Spoilers Through Grave!!
"cough*DaddyIssues*cough" (Anya to Halfrek in Older and Far Away)
As we approach adult hood, we have to come to terms with our parents. The first task is obviously separating from our mother, the second reconciling or atoning with the father.
In Btvs, the writers have focused on both struggles. In Part I of my Spike/Willow journey, I discussed Separation from the Mother, now I hope to discuss the next stage in their journey, Atonement with the Father. But before I do, a little background information.
INTRO: Star Wars, Shane, Red River, and Btvs
When I was a child, I was afraid of Science Fiction movies - they all had scary monsters. So when my father suggested we go to Star Wars, I fought him. But he insisted, saying it was a rite of passage and that it wasn't scary but fun, something akin to the Wild West meets WW II. So off we went approximately two -three hours away, to see the premiere of Star Wars. Of course we all adored it, particularly my brother and I, who at the respective ages of 8 and 11, became quite obsessed.
The Star Wars trilogy brilliantly explores the hero's atonement with two separate aspects of his father - the indulgent mentor (Obi-Wan Kenobi) and the horrible ogre (Darth Vader). Many Star Wars fans saw the series as a coming of age tale, many boys as a reflection of their own struggle for manhood. For those who aren't familiar with it - by the end of the trilogy, the boy (Luke) is forced to come to terms with both aspects of his father in a climatic sword fight, which is both physical and oddly psychological. Luke's goal in this sequence is not to destroy his ogre father as Obi -wan advises, but to somehow redeem him, save him. Obi-wan believes such a task to be impossible. But Luke ultimately succeeds, literally pulling Anakin, the man, out of the black hooded armor of the monster Vader and in doing so, reunites Anakin with his mentor/foster father Obi-Wan.
Before I ever saw Star Wars, I saw this drama played out every Saturday evening beside my father's armchair. Most notably in the classic westerns Red River and Shane, both are Westerns that deal with a boy's struggle to accept aspects of his father and reconcile those aspects with himself. In Red River - the boy, played by Montgomery Cliff is forced to break with his father, John Wayne, to lead a cattle drive. Wayne has been abusing the cattle and the men, trying to prove something. In order to save the herd, Cliff must betray his father and lead the drive. His father swears vengeance on him, but by the time the two men meet, Cliff cannot kill his father any more than his father can kill him. Instead they have a fist fight and bond in the process. Shane - is a bit more complex, in that film, a gunfighter, named Shane, comes to town and saves a boy's family from local cattle barons. The boy idolizes Shane who in some respects becomes a metaphorical representation of the boy's future self. Shane flirts with the boy's mother and saves the boy's father. But it's not until the boy's father sticks up for himself and his family that the boy bonds with him and Shane eventually rides away. Shane, like Star Wars, represents both aspects - except in Shane the gunfighter represents the positive image or indulgent father, while the stoic farmer is the ogre - not allowing the boy to have any fun, seeming to be a coward in the boy's eyes.
What's interesting about all of the above examples and most of the examples in Campbell's book Hero With A Thousand Faces is they are all male. In Buffy the Vampire Slayer: the journey emphasized is not the male's atonement so much as the female's. Actually Btvs gives equal time to both with the journeys of Spike and Willow and by extension Buffy. In Btvs Giles and Angelus represent the negative and positive elements of the father, elements that we must somehow reconcile in order to move on to the next step in our respective journeys.
1. GILES: The Indulgent Father
The Indulgent parent is described in myths as the father who gives his children whatever they demand. This parent does not restrict or supervise the child, so much as indulge the child's whims. A classic example is the myth of Phaedon, where the Sun-God Phaedon in Greek myths allows his son to drive his winged chariot. The boy loses control of the chariot, since the power the chariot harnesses is far above his capabilities, and almost destroys the earth in the process. According to the myth, the boy's misadventure got him killed, scorched the earth, and turned the people of Ethiopia black. Sort of reminds me of DarkWillow's little misadventure in dark magic at the end of Season 6. Like Phaedon's son, Willow almost burns the earth to cinder, harnessing the magic that she took from her father, Giles.
Throughout Seasons 1-5 Btvs, Giles indulges Willow's interests in the occult.
