Hello everyone. I hope you’ve got your emotional support blankets and animals and alcohol, whatever it is you need to cope with what happened last night. Once we’ve all had a minute to breathe, I would like to invite you to join me in rewatching the series, one episode a week.
We’re turning the Sacred Letters into a weekly, live podcast on Twitch.
Dates and times will be announced soon! What i need you all to do is follow The Sacred Letters of Supernatural on twitch to be notified of streams!
Each week we’ll talk about an episode of Supernatural through a specific theme, starting with the pilot and going from there.
I’m really excited about this project and I hope you all join me!
Don’t forget to follow me on Twitter and YouTube as well for updates!
Definition: mental and moral qualities distinctive to an individual; the way someone thinks, feels, behaves
Welcome to the Sacred Letters of Supernatural. Today we will be covering episode 1x03, “Dead in the Water” while thinking about the theme of character. When I think of character, my mind goes to the first part of the definition above, the “moral qualities” distinctive to an individual. I am reminded of citizenship awards in elementary school and posters in school hallways with slogans like, “Character is what you do when nobody is watching.” Character has a moral connotation to it with the expectation that I should have “good” character. But that is not the only way to define or think about “character.”
Character is also distinctive qualities of any kind that define a person. Being an avid reader and television show watcher, as a well as a writer of fan fiction, this aspect of the definition is also familiar to me. Creating characters for a story involves building distinctive, compelling individuals that viewers will be invested in. Characters can become so defined that we come to expect certain actions and behaviors from them, and when their actions fall short of our expectations, we label them as “out of character.” In fanfiction, keeping characters “in character” can be a challenge for writers. There is a need to place close attention to the actions, motivations, and philosophies of the people that are being written about. Without these elements, stories can fall apart and readers lose interest. Character is important to a story.
In addition to feeling something is “out of character,” we can have other reactions when a character’s actions surprise us, like when the bad guy finds a cause to be heroic or when the grumpy, standoffish character makes a friend. If these unexpected behaviors are written in a compelling way with clear steps of character growth or appropriate catalysts, we enjoy seeing a character change. Humans can also surprise us in this way. The quiet student can stand up against a bully or a person who has been to jail multiple times can decide to turn their life around.Â
It seems that most of the time, we enjoy these kinds of stories. But there are limits to the amount of change we can accept, and that limit is different for everyone. There are men who stop being sexist, nazis who leave their ideology, bullies who develop self-awareness and try to make amends. Accepting these changes can be difficult, if not impossible for some. Yet many of us love movie characters like Loki who develop from the “bad guy” into something better and more selfless. There is the real life vs. movie screen distinction to take into account when thinking about why we react differently. We also understand Loki’s past and watch his development, so we can empathize with him. However, it appears that we often like the idea of the bad guy turning good, but we have a hard time accepting it in real life. “Cancel culture” is an example of this challenge to accept change in people or to recognize the diversity of character within one individual.Â
This is not to argue what we should or should not accept, to put a label on right or wrong when it comes to character growth and how we respond to it, in fiction or real life. There are legitimate reasons for not trusting or accepting a person who has committed horrible acts against other humans, or who have passed our own personal boundaries in terms of what we will accept. This discussion is meant to be an observation, one that I think is worth exploring. The purpose of thinking about this idea is to learn more about yourself and how you view the world. I think we can look at this concept of character growth on a smaller scale and consider how we relate it to relationships in our personal lives, and then we can take it and examine how we approach the bigger issues. To begin digging a little deeper into our personal perspectives on this issue, we can ask ourselves, what side of the “acceptance spectrum” I lie on?
So with that question in mind, let’s summarize the episode.
The episode opens in Lake Manitoc, Wisconsin with the morning routine of the Carlton family. There’s Bill, the father, and his two children, Sophie and Will, who live in a small house by the lake. Sophie is getting ready to go for a swim. The weather and the lake is calm, but once Sophie’s out on the water, the swimmer can’t help but feel that something is underneath the surface. She pauses to look around, sees nothing, but is soon dragged under by an unseen force. She drowns and her body is never recovered.Â
Sam and Dean enter as federal wildlife officers after seeing an article about Sophie’s drowning. This lake has already claimed a life that year, and several more in the past. The Winchesters talk to the sheriff in town, Jake Devins, and meet his daughter and grandson, Andrea and Lucas. Sam and Dean learn that the daughter’s husband was the first drowning earlier that year, and that the grandson witnessed the event. Lucas won’t speak anymore, he only draws.Â
Dean attempts to gain Lucas’ trust while he and Sam investigate the lake. They try talking to the Carltons, but Bill shuts them out. Soon after this first conversation, Will dies by drowning in the kitchen sink. Sam and Dean visit a second time and try harder to make Bill talk, but he is almost comatose with depression.Â
With no other leads, Sam and Dean leave Bill alone and happen to meet Andrea in a park. Dean connects with Lucas and receives a picture from him, a drawing of a house by a church with a boy standing by the fence with his bike. They find this house in town, and Sam and Dean visit the house of an old woman whose son, Peter Sweeney, went missing when he was around ten years old. Sam and Dean realize there’s a connection between this boy and Bill when they see an old photograph in the house.Â
They visit Bill again, but find him riding his boat out onto the lake. While they try to get his attention, something knocks the boat into the air and Bill falls into the lake and drowns.Â
The sheriff kicks Sam and Dean out of town after the incident, looking up their ranger numbers and finding out the ID’s are fake. But Dean doesn’t listen, he feels like something is off, so he turns around and visits Andrea and Lucas. Lucas is frantic when he answers the door. His mom is trapped in the bathroom, drowning in the tub. Dean saves her, and she tells him she heard a child’s voice in the water saying, “Come play with me.”
