And then there were none...
is my favourite Agatha Christie book ever. It's psychological thriller themes and closed-off setting are timeless, providing the basis for all kinds of other media- P.D James' The Skull Beneath the Skin (which I didn't like, at all), Mindhunters, Harper's Island etc etc. It's more than the idea that you know the killer, it's the idea that it could be you, that underneath the exterior of human there's something dark and dangerous and twisted.
It's perfect for the world of Supernatural. Hunters, by their definition, are exactly this. They're human beings with a darkness (usually the memory of the loved one they lost that got them into the business) and they're highly dangerous. They're predators, a stone's throw away from serial killers, and it's only because we see their world, see how they love and see how hey justify, are intimate with their morals. We see the grey areas, like in The Benders, Bloodlust or with Samuel's death- what makes a monster a monster and what makes a human human and what the hell do you do when something doesn't fall neatly into a category.
The novel, And Then There Were None, is all about the hunt, and this episode emulated that perfectly. The characters are stalked, first by the little monster, (which I will get to in a minute) and then by each other. And the most interesting thing, that missyjack pointed out here is that our main characters kill someone who is a mirror to them:
Dean kills Gwen - she was the loyal soldier, following the patriarch trying to please him, not questioning too much - dean as he used to be with John?
Sam kills Samuel - his namesake, and a man who did dark things, although he had a soul when he did them. Of course this is particularly shocking - Sam isn't "possessed" and while he obviously thinks Samuel might be, the fact that he shoots him without hesitation gave me chills.
And of course Bobby kills Rufus, the man who made him a hunter, his mentor and friend, they were mirrors of each other, but also something of the role Bobby has with Sam and Dean
So essentially, though they're possessed by the monster, the characters are killing off parts of themselves, the part they hate the most. I think that while Dean misses his father and still looks up to him as a hunter, he's recognised that his father never really went about things the right way, both in raising children and in training hunters. Dean hates the part of him that responded without question, as we've seen through his anger and developing morals about the grey areas of hunting. Sam, no doubt, hates everything about his grandfather- it's evident that Samuel is a John parallel, and it was only due to Sam not having a soul that there were no arguements between them. Furthermore, at the end of season one, we saw a John who could apologise, who could show love and say that he was proud of his children. Samuel on the other hand (while I get that he was an absent figure and didn't really build any kind of bond with the boys) is completely cold toward Sam and Dean- he isn't regretful of his actions and he appears to not even have any intent to form any kind of relationship with them. He's everything Sam despises about hunting, the very thing he became while soulless, and he knows this, even if he can't remember all of it.
With Rufus and Bobby it's a little more sensitive. While Missy is correct in saying that Rufus was a mentor and friend, Rufus was also a loner, intentionally isolating himself, as flowers4ophelia mentions here:
It's like all hunters put up these tough walls because they have to at least sometimes to deal with the things they face, and a lot of them claim that they work better alone and prefer it that way, and they don't tend to be the most pleasant kind of people in general. Yet under all this, the community they belong to can be a much stronger and more supportive family than you'd ever guess.
Also:
I keep remembering how when Rufus was first introduced, he seemed like the most unsociable, bitter, hardened bastard of all the hunters we'd ever seen and it was this unsettling moment when he told Dean, "I'm what you've got to look forward to if you survive."
Rufus is the epitomisation of a hunter. Bitter and ass-holey on the outside, but soft and a little squishy if it turns out they like you. But ultimately, he's alone. He was at the crime scene alone, and if he hadn't run into Bobby, would have worked it alone. He drops by when he needs a favour, like in Weekend at Bobby's, and it can certainly be said they're friends, but he doesn't stop by for drinks and a chat,to see how Bobby's doing. And Bobby? Well, if it weren't for the Winchesters, Bobby'd be alone too. Hell, when we met him, he was all by himself, and we know he was estranged from John. And from season three through season four and five we saw how Bobby clung to the Winchesters. They became his family, he became theirs, and he kept on living through the apocalypse because he had someone else to live for. Because someone else didn't want him to die. It's said many a time that hunters don't live long lives- and no wonder, if they don't have anyone (even a brother or a non-related family) to keep strong and fighting and alive for. Rufus didn't have that. For all that he was friends with Bobby, and respcted by Sam and Dean, he was still alone in the world. He would never have truly become family to the Winchesters because he doesn't know how to accept it.