Willow offers to help him research in Harvest and surprises him with her hacking abilities on the computer. Instead of chastising her for doing something illegal or questionable, he encourages her to continue pursuing this path, since it does aid him in his Watcher duties. Then Jenny Calendar is introduced, a computer teacher and techno-pagan, who develops close relationships with both Giles and Willow. (I Robot, You Jane)
Willow is far closer to Jenny than the others are. It is Willow who rushes into the library with Jenny in Prophecy Girl to meet the apocalypse. It is Willow, Jenny asks to help cover her classes when she hunts a way to return Angel's soul. Not only stroking Willow's ego, but also giving her a role besides school geek. Jenny is not only Willow's role model, but also in a sense, surrogate Mom.
From the beginning, Welcome to the Hellmouth - there is the indication that Willow is attracted to the new librarian, Giles, as a potential father figure. Her own father is unapproachable. She refers to him as Ira Rosenberg and mentions him once in Passion, as forbidding her to have any Christian relics or references in their home. Prior to this episode, we rarely hear her mention him. Giles, on the other hand, Willow goes to repeatedly for advice and support. She even admits to having a crush on him in Where the Wild Things Are, managing to give Xander the wiggins in the process. Willow's own parents appear to be somewhat removed from her life. So she naturally replaces them with Giles and Jenny, two beloved teachers.
After Jenny Calendar dies in Season 2, we see Willow gradually take Jenny's place. She moves into Jenny's classroom. Finds Jenny's old pagan websites. And in I Only Have Eyes For You - gives Giles one of Jenny's keepsakes. Giles appears to take little notice of Willow's interest in studying magic, far too wrapped up in his own grief at the time. But Giles does not discourage her either.
Of the four Scoobies, Willow seems to take on the role of comforting Giles. She gives him Jenny's crystal. She tells him that the ghost haunting the school can't be Jenny. And when the ghost attempts to suck Willow into the floor, Giles rushes to her rescue, pulling her out. They roll down the stairs in a pseudo-sexual manner, with Giles protectively covering Willow. This reminds me of a comment in Campbell's The Hero With A Thousand Faces - that while the male fights his father for power, the female takes the mother's place at the father's side, to be dominated. (a la Electra Complex). (Personally, I think ME is going for more of the struggle for power metaphor, having grown out of their Freudian obsession.) In Season 2, they examine the Freudian father-daughter incestuous metaphor first. A metaphor that is examined in further depth with the Angel/Buffy relationship. Angel - the protector, father figure, beloved tutor, becomes sexually enamored with Buffy, sleeps with her, and goes evil. Attempts to destroy and dominate her. She eventually wins, destroying him. (More on this in the next section.)
If it weren't for Jenny and Giles, I wonder if Willow would have pursued magic. Or even known about it. In Becoming Part I: Giles aids Willow with the soul spell - that Jenny had started, the spell that had gotten her killed. (Although he may not know that.) He even encourages Willow to do it because it was Jenny's last wish. In Seasons 3 & 4, Giles asks Willow to cast all sorts of complicated spells. Example: Truth spell (Something Blue), locator spell (This Year's Girl), Destruction of box (Choices), and living flame (Revelations). Only a few times does he come down hard on her for playing too harshly with magic. Suggesting she stay away from some of the more complex spell books in Season 3. (Beauty and The Beasts, Choices) And in Season 4's Something Blue, he advises that she shouldn't play with magic while emotionally unstable. When she ignores his advice, causing him to become blind, Giles lightly punishes her by forcing her to decal his car and make cookies. Much later that same year - he encourages her to lead the gang in a complex joining spell. (Primeval Season 4, Btvs.)
Giles rarely chastises Willow for increased use of magic. He merely comments on it. When she enters Buffy's mind in Weight of the World, Giles says off-hand, "that's a very complicated spell for a novice". This echoes his words in Becoming Part I, Choices, WOTW, and Primeval. But not once does he attempt to stop her. It's not until after she brought Buffy back, in Flooded Season 6, that Gile admonishes Willow. Calls her a rank arrogant amateur. But by this time, his admonishment falls on death ears. He's indulged too many of her whims for her to take much notice of his words now. She even states, somewhat irritably, "that's right, I'm a very powerful witch, you might not want to piss me off."