Dean looks through Andrea’s old photo albums while in her home and sees a young Jake Devins with Peter Sweeney. Lucas directs Sam and Dean to a random spot in the yard by the lake, and they dig up an old bike. The sheriff finds them and holds them at gunpoint. Sam and Dean tell him they’ve made a connection. They guess that he and Bill killed Peter Sweeney as kids. The sheriff tries to deny it, but while facing his daughter, he can’t lie. He admits to the killing, stating that he and Bill bullied Peter, but one time it accidentally went too far, and Peter drowned.
The adults argue about whether the missing boy is haunting the lake, with the sheriff calling Sam and Dean crazy. Meanwhile, Lucas goes out to the dock, drops a toy in, and attempts to fish it out. He’s pulled in by a ghostly hand. Sam and Dean jump into the lake to save Lucas. Meanwhile, the sheriff runs to the edge of the lake and sees Peter’s face, pale and dirty, pop up just above the surface. While Sam and Dean search frantically for Lucas, the sheriff sacrifices himself by wading into the water and begging the spirit to take him instead. It listens, pulls the sheriff under, and releases Lucas to Dean.
The character in this episode I want to focus on is Jake Devins because of his involvement with the murder of Peter Sweeney. While Bill Carlton was also a participant, I would argue that the episode focuses more on Devins character and family. We learn that he’s a family man by hearing how he helps out with his grandson after the death of his son-in-law. We see multiple conversations and interactions with his family, so we’re able to get a sense of the kind of man Devins is. He comes across as a hardworking sheriff who cares deeply about his family. He appears to be direct as well, sometimes intense or intimidating in the way he talks with Sam and Dean about the lake. In general, we get an idea that Devins is a honorable, experienced man, so it might come as a shock when he later admits to being involved in the murder of a fellow classmate as a child.
While the audience may or may not have predicted Jake’s confession, his daughter Andrea is completely taken by surprise. She wavers between doubt and wanting her father to admit the truth in the scene where Devins divulges the secret he has kept for three decades. She is shocked by learning the truth, never considering her father capable of murder. But the truth doesn’t appear to change how she thinks about her father. At the end of the episode, she tells Dean that whatever Jake did in his past, Andrea knows him as a good father and grandfather who loved and took care of his family. This version of Jake is what Andrea chooses to remember. I can’t help but wonder if I would have the same capacity as Andrea to ignore something like murder. Would I be able to focus on the good parts of a person’s character after learning of an action like that? And why would I want to do that?
While watching the episode, my own appraisal of Jake Devins’ character fundamentally changes after learning that he frequently bullied Peter Sweeney with Bill and this bullying caused Peter’s death. I wonder how someone can go that far with hurting someone and still call it an “accident.” I wonder what kind of child Devins was growing up and the lack of empathy he would have had to be a bully. I think about the inability he and Bill had to tell the truth, which comes across as cowardice to me. Their actions led to the death of someone’s son, and Peter’s mom never gets any answers. She has to live the rest of her life not knowing what happened to her son.Â
It’s challenging to reconcile the two parts of Jake’s character that we see, the honorable, family-oriented sheriff, and the bully who killed a classmate. In the end, Devins’ family-oriented side wins when he sacrifices himself to save his daughter and grandson. But I can’t help but feel that doesn’t atone for his actions. Somehow Andrea is able to reconcile these two sides of her father. Maybe it’s because of the family bond they have. I am an outsider watching this happen, but if Jake was my father or my brother, my response might be different.Â
Character is not absolute, although at times we’d maybe like to think it is. It would make things simple for the bad guy to be all bad, and the good guys to be all good. But humans, and fictional characters, exist in the gray. Every one of us responds to that gray area differently. I extend lots of sympathy to Sam Winchester, for example, who in later seasons makes many questionable choices and endangers many people. But when I think about Sam, I don’t define him by those bad choices. I understand the reason he made the choices, and I believe that makes up for the actual content of the decisions he makes. Jake, however, was a bully. He wasn’t acting questionably for a noble cause, he was doing it to be mean and exert dominance. The intention behind the actions matters to me when I’m judging a character, but it's more challenging to judge a character when two juxtaposing actions exist in the same episode. Jake is both a murderer and a loving father/grandfather, and that makes his character very, very gray.