And I can imagine that Bobby would hate that. Would despise the part of himself that is alone and unloved. And Rufus is a reminder of what Bobby could become. Could still become, even with Sam and Dean hanging around. So I know that even though Rufus' death was not actually Bobby, but the little monster, it's still interesting to see what Rufus represents for Bobby.
Okay, moving on.
There's been a lot of speculation concerning the fact that the 'Mother of All' is wandering around with the name 'Eve' and what it's supposed to mean. There is of course the obvious conclusion of Eve from the Judeo-Christian theologies, and then there is, as flowers4ophelia mentions, the fact that she may also be based on Tiamat, the babylonian goddess associated with dragons, which makes her raising a whole lot more significant. But we must remember that Supernatural loves to mix and match it's lore, and it's entiely plausible that they've taken the approach that Eve, as the MOTHER OF ALL is so ancient she's spawned all the various types of goddesses she may be associated with and so on and so forth. You get the idea. The writers could simply be saying that this character is intended to be the basis of all the possible legends.
Anyway.
I thought about it and thought about it and ended up back at square one- she is in fact Eve. At first I thought it was a joke of some kind- she clearly at odds with God, why not choose the name of His first female (and second-ever human)? And then I thought a little bit more. Eve, as the second ever human, was not created in full by God. Sure, He fashioned her, but more importantly, he fashioned her from Adam's rib. Adam, on the otherhand, was made purely from nothing by God. Eve is, essentially, a manipulation of what Adam was- so there's a small undercurrent there that suggests that Eve- isn't human in the way that Adam is. Then there's the fact that Eve (in the bible), as the first female, is the mother of all mankind. Let me repeat: THE MOTHER OF ALL mankind. NOW, this could still be a joke on Eve's (spn) part, or it could really be something more. She mentions that God abandoned humanity- and that she as a mother would never do that to her children. If Eve (as a being of both Bible and SPN) is meant to be the mother of humanity, it begs the question of why she's content to kill off humans. Still, she is at odds with God, and by biblical definition, humans are God's children (including Adam, who is not the father of mankind- so is that further proof that Eve was something more than just the second 'human' ever made?). Consider:
Eve: God doesn't care about you. Your Father made you and then abandoned you.... A Mother would never abandon her children like He did. You'll see.
If she doesn't see humanity as her children at all, but God's, (and if she is something different from Adam, then all the more reason) then there's no reason for her to be invested in humanity. What fascinates me most is how she separates herself from God. 'Your father', which suggests that she may not be the Eve of the garden, unless she really is something separate from human.
This of course, is working under the most literal of assumptions that Eve is the Eve.
Eve in the bible was the first to sin, tempted by Lucifer in the form of the snake, and which led to the rejection from God and being cast out of the garden of Eden. The sin, of course, being disobedient to God and rejecting God's command, which we've already seen is highly punishable if you're an angel. I haven't quite wrapped my thoughts around how this all fits together, but some part of me feels that it could be important. Like, if Eve is only a manipulation of human and not human in the way Adam is, then Lucifer's influence may have been more than simply a knowledgeable apple and a bit of disobedience. It's possible something in Eve's temptation led to the creation of monsters. Because while Eve was tempted by an angel, she herself had Adam follow her, not Lucifer. Why did Lucifer choose Eve and not Adam to tempt? Is it because Adam, being a 'pure' creation of God, was immune to Lucifer?
I don't even care if I'm a million miles off, I want to know why the Mother of All chose 'Eve'.
Finally, though I don't know how long I'll blather on for, there's the issue of the little monster, who Dean called a '12-inch harpy'. Sam, quite rightly, asks Dean why he's calling it a harpy, but most importantly, Dean doesn't have an answer for it. I'm not saying that some part of Dean does know, or if he's just calling it that off the top of his head, the fact that it is called 'harpy' intrigues me.