Willow's journey reminds me more of the anti-heroe's, who challenges the father, seeks to destroy him in order to take his place. "You ceased to matter long before you left," she tells Giles in Grave. In some ancient cultures - adulthood is obtained through a ritual cannibalism. The young men symbolically devour the father to become adults. They take his power into themselves. In episode II of the prologue to the Star Wars Trilogy, Anakin is fighting with his foster father and mentor, Obi-Wan, for more power and control. Obi-Wan has been far too indulgent of Anakin, allowing him to race speedcars and use his power at times recklessly. Now Anakin believes Obi-Wan is holding him back, is jealous of his power, doesn't fully appreciate it. Willow has the same problem with Giles - she tells him in Grave, "when we last spoke, you told me I was a rank arrogant amateur, well guess what, the amateur has turned pro!" Then she fittingly invokes the name of the witch Asmodea, which Giles only manages to stop with a greenish energy field.
The witch Asmodea, according to redcat's post on 6/29/02, was a woman who was forced by her family to enter a convent. (*Disclaimer: the opinions expressed regarding convents, Asmodea, etc are largely mine, not redcat's. Her post went in another direction. So if you disagree with these points don't flame her - flame me! If you wish to read her post in full go to www.atpobtvs.com, archive 3, Dedalus' essay post, it's the thread near the bottom. Redcat and aliera did all the research on Asmodea of which I am deeply grateful and taking shameless advantage.) In vengeance, Asmodea's rebellion takes the form of confessed devil worship and witchcraft. Women were often forced to enter convents by their fathers in medieval and renaissance times because they refused to marry a selected mate or had children out of wedlock. Hence the phrase in Shakespear's Hamlet: "Get thee to a nunnery." In books such as Les Liaisons Dangerous and Richardson's Clarissa, both written in the 18th century, women are either taken to convents by their fathers or coerced into marriages. As late as the early 1900s, women were considered chattel, property in the United States as well as abroad. I'm no historian, but I do remember from my years with Domestic Violence, that as late as 1990, Missouri still had laws on the books, that stated men could beat their wives and sell their daughters into matrimony. They were his property. Another point - in Btvs as well as Western Culture (not sure about other cultures), when women marry - they take their husband's name and give up their father's. In effect, they now become their husband's property. A woman was not allowed to fight her father or the replacement father (husband) for dominance, culturally; no she fought her mother or the mother-in-law for the right to serve her father or husband. In "some" cultures, when a woman got married - she moved into her husband's family home and served his mother until her death. Asmodea is a little like Willow, insisting on fighting for her own rights, not serving anyone. When these are denied - she enacts her vengeance for being forced to serve a life-time in cloistered repression to a male God.
Redcat goes on in her Asmodea post - to suggest that Willow's use of Asmodea's name may suggest a "deeply sexualized relationship to witchcraft and power. In addition, Willow's "training" in the dark arts, as she calls them - and if such training can even be said to have taken place - occurs primarily through her relationships with books and ancient texts, not with a living mentor or teacher…" Here I disagree with redcat, she did have a mentor, and I'm not speaking of Tara. Giles. Granted he wasn't entirely present in his mentoring but he does indulge her interest. Where did Willow get access to those books? Giles. In Buffy vs. Dracula - Giles is asking Willow to scan all of his books into the computer and confiding in her his desire to leave Sunnydale. He tells her that she can take over his role of Watcher now. He's taught her and Buffy, all he knows. Giles is the one who instructs Willow to scan the book containing Moloch into her computer in the Season 1 episode I Robot, You Jane. And again it is Giles who helps Willow figure out the spell in Primeval. Giles is a lot like Phaedon in this story - permitting Willow the use of his books (chariot) but none of the training. Giles doesn't mentor her so much as just indulge her interests. Then when Willow rises, in her perception, above Giles - she wants to fight him. To take over, to take control. She tells Buffy in Grave- "I don't want to fight you, I want to fight him!" Willow has always been more interested in impressing Giles than Buffy. From Willow's perspective, Giles is now her competition in the SG dynamic, he's the Watcher - the role she wishes to usurp with her magic and her studies. It's not the slayer she wants to be - so much as the slayer's manager, the one that she perceives controls the slayer, Giles.
