Introduction

Joseph Campbell’s seminal 1949 work on mythic structure, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, postulated that there was only one myth in the world (the “monomyth”) which was told and retold with endless variations by every culture on earth. Heavily influenced by Freud and Jung, he argued that the monomyth is universal because it presents and solves the various crises of the unconscious that must necessarily be overcome by each individual in order to move from an infantile state into a higher realization of self. “The Hero archetype represents the ego’s search for identity and wholeness. In the process of becoming complete, integrated human beings, we are all Heroes facing internal guardians, monsters, and helpers.” (Vogler 35) Bruno Bettelheim, who explored similar ideas as Campbell, but studied fairy tales instead of myth, described it thus: “the fairy tales’ concern is not useful information about the external world, but the inner processes taking place in an individual.” (Bettelheim 25)

Campbell’s work has been widely influential in scholarly and literary circles, and although it was written as a work that attempted to explain why all mythic structures bear similarities, it was eventually used as a blueprint for stories that were written subsequently. For example, it was the basis for Christopher Vogler’s 1998 book The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers, which is a staple screenplay handbook in Hollywood. What was once the explanation for the organic growth of fiction has become the topiary form into which the fiction is cut.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a television show developed by Joss Whedon, which ran in the United States from 1997 until 2003. The show, which was based around a female hero, inspired deep devotions from its fans, and has also become a sub-genre for pop culture studies in academia. It deals with the mythic structure with both devastating maturity and light-hearted humor, which is equally valid: “Humor is the touchstone of the truly mythological as distinct from the more literal-minded and sentimental theological mood.” (Campbell 180)

I would like to compare and contrast the main character in the series, Buffy Summers, to the monomythic hero described by Campbell. Buffy both conforms beautifully to the archetype presented, while at the same time rebuking and rejecting portions of it. Campbell’s work focused almost exclusively on male heroes, relegating female heroes to a more passive role within the myth, that a masculine hero’s journey is “the son against the father for the mastery of the universe,” while the female hero’s journey is “the daughter against the mother to be the mastered world.” (Campbell 136) As Buffy is both a woman and a warrior, her subconscious crises lead her to have a unique reaction to her hero journey.

I am looking at Buffy’s journey through the entirety of the seven seasons of the series as one continuous story arc, which roughly follows the five-act structure that was used for both individual episodes, and season-long arcs. These five acts may be roughly defined as Act I: The Call to Arms, Act II: Frustration and Opposition, Act III: Nightmare, Act IV: Climax and Act V: Resolution. I have overlaid these five sections with the three-part (or three act) rites of passage explored by Campbell: Separation or Departure, The Trials and Victories of Initiation, and The Return and Reintegration with Society. Figure 2 shows roughly how these different criteria apply to the seasons and dramatic arc of the journey.

The Separation or Departure

At the beginning of the monomyth, the hero must leave the ordinary world and journey into a new and frightening reality. The five subsections within this beginning portion are the Call to Adventure, the Refusal of the Call, Supernatural Aid, Crossing of the First Threshold, and the Belly of the Whale. This first and brief portion of the hero myth is mostly exposition, a way to introduce the character of the hero and to incite him or her into action. In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, this portion is covered within the first season.

The Call to Adventure

In the first episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer we see Buffy attempting to be a normal teenage girl, even though she knows through previous (unseen) adventures that her future is to be a Slayer. Buffy believes she has escaped this future by changing locations, but destiny will not be subverted. It’s already too late. Campbell explains, “…the call rings up the curtain, always, on a mystery of transfiguration– a rite, or moment, of spiritual passage, which when complete, amounts to a dying and a rebirth. The familiar life horizon has been outgrown; the old concepts, ideals, and emotional patterns no longer fit; the time for passing the threshold is at hand.” (Campbell 51)

For Buffy, the call is given by Rupert Giles, whose role as a mentor and advisor will be discussed later. In her attempt to emulate outmoded norms of teenage behavior, she goes to the library for a textbook. Instead, she is presented with a large book with the word “Vampyr” engraved on the cover. Frightened, she says, “That’s not what I’m looking for.” Giles asks, “Are you sure?” (Welcome to the Hellmouth)

In actuality, Buffy is fairly committed to her calling within the first season, as long as the danger to her person is not too great. She has not yet reached the true mark of the hero, which is the sacrifice of self to the greater good. “People commonly think of Heroes as strong or brave, but these qualities are secondary to sacrifice– the true mark of a Hero. Sacrifice is the willingness to give up something of value, perhaps even her own life, on behalf of an ideal or a group.” (Vogler 38) Instead, she is still fighting to keep her life as “normal” as possibly, which delays a final decision in response to her call. “Thereafter, even though the hero returns for a while to his familiar occupations, they may be found unfruitful. A series of signs of increasing force will become visible, until… the summons can no longer be denied.” (Campbell 56)

Buffy cannot ignore her calling completely, as her new home, Sunnydale, is located on a “Hellmouth,” or a portal between a place of high mystical energy (demon dimensions) and low mystical energy (the human world.) In addition to making this area attractive to supernatural creatures, it is also constantly threatening to open, which would create, as Campbell put it, “the shocking transformations that take place when the insulation between a highly concentrated power center and the lower power field of the surrounding world is, without proper precautions, suddenly taken away.” (Campbell 225) The threat of opening the Hellmouth by an ancient vampire called The Master is the cataclysm which eventually forces Buffy to choose once and for all if she is going to accept her call to arms.

