How Do You Solve A Problem Like Castiel?

Castiel’s dealings with Dean remain difficult for a considerable time.  Dean defies Castiel’s orders in It’s The Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester, in I Know What You Did Last Summer and in Heaven and Hell.  By the time of Death Takes A Holiday, Castiel has resorted to subtefuge, pretending to be Bobby in order to assist Dean in saving Tessa the Reaper from Alistair and preventing the breaking of a seal.  After that Castiel has been demoted, and in On The Head Of A Pin Uriel has taken charge of the angels’ relationship with Dean, because Castiel’s superiors think he has become too close to Dean.  At this stage, though, by human standards Castiel has hardly become close to Dean at all, so the standard of separation Castiel is apparently meant to keep to must be a pretty stringent one.  Castiel’s better understanding of how to deal with Dean in fact dates from The Monster At the End Of This Book, where without directly disobeying orders or interfering with a prophecy, he gives Dean the idea of using the prophet Chuck to scare away Lilith.  From then on Castiel and Dean start to make a good team, working well together, communicating effectively, and disrupted only by outside forces.  For the first time since we first saw him, Castiel now has an ally he can rely on.

Castiel has had few dealings with humans other than Dean.  Anyone dealing with Dean has to deal with Sam as well, but Castiel’s dealings with Sam in season 4 were as limited as they possibly could be: an introduction in It’s The Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester, rendering him unconscious in Heaven and Hell, and a meeting by Dean’s hospital bed in On The Head Of A Pin.  For all the times I’ve watched that first meeting between Sam and Castiel, I’m still not sure what was going on.  Sam was doing a fangirl impression, of course, but what about Castiel?  There were those long and excruciating seconds when Sam was holding out his hand to be shaken and Castiel was standing there looking at it.  Was Castiel just unfamiliar with a human gesture such as shaking hands?  Uncomfortable with human touch (as he was when Anna twice touched him in On The Head Of A Pin and Chuck touched him at the end of Lucifer Rising)?  Or was there a deeper unwillingness to shake hands with someone Castiel knew had been infected with demon blood and had then deliberately consorted with a demon in order to develop his demon-given powers?

Death and the angel

“Angels (it’s said) would be often unable to tell whether they moved among living or dead” (Rainer Maria Rilke)

Castiel has often stated his willingness to kill, including innocents and friends and allies or potential allies of the Winchesters.  There’s the townspeople in It’s the Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester.  There’s Anna in I Know What You Did Last Summer and Heaven and Hell.  There’s Jesse the Anti-Christ in I Believe the Children Are Our Future.  But to an immortal, heavenly, angel, death will not necessarily have the same meaning as it does to us short-lived mortals, uncertain of our future place in paradise.   Tessa the Reaper has made it clear that we are not to know what is on the other side of death: this isn’t an uncertainty that an angel would have.  An angel would not necessarily see the transition from living to dead as problematic, and might even see it as a positive change, a way of being nearer to God – unless, of course, the human in question is needed to fulfil God’s purpose on earth. 

Castiel in fact gives us his view of death when talking to the dying Jimmy in The Rapture: “You served us well.  Your work is done.  It’s time to go home now.  Your real home.  You will rest for ever in the fields of the Lord. Rest now, Jimmy.”  So if good can come of death, or danger can be averted, or simply if someone’s time has come, an angel will not look at it as a problem in the same way that we humans do.  Despite his growing relationship with Dean, humans are still “other” to Castiel and the human view of death is not his.

Following orders

“The triumph of anything is a matter of organisation. If there are such things as angels, hope that they are organised along the lines of the Mafia” (Kurt Vonnegut)

Castiel has been around a long time, and he’s been obeying orders all that time. Uriel says, when trying to tempt Castiel over to the rebel angels in “On The Head Of A Pin.” “How long have we waited here?  How long have we played this game, by rules which made no sense?”  For Castiel, obedience is a duty, a necessity and a habit.  It’s long been an essential part of who Castiel is that he has faith in God, and in doing God’s work.  He hasn’t had to understand, or to think for himself.   Castiel’s faith in God remains firm, but dealing with Dean starts Castiel on the path of questioning his role as a “hammer” (It’s The Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester), and whether the orders he is being given do in fact come from God (On The Head Of A Pin).  

In “On The Head Of A Pin” Castiel reports that he was demoted because he was getting too close to the humans in his charge: Dean, and even Sam.  This tells us a lot about the orders under which Castiel is operating, because at this stage Castiel has met Sam only twice: when they were first introduced and when Castiel rendered Sam unconscious in Heaven and Hell.  Castiel didn’t even direct his “stop him or we will” speech directly at Sam, but relayed it through Dean (In The Beginning).  Surely such an important message should have been delivered directly, giving it more force?  And yet, according to Castiel’s superiors even the limited contact he has had with Sam still puts him “too close”.  Castiel seems to be under orders to act like the angels in the Bible: short appearances, in which acts are carried out or messages conveyed, and then a quick disappearence.  It’s Dean who has made it impossible for Castiel to interact with him like that, Dean with his doubts, his snark and his questions.