Spike and Buffy who also have taken Giles on as a surrogate father, react differently. If Willow's reaction to Giles reminds me of Anakin's reaction to Obi-Wan, Spike and Buffy's reactions remind me of Luke's reaction to Obi-Wan. Why is this? Why does Giles cause Willow to react with rebellion? To want to take over? While Buffy continues to see Giles as a mentor, a guide, who shows her laughter? While Spike appears to try to befriend or even obtain Giles approval?
Perhaps because Spike and Buffy have been abandoned by their biological fathers or is it because, like Luke, both have an ogre father they must somehow reconcile themselves with? An ogre represented by Angelus? Willow's ogre father is her own father, the never seen Ira Rosenberg. Spike and Buffy's is the formerly present Angel/Angelus. Their own biological fathers having long since left the scene.
Giles to Spike and Buffy is more of a positive role model. He doesn't appear to indulge them as often as he does Willow. Throughout Seasons 1-6, Giles is placing a lot of pressure on Buffy. In Season 3, he even becomes a bit of the ogre father - poisoning Buffy in order for her to pass a test. ( Helpless.) While being understanding, Giles lets Buffy know on numerous occasions that her role as slayer must always come first. (See Witch, Freshman, Never Kill a Boy on the First Date, and Revelations.)
Giles places a similar amount of pressure on Spike. In the I in Team, he suggests to Spike that he may have a higher purpose. When Spike dismisses this, Giles dismisses him. Makes him pay for any future help. And treats him like a neutered pain. Even makes it clear in IWMTLY that Buffy is off limits. It's Buffy who allows Spike back into the group, not Giles, who questions her judgment in Spiral, then relents when he realizes that outside of Buffy, Spike is the only one strong enough to handle Glory. In season 6, Spike appears in some ways to be emulating Giles. Or at least trying to up until Giles' departure. In Tabula Rasa, Giles continues to show disapproval towards Spike. Before and after losing his memory - before he loses his memory he states: "Well, now that we've recovered from Spike's ... sartorial humor," and after he loses it - "And you do inspire a, um ... (Spike walking out from behind the counter) particular feeling of ... familiarity and ... disappointment". The episode before, OMWF, when Spike offers his opinion, Giles states - "If I want your opinion, Spike, I'll- (pauses to consider) I'll never want your opinion." Giles clearly relates to Spike in the way a disapproving father would. Spike can never measure up.
So while Giles appears to be more indulgent where Willow is concerned, he appears to be more demanding where Buffy and to a lesser degree Spike are concerned. I'm not sure if this is because he doesn't consider Willow to be his responsibility or if he just believes Willow more capable of managing herself. Possibly the latter, which is fitting with the Phaedon myth and to some extent the Star Wars myth of Darth Vader, in both cases, the indulgent father gave the son the tools in which to destroy the world. Tools that come close to destroying the son in the process. At the end of Grave, Giles provides Willow with the tools in which to destroy the world and herself, it's Xander who stops her not Giles. As Campbell states in The Hero With A Thousand Faces - by indulging the child, the parent allows chaos to erupt.
One last point to make regarding Giles and Spike before moving onto Angelus: in Giles we have two sides = Ripper/Giles just as we have two sides in Angel = Angelus/Angel. In some ways Spike has more in common with Giles' two personas than Angel's. (Which leads me to believe Spike is more likely to become like Giles with a soul than like Angel with a soul). Perhaps this is the familiarity Giles notes? Shadows of his former wild boy self? The self we see in Band Candy boinking Joyce Summers against the hood of a car? Remind you of anyone else?
I plan to discuss Becoming Part II in more depth in the next section, but regarding Giles - Spike and Buffy team up in a way to save him. Spike saves Giles first from Angelus and the chain saw, obtaining, oddly enough, Angelus' approval in the process. "I don't fancy digging Librarian out of the carpet," he offers Angelus by way of explanation. Angelus responds: "It's nice having you watch my back, we make quite a team." In saving Giles, Spike receives his vampire father, Angelus' approval. Willow meanwhile is using Giles' knowledge and his crystal to restore Angelus to his former ensouled self. It is ironically the beginning of both character's journey's to atonement - Spike's to the cave and rebirth, Willow's climatic fight with Giles and the eventual chaos at the bluff. One results in a soul, one in the potential loss of one.
