far as to refuse to leave, seemingly dooming himself to the same fate. Love had just been declared more important the life, Dean’s or anybody else’s.
Arguably, this choice was likely influenced by Dean’s seriously screwed up emotional state at that point - borderline suicidal, quite possibly, having lost half of his family and believing himself to be the “should stay dead” category. In Born Under a Bad Sign and Playthings, Dean arguably changed his mind somewhat - “arguably”, because the way Jensen Ackles delivered it was far more convincing as “Shut up my idiot baby bro for now” than as “If it gets to that.”
We’ll get back to this dilemma later.
In the meantime, we have Heart and Madison. This was no more a moral dilemma than exorcising the demon in Meg’s body was - allowing her to live meant allowing countless other people to die, this time with the added value of allowing her to create more creatures that can and will murder. (Sam may have identified killing Madison with killing himself; Dean may have understood that, and it may have been a factor in his offering to do so instead. These, however, are more issues of character interpretation and development and less issues of morality.)
What is and what should never be is noteworthy as it forces Dean to deal with “love versus life” and “love versus mission”: he can have a perfect dream-life, if he’ll give up on all the people he may save in the future in the real world, and on the very real Sam who’s “out there”. To make it even more poignant, Dean’s way out of the dream-world is to kill himself. The order of priorities we see here is the one that will dictate his actions in the following two episodes: love first, life second. “Mission” here is split between love (Sam) and life (“saving people”), and Dean’s own life is the exception to the “saving people” rule - partially something that had always been part of Dean’s personality, partially the result of his presumed implicitly suicidal emotional state following In my time of dying.
With this in mind, Dean’s choice to sell his soul for Sam’s life seems predictated, or perhaps a choice he’d made a long time before. If it’s morally questionable, it’s only from a point of view and a moral perspective that aren’t Dean’s because to him, it has to be obvious: love has always been above all else; John had effectively commanded his soul and Dean’s life to the protection of Sam; and Dean seems to consider his own life an expandable resource. Considered this way, there isn’t really a different choice he could have made.
[3] Define “life”
The third season expands on moral dilemmas we’ve encountered before:
-> Are non-humans always “them”? This repeats in several episodes - Envy’s little defense speech in The Magnificent Seven, Dean’s “Wait!” when Sam is about to shoot the-demon-in-Cassie in Sin City, Dixon sounding like Dean in All Hell Breaks Loose in Fresh Blood. Ruby’s claim that she remembers what it’s like to be human should also be taken into account, but Ruby is a walking set of moral dilemmas, not just the one.
-> Are humans always “us”? This is exemplified by Jeremy in Dream a little dream of me and Doc Benton in Time is on my side. I’m definitely not counting Bella in this category - she’s never shown as downright “evil”, and the issue of her deal deserves an independent discussion.
-> Is it ever justifiable to let one of “them” roam free? Meg died, Madison was killed. Ruby roams free, holding a human captive. There is a direct line between Faith and Sam not exorcising Ruby - in both cases, Sam rules in favour of love over mission. Not exorcising Ruby doesn’t count as “love over life”, seeing as not only does Ruby claim to not considering “seeing people insides outside” as a hobby but she claims to still be partially human. Arguably - very, very arguably - it may even be said that Ruby is also subscribed to the “saving people” mission, making Sam’s decision regarding here wholly morally justifiable.
Gordon in Fresh Blood raised a new dilemma: are some kinds of evil less worse than others? He seemed to fully accept that as a vampire, he must be killed. Had he succeeded in killing Sam, maybe he would’ve even killed himself. However, he asked to be allowed to live long enough to kill Sam - effectively saying that there are greater and lesser evils. Kubrick didn’t agree, and was murdered for it, but I don’t think this question was truly addressed: Gordon’s opinion doesn’t “count” because Sam technically still isn’t evil and because this is the guy who’d been grouped with the “human monsters” from the get-go, and Ruby doesn’t count as another instance of this question as it is unclear where she’s standing relative to the “us versus them” line.
Malleus Maleficarum asks a different question regarding humans and evil - just what does it take to condemn a person? The women of the coven had been practicing black magic, magic that sold them into a demon’s hands and condemned their souls to hell even if all they got for it was win a few ruffles and earn a nice income. Yes, Amanda had killed a woman and tried to kill a man, but what of Renee and Elizabeth? They hadn’t killed. Their magic hadn’t resulted in anything particularly evil - as a matter of fact, Elizabeth did a small act of bravery that bought Dean enough time to kill the-demon-in-Tami. This moral dilemma is left hanging open.