The Refusal of the Call

Commonly, the hero of the monomyth is reluctant to accept the call to adventure. The hesitation “serves an important dramatic function signaling the audience that the adventure is risky. It’s not a frivolous undertaking but a danger-filled, high-stakes gamble in which the hero might lose fortune or life.” (Vogler 107) For Buffy, the impetus to her refusal is a prophesy that guarantees she will die trying to stop the Master.

Confronted with the possibility of losing her own life, Buffy says, “I’ve got a way around it. I quit.” Her lover, Angel, tries to explain that “It’s not that simple,” but she counters, “I’m making it that simple! I quit. I resign, I’m fired, you can find someone else to stop the Master from taking over…. I’m sixteen years old. I don’t wanna die.” (Prophesy Girl) As a symbol of her rejection, she takes the cross from her neck, a symbol of her aggression against the supernatural forces that threaten her, and places it on the desk.

Campbell makes it clear that the refusal of the call is always for fundamentally selfish reasons: “The myths and folk tales of the whole world make it clear that the refusal is essentially a refusal to give up what one takes to be one’s own interest. The future is not regarded in terms of an unremitting series of deaths and births, but as through one’s present system of ideals, virtues, goals and advantages were to be fixed and made secure.” (Campbell 59-60) The hero, in rejecting the call, is obeying the dictates of the id and ego, which call for self-preservation. However, we want to see “a superego-dominated ego which has become so cut off from the selfish id that it is ready to risk the person’s very existence to obey a moral obligation.” (Bettelheim 88) Any attempt to maintain the status quo when a call for change has been made is futile. “Peace then is a snare; war is a snare; change is a snare; permanence a snare. When our day is come for the victory of death, death closes in; there is nothing we can do, except be crucified– and resurrected; dismembered totally, and then reborn.” (Campbell 16-17)

Naturally, Buffy’s refusal is temporary. When faced with further atrocities committed by the Master, she realizes that she has no choice but to put her life on the line. When reminded that she will die if she fights the Master, she picks up a crossbow and says, “Maybe I’ll take him with me.” (Prophesy Girl) Only when she accepts her call does she finally find peace.

Supernatural Aid

The introduction of a mentor, or supernatural aid, is necessary to propel the plot of the journey forward. “The supernatural helper is masculine in form… who appears, to supply the amulets and advice that the hero will require.” (Campbell 72) The relationship of the mentor and the hero is also an important dynamic that facilitates the hero-journey. “The relationship between Hero and Mentor is one of the most common themes in mythology, and one of the richest in symbolic value. It stands for the bond between parent and child, teacher and student, doctor and patient, god and man.” (Vogler 17)

In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, this bond is one of the strongest in Buffy’s life, with her Watcher, Giles. Giles begins the series by representing the heavily masculine Watcher’s Council, a group that both trains and contains the feminine power of the Slayer. As time goes on, however, he becomes a strong father-figure to Buffy, whose own father is absent and neglectful. “The Mentor archetype is closely related to the image of the parent…. Many heroes seek out Mentors because their own parents are inadequate role models.” (Vogler 48)

Moments of closeness and accord between the hero and her mentor are frequently interrupted with rebellion and conflict, but the relationship is essentially affectionate. In various episodes, Buffy demonstrates that she believes that Giles is her father-replacement, from “Helpless,” when she tries to convince him to take her father’s place on their traditional yearly outing, to “Something Blue,” when she asks him to be in her wedding: “I’m not crazy, and I know that you probably don’t approve, and my father’s not that far away, I mean, he could— but this day is about family — my real family — and I would like you to be the one to give me away.” (Something Blue)

Giles’ affection is rarely so openly expressed, although Quentin Travers, the head of the Watcher’s Council, says it aloud for him: “Your affection for your charge has rendered you incapable of clear and impartial judgment. You have a father’s love for the child, and that is useless to the cause.” (Helpless) Perhaps the most telling moment in unraveling Giles’ feelings for Buffy are in the episode “Restless,” where we are privy to Giles’ undiluted subconscious, as he dreams about Buffy. In his mind, she is little more than a child, in pigtails, to be protected and given treats.

Giles is pivotal to the first few seasons of the series, when he acts as Buffy’s moral compass, motivator, teacher, and trainer. As she develops and needs guidance less, his role becomes more passively paternal. Eventually, her dependence on him becomes a crutch that inhibits her psychological growth, which leads to his eventual abandonment, which will be discussed in depth later.

The Crossing of the First Threshold

For Buffy, it is not enough in her hero-journey to accept her possible death; to truly embrace her calling, she must actually die. Campbell points out that “the really creative acts are represented as those deriving from some sort of dying to the world; and what happens in the interval of the hero’s nonentity so that he comes back as one reborn, made great and filled with creative power, mankind is also unanimous in declaring.” (Campbell 35-36) Buffy’s encounter with the Master leaves her temporarily dead– an event that changes her materially. After she is revived by her friend Xander, she gets up to fight. Frightened, Xander cautions her, “You’re still weak.” She responds, “No. No, I feel strong.” Then, tellingly: “I feel different.” (Prophesy Girl)

The first threshold that the hero passes is the point of no return. Once that step is taken, the hero journey has finally begun. The threshold is always guarded by a creature that must be fought, or turned, or out-witted. Although crossing the threshold is a necessary step on the heroic journey, it would be oversimplifying to accept it as a “good” choice. After all, it is always safer on the original side. “One had better not challenge the watcher of the established bounds. And yet– it is only by advancing beyond those bounds, provoking the destructive other aspect of the same power, that the individual passes, either alive or in death, into a new zone of experience.” (Campbell 82) Seen from that perspective, the threshold guardian isn’t a monster at all, but someone put there to protect the world, and the hero, from potentially cataclysmic change.

