Hot Topic: Soul Searching the Buffyverse

[Taake]

After viewing this thread https://buffy-boards.com/threads/the-soul-angel-and-no-doubt-spike.64674/ I thought we might discuss the nebulous concept of souls in the Buffyverse as a general concept.

Through Angel and Spike respectively the soul is introduced as a kind of conscience, it makes demons into good guys, they can no longer slaughter at will without feeling the burden of their actions. It's a simple, not very elegant position, because it is constricting in ways it's not intended to be.

Angelus mostly makes a complete turn around once he gets a soul, he's like two entirely different people in fact. (And is early on portrayed as such)
Spike is not like two different people, he has inconsistently portrayed something conscience-like before getting his soul back, but it is in the end having a soul returned to him that officially plants him in the camp of the "white hats".

So having a soul is good.

Except... let's take Warren as an example here, or Amy's mother even, these are human beings whom we can both assume to be in possession of souls and yet, they are clearly bad people doing very bad things with very little remorse. So a soul is not enough to make them good... then why, in theory, does soul-having automatically make Angelus and Spike into good guys? They struggle with having a soul sure but they are miles away from the rather rabid bloodthirsty monsters they're portrayed as when they're soulless vamps. Yet technically it seems like they would, using evil soul-havers as an example, be able to still be evil if only with a bit less glee...

In other words do you have to have a "good" soul to be good?
And what is a good soul and how could the gypsies be sure that Angelus would get a good soul? (I'm excluding Spike right here because I'm assuming that when his soul was returned the one returning it didn't particularly care whether he would be a good or bad ensouled vampire.)

One could state that souls are complicated, or that maybe Joss and company didn't plan out how evolved the mythology of the show was going to be so there are some natural plot holes from this. All the same... I'm interested to hear in your theories about souls and soul-having in the Buffyverse... do you find it problematic or not concerning at all that souls and the consequence of having them are so widely depicted?

🙂

 

[white avenger]

This is like the debate over gun control. Is the gun (or the soul) inherently responsible for the use, or misuse, or is the person using it the culprit? I tend to be on the side of the argument that the gun (or soul) isn't in and of itself either good or evil, it is simply a tool that the individual uses. How it is used is a matter totally of personal choice. As you say, people with souls, and Warren is an excellent example of this, are perfectly capable of performing evil, cruel, despicable acts, whereas others without souls are perfectly capable, for whatever reason, of performing acts of kindness, self sacrifice, and, arguably, acts or real heroism.

The soul has been referred to as a moral compass, and, within certain limits, this could be seen as a valid analogy. What has to be kept in mind, however, is that only the moral person chooses to follow that compass, whereas the immoral person chooses to ignore it. It's all a matter of individual choice.

 

[EVIL UU]

Xander: Well, Spike definitely seems a little more cogent, less bl-bl-bl-bl-bl. I'm just saying...once you get back the soul, doesn't that mean you start, like, picking up your own wet towels off the floor?
Willow: No, but maybe you start to feel really bad about leaving them there.
Buffy: At least he's showering, and that's a refreshing and delightful change.

Yeah, that's really the best description we've got.

Anyway, I think that the soul is not really a clear-cut, black and white issue - it's full of gradients. There are soulless vampires with no humanity, like Angelus, and there are those that share affection and jealousy like Spike and Dru; there are soulless vampires that act like rabid animals, like Zachary Kralik, and those that follow an ancient code, like The Three, or even the rules of the human world like Harmony or the vampires who bite for money and finally, there are soulless vampires that want to destroy the world and those that want to protect it. Similarly, there are humans with a soul who want to destroy the world, like Caleb and Willow and those who want to protect it, like Xander and Willow. And let's not forget that one time when a vampire with a soul went full apocalypse too. Ensouled or soulless - free will seems more important.

However, most soulless vampires are evil and malevolent, while most humans with a soul are good and benevolent and that is a fact so statistically, the soul does matter a lot. Maybe it's about balance - if there are monstrous humans then maybe there should be humane monsters as well, don't you think?

 

[AnthonyCordova]

I feel thinking too hard about it can complicate the issue unnecessarily; but I also don't believe Joss Whedon himself had worked out everything in a completely intelligible way.