Again, there’s no right or wrong way to view this issue, but I’m offering my perspective as a point of observation. I think it can be useful to ask ourselves how we judge character, by what standards and to what degree of absoluteness, and consider when we are able to forgive or overlook bad choices. Understanding this can give us insights into how we punish and forgive those in our personal life, what issues we feel passionate enough about to draw a line on, and how we may vote on certain political issues. Learning how we respond to fictional characters can give us insight in how we respond to people and issues in real life.Â
Lectio Divina
The next segment of this letter is called “Lectio Divina,” which is a Christian spiritual practice for reading scriptures that involves interacting with the text on four different levels. I am following Harry Potter and the Sacred Text’s use of this practice and adapting it the best I can to the visual format. Normally, you pick a scripture or a line of text to analyze. I randomized numbers between 1 and 42 (the amount of minutes in the episode), and picked the first full line after the minute mark I was given.
Line: 5:00, “I’m agent Ford. This is agent Hamill. We’re with the U.S. wildlife service.” -Dean Winchester
Now we analyze this line on the four levels of Lectio Divina : literal (narrative), allegorical (metaphors and symbols), reflection (how do I connect to it), and invitational (what is the text asking of us or teaching us).Â
Literal: Dean and Sam are knocking on the door of the victim’s family. They’re posing as wildlife agents in order to get information from the family about what happened to the victim. They’re using aliases of actors, Harrison Ford and Mark Hamill, who are widely known for their roles as Han Solo and Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars franchise.Â
Allegorical/Symbolic: The names that Sam and Dean choose immediately jump out at me. The first thing I think of when I hear these names is Star Wars and then I think of the characters, Han Solo and Luke Skywalker. The choice of these character names for Sam and Dean can give us an insight into how Sam and Dean are meant to be portrayed, and how Sam and Dean see themselves since Kripke has stated that Sam and Dean were originally based off of these characters. Perhaps Dean identifies with Han Solo, the rugged smuggler who’s a bit cocky but ends up having a heart of gold. But I’m not sure whether we can say that Sam identifies with Skywalker because we don’t know if he chose that alias. It seems more likely that Dean chose the alias’ in this situation.
Personal: Here, Sam and Dean are lying for a good cause, but their lie seems dangerous. I tend to think lying is a bad thing except for rare cases. Sometimes I might lie to avoid hurting someone’s feelings, but even the acceptableness of that is arguable. It’s hard for me to imagine posing as federal agents as comfortably as Sam and Dean seem to. I can imagine myself sweating, a knot in my stomach, and stuttering when I attempt to speak, but the fake agent names roll off Dean’s tongue as smooth as his own. In real life, I would argue against people posing as agents, but I’m supportive of what Sam and Dean are doing. Without their ability to pose as agents, their work would be nearly impossible. I can justify the use of their lying, but I don’t often justify lying in real life.
Invitational: I think this line is asking us to compare the characters of Sam and Dean with their alias’ characters, and to see what insights we can gather from this comparison. With these alias’ used so early in the first scene, I can’t help but think their use is significant, not random. And if we can compare the Winchesters with other fictional characters to gain insights into their characters, then I don’t think it’s too far a jump to say we can use fictional characters to gain insights into ourselves. Characters are powerful, just as powerful as the story itself, and I would argue that this ability to compare and relate to fictional characters is what gives power to a story. We can see pieces of ourselves and our own lives in a story, see courage in the face of hardship, and find inspiration to face our own tough choices. So maybe we can ask what Sam and Dean see in these Star Wars characters, and how might they gain inspiration from Han Solo and Luke Skywalker’s stories.Â
Before I finish this letter, I would like to end with a question for the audience. This question is for personal evaluation or contemplation, but if you would like a chance for your answer to be featured on the blog or to begin a discussion, please send your answers to my Tumblr inbox.
This week’s question:
Who is your favorite fictional “bad-guy-turned-good” character?
And last, but not least, a special thanks to our patrons!