The Belly of the Whale

By crossing the first threshold, the hero places herself in a position of great danger. In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, accepting her death and being reborn means that Buffy must fight against the Master, whereas before she was simply putting herself in a position to be killed. She has answered her call to adventure, finally, with a resounding “YES.” From here on in the series, she is the Slayer. She sometimes struggles with the peripheral difficulties, but she has accepted her destiny and learns to enjoy the journey.

“The belly of the whale” is a metaphorical expression meaning that the hero has been symbolically devoured by the new world. However, this figurative consumption is often mirrored literally. Buffy, when fighting the Master, has already actually fed him with her own blood. Often, in the series, the feeding of a vampire is delineated as “eating” as opposed to “drinking.” It’s seen as a more complete and violent absorption of the individual. So, in Buffy’s “belly of the whale,” her life-blood is coursing through the Master’s body as she kills him. This devouring is compared by Campbell to “the passing of a worshipper into a temple– where he is to be quickened by the recollection of who and what he is, namely dust and ashes unless immortal.” (Campbell 91)

By way of being consumed by the beast, and by confronting her enemy, Buffy transcends her human boundaries and is jettisoned into a new world. “Once inside he may be said to have died to time and returned to the World Womb, the World Navel, the Earthly Paradise… the passage into a temple and the hero-dive through the jaws of the whale are identical adventures, both denoting, in picture language, the life-centering, life-renewing act.” (Campbell 92) Having been destroyed and reborn, Buffy is ready to move beyond the first portion of her mythic journey, the Separation or Departure, and enter the Trials and Victories of Initiation.

The Trials and Victories of Initiation: The Road of Trials

This portion of the myth generally contains the bulk of the story. Our hero is in a new world, and must slowly learn the rules and gain experience and maturity. Buffy is faced with a sequence of larger-than-life shadow villains, whose minor emissaries provide many of the monster-of-the-week challenges that she faces. They all seek to protect Buffy from further growth and development. “That is why the approaches and entrances to temples are flanked and defended by colossal gargoyles: dragons, lions, devil-slayers with swords, resentful dwarfs, winged bulls. These are the threshold guardians to ward away all incapable of encountering the higher silences within.” (Campbell 92) In this portion of the journey, “the world is usually dominated by a villian or Shadow who is careful to surround his world with traps, barricades, and checkpoints. It’s common for heroes to fall into traps here or trip the Shadow’s security alarms. How the hero deals with these traps is part of the Testing.” (Vogler 137)

There are a few important mythological steps that Buffy encounters in this portion of her journey, but it also gives her time to gear up for the troubles to come by various means. For one thing, an important dramatic event that Campbell overlooks is that this is the portion of the story where the hero makes friends. In Vogler’s work, he spends more time on this aspect, delineating between allies, side-kicks, and teams. These various labels are also important to the characters involved in our adventure, whom the series whimsically nicknames “The Scooby Gang.” Although they often express reservations and have identity crises about their place in the adventure, the truth is that the gang is a team, and whenever Buffy forgets that and treats them as something less, she is emotionally, and sometimes physically, punished. Vogler explains the dramatic importance of the team thus: “Many stories feature multiple heroes or a hero backed up by a team of characters with special skills or qualities. The early phases of Act Two may cover the recruiting of a team, or give an opportunity for the team to make plans and rehearse a difficult operation.” (Voger 138)

The team gathers together in what Vogler calls “a watering hole,” or a place to rest and refresh in between minor adventures. “The crossing of the First Threshold may have been long, lonely, and dry. Bars are natural spots to recuperate, pick up gossip, make friends, and confront Enemies. They also allow us to observe people under pressure, when true character is revealed.” (Vogler 140) Perhaps the most obvious “watering hole” in the series is The Bronze, the dance club that figures in predominantly in all seven series. The Scoobies have several other, more private watering holes where they meet and plan. In the first three seasons, it is often the library of the high school. In the fourth season, it is Giles’ apartment. In the fifth and sixth season it is The Magic Box, Giles’ and Anya’s retail establishment. In the final season, it is Buffy’s house. The Scoobies consider these locations to belong to them, even if they are public. When an interloper enters the library or the Magic Box, the team is offended and antagonistic.

This portion of the story also gives Buffy a chance to practice at romantic relationships, something that will be marginalized later on, when her life becomes more chaotic. As a heterosexual woman, Buffy is subconsciously seeking her animus, or the repressed masculine elements of her own subconscious. Buffy herself is what Vogler would call a shapeshifter– a character who changes her identity depending on audience. Her role as a slayer is a secret, which consequently leads to a complicated series of lies and deceptions she feels compelled to live. Her suppressed animus is also a shapeshifter, because she identifies most strongly with someone who is as changeable as she. It’s not unusual for the romantic interest of a story to be a shapeshifter of some sort, as “it’s natural for each sex to regard the other as ever-changing, mysterious. Many of us don’t understand our own sexuality and psychology very well, let alone that of the opposite sex. Often our main experience of the opposite sex is their changeability and their tendency to shift attitudes, appearances, and emotions for no apparent reason.” (Vogler 67)

