Dean Winchester: Brother, Soldier, Sinner, Hero

F. Scott Fitzgerald once said, “Show me a hero and I’ll write you a tragedy”.

Well, here’s one of three:

I just want to hug him.

When we first meet Dean in the pilot episode we immediately compare him to Sam and by his actions and attitude deem him to be kind of a wise-ass punk. He drives around in a muscle car listening to nothing but classic rock on cassette, blatantly checks out his brother’s girlfriend in front of him, and shows no respect to those in positions of authority. The only person he seems to really respect and admire is his father, who, we eventually come to learn, is his hero. But then we learn that he spends his time going around the country hunting the monsters that prey on humanity. He saves lives and doesn’t even get recognized for it.  He is both the bad boy of the show and the good son. He is the outsider, the noble cowboy riding on a black horse, the rebel. He is a Romantic Hero. 

The Romantic Hero shares most of the same characteristics as the Byronic Hero: rebelliousness, melancholy, wanderlust, pension for self-criticism, a dark past and/or the suffering of some terrible crime among other things. The big thing that keeps Dean from falling into the Byronic Hero category is that the Byronic Hero is generally a member of the aristocracy and Dean is pretty damn Blue Collar.

In A Study of English Romanticism Northrop Frye describes the Romantic Hero as

…the hero who is placed outside the structure of civilization and therefore represents the force of physical nature, amoral or ruthless, yet with a sense of power, and often leadership, that society has impoverished itself by rejecting (41).

I think this describes Dean pretty well. Early in the show he made repeated references to the idea that he would never make it in “civilian life” and even when he tries to settle down in season six it just doesn’t work out. He wasn’t meant for the “apple pie life”; he was born to be a soldier, a hunter. He’s good at killing things and he knows it. 

He also (more than) kind of enjoys it.

However, he’s also a leader. He’s the big brother with a responsibility – Look after Sammy. It’s in his responsibility for his brother that Dean’s tragedy is born.

He’s been looking after Sam since he was four years old, since the night their mother died and their father began hunting. He raised Sam, sacrificing his own childhood so that his little brother could have one and giving up a high school diploma so he could help his father on hunts. He essentially took his mother’s place in the family, trying to keep it together and afloat, mediating arguments between Sam and John.

He continues to look after Sam even after they’re all grown and their father dies.

When Sam is killed in 2x21 Dean sells his soul to a crossroads demon to bring him back, giving him a year to live before he’s dragged to Hell. Four months after he’s dragged down he’s risen by Castiel and declared to be an instrument of Heaven even though, in his forty years in Hell, he spent thirty of those years torturing souls of the damned. 

He is saved, not because his soul is pure and not just because he is righteous, but because it’s his destiny. Of course, Dean rebels against his destiny and spends his time trying to atone for his actions in Hell. It’s in these acts that he truly becomes a Romantic Hero. 

 Many characters, including Sam, describe him as a dick, but at the end of the day, he’s the one who drove onto the field of Armageddon and bear witness because he didn’t want his brother to die alone. He’s a douche but he does things for the right reasons, killing to save people, rebelling against God and Heaven because it would be an injustice to do otherwise.