I saw a post not too long ago that said they didnât feel as though young!Dean was written/portrayed as kind enough to young!Sam, that weâre told things but that we donât get to see them, and thereâs some merit to that as a flaw in certain writing and, likely, in the directing chosen with the young actors, but in THIS instance, I think the edge of impatience is justified. itâs not actually about Sam. thereâs some frustration with Sam in that big-brother-annoyed-with-younger-sibling way, but heâs an angry, lonely kid here because of John, because their father has left them on their own for days, at the ages of roughly nine and five. a nine year old child is not equipped to flawlessly parent a five year old. nine year olds arenât allowed to babysit, they have babysitters (I babysat as a teenager, thereâs no way Iâd leave a nine year old alone for any extended time. I left a nine year old alone for five minutes to tend to her baby brother and she decided to eat dog biscuits to find out what they tasted like, which wasnât a big deal and didnât hurt her, but still, likeâŠkids! they donât always have the best judgment or impulse control. when I myself was nine, and my mom was at work, I was with my grandparents, not left to my own devices). it is neglectful, considering even grown adults make mistakes with their five year olds. yet John puts the entire weight of that burden on Dean before he leaves - it only takes one mistake, you got that?
one mistake is all it takes, and Dean himself is not seen as a priority or as a vulnerable kid.
John: Lock the doors, the windows, close the shades. Most importantâ
young!Dean: Watch out for Sammy.
an instruction which literally colors his entire life.
further, John says, Thatâs my man. to his child. as a way to force his child to be a parent, but also as a sort of compliment - câmon, now, Dean, youâre so grown-up, you can handle this, youâve already had a gun in your hands, you KNOW whatâs out there in the dark, you know there are monsters that rip people to shreds, you know the heat of the fire the smell of the smoke your eyes burning from the blaze, youâre not a kid, you never were one. it infuses it with a sense of importance - heâs entrusted with a task, he has to do it right.
so Sam asks for cereal, and Dean may slam the box and the bowl down with annoyance, but the point is that he still gives it to him. because Sam is just a sweet little kid, heâs allowed to be. and Dean is his protector and caregiver and, alone in that motel room, mother/brother.
Dean leaves him to go to the arcade and this sometimes gets treated as a reckless, selfish decision, but again, he is a child. a child with no normal socialization, cooped up in a motel room, no idea when - or IF - his dad is coming back, having to parent his little brother. of course he craves some time for himself. of course he wants the simplicity of playing a game. of course he doesnât think that one action could endanger his brother. of course he gets blamed for it. and in that withering glare from John, he internalizes that guilt.
he looked at me different, you know? Which was worse. Not that I blame him. He gave me an order and I didnât listen, I almost got you killed.
at the age of four, we donât have complete verbal skills. itâs when we begin using more complete sentences. we can count, maybe a little greater than ten, and recognize certain letters. possibly we learn to write our names. we start developing finer motor skills (like using utensils, brushing our own teeth, buttoning clothes). we are malleable and full of possibility that has yet to take shape, because weâre still closer to when we were infants than we even are to adolescence.
at the age of four, Dean ceased beingâŠwhoever that little one was, whoever Dean was going to be. we know that for a while he stopped talking. the tag above that says: âdeanâ little precious dean burned alongside his mother on a ceiling all those years ago <- itâs true. that Dean didnât make it out of the fire. baby Sam was put into his arms and Dean became something and someone else altogether.
I pulled this post up from my old old blog months ago, and have had it in my drafts for a while, and I wouldâve reblogged it without extra note had I not in passing seen the commentary about young!Deanâs portrayal and wanted to remark on it here, but now I also keep thinking about this post. âDeanâs WHOLE role in the family which he thought he was filling he was actually creating. MARY is not even mary. ONLY dean is mary.â which is also true. the Mary weâre told burned on the ceiling wasnât really the Mary who existed. beautiful, silken, white nightgown Mary was always an ideal, and later a figment, and later (for better or worse) proven false altogether. John takes Dean and tries to fit him into the mold of something that never existed, Dean tries to fill a mold that never existed - he is the mold, he creates the mold. only he embodies it. he can never be her, but she was never her. she can never be him. only Dean is mother Mary.
I had to be a father and I had to be a mother, to keep him safe. And that wasnât fair. And I couldnât do it.
âI couldnât do itâ is the theme all the way back to this episode. the shtriga nearly drains Sam and thatâs put on Dean. he wanted a bowl of cereal and was slightly impatient about it, and thatâs a failing unless he relents, so he relents (which is not Samâs fault, Sam is also an entirely innocent child who has no concept of whatâs happening or why he shouldnât simply ask for what he wants). Dean is nurturer and nourishment, savior and soldier. heâs the one whoâs there to give comfort in the dark. some part of Dean was always dead, and another part of him was always a ghost, and he eked out his space in echoes of a revered mother and shadows of an absent father, and somehow, remarkably, he still also unflinchingly became himself. his trauma and his capacity for love were fused together in that fire, molten pieces that cooled and canât be separated. he was never again only Dean.