Harpies are from the Greek mythology, and are seen as the representations of the destructive nature of the wind (their mother was an air nymph). They are noted to be vicious, cruel and violent (just as the deaths were in this episode, and though our primary cast wasn't killed off in any gory fashion, the trucker's killings were especially violent) and are 'agents of punishment who abducted people and tortured them on their way to Tartarus' (thank you Wikipedia). Firstly- remember how it could be said that our primary cast killed those that mirrored a part of them they hated? The abduction of their bodies was used to 'punish' (and I use the word loosely, I mean more of a self-flagellation/I-hate-me-so-much-that-I-want-to-die 'punish') those parts by killing them.
Secondly, there's the issue of Tartarus. Tartarus (and I'm using Wikipedia here) is both a deity and a place. Tartarus is a place lower than Hades primarily used for torture, very much akin to the Christian Hell, and can be also found in Roman mythology, the Christian Old Testament (and corresponding Jewish literature) and a bastardisation of the term exists in the Christian New Testament. Tartarus as a deity is the 'unbounded, first-existing entity from which the Light and the cosmos are born'. Very God-like, no?
But I digress. Because what I'm trying to get at is where the Mother of All came from- where was she raised from. Now it's possible this was mentioned in Like A Virgin, and I completely missed it, so please tell me if I did. Otherwise, I'm pretty sure she wasn't being raised from Hell, but from some other place, and why could it not it be Tartarus (which is Hell-like) and thus fits into the whole something happened between Eve and Lucifer reasoning I had. (Edit: It is in fact Purgatory. The Waiting Place.)
And because I'm exceptionally tired, I'm going to leave now, and hope to hell that this makes some kind of sense, and hopefully doesn't end too abruptly. No doubt I'll think of something else tomorrow.
Edit: It's come to my attention that Dean calls it a 'herpe' as in herpes, so even though I've watched that scene several times and still hear 'harpy', the last half this must be disregarded. I'm not going to delete it though.
Edit 2: I also forgot to mention that the parasite leading them to kill others was a kind of 'damnation'- noting that it's a sin to commit murder, the act of killing off their friends/family etc would essentially damn them- to hell, or in this case, Tartarus. However, it can be noted that, unless anybody affected was socio/psychopathic, the act of killing their friends/family etc is filled with remorse, and guilt and so on, the very emotions needed to be forgiven. But until they ARE forgiven in the eyes of God, upon their passing they would essentially be sent to Purgatory to await judgement, which is you know, where the Mother was raised from.
It's perfect for the world of Supernatural. Hunters, by their definition, are exactly this. They're human beings with a darkness (usually the memory of the loved one they lost that got them into the business) and they're highly dangerous. They're predators, a stone's throw away from serial killers, and it's only because we see their world, see how they love and see how hey justify, are intimate with their morals. We see the grey areas, like in The Benders, Bloodlust or with Samuel's death- what makes a monster a monster and what makes a human human and what the hell do you do when something doesn't fall neatly into a category.
The novel, And Then There Were None, is all about the hunt, and this episode emulated that perfectly. The characters are stalked, first by the little monster, (which I will get to in a minute) and then by each other. And the most interesting thing, that missyjack pointed out here is that our main characters kill someone who is a mirror to them:
Dean kills Gwen - she was the loyal soldier, following the patriarch trying to please him, not questioning too much - dean as he used to be with John?
Sam kills Samuel - his namesake, and a man who did dark things, although he had a soul when he did them. Of course this is particularly shocking - Sam isn't "possessed" and while he obviously thinks Samuel might be, the fact that he shoots him without hesitation gave me chills.
And of course Bobby kills Rufus, the man who made him a hunter, his mentor and friend, they were mirrors of each other, but also something of the role Bobby has with Sam and Dean
So essentially, though they're possessed by the monster, the characters are killing off parts of themselves, the part they hate the most. I think that while Dean misses his father and still looks up to him as a hunter, he's recognised that his father never really went about things the right way, both in raising children and in training hunters. Dean hates the part of him that responded without question, as we've seen through his anger and developing morals about the grey areas of hunting. Sam, no doubt, hates everything about his grandfather- it's evident that Samuel is a John parallel, and it was only due to Sam not having a soul that there were no arguements between them. Furthermore, at the end of season one, we saw a John who could apologise, who could show love and say that he was proud of his children. Samuel on the other hand (while I get that he was an absent figure and didn't really build any kind of bond with the boys) is completely cold toward Sam and Dean- he isn't regretful of his actions and he appears to not even have any intent to form any kind of relationship with them. He's everything Sam despises about hunting, the very thing he became while soulless, and he knows this, even if he can't remember all of it.
