Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Myth, Metaphor & Morality

by Field, Mark

What changed was not Spike and not Buffy, it was Robin Wood. It was in this time that the First tempted him with the chance to obtain vengeance for his mother’s death. What Wood did was seize the opportunity presented by the confirmation that Spike still poses a risk.

  Now let’s turn to the consequences. I’ll start with Giles because only his agreement to cooperate with Wood enabled Wood to move from desire to action.

  Many people were upset with Giles’s behavior here, claiming it was out of character. I disagree for two reasons. First, I think his behavior fits with the metaphor of the parent who tries to continue to control his adult child. As I said in my post on First Date, I think the events of S6 caused Giles to doubt whether Buffy could handle the responsibilities of being an adult (at least as he sees them). On no subject is this more true than her relationship with Spike. Not only does Giles detest Spike, but he remembers Jenny Calendar as well.

  Second, in my view, Giles has always taken the view that it was right to sacrifice the interests of an individual for the greater good, which is how Wood expressly phrased it to Giles. Giles’s ethics is a form of utilitarianism – the famous “greatest good for the greatest number”. Utilitarianism is a consequentialist theory of ethics, meaning that it judges the propriety of actions by whether they have good consequences regardless of the means used to achieve those consequences (see my post on Choices for the meaning of “consequentialist” and the distinction between that and “deontological”). We saw Giles’s attitude at its most forceful in The Gift, so it’s no surprise to see it here:

  GILES

  It takes more than rousing speeches to lead, Buffy. If you're going to be a general, you need to be able to make difficult decisions regardless of cost….

  GILES

  So, you really do understand the difficult decisions you'll have to make? That any one of us is expendable in this war?

  BUFFY

  Have you heard my speeches?

  GILES

  That we cannot allow any threat that would jeopardize our chances at winning?

  BUFFY

  Yes, I get it.

  GILES

  And yet there is Spike….

  GILES

  Spike's a liability, Buffy. He refuses to see it, and so do you. Angel left here because he realized how harmful your relationship with him was. Spike, on the other hand, lacks such self-awareness.

  So far, so good. But do you suppose Giles ever stopped to think whether his argument might apply to Angel or to Wood or to Willow or to Anya as well as to Spike? I see Spike's trigger as metaphorical. We all have something inside us that can release our basest instincts --the death of a loved one, a child, whatever. Willow can lose control under the influence of grief (as recently as The Killer in Me); Anya upon rejection; Angel in the case of true happiness. Each of these instances represents a metaphorical way of exploring the dark side of the human soul, that which can cause us to lash out at others. Spike's loss of control under the trigger is no different than the loss of control experienced by the others. No one can ever guarantee that their own trigger won't be pulled.

  One argument against this is the fact that the First potentially could trigger Spike without him having the ability to control it. This begs the question, to some extent. By that logic, Angel was just as dangerous pre-Innocence as Spike is now. Surely Willow is just as dangerous, because her own subconscious – by definition something outside her conscious control – could be manipulated by Amy in such a way as to nearly cause her to kill Kennedy.

  The larger point is that Giles’s argument ignores the power of free will, the power of the soul, as Buffy keeps reminding everyone. What made Angel “safe” in S3 wasn’t the elimination of his trigger, it was his own recognition of the fact that he had a trigger and his determination to control it. The same is true of Willow now. Thus, when Buffy insists that what makes Spike safe is that “he has a soul now”, this is what she’s getting at.

  A second argument against Giles’s argument remains even if we ignore the soul. If everyone has a trigger, then everyone is a risk, but that doesn’t mean we should “lean towards the postal” as Xander did in Revelations. The risk is proportional to the individual's power/ability. The only way to eliminate the risk is to eliminate also the opportunity for that person to use that power/ability for good. Surely Willow poses a much more serious threat than Spike does. She has far greater power, her use of that power is shaky at best, the First has already shown that it can take control of her spells (BotN), and Amy has the power to manipulate Willow’s subconscious (TKiM) just like Willow’s own subconscious can cause her to lose control (STSP). The same holds true for Anya.