While Mystery Spot appears to be yet another episode in the vein of Faith, another example of the extent to which Sam holds saving Dean above all else, I cannot support this notion for two reasons. The first is that as of some point during the hundred Tuesdays, Sam’s priorities shift from “saving Dean” to “saving Sam” - there are only so many times a reasonable person can watch their only family in the world die before they’d be willing to do anything, just to not have to go through that again. This brings us directly to the second point - call it post traumatic stress disorder or insanity, but as of some point during the hundred Tuesdays Sam is not lucid anymore. I cannot in a whole conscious hold Sam accountable for his actions near the end of the episode, and that’s that.
Jus in bello meets the moral dilemma of the day head-on - should Sam and Dean have accepted Nancy’s and Ruby’s offer of sacrifice? The ending of the episode seems to suggest that they should have - had they followed through on Ruby’s plan there wouldn’t have been any demon left that could’ve told Lilith were they’d been, or so Ruby said. Which is a pretty faulty explanation - had all those demons gone on a raid without reporting to their boss first? Not likely.
An argument not raised during the episode is that killing Ruby - or having her kill herself - is a waste of a good resource. We are talking the woman who fixed the Colt, after all. Dean would’ve probably waived this argument like he waived Nancy’s offer, and I’m not saying that I support this myself, but it’s a good and valid argument in a vicious war when your side has so few resources.
Then there’s the argument Dean is raising - better to risk everyone than to kill one person in cold blood. Nancy, along with everyone else, may have died once the demons were allowed into the building. Yes, recording an exorcism was a pretty brilliant plan, but it could’ve failed any of a myriad of different ways. Refusing to kill Nancy boils down to refusing to kill a human being in cold blood, even if that person is willing, even if it will potentially save four or five other people. It’s a very good, very heavy moral dilemma - and one we’re yet again left to decide for ourselves on.
Ruby had been discussed in the context of the various moral dilemmas she exemplifies; as we’re nearing the end of the third season and Time is on my side, it’s a good place to discuss Bella.
It seems that Bella is intended as a reflection of Dean: she, too, sold her soul - for an different reason - and she, too, holds to a “might as well enjoy the ride” mentality until she’s “staring right down the barrel of it.” We have two major differences between Dean and Bella: the reason for which they sold their soul, and what they did with the time until their respective contract came due.
Bella was an abused fourteen-years-old girl who, presumably, had been abused through her childhood. Even more specifically, it’s strongly hinted that she was sexually abused by her father. Approached by a demon, she sold her soul to be rid of her abusive parents. Here’s the thing, though: by doing so, she showed more survival instinct then would be found in most girls in her position. No, I am not morally justifying her action - personally I think that if she had that much survival instinct she would’ve eventually saved herself some other way - but I’m raising the same argument I did for Sam in Mystery Spot: push a person into a severe enough case of post-trauma, and the measure to which they’re accountable is doubtful. Children more so than adults, people who’d been subjected to long-term abuse more than people who’d been through a single traumatic event - and a child who’d been abused through her childhood is really on the far end of the scale.
Back to Time is on my side, now, and to a moral question that had been accompanying us since Dean refused to kill Sam in Croatoan. Back then, Dean had pretty much placed the value of Sam’s life above the value of said life’s content - he had no reason to expect that Sam would be immune to the virus or that the virus would just disappear, but he refused to either kill Sam or allow Sam to kill himself. In Time is on my side, Sam neatly ignores that Doc Benton’s formula is a life based on murder, and focuses on the “staying alive” part - he’s focusing more on keeping Dean’s life than on the content of Dean’s life. Unlike Dean in Croatoan, though, Sam eventually backs off.
C. Closing notes
Supernatural abounds in moral dilemmas typical to life in war, but these dilemmas and the show’s take on them change drastically through the seasons. The world we’re introduced to in the first season is fairly clearly defined, with “evil humans” as an aberration and “good non-human beings” an impossibility. By the third season, we’ve met a fair share of nasty human characters and discovered that human don’t tend much convincing to go bad, and have been introduced to a number of likable and very human-feeling arguably non-human beings. (I hadn’t mentioned Molly from Roadkill, but she’s really the best example of a genuinely human and humane spirit.) Furthermore, the definitions of what’s “good” and what’s “evil” had also been challenged.