Letter #3 has been released for patrons! The letter will become public and be posted to Tumblr this Sunday at 2pm. This week’s theme was chosen by patrons and we’re covering episode 1x03, Dead in the Water.Â
Definition: the ability to do something that frightens one or strength in the face of pain or grief
Welcome back to the Sacred Letters of Supernatural. This week’s theme is courage and we’re taking a look at the episode “Wendigo.” Bravery, or courage, may seem like an obvious choice for a theme--Sam and Dean put their lives at risk and battle monsters every episode--but I want to focus on the less obvious acts of bravery shown in this particular episode. I think those might hold a lot of value for application to our personal lives. After all, none of us are hunting supernatural creatures on the daily.Â
When thinking about every-day acts of personal bravery, I’m reminded of a recent fear-inducing situation I experienced. For those of you who don’t follow my personal Tumblr and don’t know this already, I went to Mexico last July. That trip brought up a lot of anxiety for me. It was my first time out of the country, first time in a place that didn’t speak primarily English, and first time on a plane. Before the trip, I was having anxiety induced dreams about forgetting my passport and not being able to get into the country. In general, I was thinking of all the ways things could go wrong and something bad could happen. I was nervous the entire way leading up to the morning of our plane ride, I was nervous walking through the airport, sitting on the plane, and through most of the plane ride. But once we landed and I realized I was really in Mexico, something almost magical happened. I walked through the doors of the Monterrey airport where our group of friends and family was waiting for us and the big ball of anxiety dissolved. Sure, there were smaller moments of anxiety during the two-week trip (anxiety never completely disappears) but the rest of the trip was fun and exciting. I made new friends and ate lots of good food, and now I want to go back as often as I can.Â
Despite my fears, I made the decision to go through with the trip, not knowing how I would feel once I landed in Mexico or how I would like the food, culture, or inability to communicate with most of the people. I chose to go anyway and see what happened. A large part of what helped me was the presence of familiar people on the trip with me. Close friends and family acted as a support, especially during that first plane ride. The plane ride was one aspect of the trip I was especially nervous about. But after we landed, I sighed in relief because I had finally faced a fear. And I found out I actually liked riding on the plane. I got a huge confidence boost from conquering that fear. I love to think about how something that seemed incredibly scary to me became one of my favorite memories.Â
Living normal life requires these kinds of “small” acts of courage, especially for those of us with high levels of anxiety. But by small I don’t mean “less than.” I don’t think it takes any less courage to do the small acts of bravery than it does to do the “big” things. Fear about a situation, and the courage it takes to face a fear, is relative. It seems almost easy for Sam and Dean to put their own safety on the line for others, but it’s not easy for them to talk to each other about their father or to talk about Sam’s grief. Spoiler alert: Sam and Dean do those exact things in this episode anyway. So then I asked myself: What makes someone have the courage to do the hard things in life like Sam and Dean did in “Wendigo”? Maybe we can find some answers by looking at the characters in this episode. But first, let’s go over the summary.
The episode opens with three young adults at Blackwater Ridge, camping in a remote location of the endless forest. They are playing video games in their tents and one of them, Tommy, is sending an endearing video message to his siblings, Haley and Ben. One of the guys leaves the tent to use the restroom and a few seconds later, he is heard screaming. Another guy takes a peek out of the tent to see what’s wrong, but he’s yanked out of the tent by something we can’t see. Realizing he’s in danger, Tommy turns off his lamp and hides, but whatever got his friends gets him, too.Â
Sam and Dean travel to Blackwater Ridge because of coordinates that John gives them. They hear about the incident with Tommy, do some investigating, and find a witness to similar events many years ago. The witness’ name is Shaw and his family was killed when he was a child decades ago. Based on Shaw’s story, Sam and Dean get clues to what the creature might be. While most of the park rangers don’t believe Tommy is in danger and want Haley to stop bugging them about her brother, Tommy’s siblings hire a guide to take them through the forest anyway. Before leaving on their hike, Sam and Dean catch up to them and they all go on the search together.Â
During this search, the guide is killed and Sam and Dean deduce that the creature is a Wendigo. They tell Haley and Ben the truth. Sam and Dean also find some time for a heart-to-heart after Sam begins acting more angry than usual. Dean and Haley are kidnapped by the Wendigo, but Sam and Ben find the trail and go into abandoned mine shafts to find them. Tommy is found alive along with Haley and Dean. Dean uses a DIY fire gun to set the Wendigo ablaze while Sam stands in front of the family to protect them. They all escape the mine shafts safely and alive.Â
These first few episodes are ones I’ve seen multiple times because they’re “classic” Supernatural. I love to go back and watch them because they hold a nostalgic feeling for me. They’re slightly spooky, and they remind me of staying up late because I just can’t stop watching. But despite having seen this episode a few times before, I was noticing new details and aspects of the story. I saw so many beautiful moments of courage in this episode. If I had unlimited time and motivation to write, I would spend time on each of the moments. But for the sake of my schedule and your time, I will be focusing on two specific acts of courage seen in “Wendigo.”Â
There seems to be a pattern of people confronting difficult conversations in this episode. Sam has a dream about confronting Jess at her grave while his grief is still raw. Haley repeatedly confronts park rangers who don’t believe her concerns. Dean confronts Sam when he notices Sam is more irritable than usual. Confrontation can require a hefty amount of courage. Not at all confrontation is an argument; sometimes it’s having a hard conversation, like Dean sitting Sam down in the forest and asking him what’s wrong. This scene happens at the twenty-five minute mark. While watching, I felt that Dean didn’t know how Sam would respond. I think he was a bit nervous about that, but he talked to Sam anyway because he cared about the wellbeing of everyone on the trip. Dean realized that if he didn’t confront what was going on inside Sam, it could be dangerous for everyone. Dean displayed bravery in helping someone get through a tough time and in trying to find the right thing to say to a grieving person. Sam also displayed bravery in confiding in his brother. We know Sam was dealing with heavy emotions because of the dream we see earlier in the episode, so I think it’s safe to assume it was no easy feat for Sam to divulge some of his inner turmoil.Â
