FINAL POST: SELF-CONSCIOUS EMOTIONS 

                                                         "Dean...What Have I Become?" 

Cass is usually pretty steadfast in his resolve to protect Team Free Will and humanity. He is a powerful archangel that is known for even coming back from the dead. There was not one time that Dean prayed to him that Cass did not answer: even when in midbattle in heaven. However, when Cass assimilates the Leviathan, taking the place of God, he does experience shame. To win an impasse with his rival for the control of Heaven, Archangel Rafael, Cass opens the door to purgatory. Such plane is home to the Leviathans, primordial creatures of extreme power. Creatures so dangerous that God himself had to combat them and bind them in Purgatory. When assimilating all the souls in purgatory to increase his power, Cass also (unknowingly) assimilates the Leviathan. He grows in power exponentially and annihilates Rafael. However, the Leviathan inside him corrupted his character. He becomes arrogant and goes on a crusade to fix things as the new God. He becomes so overwhelmed that he slaughters several humans in his seeking of righteousness. This brings Cass great shame.

 

Shame is a self-conscious emotion that is brought upon by failure to fulfil personally important rules and goals. It happens in a context of extreme personal importance. Shame makes one believe that one is totally flowed and unworthy of redemption. As an angel, Cass was created to protect souls. He was charged by God himself to keep guard of humans, all humans, even the bad ones. Cass betrays his personal standard of being a guardian angel: the most intrinsic definition of his self-image. Cass….The one who previously challenged the archangel Michael to prevent the Apocalypse; the one who cared about the life of every single human such that he was not willing to sacrifice any in the final battle (even if it would bring Paradise to earth in the end); the one who opened the door to purgatory (something unimaginable, even to Michael) to win a war that would prevent Rafael from reinstating the Apocalypse. The one who killed the humans he was supposed to protect, the reason why he opened the door in first place. Cass was a total failure. Inherently.

 

The appraisal that brought up shame was that this failure was against the very core of his self-image and purpose as angel. He was not guilty. Guilt comes from a failure with appraisal focus on behavior. While his behavior of slaughtering humas is quite reprimandable, his main appraisal lies in what he has become, rather than what he has done. In fact, he confides in Dean: “[He] can't believe what [he] [has] become;” rather than “I can't believe what I have done.” This shame is completely crimpling. Cass just becomes so depressed, his shame-withdraw is so great, he literally lays down and dies after Dean performs the ritual to expel the Leviathan from him. If one is familiar with Cass and the series, one can see how abnormal this is. Cass experienced guilt when he fell from heaven, as he questioned his choice of disobeying. But he never lost his resolve.  It is shocking to see the Champion of Heaven helpless.