2. ANGELUS -The Ogre Father or ANGEL/ANGELUS - the universal father/contradiction
"the ogre aspect of the father is a reflex of the victim's own ego - derived from the sensational nursery scene that has been left behind, but projected before; and fixating idolatory of that pedagogical nonthing is itself the fault that keeps one steeped in a sense of sin, sealing the potentially adult spirit from a better balanced, more realistic view of the father, and therewith of the world. Atonement (at-one-ment) consists in no more than the abandonment of that self-generated monster - the dragon thought to be God (super-ego) and the dragon thought to be Sin (repressed id). But this requires an abandonment of the attachment to ego itself, and that is what is difficult. One must have a faith that the father is merciful, and then a reliance on that mercy. Therewith, the center of belief is transferred outside of the bedeviling god's tight scaly ring; and the dreadful ogres dissolve." (Cited from pp. 129-130, The Hero With A Thousand Faces, by J. Campbell, 1973 Princeton University Press.) (*Yes, I'm referencing Campbell who references Freud, who is a pain. While try to swing around the Freudian stuff as much as possible. )
Spike's journey appears to be the opposite of Willow's. Perhaps because Spike's father figure and role model was Angelus/Angel. Talk about your mixed messages. Angelus represents the SIN or repressed id in the above quote, while Angel represents the Super-eg or God. Or Angel/Angelus (if you hate Freud) seems to represent the primal universal father, called Viracocha in Peru, who represents both death and life, ogre and mercy, terrifying in the contradictions.
Spike's relationship with Angel/Angelus parallels Buffy's. In Season 2, Spike is introduced in School Hard as Angelus' offspring. He calls Angelus his sire or yoda. Is furious at what he perceives as Angelus' betrayle of his kind. "You Uncle Tom," he screams at him in game face. "You were my sire, my yoda!" Angel tells him that people change. Spike screams, "Not us, not demons!" The disagreement reminds me a little of Willow's confrontation with Giles in Grave. Or even Flooded. It also reminds me of the hero confronting an unexpected side of his father - the contradiction. When Spike encounters Angel in School Hard, he expects to find his old mentor, cruel yoda, Angelus instead he finds Angel, ensouled and more merciful, the Uncle Tom.
Later, in What's My Line Part II, Spike grabs his old sire, and handcuffs him. He allows Dru to taunt him. Dru, whom we later find out is the one who sired Spike. This actually works, because in What's My Line, Angel attempts to get Spike to stake him by flirting with Drusilla in front of Spike. Spike is now sleeping with his mother. But his grandsire taunts him with the fact that he will never be good enough. You'll never satisfy her like me, Angel suggests. This threat is later actualized in Innocence through Becoming Part I, where Angelus literally sleeps with and flirts with Dru under Spike's nose. Spike incapacitated in a wheelchair must watch as Angel strokes and seduces Dru in I Only Have Eyes for You. Taunting Spike about how Dru only gives him pity access. This is the negative aspect - the portion of the father that challenges Spike.
Spike eventually rises out of the wheelchair and ironically does what Angel might have done if he hadn't lost his soul and their positions had been reversed. Spike helps Buffy save the world. Granted he does it for selfish reasons, but the image is there. He rises up out of the wheelchair and bangs old Daddy over the head with a wrench. Not unlike Willow who rises up off the ground and bangs her Daddy over the head with dark magic.
Spike's final act before leaving SunnyDale in Season 2, is to take his mother back from his grandsire, leaving the grandsire to be destroyed by the sister-self. (Not to be confused with shadow self. This isn't an unconscious projection as much as it is a parallel between the two characters.)
