dustydreamsanddirtyscars:

By now, we’re familiar with what has generally been referred to as Dean’s theme (here). It’s great music, first of all. Props to Jay Gruska. You can hear the heartbreak and pain in the theme. Naturally, it plays during the real tearjerker moments, but what those moments entail has changed a lot over the season. First, we reference this clip, which is a large compilation of the theme through seasons 1 and 2.

When we first start hearing Dean’s theme, John Winchester is still alive. It comes to symbolize the Winchester family as a whole – especially when they’re being protective of each other. Because damn if this family doesn’t love each other to death, even if John is a great big douche at times. When he sacrifices himself, we hear it, proving that once again family is the Winchester pride and joy. Now, onto the music analysis. It’s almost always played on piano, giving more depth to the melody. More importantly, the last major (or happy-sounding for you non-musicians) chord is always played, literally ending on a positive note. This implies that the Winchesters still have hope. But when John is about to die, an oboe takes over, bringing the melody to the focus and obscuring the “happy end”. From here, the show takes a turn for the darker. When Sam dies in the season 2 finale, the ending of the theme is slightly changed, and once more, we don’t get the happy ending, mirroring Dean’s pain.

In later seasons, we hear Dean’s theme mostly when he gets deep with Sam, revealing all his insecurities, vulnerability, and sorrow. However, it mostly gets regulated back to the piano (not that it makes it any less heart-wrenching). Of course, it pops up whenever one of the Winchesters bites it. Its chief purpose becomes to show that Dean is hurting, and hurting bad, usually because of his relationship with Sam. The music isn’t about family any more – not in the way it was early on.

Now, on to season 10. The most dominant spot I can think of early on is here, where Sam is looking through Dean’s room. He finds the old photos of his family, and begins to go through them. Here, instead of the piano, we’ve now turned to cello with a female voice accompaniment. We know that Mary used to sing the boys to sleep, so the voice counterpart shows his connection-or lack thereof. The cello, being a wonderfully expressive instrument, sticks the melody, and once again we don’t get the major chord ending. Most importantly – Dean isn’t in the room when this happens. We know this scene occurs while the Deanmon is still around, when the emotional focus is on Sam. For him, this is about everything that makes Dean human, primarily the love he has for his family. Dean loves his family and friends to borderline obsessive levels, and now the hatred he has for Sam and Cas is destroying their relationships because it’s not Dean. The Dean they know is gone, along with the love of his family, so the theme moves to represent what Dean has lost. This gets emphasized in tonight’s episode, when Dean attacks Cas. The cello is back while Dean beats the crap out of Cas and nearly kills him, rather than the climatic, fast paced music you would expect. Now, we see that Dean has completely lost his humanity – without even becoming an actual demon. Everything he’s held dear before no longer has any value to him, and the music takes on an ironic meaning. This is when it really hit home for me that Dean’s probably not going to come back from this. After his fights with Sam and Cas and Charlie’s death, he’s lost his last family, and the music confirms it.

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I am on my phone right now and I pray this goes through because if I had had the time THIS is what I would have wanted to talk about as well. Thank you, dear for writing this up. I agree a hundred percent, when the family theme played over it, that’s when I really lost it.

So yes to all of the above and mostly the part of Dean now having lost his humanity without even becoming a demon. It’s the single most devastating story ever.

And btw, this doesn’t really have anything to do with this but what I also find mightily significant is that Dean killed Daddy Styne who pressured his one son into the family business when he never wanted it but loved school and reading and normality and then killed Eli and Eldon – the two elder brothers who always did as Daddy told – and in the end also killed the youngest Styne. Cold bloodedly, no humanity left.

When you think about it when he killed all them really Dean killed the very loose mirror characters of his own family here too and well – like it is said above by the lovely submission – in the end the family theme plays over a moment when family no longer means anything to Dean who used to be the epitome of humanity and s family man. ;___;