I characterized the moral code of our two main characters (and their father) as a composite of three directives: (1) The sanctity of (human) life, (2) Protecting one’s loved ones, (3) whatever mission the person had sat to themselves as a “life mission”.
The characters’ moral positions unveiled and developed through the seasons. While at first Dean seemed to hold life above all else - and equate it with “mission” - when pushed to his limits he chose love above that, so long as the life in question weren’t his own. Following Dream a little dream of me, though, it seemed that Dean re-evaluated his position: his words to Sam in No rest for the wicked strongly suggest that he’s come to accept the value of his own life, and he constantly seems to be slowly moving away from his moral position in Croatoan and towards accepting that maybe, under extreme enough circumstances, killing Sam may be necessary. (Of course, this is Dean we’re talking about here, so I wouldn’t bet anything important on it.)
As for Sam, from the (relative) beginning he seemed to hold “love” above “life” - though as he doesn’t exclude his own life from the equation, this looks very different from the way it does on Dean. However, while at first he seemed to hold mission above all else, when put to the test in Devil’s Trap he either changed his mind or showed his true colours, and chose love (giving in to Dean and not shooting John) over mission (killing the YED).
At this point in time, it seems that “mission” is off the plate as a moral issue. Life and love is what it comes down to: Sam acting on the directive of love and putting his brother’s (and his) life above all else save, perhaps, their happiness (see his giving in to Dean in Time is on my side), and Dean struggling to keep the sanctity of human life at the top of the priority list.
Mostly, I tried to keep an objective and nonjudgmental tone in this essay, with two exceptions born of my personal history - the firm belief that sometimes to save a life one has to take a life, and treading carefully around issues of post-trauma. I’m pretty sure, however, that the content of this essay is very controversial and may lead to some very heated discussions - because it’s an extremely loaded topic and because there’s more than a decent chance that I hadn’t been as neutral as I tried to be.
I’d like to close this essay with the issue that prompted me to write it - and here any attempt at neutrality is thrown to the wind, so bear this in mind.
I find it interesting that while Dean is perplexed and perhaps occasionally revolted by Sam’s moral stand as reflected in the third season, Sam had been pretty much pushed to this extreme as a result of Dean’s disregard to the value of his own life. Yes, Dean had pretty much been pushed into that choice; yes, it seems Dean had done it out of any motive except for selfishness; yes, Sam had been pretty much trying to save Dean for Sam and not just trying to save another human being; but also, Sam had been providing a much-needed counterweight to Dean’s sacrifice.
The idea that sacrifice is not a wanted characteristic in a hero is not a common idea in modern, Western, Christian world. I find it incredibly interesting - and refreshing - that this show seems to be taking the path that says that the hero’s life are not worth any less than the lives of the people he’s saving and anyway, if you really want to be a hero, it would be better to give up on today’s fight, stay alive, and be there for the next war and the one after it.
Fair warning: there is no way in which I can claim that the issues of morality in war, one life over another, and a soldier’s versus a civilian’s worth are not personal to me. They are.
I’m Israeli. The price of my being able to go on a bus without being bombed is the misery of who knows how many Palestinians. Two years ago my reserve was activated for the Second Lebanon War so yeah, none of this is even remotely theoretical for me.
I’m Jewish, which means I’ve been raised on A single life saved is all of Creation saved and A danger to a [human] life postpones Mitzva.
My POV on morality in war and morality in Supernatural is probably not what constitutes common fannish opinion and maybe not what constitutes popular fannish opinion.
So yes, I’m pretty sure that the content of this essay is going to be controversial, raise a few heated discussions, and push some people’s angry buttons.
Here’s what I’m asking: be polite, please. Try to remember that not only is each of us entitled to their own opinion and their own beliefs - and this is a matter of belief more than rational opinions - but if you’re lashing out, it’s not at a person who’re being theoretical about it but at a person to whom this is hugely personal. I’m going on a limb, posting this in public space, and while I greatly value discussion and dissenting opinions - so long as we’re all being respectful, so long as we all agree to disagree and to let each person live in their own beliefs - if someone will not be polite, if someone will be oppressive with their opinions or believes, I will delete/screen comments and freeze threads if things either get out of control or look like they’re approaching that territory.