  More ironically, it would be easy to justify taking out Wood or Giles himself under Giles’s theory. Both proved themselves a danger to the Mission by conspiring behind Buffy’s back in order to eliminate an ally, and Wood actually acted under the very influence of the First that Giles claimed to fear from Spike. Both have a “trigger” that the First can use in the form of Spike. Giles’s argument cuts both much too far and far too close to home.

  Buffy rightly accepts the risk because she trusts others. That trust, in turn, inspires others to trust her, to reach beyond themselves when the need arises.

  Metaphorically, we might see Buffy’s conversation with Giles in the graveyard as reflecting Buffy’s own internal debate regarding what to do about Spike. On the one side is her rational self, coldly logical and applying the standard arguments of crisis. On the other side are her instincts, telling her that Spike is important and that the whole premise of Giles’s argument is wrong:

  BUFFY

  Spike is here because I want him here. We need him. I'm in the fight of my life….

  GILES

  You want Spike here even after what he's done to you in the past?

  BUFFY

  It's different now. He has a soul.

  An even bigger problem for Giles is the way he went about it, conspiring with Wood (whom he hardly knew) and lying to Buffy. I thought the conspiracy with Wood followed naturally from Giles’s basic attitude, his oft-expressed dislike of Spike – from Giles’s dream in Restless: “I still think Buffy should have killed you.” – and his recognition that Buffy would disagree. After all, Giles never told Buffy that he had killed Ben (a line in the shooting script contains this adMission but it was cut). But as was true with Ben, the fact that Giles conceals both his motives and his actions is itself evidence that he knows that he’s embarked on a dubious course.

  Of course, if Buffy’s supposed to be the General, as Giles insists in their conversation, then it’s hard to explain how her chief lieutenant is conspiring behind her back. For a sense of just how controversial this got, here are two sides of the debate on the quality of Buffy’s Generalship:

  Malandanza: “I think there was significant good to come out of the episode -- we got to see more of the evolution of General Buffy. At the start of the episode, we saw people making choices for her -- Giles and Wood, of course, but also Willow, who kept her Mission to LA a secret. Hey, why should the "general" have all the information necessary to make informed choices? Giles berates Buffy for playing at being general at the same time he's second guessing her and deliberately subverting her orders. By the end of the episode, we saw Buffy crack down on the insubordination of her well-meaning underlings -- she lets both Giles and Wood know that she is the one making the decisions and, finally, mutiny will be dealt with harshly. I doubt she'll shut Giles out completely -- he's a useful tool -- but he is no longer her superior or her equal. He'll be taking orders from Buffy, not the other way around. Her officers are there to advise her; once she makes a decision, though, they need to help her carry it out, not act on plans contrary to her goals. Hopefully, we'll see some of the others put in their places next ep -- Willow, Xander and Kennedy, particularly.”

  Earl Allison: “The problem is, Buffy has shown herself as all too willing to expend (or at least risk with tremendous stupidity) the lives of EVERYONE el
se in the house over Spike.

  Why? Spike is muscle, nothing else. Worse, he was unreliable muscle until the trigger was destroyed. Yet over and over she has bent over backwards to find reasons to keep him around, to decide he wasn't killing, or that if he was, it wasn't his fault.

  Buffy wanted to unchain Spike even after he had JUST grabbed her by the throat and flattened Dawn with a thrown cot. There was no reason to assume the trigger was eliminated -- but Buffy wanted him free, why? There was no pressing need for him to be unchained, and if he HAD been triggered again, who other than Wood or Buffy could subdue him? Buffy willingly risked everyone else -- and I still want to know, for WHAT? There was no benefit, no immediate payoff, and it's not like leaving him restrained HURTS anything. I can't understand what motivates Buffy, so I can't accept her as a leader -- I wouldn't trust her with a pet rock right now.

