#the rapture and jimmy novak my beloved | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

drsilverfish · 5 years

Text

The Rupture/ The Rapture - Subtextual Grammar and Castiel’s Relationship to Dean in 15x03

Hey everyone,

Catching up British time and just seen the ep, so looking forward to seeing all your posts and gifs shortly! Firstly, some musings of my own.

Has Berens’ ripped everyone��s hearts out already? That’s some pretty potent symbolism right there for heartbreak huh? (Sorry Ketch):

The Rupture recalls, in subtext, through visual symbolism, Castiel’s long narrative journey in relation to Dean. So that Dean and Cas’ break-up, already foreshadowed by Chuck and Amara’s “divorce” in Reno last week, at the end of the episode (for those following the symbolism) is given extra punch.

Firstly, the title, The Rupture 15x03 deliberately recalls, following Dabb’s ouroboros (circular/ spiral) narrative structure, The Rapture 4x20. That episode was critical for Dean and Castiel’s relationship. Castiel rebelled against Heaven and entered Dean’s dreams (his intimate space) in order to try to warn him about the angels’ plans by passing him a love note:

In the subtextual grammar of the show, that pier incident, has become a symbol of Dean and Castiel’s intimate connection. For example in 14x10 Nihilism, you can see a pier at sunset with a figure standing on it in the background on the wall, behind Dean’s mind-Pamela:

And remember, mind-Pamela profoundly represents Dean’s feelings for Castiel in that episode. Recall her costume, with the winged necklace and the T-shirt symbolising Dean’s salvation from Hell by Cas? And mind-Pamela, in Rocky’s Bar, is someone Dean wants, but thinks he can’t have.

Of course, Castiel was dragged back to Heaven and punished for his disobedience in 4x20 The Rapture, yet, eventually, as we know, he rebelled again and chose to help Dean over Heaven. So, when Berens recalls The Rapture in his episode title, The Rupture, it is to remind us just how much Castiel has sacrificed for Dean.

“I rebelled, and I did it, all of it.... for you” (5x02 Good God Y’All).

As Cas said to Dean last week, in 15x02 Raising Hell, what’s “real”, despite Chuck’s machinations?: “We are.”

Cas can see (at that point) that his connection to Dean has profound meaning, at least for him (a profound bond, indeed) because Dean helped Cas finally break free of Heaven’s control. Something (we learn in 8x21 The Great Escapist) that Cas had been trying over and over to do for aeons, only to be mind-wiped and re-programmed again and again. Naomi tries to torture re-programme Cas, yet again, in 8x17 Goodbye Stranger, by getting him to murder endless Dean clones in Heaven (making it very clear that the source of Castiel’s free will and resistance is his connection to Dean specifically). BUT Cas’ bond with Dean is too strong, and he breaks free of Naomi’s conditioning when faced with the real Dean, bloodied and on his knees, telling him: “I need you.”

If anything in Chuck’s multiverse symbolises free will it is Castiel’s rebellion against Heaven for Dean.

What Cas isn’t clear on, by 15x03, is that the “profound bond” continues to have any meaning for Dean himself. As he says, bitterly to Belphegor:

Cas: “Sam and Dean are just using you. Don’t mistake that for caring about you, because I an assure you, they don’t.”

Bel: “Wow, you learn that the hard way?”

The symbolism, of Castiel’s journey in relation to Dean, continues in 15x03 in the visual grammar, as we see Cas, literally, jumping into Hell:

which of course recalls what we all know so well - that Cas fought his way into Hell and rescued Dean from Alastair’s clutches and resurrected him:

Castiel (to Dean): “When we discovered Lilith’s plan for you, we laid siege to Hell, and we fought our way to get to you...” (4x16 On the Head of a Pin).

This shot of Dean and Cas together in 15x03, literally at Hell’s mouth, with a gravestone between them, likewise symbolises that event (Castiel’s resurrection of Dean from Hell) as well as the present “death” of their relationship:

So, it’s no accident that the magical object Castiel is tricked by Belphegor into retrieving from Hell in 15x03 is Lilith’s crook. Because (as in the 4x16 quote above) Lilith was the demon who worked to ensure Dean was dragged to Hell, to be broken by Alastair (whom Belphegor re-mentioned, also not by accident, in 15x01 Back and to the Future) thus breaking the first seal to jumpstart Lucifer’s return and the apocalypse.

All these reminders of Castiel’s significance to Dean, of Castiel’s salvation of Dean, of how they averted Chuck’s apocalpyse before (in S5), together, at the very moment of their break-up....

So, when we see Castiel on his knees in Hell, reluctantly singing a praise hymn in Enochian to Lucifer in order to achieve access to Lilith’s crook, aka magic horn? (Belphegor explicitly refers to the crook as a “horn”).

Well, in subtext, the magic horn (Lilith’s crook) can be read as a sexual metaphor.

This symbolism is the juxtaposition of the sacred and the profane - an angel at prayer in Hell.

And following the shot of Cas kneeling in Hell, we get this shot of Dean, looking down into the Hell-mouth...

A visual reversal of Castiel’s rescue of Dean from Hell in S4.