This changeability does not create stable or enriching relationships. “Shapeshifters change appearance or mood, and are difficult for the hero and audience to pin down. They may mislead the hero or keep her guessing, and their loyalty or sincerity is often in question.” (Vogler 65) As is often the case in the show, the metaphorical aspects of myth are rendered literally. The men that Buffy involves herself with are changeable in emotions and behaviors, but they sometimes literally change their shape, specifically; vampires. Some change moral sides in ways that are fairly minor; such as Parker in season 4, who seems like a sensitive and caring individual, only to shapeshift into a crass and unfeeling cad. Other changes are more material; such as Angel shapeshifting in season 2 into a villain bent on destroying Buffy’s life. The important thing for Buffy is that her romantic interests must constantly change in order to remain interesting to her. When Riley goes from being a shapeshifter in season 4 (a Midwestern farm boy on in one facet, and a secret government agent on the other) into a more straightforward and solid individual in season 5, she becomes bored and shuts him out emotionally. As Spike rather crassly puts it, “The girl needs some monster in her man.” (Into the Woods)

Several important steps of the heroic journey take place during the “trials” period. “Once having traversed the threshold, the hero moves in a dream landscape of curiously fluid, ambiguous forms, where he must survive a succession of trials. This is a favorite phase of the myth-adventure…. The hero is covertly aided by the advice, amulets, and secret agents of the supernatural helper whom he met before his entrance into this region.” (Campbell 97) The steps that are undertaken in the portion of the journey are The Meeting with the Goddess, The Woman as Temptress, The Atonement with the Father, Apotheosis, and The Ultimate Boon. It encompasses roughly seasons 2 through 5.

Meeting with the Goddess

It is in this section of the hero journey that Buffy’s path becomes significantly differentiated from the monomyth presented by Campbell. Within the temple of the mystical world through which our hero is traveling is the ultimate feminine power. “The mythological figure of the Universal Mother imputes to the cosmos the feminine attributes of the first, nourishing and protecting presence.” (Campbell 113) The encounter by a male hero with this feminine force is often a “mystical marriage,” or sexual in nature. She is both beautiful and dangerous, and should not be underestimated. “For she is the world creatrix, ever mother, ever virgin. She encompasses the encompassing, nourishes the nourishing, and is the life of everything that lives. She is also the death of everything that dies.” (Campbell 114)

Within the mythology of Buffy the Vampire Slayer the power of the slayer is heavily feminine. Slayers have always been women. Buffy’s meeting with the Goddess is then with the ultimate matriarchal creatrix of the Slayer line: the First Slayer, also called The Primitive. She is someone Buffy seeks more than once in the series in a quest for answers: “Woman, in the picture language of mythology, represents the totality of what can be known.” (Campbell 116)

It is perhaps important to note that Buffy’s first meeting with The Primitive takes place during a dream state, in the episode “Restless.” As all action within the hero myth is essentially a playing-out of the individual battling the subconscious mind, dream sequences are important because they allow the subconscious to surface and become an active factor in the story. “Dream is the personalized myth, myth the depersonalized dream; both myth and dream are symbolic in the same general way of the dynamics of the psyche.” (Campbell 19)

Instead of a sexual encounter between the two women, they attack each other and fight physically. (This is certainly not the first or last time on the show that those two physical actions are blurred.) The argument is over a set of morals; the Primitive is telling Buffy that the role of Slayer is a lone one, and that Buffy is showing weakness by relying heavily on her friends when they fight. The Primitive says, “The Slayer does not walk in this world.” Buffy rejects this ideology, countering with: “I walk. I talk. I shop, I sneeze…. Now give me back my friends.” (Restless) Psychologically, Buffy is encountering the crisis presented by different value systems between parent and child. The Primitive is her mother-slayer, remote and dangerous, and is imposing her ethics on her daughter-slayer. Although Buffy has accepted her call, she still has the ability to accept or reject the ideology of those who seek to impose their will upon her.

Woman as Temptress

The masculine hero in Campbell’s work must also reject the feminine presence. Psychologically, it is unhealthy for him to remain bonded to the mother. In order to be a hero, he must leave her. The joining was a sort of mastery, a subconscious acting out of the Oedipal complex, but after that he must reject her. “A monastic-puritanical, world-negating ethical system then radically and immediately transfigures all the images of myth. No longer can the hero rest in innocence with the goddess of the flesh; for she is become the queen of sin.” (Campbell 123)

After her physical encounter with The Primitive, Buffy rejects fighting as a solution to their differences: “Are you quite finished? It’s over, okay? I’m going to ignore you, and you’re going to go away. You’re going to have to get over the whole primal power thing. You’re [i]not[/i] the source of me.” (Restless) This disassociation protects Buffy psychologically from the emotional pain of rejecting her mother. If The Primitive is not her matriarch, then she has no right to impose her value system on Buffy. If Buffy chooses to be her own creator, then she can create her own rules. Rather than continuing the fight, The Primitive leaves abruptly. She reappears a couple of seasons later, and instead of seeming angry or hurt by Buffy’s rejection, it instead has allowed them to address each other as equals and peers.

It is also perhaps important to note that within a few episodes of her encounter with the Goddess, Buffy loses her mother. The emotional bond between Joyce and Buffy is too strong for Buffy to reject her (a theme that will be repeated later with her father-figure, Giles.) However, dependence on a mother-figure is an inhibitor to Buffy’s heroic development, and Joyce’s death, although emotionally devastating, gives Buffy room to mature and develop into a mother-figure herself (to her sister, Dawn, and later to the Potentials.)