  Given what I've seen to date, I'd follow Giles long before I'd follow Buffy, who HAS shown an enormous preference towards Spike regardless of risk to others.

  With Giles, I can accept that sacrifices would come from being for the greater good -- for Buffy, I have to be honest, I have NO idea what her motivations are, and the idea that she is General and therefore her word is law -- not nearly good enough….

  If ANYONE is to be put in their place, IMHO, it needs to be Buffy. These people supported her for years, and THIS is how she repays them, by favoring the until-recently unstable and potentially dangerous vampire over ALL of them?

  Were I in the group, I would either be leaving, or looking to relieve her of command. Buffy does not, and has not, inspired any leadership at all that I can see this season.”

  I, by the way, disagree with both of them. But the arguments you see here are about to play out in an important way two episodes hence. I’ll explain why I think they’re both wrong in that post.

  One more point about Buffy’s interaction with Giles. I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that this is the last episode in which Buffy stakes a regular vampire (leaving Ubervamps aside for now). Vampires serve multiple purposes on the show, and one is that they represent the obstacles on Buffy’s path to adulthood (see the Introduction). As she closes the door in Giles’s face, she tells him, “I think you’ve taught me all I need to know”. She no longer needs to slay vampires now that she’s fully accepted adult responsibilities herself.

  Now let’s consider Wood. Wood sells Giles on the plan based upon the danger Spike poses. The way he puts it is that Spike is a danger to Buffy: “Now he's gonna prove to be our undoing in this fight, Buffy's undoing, and she will never—never see it coming.” It’s interesting that he makes this particular argument, since it’s somewhat at odds with Giles’s argument that Spike poses a danger to others (presumably the Potentials).

  Taking Wood’s argument at face value, and putting aside Wood’s veracity for a moment, he doesn’t know, nor does Giles, that Buffy has been in danger from Spike ever since Smashed, but he has never tried to kill her. Nor do they know the details of Spike’s remarkable journey to get his soul, or that, trigger or not, Spike had enough self-control to back away from biting Buffy in Sleeper, that Spike asked Buffy to kill him in that episode, that Spike was tortured by the First but didn’t change sides, or that Spike offered to leave town in First Date.

  It’s hard to tell if Giles truly believes this justification, but we don’t have to. Maybe Wood believes it when he says it, but it’s pretty clear in the event that vengeance is his real goal (with perhaps some jealousy mixed in). In my view, there are 2 key points regarding Wood’s “avenging son” attitude: the timing of the vengeance and the justification for it.

  I see no possible counter argument to the timing claim. There is an apocalypse coming; the one in charge (that would be Buffy) believes Spike is essential to defeating it. There is no reason I know of why Wood couldn't wait until afterward to exact vengeance if that were justified. And his attempt here is inexcusable on multiple grounds: he deceived Buffy; he acted after the First influenced him to kill Spike, yet ironically claimed to worry that the First will influence Spike; he used the First’s own tactic to access Spike’s demon; he ignored the fact that Spike has saved his life more than once, including earlier in this episode. Wood not only wasn’t fighting the First, he was acting on behalf of the First – he gave in to the evil voice inside him telling him to seek revenge.

  Whether Wood is “justified” depends in part on what credence you give to the presence of a soul. Buffy gives a lot; Xander and possibly others are less certain. I see it Buffy's way -- souled Spike is essentially different from the vampire he was before. In my view, Wood is no different than Holtz (spoilers at link) if he fails to recognize this. However, for the sake of analyzing Wood’s moral choices, I’ll assume that SouledSpike bears responsibility for the murders of VampSpike and is still dangerous because of the trigger.

  Probably the most fundamental principle of our legal system is expressed in an old maxim: "No man may be a judge in his own case." This maxim not only establishes the most basic principle of due process, it also serves as the foundation for the Lockean political philosophy which supports the entire American system. Here’s James Madison explaining the point in Federalist 10: “No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity.”