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Life and Love: Morality Under War in Supernatural
A. Introduction
[1] Means and ends
Person A shoots person B clean through the heart. Is person A bad?
Person B was just about to shoot person C. Person A prevented this by shooting person A clean through the heart. Is person A bad?
Person C is a rapist and a murderer. Person B was just about to execute him when killed by person A. Is person A bad?
Person C is person A’s lover. Person B was about to kill person C when stopped by person A shooting them dead. Is person A bad? Would it make a difference if person C was innocent and A’s lover or a murderer and A’s lover?
The answer to none of these questions is simple. The answer to none of these questions is subject to consensus, though I hope all of us here would agree that person A killing person B without any reason is murder and wrong. From that point, though, it breaks down. Even if someone’s a vile murderer beyond a shadow of a doubt, not everyone would support the death penalty for them - and all the other scenarios are more controversial.
It’s problematic to discuss the moral value of an act if there is no agreement on what constitutes a moral value. Human life is pretty much sacred in modern Western society but it isn’t an absolute - the death penalty is a handy example. I, personally, object to the death penalty out of fear for executing an innocent but others believe that no human has the right to take another human’s life even if that other human is a murderer beyond any doubt, and yet others think that the chance of executing a few innocents is worth it to not have to feed and cloth the murderers.
There are people in other villages shooting at the people of your village, occasionally killing them. The other village’s leaders aren’t interested in stopping this, are perhaps even encouraging this. You have a gun.
Would you kill people from the other village, knowing that there’s a chance you’ll kill non-combatants?
Would you kill people from the other village if you knew that you would only kill people who’d shot at your village first?
Would you kill a person from the other village who’d shot at your village’s people but hadn’t killed anyone - yet?
Would you refuse to kill anyone at all, on the grounds that you are all equally people so it doesn’t matter who dies?
Would you refuse killing on moral grounds even if you knew you’d be killed for this?
Welcome to war.
If you believe that nothing whatsoever is cause enough to kill another human being then you’re (a) in the wrong fandom and (b) encouraged to leave this discussion now. With that out of the way, then under the assumption that sometimes the taking of a human life is morally justifiable and does not constitute murder, and discussing the scenario of a war, I would argue that there is a fundamental moral difference between an offensive war - geared towards the destruction of the opponent - and a defensive war - geared towards protecting one’s people. Note that this distinction is not interchangeable with the distinction between aggressor and defender: if you happen to know that the other village’s people intend to rise and attack your village in two nights from now, going out and attacking them first is playing aggressor but initiating a defensive war. Yes, negotiating a peaceful agreement is generally preferable, but sometimes the other village’s people just want your village’s people dead.
For the rest of this discussion, “war” will be used to mean a defensive war unless otherwise stated.
[2] For all that we let in
There’s something inherently frustrating about coming back from a war. There’s an anger, a terrible anger that all returning soldiers must deal with, and this anger is directed at the civilians, the very people the soldier fought to protect and save. Taken to an extreme, this is the problem - how would you feel about having saved someone who morally condemns you for having done what was necessary to save them?
This anger is directed even at people who don’t condemn you for having preferred their lives to somebody else’s. It’s there because why was it you who had to pay the price of blood, and not they? This question may seem weird to those of you who live in countries where military service is wholly voluntary but I assure you, your country’s soldiers have at some point angsted through this, too.
The answer to this question is simple and terrible: it’s not just the lives of the civilians that you protect as a soldier but also their civilian identity - their innocence, if that’s how you want to call it, their not having someone’s life and death on their hearts.
And here’s why this can and does break people’s hearts. What’s said above, a more brutal phrasing of it would be that any soldier is a sacrifice on the altar of someone else’s innocence. A sacrifice, however, is one thing that a soldier cannot afford to be. You’re no good to your unit-mates dead, you’re no good to the people back home dead; people who think that sacrificing themselves has some moral value make really bad soldiers. Good soldiers want to live or they won’t stay alive very long.
Imagine being this kind of person, who’d live for something rather than die for it, someone who implicitly gets that their life are no less innately holy than the lives of the people you’re protecting. Now imagine realizing you’re a sacrifice for them.
If you enlisted of your own initiative and volition, then there’s a decent chance that you knew the moral contract you’re signing alongside the legal one, and you decided that it’s worth it to you. This is wholly different for people whose draft was not of their own initiative.