With Rufus and Bobby it's a little more sensitive. While Missy is correct in saying that Rufus was a mentor and friend, Rufus was also a loner, intentionally isolating himself, as flowers4ophelia mentions here:
It's like all hunters put up these tough walls because they have to at least sometimes to deal with the things they face, and a lot of them claim that they work better alone and prefer it that way, and they don't tend to be the most pleasant kind of people in general. Yet under all this, the community they belong to can be a much stronger and more supportive family than you'd ever guess.
Also:
I keep remembering how when Rufus was first introduced, he seemed like the most unsociable, bitter, hardened bastard of all the hunters we'd ever seen and it was this unsettling moment when he told Dean, "I'm what you've got to look forward to if you survive."
Rufus is the epitomisation of a hunter. Bitter and ass-holey on the outside, but soft and a little squishy if it turns out they like you. But ultimately, he's alone. He was at the crime scene alone, and if he hadn't run into Bobby, would have worked it alone. He drops by when he needs a favour, like in Weekend at Bobby's, and it can certainly be said they're friends, but he doesn't stop by for drinks and a chat,to see how Bobby's doing. And Bobby? Well, if it weren't for the Winchesters, Bobby'd be alone too. Hell, when we met him, he was all by himself, and we know he was estranged from John. And from season three through season four and five we saw how Bobby clung to the Winchesters. They became his family, he became theirs, and he kept on living through the apocalypse because he had someone else to live for. Because someone else didn't want him to die. It's said many a time that hunters don't live long lives- and no wonder, if they don't have anyone (even a brother or a non-related family) to keep strong and fighting and alive for. Rufus didn't have that. For all that he was friends with Bobby, and respcted by Sam and Dean, he was still alone in the world. He would never have truly become family to the Winchesters because he doesn't know how to accept it.
And I can imagine that Bobby would hate that. Would despise the part of himself that is alone and unloved. And Rufus is a reminder of what Bobby could become. Could still become, even with Sam and Dean hanging around. So I know that even though Rufus' death was not actually Bobby, but the little monster, it's still interesting to see what Rufus represents for Bobby.
Okay, moving on.
There's been a lot of speculation concerning the fact that the 'Mother of All' is wandering around with the name 'Eve' and what it's supposed to mean. There is of course the obvious conclusion of Eve from the Judeo-Christian theologies, and then there is, as flowers4ophelia mentions, the fact that she may also be based on Tiamat, the babylonian goddess associated with dragons, which makes her raising a whole lot more significant. But we must remember that Supernatural loves to mix and match it's lore, and it's entiely plausible that they've taken the approach that Eve, as the MOTHER OF ALL is so ancient she's spawned all the various types of goddesses she may be associated with and so on and so forth. You get the idea. The writers could simply be saying that this character is intended to be the basis of all the possible legends.
Anyway.
I thought about it and thought about it and ended up back at square one- she is in fact Eve. At first I thought it was a joke of some kind- she clearly at odds with God, why not choose the name of His first female (and second-ever human)? And then I thought a little bit more. Eve, as the second ever human, was not created in full by God. Sure, He fashioned her, but more importantly, he fashioned her from Adam's rib. Adam, on the otherhand, was made purely from nothing by God. Eve is, essentially, a manipulation of what Adam was- so there's a small undercurrent there that suggests that Eve- isn't human in the way that Adam is. Then there's the fact that Eve (in the bible), as the first female, is the mother of all mankind. Let me repeat: THE MOTHER OF ALL mankind. NOW, this could still be a joke on Eve's (spn) part, or it could really be something more. She mentions that God abandoned humanity- and that she as a mother would never do that to her children. If Eve (as a being of both Bible and SPN) is meant to be the mother of humanity, it begs the question of why she's content to kill off humans. Still, she is at odds with God, and by biblical definition, humans are God's children (including Adam, who is not the father of mankind- so is that further proof that Eve was something more than just the second 'human' ever made?). Consider:
Eve: God doesn't care about you. Your Father made you and then abandoned you.... A Mother would never abandon her children like He did. You'll see.