Castiel passes the “magic horn” to the demon wearing the body of his beloved son, Jack:

Jack who always, in subtext, symbolised the (forbidden) love between Dean and Castiel (his adoptive parents) because, as a Nephilim, he was the product of (forbidden) human-angel congress.

Here at the start of S15, we know Castiel is losing his angelic powers after trying to heal Sam’s God-wound, and the show has previously been quite clear that becoming human entangles Cas in the world of human sexuality. We’ve seen that in 5x04 The End with Castiel and the orgies he shares with Future!Dean:

And we also saw it (crudely drawn by Bucklemming) in 9x03 I’m No Angel, when newly fallen Human!Cas has survival sex with the Reaper possessing April (yes, ugh - consent issues all round):

Belphegor pleading with Cas in Jack’s voice reminds us of everything Jack meant to Cas. Cas, after all, once towed Heaven’s party line and regarded Nephilim as “abominations”. We saw that in 8x22 Clip Show, when Metatron inveigled Cas into killing a Nephilim, in order to obtain her heart, for his (subtext-heavy) angel-fall spell, and we also saw it in the flash-back sequences in 12x10 Lily Sunder Has Some Regrets when Cas believed Akobel deserved to die for (supposedly) fathering a Nephilim child with Lily.

What was once profane to Cas has become sacred.

Jack, and loving Jack, represented (among other things) for Castiel, some kind of accommodation with his own secret heart. If the child of an angel (Lucifer, no less) and a human could NOT be a monster, then maybe an angel loving a human might not be monstrous either, despite Heaven’s edicts.

But then Jack (apparently) killed Mary, and the Winchester family, whose always previously shaky membership (for Cas), Jack’s co-adoption with Sam and Dean had cemented for him, was blown apart.

In 15x03 Cas is forced to kill Belphegor wearing the body of Jack:

And the death of Jack’s Nephilim (human-angel union) image, becomes, in the visual grammar, a metaphor for the death of Castiel’s hope of any continuing union between him and Dean - the death, on Dean’s part, Cas believes, of the profound bond. Hence we get a corpse-shot:

And Castiel’s tears:

Castiel echoes (having absorbed them) Dean’s unkind (grief-stricken) words to him from 14x18 Absence, “You’re dead to me!”

Cas (to Dean): “I’m dead to you.” (15x03).

After everything they’ve been through together (to Hell and back, as carefully illustrated in the visual grammar of 15x03) Castiel has utterly lost hope that he has any remaining emotional meaning for Dean; without Jack, without Mary, without his powers.

Walking away (as the Winchester family signature music plays poignantly in the background) is a huge (and ultimately positive) step for Cas, who has, over the years, more and more built his identity and his meaning around his connection to the Winchesters, following his long rebellion against (and rejection by) Heaven. After everything Cas has been through (the narrative suggests) he deserves to be his own person, to be loved for himself (not his powers) and not to be taken for granted.

And so we are left with the LOUD narrative negative space of Dean’s silence at the end.

We can see Dean’s tense body language, in the final shot, half poised as if to spring forward, half frozen to the spot, as Cas leaves:

That silence in the narrative structure, which is mirrored in the symbolism of the ghosts/ demons being temporarily re-bottled up in Hell (like Dean’s feelings) as well as in the re-death of the feminine in the form of Rowena (because the feminine in the grammar of SPN = feelings) DEMANDS words, at some point down the road.

Last time Cas was human, Dean kicked him out of the Bunker (thanks to Dean’s coercive pact with Gadreel) and we saw Cas’ broken-hearted suffering over that break-up in 9x06 Heaven Can’t Wait (Berens’ very first episode for SPN):

This time, Cas has more agency. He decides to initiate the break-up, because his heart (and how very human of you, Cas) can’t bear being treated to Dean’s silence, Dean’s anger and Dean’s (apparent) indifference any longer.

Now, we need not only to see Dean come to his own broken-hearted realisation over this (reverse) break-up (after all, we’ve seen Dean broken-hearted over losing Cas, to death, before now) but for Cas to see that realisation, in Dean.

In The Rapture (4x20) we are told the story of how Castiel the angel came to take Jimmy Novak as a vessel - how the angel we know became conjoined to the human-form we best know him in:

In The Rupture (15x03) Castiel is losing his angelic powers again, moving once more towards inhabiting Jimmy Novak’s vessel, which is now his own body (Jimmy’s soul long-gone, and indeed that body destroyed and yet resurrected AS Cas, several times), as a human.

Last time Cas was human, Dean missed his shot. How about this time?

The Ouroboros narrative is taking its final turn.

My usual disclaimer: subtextual readings do not inevitably indicate or imply that textual romantic declarations will be forthcoming between Dean and Cas. That element of the story has been told in subtext for 10 years (and that’s where it quite likely will remain, in the terrain of ambiguity). Subtext IS however, part of narrative.

Nevertheless, an emotional reconcilliation of some sort, however readable as “brotherly”, comrades-in-armsy, nebulously “familial” etc. is, by story-logic, absolutely inevitable.

That which is parted will be re-joined - Chuck to Amara, Cas to Dean.

#Supernatural #15x03 #The Rupture #SPN meta #Meta #4x20 #The Rapture #Destiel #Still subtext #But subtext IS part of narrative #Long post for TS #If anyone is still using Tumblr Savr?

782 notes · View notes