  There are both historical and psychological reasons why we adopt this principle. Historically, primitive legal systems operated under a vengeance principle. This was widely seen as a failure, leading to cycles of blood. It was precisely to get away from vengeance cycles that the legal system adopted the maxim I quoted. The avenger takes it upon himself to judge his own case and enforce that judgment. This undercuts the foundation of justice as we recognize it.

  I personally doubt that vengeance is ever justified. I can see reasons for punishment. I can't justify vengeance -- it's an endless cycle of hatred and violence. That’s the point of the quote from James Madison which heads this post.

  That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t do it myself in some case. I might well react like Giles in Passion or Willow in Tough Love, given the right circumstances:

  SPIKE: You - so you're saying that a ... powerful and mightily pissed-off witch ... was plannin' on going and spillin' herself a few pints of god blood until you, what, "explained"?

  BUFFY: You think she'd ... no. I told Willow it would be like suicide.

  SPIKE: I'd do it.

  SPIKE: (looks down at the ground) Right person. Person I loved. (looks at Buffy) I'd do it.

  So I fully understand the motivation. What I’m saying is that from a societal point of view, vengeance is unacceptable. That’s also been the view of the show since at least Innocence: “It is not justice we serve, it is vengeance.” That’s the contrast, all right.

  Now let me address some specific defenses of Wood which I’ve taken from the internet. The first is the claim that Wood had no one to go to for justice. This is wrong – the Slayer is available, and Wood knows it. Now, Wood may not like Buffy’s judgment, but that doesn’t allow him to seek vengeance on his own.

  Another argument I’ve seen is that Wood’s silence would be construed as a form of complicity. If Wood acts as though Spike is just another guy, then Spike, Buffy, and everyone else may very well assume that he doesn't really care. This suffers from the logical fallacy of excluding the middle. There are lots of options between silence and killing Spike.

  A third argument focuses on Spike’s own character. If he were truly is sorry for his deeds, he should desire forgiveness for the sake of his victims. That would show true repentance. I agree with this in general. But for me the key point is this: how is Spike to know that he needs to demonstrate contrition for this particular wrong, more than any other, unless Wood speaks up? And how will he ever get the chance if Wood stakes him without warning while Spike is protecting Buffy? By the time Wood told Spike, he was preparing to kill him.

  In a larger sense, Wood’s real ta
rget was The Mission. That’s what took his mother away as much as Spike. If his mother was truly dedicated to that Mission, then Wood betrayed his mother when he betrayed, even perverted, her Mission, as Buffy told him at the end. We can debate whether the Mission really is what matters, and I will as we move towards the finale. (We might do well to remember the words from the beginning of Apocalypse Now: "I needed a Mission. And for my sins they gave me one." That’s a HINT.) My only point here is the narrow one that Wood failed to respect his mother’s own dedication to the cause, indeed, that he may not even understand what that cause is.

  Now let’s consider Spike. Until the very end, Spike did nothing controversial; he was the victim. LMPTM marks the end of the beginning of Spike’s journey since Grave, the final step in his “recovering alcoholic” progression during S7. Once Buffy rescued him in Showtime, Spike had to accept that he had moral authority over himself. That couldn't happen until he got the chip removed (The Killer in Me). At that point he needed to face the monster within and gain control over it (Get it Done, and LMPTM). Only now can he begin to reconstruct his life on his own, without Buffy standing at his side every minute. In that sense, Wood succeeded in killing the monster within Spike.

  That doesn’t mean Spike should be seen as redeemed; far from it. As I’ve said before (Amends), redemption is a process, not an event. How far does he have to go? Well, let’s start with his cruel comments to Wood at the end of the episode, which were very controversial at the time. Here’s the dialogue, fighting omitted:

  SPIKE I wasn't talking to you. I don't give a piss about your mum. She was a slayer. I was a vampire. That's the way the game is played….

  ROBIN You took my childhood. You took her away. She was all I had. She was my world.

  SPIKE I know slayers. No matter how many people they've got around them, they fight alone. Life of the chosen one. The rest of us be damned. Your mother was no different.