The moment of bravery which spoke to me the most in this episode happened when Sam and Dean visited Shaw. Shaw was attacked by the Wendigo when he was a young child, but no one believed what he experienced. Everyone told him it was a bear attack, and so for decades that’s what he told himself. When the Winchesters meet him, he’s an old man who’s had to carry his secret for a long time. There is a lot of shame in that kind of suffering, when there’s a feeling that no one believes you or cares to hear the truth. There’s also the fear that if you told your truth, you would be mocked, ostracized, or bad-mouthed. I imagine Shaw had a similar kind of fear and shame growing up. Shaw doesn’t say he feels shame, but I can see shame in his body language. He doesn’t want to look Sam and Dean in the eyes, he tells them “You wouldn’t believe me. Nobody ever did.” That’s when Sam sits down in front of Shaw, eye to eye, and asks him again, but softer, “What did you see?” Shaw finds the courage to open up and tell his true story with a shaky voice.Â
As I watched that scene, I wondered how he found the capability to trust two men he had never met before. Sam’s empathy helped, and the boys knew the right questions to ask. Maybe Shaw had been looking for someone to understand what he experienced, and Sam and Dean were those people. Sam and Dean showed the right kind of curiosity and they created a safe space where Shaw could tell his truth and be accepted. There is courage and power in telling your story, but it requires faith and hope that you will be accepted. Shaw found this when he chose to be vulnerable with the Winchesters, and his vulnerability led to the rescue of Tommy and the death of the monster who killed his parents.Â
I imagine Shaw found some amount of healing as well in telling his story, and maybe he would have been given more had he been told he was right all along. Sam and Dean never visit Shaw again, so we can’t know for sure how this meeting affected him. However, knowing how vulnerability can open someone up to healing and connection, I can guess that we would have seen a huge amount of relief on his face after Sam and Dean told him that this creature can never harm another person again.Â
On a side note, Shaw tells Sam and Dean that he doesn’t know why the creature didn’t take him as a child. I’ve never noticed this before but Shaw says he was sleeping by the fireplace. After watching this scene several times, I remembered that Wendigos don’t like fire. Fire kills them. Shaw didn’t get taken as a child because he was next to a fire when his parents were attacked. Drop a comment if you never realized that either so I know I’m not alone!
Lectio Divina
The next segment of this letter is called “Lectio Divina,” which is a Christian spiritual practice for reading scriptures that involves interacting with the text on four different levels. I am following Harry Potter and the Sacred Text’s use of this practice and adapting it the best I can to the visual format. Normally, you pick a scripture or a line of text to meditate on. I randomized numbers between 1 and 42 (the amount of minutes in the episode), and picked the first full line after the minute mark I was given.
Line, 11:00: “Okay, watch this. I downloaded that guy Tommy’s video to the laptop. Check this out.” - Sam
Literal: Sam and Dean are sitting in a busy bar with a laptop and old newspapers. Sam wants to show Dean the video of Tommy talking to his siblings just before the attack happened. The clip in question that Sam shows Dean is “three frames, it’s fractions of a second.” Sam points out a shadow quickly moving outside the tent behind Tommy. This confirms their suspicions that the attack on Tommy’s camp was not a natural occurrence like a bear attack. The creature moved far too fast according to Sam.Â
Allegorical/Symbolic: Watching this scene made me consider the amount of effort it would have taken to notice the quick movement of shadows behind Tommy. Sam would have had to go through each frame individually which would have taken an incredible amount of patience. In a situation where not many people are believing Tommy’s sister, Sam is taking a considerate amount of care into finding out what happened. Sam is also applying refined observational skills to dissect this video. He comes across intelligent in this scene, using his knowledge of computer technology and observational skills to give them a clearer direction in the case. In a lot of crime procedurals, there is the staple “geek” in the show, think Abby in NCIS or Spencer Reid in Criminal Minds. This person gives the team valuable insights that result in solved cases, even if they are at times eccentric. Sam is functioning like one of these characters here. He knows computers and video technology, and he went to law school, and he’s able to use his unique skill set to help crack the case.
Personal: Somewhat reluctantly, I was reminded of the grueling task of getting college assignments and papers done. Research papers require attention to detail and painstaking hours of research. I don’t think I applied as much care to each paper as Sam does to this case, but I’ll give myself a break. Sam is working with a life or death situation, so he may be more motivated than I was. But regardless, this scene made me think about what it means to stay focused and apply myself to complete a difficult job. How do I motivate myself when my brain is tired? How do I put myself aside temporarily when I’m helping someone else? Sam seems to have no trouble pouring himself into his work whereas I often feel like I could give more of myself to others. It takes genuine effort to put lots of care into a project, and I think approaching tasks with that kind of attitude is ideal. I’ll acknowledge that it’s a standard I give myself that others may not, and sometimes that standard may cause me to be too hard on myself. But I look up to Sam in this scene. He pushes through a monotonous task and comes out the other side with a valuable lead.Â
Invitational: At first watch, I didn’t think this scene offered much in the way of reflection. How can watching someone show a video clip offer any useful insights to how I live my life? However, when I approached watching this scene as a lesson in observing the amount of care and dedication Sam put towards his responsibilities, this scene held more meaning. Sam’s actions led to saving the life of another human being. The amount of care Sam put into his task had a monumentally positive effect on someone else. This led me to ask the question: how does our focus and attention to detail affect others? I remembered that when I was younger, my mom would ask for help to clean the bathroom. Sometimes I would rush through it and miss spots in the bathtub or on the mirror. My mom would be frustrated, but as a kid, I didn’t understand what the big deal was. It was mostly clean, right? But this made my mom feel like she had extra work to do. Doing the job with great care to the detail and end results would have meant a great deal to my mom. I imagine there are other opportunities in which I can go the extra mile to make someone feel the same way.