B. Moral dilemmas in the first three seasons of Supernatural
[1] Mission worth dying for, love with living for
The world of Supernatural is introduced to us as a world at war right from the get-go. Some moral prerogatives are given to us as postulates, not to be doubted: that the spirits of people aren’t “people”, that clearly intelligent and feeling creatures such as vampires are not “people” either, that there’s a line between “us” and “them” and that killing “them” in the name of protecting “us” is morally justified. This is the worldview of the first season - clear-cut and simple, so long as we’re all agreed on the idea that not all killing is murder.
Clear-cut until Faith, that is, where the question of one human life versus another is raised. The treatment of this dilemma is murky - we’re explicitly told that humans shouldn’t make such calls, but Roy’s character is making a good point: Dean is a soldier. You save a soldier, you save all the people they’re going to save in the future. You save a civilian - well, unless a family member would have committed suicide over their death, that’s just one life on your tab. Arguably, Dean’s life are worth more than Marshall’s and Layla’s both.
This, however, didn’t seem to be the moral directive Sam was operating on: Sam seemed to be operating on an “us versus them” distinction among humans - Dean, as a brother, was worth to him more than a stranger or two.
Episodes 14 and 15 - Nightmare and The Benders - give rise to a dilemma that will accompany us into the next seasons: are humans ever “them” and not “us”? Are humans ever not worth protecting, or are perhaps even worth killing? In Nightmare we’re shown a moment of conflict - Dean doesn’t draw a line between human and non-human murderers, but Sam would rather pardon Max is at all possible. In The Benders, though, there is reasonable grounds for Sam and Dean to believe that Kathleen killed Pa Bender without his trying to escape, and Sam doesn’t so much as squeak. This could be for either of two reasons, both of them derived from Sam’s “Family before strangers” ethics: either because Pa Bender had been offensive towards Sam and Dean, or because he didn’t remind Sam of himself as much as Max did.
The end of the season gives us two dilemmas is very close succession: is it justified to kill the human Meg in order to exorcise the demon in her body? Does Dean have the right to either John or Sam from sacrificing themselves to a cause they very obviously find worthy enough?
I admit to not really understand why the first is even a question - for one, the true responsibility for Meg’s death seems to lie with the demon, for one. Also, unless Sam, Dean and Bobby were willing to consciously allow a demon to roam free the human world they had no choice but to exorcise the demon and bring about Meg’s death.
The second dilemma, though, is a whole other matter. Yes, Sam was probably going to achieve nothing by running into the burning house, so arguably Dean had that reason from stopping him at that point. But what of when Sam had the Colt trained on the YED and the body it was inhabiting at that times - John’s? John was not a civilian. He knew what was going on, and he deemed his life an acceptable price for the YED’s even before it was as direct as the demon in his body and one of his sons with a kill-all gun. In asking that Sam not kill John, Dean - the quintessential soldier who’d life and kill in the name of defending civilians - had declared a value more sacred to him than human life. Whether you call this value “family” or “love”, Dean very obviously care for it more than he does for the sanctity of life.
Which brings us directly to the first moral dilemma of the second season: John’s exchanging his life, his soul and the Colt for Dean’s life. If he was still attempting to bring the YED’s demise he was incredibly roundabout about it - arguably Sam and Dean make a better team than John and Sam, but the Colt? I think that John was acting on his interpretation of Dean’s prerogative: family above mission. He saved one son’s life, and he seemingly gave another son’s soul a better chance - because “saving” Sam is something Dean’s far more fitting to achieve then John, which whom Sam could barely agree on the time of day.
The next dilemma was introduced to us in episode 3 of the season, Bloodlust, and has stayed with us since: are non-humans ever “us”, worthy of protection, and not “them”, whose killing is not murder? Sam effectively claimed a vampire - Lenore - as essentially human, as one of “us”, and Dean implicitly agreed with him. Put in different terms, the show just became less racist, allowing for judgment based on the individual and not the species. Also, Gordon’s character - compared to Hannibal Lecter by Ellen - harked back to an idea that was introduced in the episode The Benders in the first season: “not all humans are good,” which in war terms translates to “not all humans are worth defending.” This, however, was a minor point here compared to Sam’s defense of Lenore, who’s arguably not a subject of identification for him.
