Generational trauma; Sam becoming Mary
Been thinking a lot about the generational trauma and domestic (sexual) violence parallels between Mary and Sam, and Sam and Jack. Specifically how both Mary and Sam's reluctance to adress their trauma leads to their children being hurt by the men who abused them.
As a young woman, Mary is violated by a man wearing the body of her father (Azazel). Through this violation, Azazel becomes the metaphorical parent of her child (Sam). The incestous sexual violence parallel here is not subtle. Azazel explicitely calls Mary a breeder, tells Dean he’s gonna fuck her and that he will come back to violate his sibling too. Which he does.
Instead of telling John, adressing what happened and preparing for Azazels inevitable return, Mary supresses it, living in denial until it's too late. It leaves us wondering; if she had just told someone, if she had done something, perhaps her son could have been saved. Or, at very least, could have been prepared for the grooming he would later experience. But she didn't, so he wasn't. She doomed him with her refusal to accept the reality of what happened to her.
And then Sam gets his own child, and repeats Mary's mistakes. He becomes the metaphorical parent of his rapists child, and despite knowing that Lucifer will come back for Jack, he refuses to adress what was done to him until it's too late.
Ultimately, it is the silence around what was done to Sam (which I'd argue Castiel and Dean are also partially complicit in) that makes it so that Jack is willing to go with Lucifer, becomes vulnerable to his grooming. If he had known what happened to Sam, really understood it, he almost certainly wouldn't have entertained Lucifer at all.
But Sam doesn't tell him, so Jack gives him a chance, and Lucifer does what Azazel did: he uses Sam to get back into Jack's life, and then violates him; slices him open, rips out his grace, leaves him broken and wrong in a fundemantal way. Sam "walks in on them", hitches a ride, and is then hurt in front of Jack (like Mary was hurt in front of Sam).
I feel like quite a lot of people talk about the generational trauma of Dean becoming John in relation to Jack, but I also think Sam fails him as a parent and that he does so in much the same way that his mother failed him. Sam and Mary are classic examples of how denial and shame enables abuse.