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When he was alive, Shawn was caught up in The Rules and with his own emotional responses to the different power plays that defined his gang-ruled community. Passing on The Rules to his brother, Shawn spends his brief life advocating for the emotional remove, hardening, and violence that marked and ultimately ended his own father’s life. Shawn has no other model for understanding how to navigate the dangerous world he was born into and believes that he’s protecting his brother by teaching him and enforcing The Rules. After he dies, Shawn seems to realize the tragic error of his violent and emotionally suppressed life. He doesn’t explicitly state that The Rules are invalid and dangerous. Instead, he illustrates the pain and suffocation they caused him by violating the first rule and exhibiting profound emotion. By sobbing and moaning in front of his brother, uncle, and father, Shawn calls into question The Rules. He exhibits through his actions both the pain that The Rules caused him within life and the regret that he has from living by them. His emotional display conveys the fact that The Rules cost him his life as it did for the other ghosts, spare Dani, in the elevator. By breaking The Rules, Shawn also does for Will what he couldn’t do in life: models a different way of responding to the pain and tragedy that has marked their lives.
