Death As a Gift in J.R.R Tolkien's Work and Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Journal of Tolkien Research Volume 10 Issue 1 J.R.R. Tolkien and the works of Joss Article 7 Whedon 2020 Death as a Gift in J.R.R Tolkien's Work and Buffy the Vampire Slayer Gaelle Abalea Independant Scholar, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholar.valpo.edu/journaloftolkienresearch Part of the American Popular Culture Commons, Literature in English, British Isles Commons, and the Other Film and Media Studies Commons Recommended Citation Abalea, Gaelle (2020) "Death as a Gift in J.R.R Tolkien's Work and Buffy the Vampire Slayer," Journal of Tolkien Research: Vol. 10 : Iss. 1 , Article 7. Available at: https://scholar.valpo.edu/journaloftolkienresearch/vol10/iss1/7 This Peer-Reviewed Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Christopher Center Library at ValpoScholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal of Tolkien Research by an authorized administrator of ValpoScholar. For more information, please contact a ValpoScholar staff member at [email protected]. Abalea: Death as a Gift in Tolkien and Whedon's Buffy DEATH AS A GIFT IN J.R.R TOLKIEN’S WORK AND BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER “Love will bring you to your gift” is what Buffy is told by a spiritual being under the guise of the First Slayer in the Episode “Intervention” (5.18). The young woman is intrigued and tries to learn more about her gift. The audience is hooked as well: a gift in this show could be a very powerful artefact, like a medieval weapon, and as Buffy has to vanquish a Goddess in this season, the viewers are waiting for the guide to bring out the guns. However, the guide reveals that “Death is [her] gift.” The heroine, and the viewers with her, are baffled. Buffy understands that killing, giving death, is her only gift. She interprets the phrase to mean that killing is her talent: she is really good at terminating monsters. Indeed, as underlined by Rhonda V. Wilcox, the life of a Slayer is dictated by death; “like the king in a patriarchal succession, each Slayer is born to the position and assumes it only on the death of the preceding Slayer” (Wilcox 4). She herself will be relieved of her responsibility on the day of her own death. In the meantime, she will confront undead creatures to which she will bring death on a daily basis. She is trained in the art of giving death in multiple situations, in various ways, with many different weapons. Still mourning her mother, who had passed away two episodes before in “The Body” (5.16), Buffy is not really inclined to see Death as a gift one way or another. However, the guide disappears without further explanation, leaving Buffy and the audience in the same state of confusion. The association of Death with something as positive as a gift, something willingly bestowed to another person as a token of gratitude or attachment, is likely to be viewed as either odd or tragically cruel by a 20th century Western mind. Indeed, since the Romantic era, death has generally been associated with tragedy and loss, as it is supposed to be the end of an individual and the separation between loved ones (Ariès 178). However, to Tolkien’s fans this association feels familiar. Indeed, in The Silmarillion, the Elves refer to human death as the Gift of Ilúvatar (S 318). Men in Middle- earth are rewarded at the end of their short existence with the possibility, or so the Elves believe, of escaping the circles of the World and perhaps joining Eru Ilúvatar, the name of the Creator in Elvish. The Eldar, being bound to Eä, harbor a great envy for this particular present only bestowed to Men, which can seem paradoxical for immortal creatures, at least from a mortal point of view. BODY AND SOUL It is interesting that Tolkien and Whedon, two prolific artists of the 20th century working in different media, the first a devout Roman Catholic and the second a convinced atheist, both developed a mixed of Aristotelian and Published by ValpoScholar, 2020 1 Journal of Tolkien Research, Vol. 10 [2020], Iss. 1, Art. 7 Platonic vision of death. This is a vision of the soul as a vessel of the personality and the essence of a being that survives the death of the body, which is only a flesh receptacle. (Phaedo, 62b) Claudio Testi affirms that Tolkien’s vision of the soul is a sort of “Aristotelized Platonism” (Testi 176). In the exposition of the Myth of Er, Plato presents the union between the body and the soul as accidental. The two distinct entities are forced together in a way. In contrast, Tolkien views the