Atonement with the Father

After the psychosocial estrangement from the mother-figure, the hero must come to some sort of terms with the father. Often, in myth, this is a God figure. Psychologically, the individual must deal with the dual nature of how he or she perceives his or her father, as well as how he or she perceives God. On the one hand, the father-God is seen as protecting and safe, on the other, abandoning and dangerous. The fact that both views blind us to the true nature of the father perpetuates this conflict; “the fixating idolatry 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 double monster.” (Campbell 130) Thus, atonement with the father doesn’t mean to reconcile one’s will with his, but to accept him as a flawed and human creature.

Buffy’s relationships with the father-God involve a sequence of rejecting and, most of the time, reaccepting. There are four main men or groups of men whom represent father/God/authority during the course of the series: Giles, Wesley, the Watcher’s Council, and the Shadow Men. In a way, these father-god figures are all descended from each other: the Shadow Men’s descendents eventually became the Watcher’s Council, which assigned Giles and subsequently Wesley to Buffy. The Watcher’s Council, although we are shown a couple of women involved, is a primarily masculine functioning force, made of rigid rules and ancient codes, which is much different from the feminine functioning force of the Scooby Gang, which is fluid and adaptable to various situations.

The most intense father-God relationship that Buffy has is with her Watcher, Giles. During the first three seasons, Giles acts as a representative of the Watcher’s Council, but that relationship breaks down in the episode “Helpless,” referenced above. Giles is fired from the Watcher’s Council, but remains with Buffy in an unofficial capacity. The bonds of affection between them are strong enough that Buffy eventually develops an unhealthy dependence on Giles by season 6. He becomes increasingly concerned about the fact that she will not step up and act like an adult, but instead continues to rely on him. As he (ahem) sings in “Once More, with Feeling”: “I wish I could say the right words to lead you through this land. Wish I could play the father and take you by the hand. Wish I could stay here, but now I understand. I’m standing in the way.” (Once More with Feeling) Giles’ decision to leave Buffy to her own devices is one that shocks and hurts her, but is absolutely necessary to her heroic development. When he returns, months later, he finds a woman who has learned to take control of her own problems. Her love for him is undiminished, but they now have the freedom and space to come and go out of each other’s lives without emotionally devastating each other. Like Buffy’s relationship with the Goddess, they can be colleagues and allies instead of a child and a parent.

Buffy’s rejection and subsequent reacceptance of Wesley is more straight-forward, because she doesn’t have the emotional attachment to him that she has to Giles. He is sent from the Watcher’s Council to replace Giles, but he is never completely accepted by the group. In the beginning, Buffy obeys him, but never without checking with Giles first. He is a parent in name only, and does not wield the psychological power over her that Giles, as her father-figure, does. He is an object of annoyance and contempt. Her full rejection of him is also a rejection of the Council, when they refuse to bend their ancient codes to help her friends. Wesley says, “The Council’s orders are to concentrate on…” but Buffy interrupts him, saying, “Orders? I don’t think I’m going to be taking any more orders. Not from you, not from them…. Go back to your Council and tell them, until the next Slayer comes along, they can close up shop. I’m not working for them anymore.” (Graduation Day, Part I) Buffy only reaccepts him when he turns his back on the Council and humbles himself to her level, so that he is an ally instead of a father-God figure: “I’m not here for the Council. Just tell me how I can help.” (Graduation Day, Part II)

Buffy’s reacceptance of the Watcher’s Council follows the now-familiar pattern: she will not be subjugated by them, or honor them as a father-God, although she will accept them as allies if they provide her with anything useful. In the season 5 episode “Checkpoint,” the Council attempt to reestablish dominance. In response, Buffy shows how far she has come to mastering her own destiny: “You guys didn’t come all the way from England to determine whether or not I was good enough to be let back in. You came to beg me to let you back in. To give your jobs, your lives, some semblance of meaning…. So here’s how it’s going to work. You’re going to tell me everything you know. Then you’re gonna go away.” (Checkpoint)

Far after her Trials period is over, Buffy confronts and rejects the Shadow Men, in the season 7 episode “Get it Done.” These are the men who originally imbued The Primitive with her Slayer powers, and they are the antecedents of the Watcher’s Council. With them, there will be reacceptance as colleagues. Her rejection of them is total. Realizing that they chained The Primitive against her will and infused her with a demon spirit, she says “You think I came all this way to get knocked up by some demon dust? I can’t fight this. I know that now. But you guys? You’re just men. Just the men who did this… to her. Whoever that girl was before she was the First Slayer…. You violated that girl, made her kill for you because you’re weak, you’re pathetic, and you obviously have nothing to show me.” This total rejection is a break from pattern, and shows no atonement between Buffy and the male authority.

Apotheosis

Apotheosis means, literally, the elevation to divine status or Godhood. This is more than mere death– the hero must become a Savior. “The Hero facing an Ordeal has moved her center from the ego to the Self, to the more godlike part of her. There may also be a movement from Self to group as a hero accepts more responsibility than just looking out for herself. A hero risks individual life for the sake of the larger collective life and wins the right to be called ‘hero.’” (Vogler 177) The attractive and life-affirming message of myth is that divinity is something that anyone can attain, through trial: “This is the release potential within us all, and which anyone can attain–through herohood.” (Campbell 151)

Buffy dies again. This time, however, her death is not only accepted, it is embraced. Her mother-slayer, The Primitive, tells her “Love will bring you to your gift…. Death is your gift.” (Intervention) The moment that Buffy realizes that her death would save the life of her younger sister, Dawn, she becomes extremely calm. She does not hesitate. She is not the grieving, frightened child who drowned in the first season. She is The Slayer. She is a hero, who has gone through her Trials stage, and she understands her path. “This image stands… at the conclusion of the hero-task, at the moment when the wall of Paradise is dissolved, the divine form found and recollected, the wisdom regained.” (Campbell 154) This call will not go unanswered.