Speaking of Sam, that’s another moral dilemma of the season right there, and one the show illustrated many solutions to. On the one extreme of the spectrum we have Gordon, who deems Sam’s psychic powers alone reason enough to tag him as “them”, and furthermore perceived Sam as inherently evil by virtue of certain demons counting on him, ignoring Sam’s will and choice just as he ignored Lenore’s. Ellen is the middle ground: suspicious, but not considering Sam “fair game” just yet. (While Bobby’s position was never explicitly shown, implicitly he seems to be in the same general area of Ellen.) Dean is the other extreme, refusing to kill Sam or allow Sam to kill himself even under the seemingly hopeless prospect in Croatoan, where it seemed certain that Sam would go violently insane and will either kill or convert Dean.
[2] Love and life
Recap: up until now, we had characters acting on different prioritizing of three values - mission, life and love. It’s hard to tell what John’s precise balance was, but there are good evidence that Sam hold mission at the highest priority (was willing to both die and kill John for it) and life at the lowest (his actions in Faith). As for Dean, the one thing we know for sure is that mission takes the lowest priority. The balance between love and life had been, until this point, unclear: when he placed the value of John’s life above the value of the YED’s death in Devil’s Trap, he seemed to be considering the YED’s death more a matter of vengeance and less a matter of saving lives, seeing as they’d just saved Rosie and her mom without killing the YED.
Then comes that scene in Croatoan, when Dean allows a seemingly-doomed-to-go-homicidal Sam to live and goes so far as to refuse to leave, seemingly dooming himself to the same fate. Love had just been declared more important the life, Dean’s or anybody else’s.
Arguably, this choice was likely influenced by Dean’s seriously screwed up emotional state at that point - borderline suicidal, quite possibly, having lost half of his family and believing himself to be the “should stay dead” category. In Born Under a Bad Sign and Playthings, Dean arguably changed his mind somewhat - “arguably”, because the way Jensen Ackles delivered it was far more convincing as “Shut up my idiot baby bro for now” than as “If it gets to that.”
We’ll get back to this dilemma later.
In the meantime, we have Heart and Madison. This was no more a moral dilemma than exorcising the demon in Meg’s body was - allowing her to live meant allowing countless other people to die, this time with the added value of allowing her to create more creatures that can and will murder. (Sam may have identified killing Madison with killing himself; Dean may have understood that, and it may have been a factor in his offering to do so instead. These, however, are more issues of character interpretation and development and less issues of morality.)
What is and what should never be is noteworthy as it forces Dean to deal with “love versus life” and “love versus mission”: he can have a perfect dream-life, if he’ll give up on all the people he may save in the future in the real world, and on the very real Sam who’s “out there”. To make it even more poignant, Dean’s way out of the dream-world is to kill himself. The order of priorities we see here is the one that will dictate his actions in the following two episodes: love first, life second. “Mission” here is split between love (Sam) and life (“saving people”), and Dean’s own life is the exception to the “saving people” rule - partially something that had always been part of Dean’s personality, partially the result of his presumed implicitly suicidal emotional state following In my time of dying.
With this in mind, Dean’s choice to sell his soul for Sam’s life seems predictated, or perhaps a choice he’d made a long time before. If it’s morally questionable, it’s only from a point of view and a moral perspective that aren’t Dean’s because to him, it has to be obvious: love has always been above all else; John had effectively commanded his soul and Dean’s life to the protection of Sam; and Dean seems to consider his own life an expandable resource. Considered this way, there isn’t really a different choice he could have made.
[3] Define “life”
The third season expands on moral dilemmas we’ve encountered before:
-> Are non-humans always “them”? This repeats in several episodes - Envy’s little defense speech in The Magnificent Seven, Dean’s “Wait!” when Sam is about to shoot the-demon-in-Cassie in Sin City, Dixon sounding like Dean in All Hell Breaks Loose in Fresh Blood. Ruby’s claim that she remembers what it’s like to be human should also be taken into account, but Ruby is a walking set of moral dilemmas, not just the one.
-> Are humans always “us”? This is exemplified by Jeremy in Dream a little dream of me and Doc Benton in Time is on my side. I’m definitely not counting Bella in this category - she’s never shown as downright “evil”, and the issue of her deal deserves an independent discussion.