normal course of life as hroä and feä living in harmony because they belong together. The separation of the two is seen as unnatural. In Buffy, the mere concept of the vampire relies on this idea of body and soul being two apparently distinctive entities able to survive one without the other; or more precisely, the soul, being immortal, survives somewhere while the body disappears. In “Becoming” (2.21-22) the restoration spell as uttered by Willow mentions the interregnum. We could suppose it refers to a place between realms, like the demi-monde described in Penny Dreadful or the limbo of Christian tradition.) However, in the Buffyverse, when one is killed by a vampire, one’s soul departs the body resulting in one’s death, and the soul is replaced by a sort of demon remembering the dead person’s life. What Scott McLaren calls the “second soul” which derives from Aristotle’s thesis that a body can’t survive without a soul, an idea that is prevailing in vampire folklore. Angel expresses it himself in the episode “Angel” (1.7): “when you become a vampire, the demon takes your body but it doesn’t get your soul. That’s gone.” The body is therefore thought of as a vehicle which can accept many passengers, or as it is often referred to by demons in the TV show Supernatural, a “meat suit.” This derogatory term however diverges from the Platonic vision in which the body, if somewhat inferior to the soul, is still sacred. The vision also diverges from Plato in another way, as explained by Marguerite Krause. Indeed, in the Buffyverse, the vampire keeps memories and traits of the deceased: “Even though the human soul is gone, the demon has complete access to all of the human’s memories, behavioral traits and personal habits. Whedon and the other writers of Buffy and Angel may not think of it in this terms, but the implication is that memory and personality are stored in the physical body” (Krause 105). The soul imprints thoughts and traits inside the body creating a link, an interdependence between soul and physical form. If the body survives without the soul, it keeps traces, marks the soul left. It might be the reason why when summoned back, only the soul previously inhabiting the body comes back, and not any soul passing by, though it seems the demonic possession can be rather random. Tolkien’s conception of Elvish souls is the opposite, as Elves can choose through reincarnation to inhabit a brand-new new body like Glorfindel (PME 379) or their own like Miriel (Morgoth’s Ring 256 but not the body of another entity. They can also choose not be reincarnated and to stay in the Hall of Mandos. However, this reflection on the destiny of Elvish souls evolved throughout Tolkien’s life, alongside his understanding of the different https://scholar.valpo.edu/journaloftolkienresearch/vol10/iss1/7 2 Abalea: Death as a Gift in Tolkien and Whedon's Buffy perceptions of death from elvish and human point of view, showing that both concepts were paramount in importance and intertwined. Marguerite Krause argues that this imprinting of the body by the soul makes vampires “such disturbing monsters. When someone is killed by a vampire, their surviving friends and relations are confronted with a double horror: the grief of losing someone they loved, plus the agony of facing an utterly evil being who looks, sounds and acts almost exactly like the person they once knew” (Krause 105). Creating a vampire in this light is an additional level of desecration of the body and mockery of life and thus encroaches on divine power. So the death given by a slayer might actually be a gift not only to the mourning relatives but perhaps also to the soul of the human whose body has been inhabited. If a part of that soul was indeed still present in the body and another part in another world or dimension, then the soul becomes whole again and is reattached to the body, thus allowing the being to be one again in death. This vision of the soul makes it possible for a character like Angel to exist in all his complexity and sometimes contradictions: a particularly vicious character, Angelus is cursed by a Romanian clan (“Becoming” 2.21/22) after he murdered one of their own. The curse restores the vampire’s soul to his dead body, plaguing him with the appalling memories of all his deeds as a vampire and transfixing him with remorse and guilt. We learn in the episode “The Dark Age” (2.8) that the demon is still trapped in Angel’s body but his human soul has taken over. In this episode, as the demon Eyghon the Sleepwalker can only possess unconscious or dead bodies, the gang force him into Angel’s.