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Author: DrLiz, BA, MDiv, PhD
During Season Six, Supernatural contemplates the value of the human soul. It’s a notion that the characters of the show confront frequently throughout many seasons: John Winchester contracts for Dean’s life (Season Two); Dean compromises his soul for Sam (Seasons Two and Three); Sam returns from Hell without his (Season Six); Bobby confers his soul on Crowley to find Death’s ring (Seasons Five and Six); Castiel and Crowley seek human souls to fuel their bids for power (Season Six).
Throughout the show the human soul is paranormal currency exchanged between crossroads demons and people seeking to alter their circumstances. Few of these folks seem to understand the price they are paying, but in Supernatural even those who are aware of the cost (John, Dean, Bobby) are apparently willing to make the sacrifice. It is not really until Sam’s return from Lucifer’s cage in Hell that Supernatural attempts to define and extrapolate the actual value of the human soul.
When Sam is plucked from Hell, unburdened by his soul, he becomes, particularly in Dean’s absence, the best hunter on earth. He kills with abandon. He approaches each mission with an eye for the bottom line: what is the best outcome and how do I achieve it? He no longer strains under the responsibility of moral righteousness (a task Dean shoulders aggressively throughout the show). Instead he does not sleep. He does not feel. The moral decisions he must make (what is right? what is wrong?) are expedient.
Expedient morality, or situational morality is immediate and narcissistic. The questions which drive expedient morality are not what is right or wrong, but rather what is right/wrong for me in this situation. There is no long-term analysis of the outcome of one’s actions, or whether one’s mission affects others. When Sam opts not to save Dean from being turned by a vampire (“Live Free or Twi-hard”, Season Six), he does not consider what that means for Dean, only what it means for the mission. Even Samuel Campbell, who has sold his own soul (to Crowley for the resurrection of Mary Campbell Winchester), can see that Sam’s actions are “scary”
It is interesting that Supernatural, despite it’s emphasis on the value of the soul, does not offer a specific definition of that all-consuming “organ” of humanity. In order to understand the worth of the human soul, we must collect clues from its value to demons and angels and its absence in Sam.
Clearly the value of the human soul to non-human beings, both demonic and angelic, is fuel for power. When Death replaces Sam’s soul it is a bright light, blinding and painful to re-install. Death describes the human soul as “vulnerable, impermanent, but stronger than you know. And more valuable than you can imagine.” (“Appointment in Samarra”, Season Six). Castiel uses souls, both human and monstrous, to consolidate his power, but also to heal and strengthen himself. He does so by absorbing them: by inserting his hand into the human body accompanied by much pain and danger to the soul’s host, in the case of Bobby’s soul (“Frontierland”, Season Six) or directly into his body/stomach in the case of the souls from Purgatory (“The Man Who Knew Too Much”, Season Six; “Hello, Cruel World”, Season Seven).
How Crowley uses souls is not directly discussed. He becomes the King of Hell after Lucifer’s demise, one assumes, because he absorbed the power of many human souls, having been denied those souls from Purgatory by Castiel (“The Man Who Knew Too Much”, Season Six). His only source of souls before ascending to the throne of Hell seems to have been his traffic as a crossroads demon, but after his power-grab one assumes he receives potency from all the souls who enter Hell under his rule.
But what is the value of the soul to humans? It is apparently nourished by sleep, since Sam doesn’t do so after the loss of his soul. Among Supernatural’s categories of being (angel, human, monster and demon), angels don’t sleep, and we might assume this is also true of demons. Soulless Sam’s lack of sleep suggests that his soul makes him human, or perhaps monster, an assumption confirmed by Veritas, Goddess of Truth, who gasps, “You’re not human”, when Sam lies to her face (“You Can’t Handle the Truth”, Season Six).
It is exactly this question, what is soulless Sam, human or monster, which Dean and Bobby confront throughout Season Six. Since Dean continues to work with soulless Sam killing monsters, we must assume that Dean accepts that Sam is, in fact human, and the only thing wrong with him is his loss of soul (“Family Matters”). It then becomes imperative to Dean that Sam recover his soul, even though Dean is repeatedly warned by Castiel, Crowley and Death that Sam’s soul is, at best, damaged and if it were returned to him, Sam might be forever lost. This leads to Sam rejecting Dean’s quest, refusing to accept his soul’s return and even seeking to scar his vessel indelibly by committing a form of patricide and killing Bobby.
Through the story arc of soulless Sam, we are told he doesn’t feel emotions. From his rejection of the return of his soul, however, we can see that he does feel, at least, one emotion: fear. This goes along with the rest of the soulless Sam personality. He acts without moral compass, making choices that are expedient and self-serving. Fear, his only emotional response, protects his ego, permitting him to continue as a super-hunter, unflappable, unstoppable and cold.
Soulless Sam has kept his intelligence, his memories, his abilities and even his willingness to participate in the social circumstances in which he finds himself: among the Campbells and with Bobby and Dean. What he lacks is a belief in the value of his emotions and the connections they provide to others. In that sense, Soulless Sam is a fully formed narcissist, unchecked by the conventions of social interaction and the emotional networks they engender.
What I am describing is essentially a sociopath: someone who can mimic emotional responses, but doesn’t feel them, nor accept their value, whose only moral compass is the one determined by what is best for him/her, and no other. In Supernatural the antidote for this condition is the human soul.