Another pattern that is eerily reflected in the show is the image, associated with the Apotheosis, of the dual-sexual God. Buffy dies in the place of her sister, who was being sacrificed by a God (instead of a demon or vampire, like other seasons) who was both alternately male and female. After overcoming the crises of both the mother and the father, the individual is faced with this androgynous deity. “This is the meaning of the image of the bisexual god. He is the mystery of the theme of initiation. We are taken from the mother, chewed into fragments and assimilated to the world-annihilating body of the ogre for whom all the precious forms and beings are only the courses of a feast; but then, miraculously, reborn, we are more than we were.” (Campbell 162) Buffy is searching for a way to save her sister; what she finds is herself. “It is found (or rather, recollected) that the hero himself is that which he has come to find.” (Campbell 163)

The Ultimate Boon

Dying, the hero finally attains his greatest reward. The fleece is snatched, the amulet taken, the wisdom gleaned. In death, the hero has become divine.

All we know of Buffy’s sojourn in the afterlife is what we are told later. The woman who has dealt in death and destruction since she was a child has found peace. She says, “I was happy. At peace… I knew that everyone I cared about was all right. I knew it. Time didn’t mean anything. Nothing had form… but I was still me, you know? And I was warm, and I was loved, and I was finished. Complete. I don’t understand about theology or dimensions, or …any of it, really… but I think I was in heaven.” (After Life)

The Return and Reintegration with Society

Could the series have ended at this point? No. Despite how much peace may be found in death, the hero must return. “The full round, the norm of the monomyth, requires that the hero shall now begin the labor of bringing the runes of wisdom, the Golden Fleece, or his sleeping princess, back into the kingdom of humanity, where the boon may redound to the renewing of the community, the nation, the planet, or the ten thousand worlds.” (Campbell 193)

Vogler and Campbell disagree on the tone of the return. Vogler sees it as a time of celebration, bonfires and drinking. The great storm is over. Campbell believes, however, that it is a time of great pain and readjustment. Who, having found peace, would renounce it again? This is the beginning of the third act of the series, the one aptly named “Nightmare.” (See Figure 2)

This portion of the heroic journey contains The Refusal of the Return, Rescue from Without, The Crossing of the Return Threshold, Master of Both Worlds, and Freedom to Live. It encompasses roughly seasons 6 and 7 of the series.

The Refusal of the Return

Buffy has no wish to return to life. Following her description of “heaven” above, she continues, “I was in heaven. And now I’m not. I was torn out of there. Pulled out… by my friends. Everything here is hard, and bright, and violent. Everything I feel, everything I touch. This is Hell. Just getting through the next moment, and the one after that, knowing what I’ve lost…” (After Life) Nobody goes through what Buffy did unscathed. “Heroes don’t just visit death and come home. They return changed, transformed.” (Vogler 160) “For if he has won through to the profound repose of complete enlightenment, there is danger that the bliss of this experience may annihilate all recollection of, interest in, or hope for, the sorrows of the world, or else the problem of making known the way of illumination to people wrapped in economic problems may seem too great to solve.” (Campbell 36-37) Is it any wonder that Buffy’s journey out of the grave involves her going back up on the scaffold that saw her death? She wishes to return to the land of peace, and only the cries of her sister draw her reluctantly back.

Rescue from Without

As Buffy does not wish to save herself from death, the rescue must come from someone else. “The hero may have to be brought back from his supernatural adventure by assistance from without. That is to say, the world may have to come and get him. For the bliss of the deep abode is not lightly abandoned in favor of the self-scattering of the wakened state. ‘Who having cast off the world,’ we read, ‘would desire to return again? He would only be there.’” (Campbell 207)

Buffy’s abduction from “heaven” is enacted by her friends. They have, of course, good intentions. They believe that her death was mystical and unnatural, and that they therefore have an obligation to “rescue” Buffy from what could be a hell dimension. Several clues are given, however, that this enterprise is not as benign as it appears. In order to enact the spell, Buffy’s best friend Willow kills an innocent creature, and then lies about it. Benevolent spells should not involve such violent acts. The incantation itself is frightening and suggests that Willow was less than honest with the remainder of the group regarding the cost.

It has not occurred to the Scooby Gang that Buffy would not want to return. “If the hero… is unwilling, the disturber suffers an ugly shock.” (Campbell 207) Her friends end up suffering a great deal of guilt and hurt as their attempt at righting the wrong of the universe ends up breaking one of its fundamental laws, leading to various evils that beset the group for the next couple of years.

Nevertheless, the return was fundamentally necessary. “[The hero’s] consciousness having succumbed, the unconscious nevertheless supplies its own balances, and he is born back into the world from which he came. Instead of holding to and saving his ego… he loses it, and yet, through grace, it is returned.” (Campbell 216) No matter how needed it is, though, it is a painful process. Campbell calls it “the paradoxical, supremely difficult threshold-crossing of the hero’s return from the mystic realm into the land of common day.” (Campbell 216)

The Crossing of the Return Threshold

At some point, the hero must accept that he or she has been returned to the normal world if they are going to progress. “The two worlds, divine and the human, can be pictured only as distinct from each other–different as life and death, as day and night…. Nevertheless–and here is a great key to the understanding of myth and symbol–the two kingdoms are actually one. The realm of the gods is a forgotten dimension of the world we know. And the exploration of that dimension, either willingly or unwillingly, is the whole sense of the deed of the hero.” (Campbell 217)