Before I finish this letter, I would like to end with a question for the audience. This question is for personal evaluation or contemplation, but if you would like a chance for your answer to be featured on the blog or to begin a discussion, please send your answers to my Tumblr inbox.
This Week’s Question:
What do you think was the biggest moment of courage in this episode and why?
And last, but not least, a special thanks to our patrons!
Welcome to the first letter of The Sacred Letters of Supernatural. I’m glad to have you here with me on this journey. I want to take a moment to say thank you to those who have already shown their support for the project on Tumblr and Twitter. You gave this project the kickstart it needed to get off the ground. And for those who will be jumping on board now and in the future, thank you.Â
I also want to thank the people over at Harry Potter and the Sacred Text, the podcast which inspired this project. I hope to take the inspiration and love for Harry Potter that you show through your podcasts and channel that into my love for the show Supernatural. I also hope to take this project and make it my own while learning from the work put into Harry Potter and the Sacred Text.Â
As I begin my work on this project, I find myself wishing I had a text to hold. There is something special about holding a book in your hands as you read from it, something about feeling the physical object in my hands helps me learn. But Supernatural is primarily a visual and auditory experience and I think there’s something special about that, too. We can see more details, see how characters react in body language and tone of voice. The set design, lighting, and color choices can clue us into what’s happening on screen. We don’t get internal dialogue or exposition of a character’s introspection on television, but I think many of the visual and auditory aspects make up for that.Â
So with that being said, let’s begin the first Sacred Letter of Supernatural.
I want to start with a personal story. When I was a young child, I did not like Chinese food. I wouldn’t eat it. When my dad tried to convince me to try Chinese food as a child, it would usually result in tears. It wasn’t until years later as an adult that I learned that when I was about four years old, I had Chinese food for dinner and a stomach bug the same evening. You maybe can see where this is going? My parents’ bed sheets were ruined, let’s just say that. But that moment, the feeling of that memory, stayed with me many years even though I couldn’t remember the actual incident. This aversion was something my dad didn’t understand. I remember very vividly sitting in a Chinese buffet with my plain chicken, french fries, and a few vegetables. My dad is trying to make me try various different foods. I keep saying no and become so upset at the pressure to “just get over it,” I cry in the restaurant. To my dad, Chinese food was just chicken or pork with noodles, rice, and vegetables. It was delicious. To me, Chinese food was the reason I had become violently ill, and my body couldn’t forget that. The body’s memory of fear can be a powerful force in our day-to-day lives.
By now, you may have guessed our theme for today’s letter: fear. The Merriam Webster dictionary defines fear as “an unpleasant, often strong emotion caused by anticipation or awareness of danger.” I also like the definition given by Google which defines fear as “an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat.” I like how the second definition highlights the idea that fear is tied to our own beliefs that something is dangerous. This says to me that some people can believe that something is scary and experience fear, while others do not see the same danger. Like in my story about having this fear of Chinese food, I expected it to be dangerous while those around me did not. They couldn’t understand my fear.Â
But I think we can understand the fear that’s happening in the pilot episode of Supernatural. For the fandom, this episode is iconic. We will likely never forget the visuals and lines of dialogue, many of which are echoed in episodes fifteen years later, but I’ll still give you a quick recap of what happens in this episode.Â
The year is 1982, and we are introduced to the Winchester family on the night that their mother, Mary Winchester, dies. She is murdered by a mysterious figure who breaks into baby Sam’s nursery. When Mary goes to check on Sam, she interrupts this figure and is attacked. We see some of the ordeal, most poignantly the image of her stuck to the ceiling, stomach cut, and flames igniting around her. Her husband, John Winchester, sees her on the ceiling as well. John knows something is not normal about the way she dies.Â
When we fast forward twenty-two years, Sam has been in college and is living with his girlfriend. He seems to be enjoying life. But he hasn’t talked to his family in four years. Unexpectedly, Dean shows up, tells him that their father is missing on a hunting trip, and Sam agrees to help Dean find their father. To track his whereabouts, they listen to a voicemail in which John says something bigger is happening, something dangerous.Â
On the search for their father, they are led to a potential haunting where several men have been reported missing on a stretch of highway over the years. John had been on the case before he disappeared. The boys find out which motel John was staying at and find his room, but are caught by police and Dean is arrested. However, they are able to figure out that the ghost they’re hunting is a Woman in White and Dean’s arrest leads them to John’s journal where John has recorded everything he knows about the supernatural.Â
The boys end up getting rid of the Woman in White, and they find out where John wants them to go next. However, Sam insists on being back home for his law school interview the next morning, so Dean takes him home. When Sam goes inside, he lays down in bed, looks up, and finds Jessica on the ceiling like his mom. The ceiling catches on fire around her. She can’t be saved. The episode ends with Sam and Dean outside of their car, the 1967 Impala. Sam says, “We got work to do,” before slamming the trunk full of hunting supplies shut and leaving with Dean for the next case.
