John and great vs. good
Papa Winchester continues to be a driving force in both of his sons' lives. Here's my take after digesting On the Head of a Pin (so be warned for spoilers through that episode)
When all is said and done, the greatest character to appear on Supernatural is John Winchester. He’s only been on screen for a total of nine episodes (and only about half of those were more than one or two scenes), died at the beginning of season two, and hasn’t been seen since the end of the same season; but the impression he’s left on the show easily makes him Eric Kripke’s greatest creation, if not one of the top 100 television characters of all time.
John Winchester was also a great man, as proven by the fact that he still exerts a great influence over the lives of Sam and Dean. It’s fitting that an episode entitled Shadows was the first time viewers saw the boys interact with their father as adults because, over two years after his death, John’s shadow still looms over his boys. Yet during In the Beginning viewers were introduced to the good man he once was - a man not so different from Sam and Dean, a man obscured and for the most part forgotten by the great one that emerged in the wake of Mary’s death. In On the Head of a Pin, John’s influence - and the struggle between greatness and goodness - is more important than ever to his sons.
Sam as John 2.0
They may have had different interests, aspirations, and opinions, but Sam Winchester inherited a lot of his personality from his father. In the first three seasons that personality came out in his own unique way, tempered by his goodness and his complete trust in his brother. However, thanks to the tragic turns his life has taken since Dean’s death Sam seems to be following, however unwittingly, in his father’s footsteps - burying the goodness to achieve the greatness he thinks he needs to go on. We never got to see John’s life as he knew it fall apart after Mary’s death, but now we have an idea of what it was probably like in watching Sam’s struggles and personal conflicts throughout season four.
Losing Dean, not Jessica, was Sam’s equivalent to John losing Mary. This is not a comment on Wincest or my way of saying that Sam didn’t love Jessica; but no matter how much he was in love with her Sam didn’t share his whole life with her, not like he did with Dean and not like John did with Mary. Jessica’s death devastated Sam, but witnessing Dean ripped apart by hellhounds turned Sam’s life upside-down, just like seeing Mary pinned to the ceiling did for John over two decades earlier. Most importantly, Sam was able to keep who he was intact and eventually let Jessica go - and not just after having to choose between his family and his revenge. Sam participated in the traditional death and burial rites after Jessica died by attending her funeral and visiting her grave. Three years later he refused to burn Dean (the traditional rite of the Hunter subculture), just as his father once refused to attend Mary’s funeral or visit her headstone, because participation meant letting Dean go and accepting a defeat that he was determined to become great enough to undo.
To achieve the greatness they needed to avenge their loved ones, John and Sam both had to reject their current communities. John quickly learned after Mary died that he wouldn’t be able to find what he was needed from the average folks of Lawrence, Kansas. The people he once depended on wanted him to let his wife go: the police closed the case (on Christmas, no less) and his friends were convinced his grief was making him lose his mind. He went outside of his community to seek answers when he went to psychic Missouri Mosley, and soon rejected his old life entirely for a place in a new community - one whose basis of hunting down the supernatural and evil better fit his new purpose in life of avenging Mary’s death. It was this community of Hunters that his youngest son rejected (through cutting ties with Bobby) after Dean’s death for similar reasons: because his old community wanted him to simply grieve for his brother and then move on. So he left and found a new community of one in Ruby, one that made him powerful in a way he had never before imagined. While there’s a definite difference between the two in terms of intentions, John’s old community probably would have found his new one just as strange and unsettling as Dean and Bobby found Sam’s association with Ruby.
John and Sam had to leave their communities because if they’d stayed they would have eventually had to let their loved ones go. The quests for Azazel and Lilith and the drive to become great enough to defeat them were just as much about keeping Mary and Dean as they were about avenging their deaths. John never let go of Mary - over two decades after she died he still wore her wedding ring and wished her alive with same misery as a recent widower. The starkest reminder that he never let his wife go can be found in the January 24, 1996 entry of his journal: twelve years later, with his oldest son away on his first solo hunt and his youngest son noticeably miserable with their current lifestyle, John writes that “Mary comes first”. Sam threw himself into hunting down Lilith for the same reason he kept the Impala and wore the amulet: because it was a way to connect with Dean. It was also a way to exert control over the situation, to tell himself that he could somehow become powerful enough to reverse Dean’s deal and get his brother back (hence not burning the body because he’d need it again).
The obsessive hunts were also John and Sam’s self-punishments for the innocent mistakes (real or perceived) that led to their loved ones’ deaths. In his first journal entry, John admitted he blamed himself for Mary’s death because he’d gotten out of bed to watch TV. Sam’s mistake wasn’t so much letting Jake live - that was a conscious choice, though he did fault himself for it by starting to reject his idealistic nature even before Dean died - as it was turning his back on a foe who wanted to kill him. It probably wasn’t the first time Sam made this mistake or the first time John stayed up late to watch television, but in both cases it was what most likely what made the difference between life and death. Sam can’t forgive himself for that any more than John could.
Blaming themselves for falling short when it counted led John and Sam to justify doing things they weren’t proud of and would have never even considered doing before. Before Dean died Sam was scared of his powers and horrified by the fact that Azazel fed him some demon blood. The idea that he’d become dependent on those powers and addicted to demon blood would have been inconceivable to him. While John’s shocking personal transformation wasn’t so supernaturally suspect, it was horrifying on a human level. Would the father who put wee Dean to bed and wished baby Sam sweet dreams ever believed he would one day leave his pre-adolescent sons alone in a motel room for days on end with a loaded and cocked gun? Would he have ever considered anything to be a reasonable excuse for not coming home to his motherless boys on Christmas Eve? To punish themselves for their weaknesses, hold onto their loved ones, and make them “great enough” for the vengeance quests that consumed their lives, John and Sam did things that Mary and Dean would never approve of - things that Mary and Dean wanted least for the ones they love.