What I continue to find fascinating about the whole Angelus-Spike-Dru-Buffy storyline, is how the characters of Spike and Buffy are paralleled throughout that season. It's almost as if they are flip sides of each other. Both are incapacitated by their love for the significant other, which in both cases is a pseudo parental figure. Spike will do anything to save Dru, to the degree he ends up being the one incapacitated at the end of What's My Line not Drusilla. Buffy similarly will do anything for Angel. Literally walking into the lion's den without backup. "Nobody messes with my boyfriend!" she declares. Luckily the SG is in pursuit. For Spike - it's Drusilla. For Buffy - it's Angel. They fight each other, in defense of their significant others. Buffy had threatened Dru's life just a few episodes earlier in Lie to Me. Spike returns the favor by threatening Angel's, although he only does so to save Dru. Buffy's nemesis is Spike not Dru, just as Spike's nemesis is Buffy. It's Spike she fights and vice versa. Ironic. When in reality it is Dru that turns out to be the main threat to her relationship with Angel, as well as Buffy herself. Buffy/Dru in combination cause Buffy to lose Angel. Not Spike. Hence Buffy's dreams of Dru staking Angel. Rewatching them in combination with Becoming Part II = you see Drusilla overlapping Buffy, the Daughter kills the merciful father. (Much like Willow attempts to do in Grave and in the same manner - by touching the heart.) And both times in Buffy's dream and in reality - it is Angel the merciful father who gets staked not Angelus, the ogre. Spike is the one who wounds the ogre with a monkey wrench.
Spike's feelings for Angel in Season 2 are murky at best and have an undercurrent of sexuality. On the surface we see the father/child relationship with a homo-erotic sexuality underneath. For instance- (What's My Line Part II) in response to Willy's question about what Spike plans to do with an injured Angel. "I'm thinking maybe dinner and a movie. I don't want to rush into anything. I've been hurt."
Buffy's feelings towards Angel are equally murky, filled with obvious sexuality and an underlying father child relationship. (The flip side of Spike's.) Throughout the first part of Season 2 and a portion of Season 1, Angel takes on a protector role for Buffy, acts in many ways like Buffy's father. He takes her ice-skating just like her biological father used to do. Listens to her hopes and dreams. Enters some of her dreams, guiding her, telling her what to look for. He gives her information on the demons, helps her fight them, saves her life. In some ways he acts like Buffy's yoda. Just as Angelus might have once acted like Spike's.
When Angel becomes Angelus - both get betrayed. And both don't realize it at first. Angelus leads both on. In Innocence Buffy thinks he just went wonky on her, until near the end of the episode when Angelus attacks Willow. Spike thinks they are a family now, that Angelus is his friend and on his side, his father is back, only to realize at the end of Innocence that Angelus is an ogre, leaving the incapacitated Spike behind to face the SG. Doesn't care a whit about Spike except as something to torment. Both Buffy and Spike struggle with their feelings for Angelus. Angelus, the ogre father, taunts both of them in separate but powerful ways, building their animosity towards him until it reaches the breaking point. In I Only Have Eyes For You - both Buffy and Spike are close to the end of their respective ropes. Spike can barely hide his fury, rising up out his wheel chair and kicking it. Buffy identifies so closely with the rejected spirit of a dead boy, she rages at the spirit and her friends. By the time we reach Becoming Part II, the resulting truce is almost inevitable. The two battling kids have finally banded together against their father. Becoming Part II also echoes Buffy's prophetic dreams in Surprise, except instead of Angelus' dark daughter Dru killing him - it is Buffy who sends him to hell as he reaches out to her. (Another interesting point - when Darla first kills Liam she indicates that he should close his eyes, when Buffy sends Angel to hell, she indicates he should close his eyes, symbolically taking Darla/the mother's place with the father.) Spike is similarly echoed, in School Hard he embraces Angel thinking he is Angelus and in Innocence he attempts to kill Angelus thinking he is Angel, then finally in Becoming, he attacks and wounds Angelus knowing it is Angelus in order to take back his mother/lover Drusilla and take the father/Angelus' place with her. And Willow symbolically takes Jenny's place in Becoming Part II, returning Angel's soul to save the father/Giles.
In one of the posts I read, there was a point made about how Angel and Spike had the same name. Both have variations on the name William. When a father gives his son both his first and last name, it is in a sense passing on his reputation or "good name" to the son. My guess is both William and Liam inherited their names from their fathers. But even if they didn't, isn't it interesting that they share versions of the same name? Liam is the Irish version of William. Both mean protector or guardian. Perhaps there is some significance that Spike's human name is a reflection of Angel's?