The strictness of the orders under which Castiel is operating puts in focus Dean’s near constant frustration with Castiel’s close-mouthed ways and habit of disapearing without answering questions.  Dean shares everything and tries to establish his relationship with Castiel on the basis that Castiel will share back: Castiel is disobeying standard operating procedures for angels by spending even as much time as he does with Dean, and sharing as much information as he does.

Castiel is first shown starting to express his doubts about his role in “It’s The Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester.”  His journey from there to independent thought, and to complete disobedience in “Lucifer Rising,” is a long and difficult one, shown by his reply when Uriel is trying to tempt Castiel into disobedience in “On The Head Of A Pin.”  “All you have to do is be unafraid”, says Uriel.  Turning him down Castiel says  “For the first time in a long time, I am”.  As Anna says to Castiel in the same episode, “It’s time to think for yourself”, but as she also says: “Choosing your own course of action?  Confusing. Terrifying.”  Castiel’s isolation during this process is demonstrated by the fact that the only person he can turn to for advice is Anna, the former comrade he despises for having fallen, the one he was prepared to kill in “Heaven and Hell.”  He must be at a very low point to say to her, as he does in On The Head Of A Pin, “I don’t know what to do.  Please tell me what to do.”  

As well as having almost no support during his period of doubt, Castiel is having to deal with the enforcement action being taken against him by his superiors.  Castiel’s change in demeanour between “Death Takes A Holiday” and “On The Head Of A Pin,” and then again during the course of “The Rapture,” indicates that some heavyweight pressure has been brought to bear on him to keep within the rules he has been set.  In the first case the conditioning is hardly effective at all: Castiel’s power to act is limited by the fact that Uriel is now in charge, but his thinking is essentially unchanged.  Whatever was done to him during “The Rapture,” however, was more serious, and his obedience is restored for rather longer, until near the end of Lucifer Rising.  That Castiel is prepared to disobey again, after what in human terms might well be categorised as torture, is a testament to his strength of mind, his convictions as to right and wrong and his faith in a just God.

Castiel’s final act of disobedience, freeing Dean from the heaven/hell Green Room in “Lucifer Rising,” pushes him into a situation which for an angel who for millenia has been an obedient member of the heavenly army is as bad as it gets.  When Chuck protests that Castiel and Dean are not in the story of “Lucifer Rising,” Castiel’s response is “We’re making it up as we go”, a complete change around from where he started out in “Lazarus Rising.”   Castiel has become a soldier completely separated from his line of command, and from the aims of the army he was a part of, knowing he is being hunted by beings far more powerful than he.  In “Sympathy for the Devil” Castiel even kills two of his fellow angels, his brothers in arms, in order to save Sam and Dean from Zachariah.  “I’ve lost everything”, as he says in “Good God Y’All.”

Fallen angel

“How do the angels get to sleep when the devil leaves the porch light on?” (Tom Waits)

After his death and resurrection in “Sympathy for the Devil,” Castiel has been cut off from heaven, and also from much of heaven’s power (“Good God Y’All”).   The fallen Castiel is the most isolated character in Supernatural: apart from home, from his fellow angels, from anything familiar.  He has only two things to sustain him: his faith in God, whom Castiel believes resurrected him, and the friendship of Dean Winchester. 

On the positive side, Castiel is beginning to feel more comfortable in his human body: in the present-day part of “The End” he accepts Dean’s touch on his shoulder, the first time he is shown not to have a problem with being touched by a human, and in “Abandon All Hope” is interested enough in his physicality to try drinking shots with Ellen.  He’s also beginning to deal more with Sam: his phone call to find Sam and Dean and part of the conversation he held when carving sigils into Sam and Dean’s chests in “Good God Y’All” were directed at Sam, and he is interested in Sam’s whereabouts in “Free To Be You and Me.”  But Dean is his only reliable resource: “I need your help.  Because you are the only one who will help me” (Free To Be You And Me).

Despite all the changes he has been through, his disobedience, death and resurrection, his fall from heaven and the isolation that brings, Castiel is still in essence what he started out as: a soldier.   He takes on all three of the archangels who are on earth: Raphael, Gabriel and Lucifer, even though they are as much more powerful than Castiel as Castiel is more powerful than humans.  Even in the alternate future of “The End” when Castiel has lost nearly all his angelic powers, he is still a soldier, ready to pick up a gun and fight even when the fight is hopeless.

Castiel in fact is so much like Dean that the words Zachariah says to Dean at the end of It’s A Terrible Life could apply to Castiel just as much as to Dean: “I know, I know. You’re not strong enough, you’re scared, you’ve got Daddy issues, you can’t do it, right?”  Like Dean, Castiel is socially isolated, tortured, having to decide for himself what is right and wrong in a world where almost everything he thought he knew has been taken away from him, and yet he is still prepared to fight on even when the fight looks hopeless.  Like Dean, Castiel is a hero.

And whoever disbelieves in God and his angels and his books and his messengers and the last day, he indeed strays far away. (The Koran 4:36)

Share on Facebook

Tweet

Follow us

Save