I would not follow in saying that the show presents the soul as just the conscience. I always felt the show intended the soul to be what we usually mean by it, like essence or something (the 'essence' of the person in question, that-which-makes-a-man-what-he-is, etc.). I think we confuse the conscience, which is a subordinate feature of the soul, as something that defines it because of the way the show presents vampires. To me, there is no good vampire on the show without a soul in the sense that there is no vampire (without a soul) that can overcome the urge to kill to drink and revert to its primal vicious nature at some point (accept arguably Harmony, which is frustrating because like so many things about the show we can't say definitive things because there is always some character or thing that refutes the theory. In this case I honestly feel it is carelessness on the part of the writers and Joss. They either failed to think it through fully or they weren't interested in consistency to the nth degree. This is part of the reason why I say thinking too hard on these things only brings confusion, because they eventually fall apart under close scrutiny). Every vampire on the show accept souled Angel and Spike (and Harmony I guess) fails to overcome the urge to indulge in their viciousness. Judged this way, it is also hard for me to judge vampires as evil the way the show likes to do, because vampires without souls are helpless in the face of their most primal urge to viciousness, and because it has been demonstrated (accept for the anomaly Harmony as far as I can think of) that it is impossible for a vampire to overcome this drive indefinitely. I think we have to say vampire nature is fixed and determinate in this particular sense and therefore they don't really have free will. Without free will I don't believe you could call someone evil, because I believe evil (when we use it to describe people) is a choice. In this particular sense that I'm speaking about, vampires are as evil as a snake or a wolf is for being what they are. Now, after saying this, some vampires are definitely worse than others. The difference between vampire Harmony or Holden Webster and for example vampire Willow, Angelus or Darla is dramatic. The former display more humanity and the latter are much more cruel and sadistic. But all vampires show their other side eventually. The other shoe always drops. How Harmony manages during much of S5 to refrain from reverting to her other side I don't know. I can't think of any other vampire on either show who does this (without a soul), but if anyone else has a good example please share.

Anyway, another reason why I don't think the soul is the conscience is because of the examples furnished by Angel and Spike. Having a soul doesn't automatically make you good. Angel, after experiencing Angelus and the guilt that followed, was shaped by those experiences and felt compelled to do acts of extreme good (eventually, after spending a lot of time feeling miserable and being a shattered transient recluse). And this only happened after seeing Buffy, so we can say originally he was just inspired by love. Spike interpreted his experiences as vampire Spike much differently. He also was motivated originally by love and underwent a difficult period of not being able to handle the memories of being so evil, but he emerged from that a little different. Spike isn't a 'paladin' the way that Angel eventually turned out. He doesn't want to be. He's just human. Both Angel and Spike definitely have their 'human, all too human' flaws, (Spike more than Angel imo), and I would not call either one of them good without any qualification. They definitely come with their "qualifications", (i.e. conditions or "provisos", I guess. Can't think of another word). I don't think Spike is inconsistently portrayed in this respect (I feel he absolutely is in other ways though) he is just a different person than Angel. Of course, having a soul is no moral guarantee for anything: witness for example Warren, as was pointed out already.

In my view, having a soul again just means that the former vampire is no longer completely beholden and at the mercy of his or her baser, vicious nature, the other side of the vampire duality. That's all. We only have two examples of vampires with souls in the Buffyverse but I see no reason why a souled vampire might not easily return as bad, or rude or selfish, or mean, or anything else not good. Or anything in between. I feel the show made such a big deal about Angel and Spike getting their souls back not because doing so makes you automatically a paragon of virtue (and then why are normal humans often not) but rather because having the soul back gives the vampire back their humanity. The humanity is the important thing, the ability to choose between good and evil from a position of free will and of potential control. Being human also means being capable of great acts of badness as well as goodness. But the choice, the true ability to act and decide how one wants to be and how one wants to act is divine, sacrosanct, that which makes being human a glorious thing...and it is that which the vampire is deprived of. That is what the big deal about getting a soul back is all about. Maybe Joss and co. muck it up here and there, but that's the real point I think. This idea that the soul merely = good alone is unintelligible to me by itself.

As for the gypsies, who knows. I like to think fate intervened. Obviously Angel was destined for something more (the prophecies say so!). But who's to say why the gypsies knew Angel would turn out "good" (I guess by good you mean that Angel would feel guilty and pain about his experiences of Angelus?). Maybe using the word good to describe Angel right after being souled is not the correct one. They knew he would turn out crippled with guilt, or they designed the curse that way somehow. Good is beside the point (on this specific issue) with regard to the gypsies and what they did to Angel. They just wanted him to suffer. Good was also completely beside the point with the true happiness feature of the curse too. Happiness and being good are not the same thing. Plenty of people who most would never call "good" feel moments of happiness, e.g. stories about Hitler's private life.