Perhaps I'm reaching? How about this - in Western Australia, the aboriginal people practice the following rite of manhood - for a whole moon, a boy is not allowed any other food but human blood. The blood he must drink is the blood of the men of his tribe or family. In some cases they kill someone and use that blood. But in most cases the blood is taken from each man's wrist, while the boy's father holds his head and forces him to drink the blood. This practice, Campbell compares to the metaphorical eating of the primal father or the ogre. (See The Hero With A Thousand Faces). By consuming the ogre, the boy becomes reconciled to him, at one with him, and takes the ogre's place as the new father. In Btvs - vampires are created by drinking blood. Dru sired Spike with her blood, which in turn was taken from Angelus. Prior to becoming a vampire, Spike was the boy William, a naive young man. Then he drinks blood for many moons - becomes an undead thing, the adolescent, the hoodlum. He gets the chip and stops drinking human blood, has moved to animal blood as far as we know. Then finally, in Spike's trials, the bugs clean him out and he is given the soul, adulthood.
If Angelus is the ogre father, than what is Angel? Angel may be the merciful father, not the indulgent one. The father who can turn into an ogre at the slightest hint of trouble. How does one trust in this father's mercy? Spike for the longest time resists becoming anything like Angel, a demon he previously emulated. Now he calls him soul-boy with more than a little disdain. Buffy-whipped. Slayer's lap-dog. All incredibly ironic terms when viewed in hindsight. After becoming chipped, Spike has become more and more like Angel. Slowly usurping his pseudo-father's role with SG in the process. Now Spike has Angel's old place in the Btvs credits, just as Willow has taken over Gile's. Spike is the vampire Buffy is trying to resist. And soon the vampire with a soul that helps her from the fringes??
By going to the lurker demon -Spike may have wandered down the path he once swore he'd never follow, Angel's. Several posters have compared Spike in the past to the Greek God, Dionysis. Well there is another term for this god, Dithyrambos - it means killed and resurrected or "him of the double door", who survived the awesome miracle of a second birth, but not from the mother's womb -- the father's. Interesting. It reminds me of a theory I read a while back that the Lurker demon was the oldest of the vampires, a sort of father figure. If this is the case, then Spike's meeting with him - could metaphorically symbolize a reconciliation with his own ogre father Angelus/Angel. As Campbell states in The Hero With A Thousand Faces : "The problem of the hero going to meet the father is to open his *soul * beyond terror to such a degree that he will be ripe to understand how the sickening and insane tragedies of this vast and ruthless cosmos are completely validated in the majesty of Being. The hero transcends life with its peculiar blind spot and for a moment rises to a glimpse of the source. Beholds the face of the father, understands and the two are atoned." I've seen this happen twice in BTvs: with Willow and Giles, Giles gives Willow the ability to feel and ultimately understand the sickening pain of the cosmos, a pain that almost causes her to rip the world to shreds, and with Spike and Lurker, the Lurker gives Spike his soul which allows Spike to feel the sickening pain of all his past deeds. Once Spike feels this pain - he will ultimately understand Angel. And become reconciled to what Angelus/Angel has now become. Because in essence Spike has now chosen this route himself.
Conclusion
Spike and Willow both seek atonement but in different ways and with different types of fathers. Spike reconciles himself with his father. He metaphorically goes to the father to seek who he once was, to grow. In doing so, he is reborn and becomes in essence like his father, Angel, an ensouled vampire. Yet very different. Just as his name William is but a version of Angel's name Liam. He chose his father's path, and in a sense his vampire father's old place at Buffy's side, but he has not become his father. He has not become Angel. He has merely faced the universal father and accepted both the merciful and the ogre and seen that the two are one. Willow fights her father. She wants to usurp him, to take over his role, to take his power. She believes she can control it. Instead she becomes overwhelmed by the power he has given her. The moral of the indulgent father is actualized, chaos results. Thus, the journeys that were begun in Becoming Part I & II come to their denouement in Grave. Spike and Willow have atoned with their respective father figures with varying results. Neither have taken their father's place nor have they become their father. The next stage in their development, like all stages is up to them.
Just like our next stage in development, is up to us.
Hope this made sense and didn't contain too many historical inaccuracies or mistakes.
Thank you for reading. Feedback please?
;- ) shadowkat