Moments of fear are littered throughout this pilot. Given that the genre of the show involves ghosts, monsters, and demons, it makes sense that fear would be an integral part of each episode. But I want to focus on a key scene of this episode and how fear plays a special role in defining the Winchesters’ lives.
The opening scene of the Winchester family tucking in for the night is heartwarming. Everyone smiles at least once, John and Mary are doting on their children, John appears to be an involved, helpful father as he helps tuck the boys in for the night. There is a lot of focus on Sam. We get this shot of just Sam in his crib, laughing, playing with his feet, a shot of Mary kissing him goodnight, and a shot of John specifically saying, “Sweet Dreams, Sammy.” It sets up an expectation that Sam is the main focus, if not the main character, and it adds to the sweet feeling I get while watching this scene.Â
But there are hints that something isn’t right. The opening scene of this episode is an exterior shot of the house at night with shadows of tree limbs crawling up the side of the home. The limbs are moving unnaturally. There’s suspenseful music playing. You know something is wrong and your fears are confirmed when the mobile in Sam’s nursery begins moving on its own, the clock stops at 8:12pm, the nightlight flickers, and the baby monitor in the parents’ room makes odd, high frequency noises. When Mary wakes up, John is not in the room. Mary sees John standing in Sam’s nursery, with more lights flickering in the hall. While Mary does not seem to be afraid, the viewer by now knows that she should be afraid. And that moment comes soon enough when she hears the tv on downstairs, and sees John asleep in a chair. She runs back upstairs to Sam with who she now knows is an intruder. We don’t see what happens between Mary and this mysterious figure, but we hear the screams and we see what happens next. John runs upstairs, finds Sam alone in the crib, and thinks everything is fine until he notices the blood dripping from the ceiling. That’s when he looks up, sees his wife on the ceiling, a slash across her stomach. He falls to the ground, looking up at the ceiling with horror as fire bursts around his wife and Sam begins to wail.
What strikes me about this whole first scene is how much we don’t see, and we can only notice what’s missing after having watched this show for its many seasons. We don’t see what happens to Sam, so we don’t know the reason for the man visiting his nursery. We don’t see Mary’s interaction with this man. John doesn’t even see the man. He only sees his wife on the ceiling, dying. And that’s why this scene is so horrifying to me. It turns the world of the Winchesters upside down, ruins every good thing we saw in their warm, family interactions, and it leaves us with many more questions than answers.Â
The reason the scene works as being scary is because it leaves much unknown, and fear festers in the unknown. It seems that some of the most scary moments in life are when big, important questions are left unanswered. When you’re at the doctors waiting on potentially bad news, when your life plans are derailed because you didn’t get that job or that person left you, or when you see horrendous acts of violence on the news and you can’t fathom why humans would treat each other this way. When we are left to grapple with life’s big, important questions without anyone who can give us definitive answers, it can be terrifying.Â
I believe the person who is trying to handle the biggest questions in this episode is John Winchester. He sees and remembers the most from the night Mary died, and therefore he has the most questions and a lot of weight to carry. Sam will never remember this night and Dean was too young to realize what was happening. None of them saw Mary on the ceiling except John, and he alone carries that image, that burden. John had just experienced an unspeakable tragedy.Â
The thing with tragedies is that even though they can often be explained in some way, humans still have a hard time grappling with the aftermath. While some may move on, many others become stuck in grief for extended periods of time, possibly for the rest of their lives. This is what happened to John. He didn’t have a “natural tragedy” to deal with; there was no hope for a natural explanation. And now, the world was no longer safe to him. There were new, unexplainable threats that could take his family away from him at any moment. I can imagine he felt alone in his knowledge of these threats and I can imagine that he felt completely powerless in that situation. That feeling of powerlessness, coupled with fear of the unknown, can make humans do dramatic, unhealthy things. John Winchester was no different.
