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![]() Buffy s4e8 The argument between Willow and Giles is essentially one of the proportionality of punishment. Neither would doubt that Buffy has to do something, but Willow rejects the usual resolution of killing the offending demon. I have long recognised that the Slayer has limited options as what she can do to her adversaries. She's a lone girl, so she can either slay them or let them go (unless some form of incaraceration can be achieved as with Catherine Madison, way, way back in The Witch). This will necessarily lead to injustice when the opponents are on the borderline. What would she do with a demonic thief? It wouldn't be just to kill it if it wasn't threatening others, but as it is supernatural it still escapes the jurisdiction of mortal agencies. As fascinating as this problem is (and I go into it more fully in my article Slayers and the Right to Slay) I do not think it is relevant in this particular case. Willow's argument, that the Chumash's vengence spirit is justified in what it does because it is merely exacting what was done to those people fails on the ground that its punishment is not exacted on the correct people. It might be a different matter if it targeted the people actually responsible for the atrocities but they are long dead. It is not just to hold a person responsible for someone else's crimes. The spirit is going around killing innocent people, whether he believes he has just cause or not is irrelevant. In some way the spirit's valuing vengence above justice echoes the attitude displayed by Uncle Enyos in Surprise, but there the punishment was inflicted on the guilty person (Angelus) whereas here the victims had no identifiable connection with the guilty. They were chosen merely because they were in positions of power. So, no matter the tragic history of the Chumash tribe, this should have been a case of a simple slayage. The topic of land was also brought in, yes we might see it as just that an decimated people be allowed to recover something of what was wrongfully taken from them, but there we begin to run into problems. How far back do we go? Take South Africa for an example, which race should rightfully on that? The English uprooted the Dutch, the Dutch uprooted the Zulus, the Zulus uprooted the original tribes that lived there. Each one is as guilty as the one before, so which do we give it back to? This does not mean, of course, that we should accept Spike's argument of a fait accompli, in the Gulf War there was no question that the Kuwaiti land should be returned to them from the Iraqis who had occupied it. But it does mean that there has to be some point where the land itself, no matter how wrongfully taken, stops being the victim's and starts belonging to the invader. In the end, we are all "bloody colonials". Go to Masquerade's Is symbolic revenge justified? Your opinion Or you can
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