If she doesn't see humanity as her children at all, but God's, (and if she is something different from Adam, then all the more reason) then there's no reason for her to be invested in humanity. What fascinates me most is how she separates herself from God. 'Your father', which suggests that she may not be the Eve of the garden, unless she really is something separate from human.
This of course, is working under the most literal of assumptions that Eve is the Eve.
Eve in the bible was the first to sin, tempted by Lucifer in the form of the snake, and which led to the rejection from God and being cast out of the garden of Eden. The sin, of course, being disobedient to God and rejecting God's command, which we've already seen is highly punishable if you're an angel. I haven't quite wrapped my thoughts around how this all fits together, but some part of me feels that it could be important. Like, if Eve is only a manipulation of human and not human in the way Adam is, then Lucifer's influence may have been more than simply a knowledgeable apple and a bit of disobedience. It's possible something in Eve's temptation led to the creation of monsters. Because while Eve was tempted by an angel, she herself had Adam follow her, not Lucifer. Why did Lucifer choose Eve and not Adam to tempt? Is it because Adam, being a 'pure' creation of God, was immune to Lucifer?
I don't even care if I'm a million miles off, I want to know why the Mother of All chose 'Eve'.
Finally, though I don't know how long I'll blather on for, there's the issue of the little monster, who Dean called a '12-inch harpy'. Sam, quite rightly, asks Dean why he's calling it a harpy, but most importantly, Dean doesn't have an answer for it. I'm not saying that some part of Dean does know, or if he's just calling it that off the top of his head, the fact that it is called 'harpy' intrigues me.
Harpies are from the Greek mythology, and are seen as the representations of the destructive nature of the wind (their mother was an air nymph). They are noted to be vicious, cruel and violent (just as the deaths were in this episode, and though our primary cast wasn't killed off in any gory fashion, the trucker's killings were especially violent) and are 'agents of punishment who abducted people and tortured them on their way to Tartarus' (thank you Wikipedia). Firstly- remember how it could be said that our primary cast killed those that mirrored a part of them they hated? The abduction of their bodies was used to 'punish' (and I use the word loosely, I mean more of a self-flagellation/I-hate-me-so-much-that-I-want-to-die 'punish') those parts by killing them.
Secondly, there's the issue of Tartarus. Tartarus (and I'm using Wikipedia here) is both a deity and a place. Tartarus is a place lower than Hades primarily used for torture, very much akin to the Christian Hell, and can be also found in Roman mythology, the Christian Old Testament (and corresponding Jewish literature) and a bastardisation of the term exists in the Christian New Testament. Tartarus as a deity is the 'unbounded, first-existing entity from which the Light and the cosmos are born'. Very God-like, no?
But I digress. Because what I'm trying to get at is where the Mother of All came from- where was she raised from. Now it's possible this was mentioned in Like A Virgin, and I completely missed it, so please tell me if I did. Otherwise, I'm pretty sure she wasn't being raised from Hell, but from some other place, and why could it not it be Tartarus (which is Hell-like) and thus fits into the whole something happened between Eve and Lucifer reasoning I had. (Edit: It is in fact Purgatory. The Waiting Place.)
And because I'm exceptionally tired, I'm going to leave now, and hope to hell that this makes some kind of sense, and hopefully doesn't end too abruptly. No doubt I'll think of something else tomorrow.
Edit: It's come to my attention that Dean calls it a 'herpe' as in herpes, so even though I've watched that scene several times and still hear 'harpy', the last half this must be disregarded. I'm not going to delete it though.
Edit 2: I also forgot to mention that the parasite leading them to kill others was a kind of 'damnation'- noting that it's a sin to commit murder, the act of killing off their friends/family etc would essentially damn them- to hell, or in this case, Tartarus. However, it can be noted that, unless anybody affected was socio/psychopathic, the act of killing their friends/family etc is filled with remorse, and guilt and so on, the very emotions needed to be forgiven. But until they ARE forgiven in the eyes of God, upon their passing they would essentially be sent to Purgatory to await judgement, which is you know, where the Mother was raised from.