This is not a simple choice. It is journey, fraught with pitfalls. “The returning hero, to complete his adventure, must survive the impact of the world.” (Campbell 226) Buffy’s disorientation leads her on a quest for meaning and sensation. She is emotionally distant from her friends, and begins a destructive relationship with Spike simply to try and provoke a response in herself. The world doesn’t feel real to her. “The first problem of the returning hero is to accept as real, after an experience of soul-satisfying vision of fulfillment, the passing joys and sorrows, banalities and noisy obscenities of life. Why re-enter such a world? Why attempt to make plausible, or even interesting, to men and women consumed with passion, the experience of transcendental bliss?” (Campbell 218)

It is difficult to pinpoint one particular event during this process as when Buffy is finally healed and reaccepts her life. However, there are two moments that indicate that she is making progress. Both episodes have titles that suggest this return: “As you Were” and “Normal Again.” In the first, Buffy finally makes the progressive decision to end her relationship with Spike, because she finally lets her superego overpower her id, and realizes that sensation is not worth the hurt she is causing. “It’s over…. Being with you makes things simpler. For a little while… I’m using you. I can’t love you. I’m just being weak, and selfish… and it’s killing me.” (As you Were) The choice she makes in “Normal Again” is even more direct. Because of a hallucinogenic drug, Buffy is able to choose between the real world and a dream-psychotic state that in many ways mirror her heaven-world. She is loved there, with both her deceased mother and her absent father. She has no hero-quest, and no obligations. Her choice to return to the real world is inspired, ironically, by her delusion of her mother begging her to stay in the false world. Joyce says, “You’re too good to give in, you can beat this thing. Be strong, baby, okay? I know you’re afraid. I know the world feels like a hard place sometimes, but you’ve got people who love you… You’ve got a world of strength in your heart. I know you do. You just have to find it again. Believe in yourself.” (Normal Again) Buffy realizes that the “real” world isn’t the easy one, but the one where she still has to fight.

Master of Two Worlds

After leaving the divine world and returning to the secular world, the hero becomes the master of both. “Freedom to pass back and forth across the world division, from the perspective of the apparitions of time to that of the causal deep and back–not contaminating the principles of the one with those of the other, yet permitting the mind to know the one by virtue of the other– is the talent of the master.” (Campbell 229) The hero has learned not only the difficult lesson of death, but also the near-impossible lesson of rebirth. He or she has reconciled the lack of death-fear with a true desire to live. “The life-wish… and the death-wish… are the two drives that only move the individual from within but also animate for him the surrounding world.” (Campbell 164)

Buffy finally reconciles her psychological crises and becomes confident and self-reliant. She also finally resolves her battlefield guilt, i.e., the fact that she only lives by the death and destruction of those who oppose her. “The battlefield is symbolic of the field of life, where every creature lives on the death of another.” (Campbell 238) Before her Apotheosis, Buffy dealt with this bloody enterprise with a less-mature emotional crux, imagining humans as ‘good’ and demons and vampires as ‘evil.’ “Instead of clearing his own heart the zealot tries to clear the world. The laws of the City of God are applied only to his in-group (tribe, church, nation, class, or what not) while the fire of perpetual holy war is hurled (with good conscience, and indeed a sense of pious service) against whatever uncircumcised, barbarian, heather, ‘native,’ or alien people happens to occupy the position of neighbor.” (Campbell 156) This is a gross oversimplification of a complex situation. The first blow to this world-view is, of course, Angel, who is a hero in his own right. Although a vampire and a shapeshifter, he represents things that are good and noble. As the series progresses, demons and vampires are shown as less and less noble, and more and more “human.” They have their foibles and habits and loves and lives. The first non-humans that are accepted as ‘not evil’ by the Scooby Gang are the changed and penitent, but as the series progressed, they allow to live those who are simply non-hostile and neutral. (For example, Clem, the loose-skinned demon, who does not fight for the forces of good, but it genial and harmless.) Even Spike, who is capable of much evil, is eventually spared, less through penitence and more through familiarity. When Spike tries to stake himself, Xander callously remarks, “He wants to die. I want to help.” Willow chastises him, “It’s ooky. We know him, we can’t just let him poof himself!” (Doomed)

After her Apotheosis, this line between good and evil becomes even more muddied for Buffy. She says, “I was always brave, and kind of righteous. Now I find I’m wavering.” (Once More, with Feeling) By becoming the master of both worlds, Buffy is able to accept death as something that must happen in order to preserve divine balance. “The goal of the myth is to dispel the need for such life ignorance by effecting a reconciliation of the individual consciousness with the universal will…. Powerful in this insight, calm and free in action, elated that through his hand should flow the grace of [the divine], the hero is the conscious vehicle of the terrible, wonderful Law.” (Campbell 238-239)

By becoming the master of two worlds, Buffy has also finally reconciled herself to her own fears, and where she would formerly have wallowed in self-doubt and the anxiety of self-preservation. When, just before her final battle, she is confronted with the threshold guardian known as The First, it appears to her in her own form, and speaks to her in the terms of her former infantile neuroses. “Into every generation a Slayer is born. One girl in all the world. She alone will the strength and kill to…” The First taunts, then needles: “There’s that word again. What you are. How you’ll die. Alone.” Instead of being crippled with insecurity, as an actualized self, Buffy responds “I just realized something. Something that had really never occurred to me before. We’re going to win.” (Chosen)