Sam’s salvation from his father’s shadow lies in the one significant way that his situation differs from John’s: Dean, unlike Mary, came back. Unlike his father, Sam can reconnect with the person who is his life partner and reclaim at least a part of him that was lost when Dean died. In order to do so, he has to choose between being a good man by being supportive and honest with his brother or being a great one who can destroy Lilith (and probably himself in the process). While he can never completely go back to the way he used to be, hopefully Sam can learn from his father’s life and make the right choice - only then can he cease to be John 2.0 and be himself again.
Dean as John’s Disciple
Dean is just as much as his father’s son as Sam is, although in a different way. While John’s mark on Sam’s life through appearance and personality is equal parts nature and nurture, his fingerprints on Dean’s life is all about nurture. John molded Dean (wittingly or not) to be his student, soaking up the lessons he taught; his helpmeet, striving to make his life easier by minding Sam, tending to John’s physical and emotional injuries, and watching his back; his follower, aspiring to live up to the example he set and the expectations he had; and his faithful believer, taking to heart the orders and values he passed down to him even if those orders and values seemed to diminish Dean’s own self-worth. Oh, there have been substitutes since his father’s death - Bobby, Gordon Walker, Alastair, and Castiel - but no one has ever come close to being as influential as John and never has John’s influence on his eldest been more apparent than in episode 16 of season four.
Dean’s belief in John and his desire to live up to his real or perceived expectations is nothing new to anyone in his life. His adversaries certainly understood it: Hendriksen used this devotion to try to rattle him during Nightshifter, Gordon tried to talk him into letting Sam be killed by asking him if he could be the man his father was while holding him hostage in Hunted, and the crocotta pretended to be John in order to lead him to his death in Long Distance Call. His allies also knew how much this meant to Dean. Sam was willing to invoke John when he tried to get Dean to do something he didn’t want to do, like in Devil’s Trap when Sam tried to keep Dean focused on hunting the YED and leaving the Colt behind when they rescued John or in Playthings when he coerced his brother into promising to kill him if it ever became necessary. Bobby, while not trying to convince him to do anything, understood just how much John played into Dean’s decision to sell his soul in All Hell Breaks Loose, Part II.
It was his desire to make his father happy and proud that took Dean to Hell (literally and figuratively) and back (literally and hopefully figuratively). In Cold Oak, South Dakota, Dean was faced with a horrible and intolerable situation: Sam was dead, which for him meant that he’d failed to protect his little brother. This also meant that he’d failed his father, as his first directive was to “watch out for Sammy”. Faced with this loss and failure, Dean looked for inspiration in the actions of the one person he’d always believed in: John. He made a deal with a demon (following the example his father set) to save his brother (in perfect compliance with John’s number one order and value for Dean - that first and foremost he must “watch out for Sammy”) and make is life “worth something” (because - however inadvertently - John’s lessons taught Dean that he had no value outside of his relationship with his family). Hey may not have wanted to go to Hell, but in selling his soul he believed he’d finally become someone his father would be proud of.
This belief, accompanied by Dean’s continued need for John’s approval by trying to live up to his example led directly to him hitting rock bottom in On the Head of a Pin. Living with the fact that he broke under the torment of Hell after thirty years and enduring the memories of becoming a torturer was bad enough, but learning that his father faced the same torment under the same torturer for a lot longer without ever breaking brought Dean’s shame to new depths. Rock bottom, however, came when he found out that he’d been the one to break the first seal and start the Apocalypse only because he hadn’t been as great as John. Dean made the deal with the Crossroads Demon to be the man his father was; now, in his eyes, he failed at living up to his example when he needed to most. The revelation, made even harsher because it was delivered by John-substitute Alastair, left Dean drowning in despair.
There’s more to the story than meets the eye, however. If Alastair is telling the truth - and I could go either way about this - he’s still making the big assumption that John fit the description of a righteous man who could start the Apocalypse by spilling blood in Hell. The forces of Hell certainly thought he could; however, Castiel only said that the angels laid siege to Hell after Dean got there - he never mentioned anything about John. Also, it took 4 months (or 40 years, Hell time) to get Dean out; yet John was down there for a year (or 120 years, Hell time) and only escaped because the Devil’s Gate opened. A siege to spring John from Hell shouldn’t have taken that long - unless there was no siege. John may have been a great man, but righteous doesn’t mean “great” - it means “good”( one of the highest levels of “good” in fact); and just because a man is great doesn’t mean he’s automatically greatly good. John was the great man evil feared but Dean’s strength as always been in his goodness, whether it was spending his life taking care of his family or diligently hunting evil to save the families of others. If Dean can accept this strength rather than dwell on where he falls short of John’s example he may finally be able to free himself from his father’s shadow.
John Winchester’s influence may continue to loom over his sons well into the fourth season of Supernatural. Hopefully, though, Sam can learn from his father’s example and take advantage of the opportunity to rediscover and appreciate his inner goodness; and hopefully Dean can realize he’s a good man in his own right and learn he doesn’t have to live up to any expectations set by John. Maybe the story of Supernatural will ultimately be the story of two sons who grow up to learn from their father’s mistakes just as much as they learned from his life.