-> Is it ever justifiable to let one of “them” roam free? Meg died, Madison was killed. Ruby roams free, holding a human captive. There is a direct line between Faith and Sam not exorcising Ruby - in both cases, Sam rules in favour of love over mission. Not exorcising Ruby doesn’t count as “love over life”, seeing as not only does Ruby claim to not considering “seeing people insides outside” as a hobby but she claims to still be partially human. Arguably - very, very arguably - it may even be said that Ruby is also subscribed to the “saving people” mission, making Sam’s decision regarding here wholly morally justifiable.
Gordon in Fresh Blood raised a new dilemma: are some kinds of evil less worse than others? He seemed to fully accept that as a vampire, he must be killed. Had he succeeded in killing Sam, maybe he would’ve even killed himself. However, he asked to be allowed to live long enough to kill Sam - effectively saying that there are greater and lesser evils. Kubrick didn’t agree, and was murdered for it, but I don’t think this question was truly addressed: Gordon’s opinion doesn’t “count” because Sam technically still isn’t evil and because this is the guy who’d been grouped with the “human monsters” from the get-go, and Ruby doesn’t count as another instance of this question as it is unclear where she’s standing relative to the “us versus them” line.
Malleus Maleficarum asks a different question regarding humans and evil - just what does it take to condemn a person? The women of the coven had been practicing black magic, magic that sold them into a demon’s hands and condemned their souls to hell even if all they got for it was win a few ruffles and earn a nice income. Yes, Amanda had killed a woman and tried to kill a man, but what of Renee and Elizabeth? They hadn’t killed. Their magic hadn’t resulted in anything particularly evil - as a matter of fact, Elizabeth did a small act of bravery that bought Dean enough time to kill the-demon-in-Tami. This moral dilemma is left hanging open.
While Mystery Spot appears to be yet another episode in the vein of Faith, another example of the extent to which Sam holds saving Dean above all else, I cannot support this notion for two reasons. The first is that as of some point during the hundred Tuesdays, Sam’s priorities shift from “saving Dean” to “saving Sam” - there are only so many times a reasonable person can watch their only family in the world die before they’d be willing to do anything, just to not have to go through that again. This brings us directly to the second point - call it post traumatic stress disorder or insanity, but as of some point during the hundred Tuesdays Sam is not lucid anymore. I cannot in a whole conscious hold Sam accountable for his actions near the end of the episode, and that’s that.
Jus in bello meets the moral dilemma of the day head-on - should Sam and Dean have accepted Nancy’s and Ruby’s offer of sacrifice? The ending of the episode seems to suggest that they should have - had they followed through on Ruby’s plan there wouldn’t have been any demon left that could’ve told Lilith were they’d been, or so Ruby said. Which is a pretty faulty explanation - had all those demons gone on a raid without reporting to their boss first? Not likely.
An argument not raised during the episode is that killing Ruby - or having her kill herself - is a waste of a good resource. We are talking the woman who fixed the Colt, after all. Dean would’ve probably waived this argument like he waived Nancy’s offer, and I’m not saying that I support this myself, but it’s a good and valid argument in a vicious war when your side has so few resources.
Then there’s the argument Dean is raising - better to risk everyone than to kill one person in cold blood. Nancy, along with everyone else, may have died once the demons were allowed into the building. Yes, recording an exorcism was a pretty brilliant plan, but it could’ve failed any of a myriad of different ways. Refusing to kill Nancy boils down to refusing to kill a human being in cold blood, even if that person is willing, even if it will potentially save four or five other people. It’s a very good, very heavy moral dilemma - and one we’re yet again left to decide for ourselves on.
Ruby had been discussed in the context of the various moral dilemmas she exemplifies; as we’re nearing the end of the third season and Time is on my side, it’s a good place to discuss Bella.
It seems that Bella is intended as a reflection of Dean: she, too, sold her soul - for an different reason - and she, too, holds to a “might as well enjoy the ride” mentality until she’s “staring right down the barrel of it.” We have two major differences between Dean and Bella: the reason for which they sold their soul, and what they did with the time until their respective contract came due.
Bella was an abused fourteen-years-old girl who, presumably, had been abused through her childhood. Even more specifically, it’s strongly hinted that she was sexually abused by her father. Approached by a demon, she sold her soul to be rid of her abusive parents. Here’s the thing, though: by doing so, she showed more survival instinct then would be found in most girls in her position. No, I am not morally justifying her action - personally I think that if she had that much survival instinct she would’ve eventually saved herself some other way - but I’m raising the same argument I did for Sam in Mystery Spot: push a person into a severe enough case of post-trauma, and the measure to which they’re accountable is doubtful. Children more so than adults, people who’d been subjected to long-term abuse more than people who’d been through a single traumatic event - and a child who’d been abused through her childhood is really on the far end of the scale.