Freedom to Live

As the resolution to the heroic journey, the hero has earned the capacity and ability to live. “The hero is the champion of things becoming, not of things become, because he [i]is[/i]… He does not mistake apparent changelessness in time for the permanence of Being, nor is he fearful of the next moment (or of the “other thing”), as destroying the permanent with its change… thus the next moment is permitted to come to pass.” (Campbell 243)

For Buffy, the freedom to live is not only psychological, but literal. Her final rejection of the father-God that was the Shadow Men and the Watcher’s Council comes in breaking their first and most foremost law: that there be only one. Through Willow’s appeal to the Goddess, she enables the powers of the Slayer to pass simultaneously into all those with the potential and capacity to receive it. By starting these hundreds of girls on their own hero-journey, Buffy changes the world forever. “Another aspect of the [power or prize] is that the wisdom which heroes bring back with them may be so powerful that it forces change not only in them, but also those around them. The whole world is altered and the consequences spread far.” (Vogler 228) This change gives her the possibility, for the first time, of making her own destiny. After the battle, her sister-slayer, Faith says, “You’re not the one and only Chosen anymore. Just gotta live like a person. How’s that feel?” Her sister, Dawn, asks, “Yeah, Buffy. What are we going to do now?” (Chosen) In response, Buffy only smiles. She has gained the freedom to live, and has every choice in the world.

Thus is the final object of every hero journey accomplished: “Where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence; where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.” (Campbell 25)

Conclusion

Can any story have a happy ending? Campbell believes that “the happy ending is justly scorned as a misrepresentation; for the world, as we know it, as we have seen it, yields but one ending: death, disintegration, dismemberment, and the crucifixion of our heart with the passing of the forms that we have loved.” (Campbell 25-26) Bettelheim, on the other hand, insists that all endings must have an edge of happiness: “Tolkien describes the facets which are necessary in a good [story] as fantasy, recovery, escape, and consolation–recovery from deep despair, escape from some great danger, but most of all, consolation. Speaking of the happy ending… however fantastic or terrible the adventure, it can give to a child or man that hears it, when the ‘turn’ comes, a catch of breath, a beat and lifting of the heard, near to tears.” (Bettelheim 143) The truth of the matter is that all endings have elements of both the tragic and the consoling. The war has been won, at great cost. The road is open with possibilities, but the way back to the life you had before is permanently closed to you. The child has grown up. The world has changed.

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Works Cited

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Books:

Bettelheim, Bruno. The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales. New York: Vintage Books, 1975.

Cambell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. New York: Princeton University Press, 1949.

Vogler, Christopher. The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers, 2nd Edition. Studio City, CA: Michael Wise Productions, 1998.

Episodes:

“After Life.” Buffy the Vampire Slayer. By Jane Espenson. Perf. Sarah Michelle Gellar. UPN Network. October 9, 2001.

“As you Were.” Buffy the Vampire Slayer. By Douglas Petrie. Perf. Sarah Michelle Gellar. UPN Network. February 26, 2002.

“Checkpoint.” Buffy the Vampire Slayer. By Douglas Petrie, Jane Espenson. Perf. Sarah Michelle Gellar. WB Network. January 23, 2001.

“Chosen.” Buffy the Vampire Slayer. By Joss Whedon. Perf. Sarah Michelle Gellar, Eliza Dushku, Michelle Trachtenberg. UPN Network. May 20, 2003.

“Doomed.” Buffy the Vampire Slayer. By Marti Noxon, David Fury, and Jane Espenson. Perf. Nicholas Brendan, Alyson Hannigan. WB Network. January 18, 2000.

“Get it Done.” Buffy the Vampire Slayer. By Douglas Petrie. Perf. Sarah Michelle Gellar. UPN Network. February 18, 2003.

“Graduation Day, Part I.” Buffy the Vampire Slayer. By Joss Whedon. Perf. Sarah Michelle Gellar, Alexis Denison. WB Network. May 18, 1999.

“Graduation Day, Part II.” Buffy the Vampire Slayer. By Joss Whedon. Perf. Sarah Michelle Gellar, Alexis Denison. WB Network. July 13, 1999.

“Helpless.” Buffy the Vampire Slayer. By David Fury. Perf. Harris Yulen. WB Network. January 19, 1999.

“Intervention.” Buffy the Vampire Slayer. By Jane Espenson. Perf. Sarah Michelle Gellar. WB Network. April 24, 2001.

“Into the Woods.” Buffy the Vampire Slayer. By Marti Noxon. Perf. James Marsters. WB Network. December 19, 2000.

“Normal Again.” Buffy the Vampire Slayer. By Diego Gutierrez. Perf. Kristine Sutherland. UPN Network. March 12, 2002.

“Once More with Feeling.” Buffy the Vampire Slayer. By Joss Whedon. Perf. Anthony Stewart Head, Sarah Michelle Gellar. UPN Network. November 6, 2001.

“Prophesy Girl.” Buffy the Vampire Slayer. By Joss Whedon. Perf. Sarah Michelle Gellar, David Borneanaz, Nicolas Brendan. WB Network. June 2, 1997.

“Restless.” Buffy the Vampire Slayer. By Joss Whedon. Perf. Amber Benson, Sarah Michelle Gellar. WB Network. May 23, 2000.

“Something Blue.” Buffy the Vampire Slayer. By Tracey Forbes. Perf. Sarah Michelle Gellar. WB Network. November 30, 1999.

“Welcome to the Hellmouth.” Buffy the Vampire Slayer. By Joss Whedon . Perf. Sarah Michelle Gellar, Anthony Stewart Head. WB Network. March 10, 1997.