A sense of control is really important for humans. We all need to feel that on some level that we are able to choose a direction for our lives, and that our choices will directly affect our environment. So, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that John’s actions after this night were an attempt to regain control after an event that shook his foundation. Thinking about John in this way helps me see his actions in the rest of the series as his way of trying to gain back a sense of control in his world. He wants to control the thing that scares him, much like I think we eventually see Dean doing. John’s fear led him to do many things that the fandom has deemed unforgivable. Whether or not you sympathize with John Winchester is entirely up to you and is influenced by your own personal experiences, but I think we can all relate to the feeling of fear in the face of the unknown, and the utter powerlessness we can feel in uncertain times.Â
Lectio DivinaÂ
The next segment of this letter is where we use a practice to analyze a part of the episode. We will be using “Lectio Divina,” a Christian spiritual practice for reading scriptures that involves interacting with the text on four different levels. I am following Harry Potter and the Sacred Text’s use of this practice and adapting it the best I can to the visual format. Normally, you pick a scripture or a line of text to analyze. I randomized numbers between 1 and 42 (the amount of minutes in the episode), and picked the first full line after the minute mark I was given.
Line: “That’s cus you’re out of practice… Or not.” -Dean Winchester (7:00)
Now we analyze this line on the four levels of Lectio Divina : literal (narrative), allegorical (metaphors and symbols), reflection (how do I connect to it), and invitational (what is the text asking of us or teaching us).Â
Literal: What’s happening on a literal level in this scene is that Dean has broken into Sam’s house, Sam has snuck up on him, and they’ve just fought because Sam didn’t know who was in his house. Dean ends up pinning Sam to the floor, saying that he was able to do so because Sam was out of practice. “That’s cus you’re out of practice.” But when Sam promptly flips him over, pinning Dean to the ground, Dean proudly but surprisingly says, “Or not.” The scene comes across as a little heartwarming, a little funny. The two seem like natural brothers.
Allegorical: To me, this is a scene about returning. Here we have the loyal child who has stayed with his father and continued the “family business” confronting what I think of as the prodigal son. You can see the tension between the brothers play out in the fighting. But this prodigal son story is not the same one that we’re used to. This isn’t the prodigal son coming back home because he realized he was wrong. Sam left something horrifying. He left for safety and found love, a career, and independence. But despite his reasons for leaving, there’s still tension when he returns. Stepping away from your family, a friend group, a job--that’s never easy even if you have strong convictions about your reasons for doing so. There are relationships there, shared experiences, and bonds. So, I think there’s a sense of betrayal from Dean’s perspective, an invisible contract that Sam broke. Then Sam and Dean have to confront all of these feelings and experiences again. I'm impressed with the way Sam and Dean handle it. Dean could have grilled Sam about why he left, made him feel bad, or approached with a hostile attitude, but he very much is happy to see Sam and wants his help. Sam ends up helping Dean even when there’s a possibility of Sam confronting his father, and Dean risks being rejected to ask for Sam’s help. They’re each risking the status quo of their lives and making themselves vulnerable to one another by reaching out and deciding to take on this task together.
Reflection: Watching this exchange between the two of them, it reminded me of when I used to play soccer as a kid. I played for about four or five years and like to think I developed a few skills. One year recently, I was playing soccer with my younger siblings on Father’s Day and I could tell that I was out of practice, but dribbling, kicking, stopping the ball -- those movements still felt natural. I was even able to give pointers to the kids. I hadn’t touched a soccer ball in years, but that knowledge is still stored in my brain.
I think that, in the same way, Sam was forced to play out his own muscle memory while fighting with Dean, and through that, is forced to acknowledge once again the reality of his childhood and his family, of what lives in the dark and why he ran. In one fell swoop, Dean shoves that all into the forefront for Sam. A few years of building walls of safety around him and now Sam is vulnerable again, using his fighting skills to protect himself when I imagine he had begun to settle into a “normal” life.Â
Invitational: There’s a question that jumps out at me after spending time contemplating this scene: how do you have the courage to confront burned bridges with other people? I don’t have a clear-cut answer but I think it takes some courage and understanding on both sides. There should be a realization from both parties that each person assumes some responsibility for what happened between them, and for this to happen, there needs to be a cool-down period and opportunity for forgiveness. Forgiveness is rarely easy. I can think of situations in my own life in which forgiveness seems impossible, and maybe it isn’t always an option. But for those situations in which time can heal, I think repairing a burnt bridge can be worth the effort. I see this play out between Sam and Dean. Dean has to overlook his feelings of abandonment by Sam, see the decision from Sam’s perspective, and practice some forgiveness. Sam has to have hope that he will be accepted by his family again and courage to face the people who feel hurt by his actions. I think there would be a lot of fear on both sides: fear of another fight, fear of rejection. But Sam and Dean are able to put aside their own fears and their own hurts for the sake of family and the bond they share. So maybe one thing this scene is asking us to do is to practice forgiveness despite our fears.
Thank you all for reading the first ever Sacred Letter of Supernatural. I hope you enjoyed our exploration of the theme this week. Before I finish this letter, I would like to end with a question for the audience. This question is for personal evaluation, but if you would like for your answer to be featured on the blog or to contribute to a discussion, please send your answers to my Tumblr inbox.
This Week’s Question:
How do you recognize when you’re afraid and how do you make decisions in the face of fear?