Back to Time is on my side, now, and to a moral question that had been accompanying us since Dean refused to kill Sam in Croatoan. Back then, Dean had pretty much placed the value of Sam’s life above the value of said life’s content - he had no reason to expect that Sam would be immune to the virus or that the virus would just disappear, but he refused to either kill Sam or allow Sam to kill himself. In Time is on my side, Sam neatly ignores that Doc Benton’s formula is a life based on murder, and focuses on the “staying alive” part - he’s focusing more on keeping Dean’s life than on the content of Dean’s life. Unlike Dean in Croatoan, though, Sam eventually backs off.
C. Closing notes
Supernatural abounds in moral dilemmas typical to life in war, but these dilemmas and the show’s take on them change drastically through the seasons. The world we’re introduced to in the first season is fairly clearly defined, with “evil humans” as an aberration and “good non-human beings” an impossibility. By the third season, we’ve met a fair share of nasty human characters and discovered that human don’t tend much convincing to go bad, and have been introduced to a number of likable and very human-feeling arguably non-human beings. (I hadn’t mentioned Molly from Roadkill, but she’s really the best example of a genuinely human and humane spirit.) Furthermore, the definitions of what’s “good” and what’s “evil” had also been challenged.
I characterized the moral code of our two main characters (and their father) as a composite of three directives: (1) The sanctity of (human) life, (2) Protecting one’s loved ones, (3) whatever mission the person had sat to themselves as a “life mission”.
The characters’ moral positions unveiled and developed through the seasons. While at first Dean seemed to hold life above all else - and equate it with “mission” - when pushed to his limits he chose love above that, so long as the life in question weren’t his own. Following Dream a little dream of me, though, it seemed that Dean re-evaluated his position: his words to Sam in No rest for the wicked strongly suggest that he’s come to accept the value of his own life, and he constantly seems to be slowly moving away from his moral position in Croatoan and towards accepting that maybe, under extreme enough circumstances, killing Sam may be necessary. (Of course, this is Dean we’re talking about here, so I wouldn’t bet anything important on it.)
As for Sam, from the (relative) beginning he seemed to hold “love” above “life” - though as he doesn’t exclude his own life from the equation, this looks very different from the way it does on Dean. However, while at first he seemed to hold mission above all else, when put to the test in Devil’s Trap he either changed his mind or showed his true colours, and chose love (giving in to Dean and not shooting John) over mission (killing the YED).
At this point in time, it seems that “mission” is off the plate as a moral issue. Life and love is what it comes down to: Sam acting on the directive of love and putting his brother’s (and his) life above all else save, perhaps, their happiness (see his giving in to Dean in Time is on my side), and Dean struggling to keep the sanctity of human life at the top of the priority list.
Mostly, I tried to keep an objective and nonjudgmental tone in this essay, with two exceptions born of my personal history - the firm belief that sometimes to save a life one has to take a life, and treading carefully around issues of post-trauma. I’m pretty sure, however, that the content of this essay is very controversial and may lead to some very heated discussions - because it’s an extremely loaded topic and because there’s more than a decent chance that I hadn’t been as neutral as I tried to be.
I’d like to close this essay with the issue that prompted me to write it - and here any attempt at neutrality is thrown to the wind, so bear this in mind.
I find it interesting that while Dean is perplexed and perhaps occasionally revolted by Sam’s moral stand as reflected in the third season, Sam had been pretty much pushed to this extreme as a result of Dean’s disregard to the value of his own life. Yes, Dean had pretty much been pushed into that choice; yes, it seems Dean had done it out of any motive except for selfishness; yes, Sam had been pretty much trying to save Dean for Sam and not just trying to save another human being; but also, Sam had been providing a much-needed counterweight to Dean’s sacrifice.
The idea that sacrifice is not a wanted characteristic in a hero is not a common idea in modern, Western, Christian world. I find it incredibly interesting - and refreshing - that this show seems to be taking the path that says that the hero’s life are not worth any less than the lives of the people he’s saving and anyway, if you really want to be a hero, it would be better to give up on today’s fight, stay alive, and be there for the next war and the one after it.