"What can I tell you, baby? I've always been bad." - Spike

BUFFY GOOD. VAMPIRE BAD.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer has more to do with ideas about Good and Evil than most TV shows. But while it's understood that Buffy, good and Vampire, bad, beyond that things get far more complicated. And in fact, even that basic statement can be called into question, Buffy not always being entirely good and vampires definitely not always being bad. But what makes someone or something evil is open to debate.

One question is, what separates someone who can be good or evil from someone who can only be evil? Giles says that there are two kinds of monsters in this world: ones that are not wholly evil, and can and want to be redeemed, and those which are completely inhuman and can only be destroyed. Vampires are theoretically unredeemable; Giles makes it very clear that a vampire is not a person, and that while they remember all of a person's memories, they are not human and are intrinsically evil. Angel is an obvious contradiction, but he has a soul. Giles frequently determines redeemability on the basis of having a soul. Any creature with a soul can be good. But it doesn't follow that creatures without a soul can only be bad. There are many examples of demons without souls who aren't bad, although admittedly most of these are neutral rather than good. 'It's getting hard to tell these days' Angel comments, talking about the fact that telling good from evil can't be based on physical appearance.

Demons, then, aren't automatically evil. But vampires are demons (and therefore without souls) and yet they are automatically evil. The Slayer is trained not to think twice about killing vampires; vampires cannot be redeemed, and are soulless and non-human. Angel's handy get-out clause saves him, but Spike is unusual. That Spike is evil is something we're supposed to have taken for granted. It was a simple case of no soul = badness. But Spike and, to an extent Drusilla and Harmony, don't fit into the conventional idea of a Buffyverse vampire. They love, they aren't animals who exist only to feed. Equally Spike likes living with humans, he likes the Earth rather than Hell.

It's made clear that to love you first must have a soul; when Angel loses his soul, it is said that he loses the power to love. In the time Angel spent with Darla, he never loved. Yet Spike has loved: that Drusilla loves in the same sense isn't as sure. She has left Spike, and seems fickle, while Spike's love seem eternal. Though Drusilla says, 'We can love. We can love quite well' she doesn't seem to be consumed by her passions in the way that Spike is. Spike is always more emotional than Drusilla, Angelus or Darla, and is more driven by jealousy, anger and love. Of all the vampires, Spike is the only one who has put love before his own survival, risking his life to get Dru to come back to him through a love spell ('Lover's Walk').

But what makes Spike bad, if it isn't the lack of a soul? And, equally, if other demons can be redeemed, can a demon like Spike be ever considered good? Season Five begins to answer the second question, but not the first.

BORN AGAIN VAMPIRE
In Season One, the first human-to-vampire transition is made by Jesse, Xander's friend. Jesse isn't simply a walking-dead nasty: not only does he remember his life as a human, he is driven by it. Like Angel, one of the first things he does is to try and take out revenge on people from his human life: on Cordelia. It is as if Jesse isn't a new creature, but the old human turned bad. Angel does the same, taking out revenge on his whole family. It is as if vampires are psychopathic versions of their human selves: all human remorse and pity removed, with only a selfish desire for power over whoever wronged them in their human life, yet they are still the same person. A vampire is evil and remorseless, then, from the moment they arise and begin their unlife. We see this clearly and regularly: vampires automatically attack Buffy the moment they claw their way out of the grave. True, it can be explained away as hunger, but vampires never show remorse at having to kill for food. Even a new 'born' vampire is evil.

For Spike, this doesn't bode well for his chances of being redeemed. Spike was reborn as an evil fiend, but how much of that evil is innate? Take the example of the Master, the most evil vampire who has ever lived. Was he incredibly evil as a human, or did he only become incredibly evil? That is to say, is it possible that while a vampire (like a werewolf, for example) is controlled by a need to feed, they are not strictly evil, but rather are like animals? That would mean that Spike's real evil tendencies are something he has learnt; while he will always be under the control of the blood lust, this could be controlled in the same way that Oz controlled his werewolf self. Angel, for example, was unpleasant but not evil as a human. As a vampire these tendencies were enhanced and he became evil from the moment of his unbirth. But as a human Spike was a sweet and gentle man; perhaps when he was turned he lacked Angel's innate sadistic tendencies, and these were only learnt during his unlife.

THE HUMAN MIND
Other vampires are clearly evil as both humans and undead, the only difference being that as vampires they become unredeemable. Zachary Crelick of 'Helpless' and the Gorch brothers in 'Bad Eggs' are examples men whose evil was magnified, but already innate. They have no memories of being good as a human, so they have no possibly for ever being good. Yet when he finds he cannot kill, chipped-Spike reverts to his human self, and somehow gradually becomes good. Spike is in some way different to other vampires: perhaps because he was chosen in an unusual fashion. Darla, Angel and Drusilla were all chosen for their potential for evil. The Master saw something evil in Darla, so he turned her. Equally Darla saw potential for true evil in Angel. Yet Drusilla was mad, and she seemed to be choose William the Bloody (Spike) not for his evil, but for his goodness, and for his poetic aspirations. Even with his soul, Angel shows the inner darkness which made Darla turn him; a darkness Spike, I think, never really possessed as a human. Thus while most vampires are chosen for their potential as killers, Spike was different. Drusilla chose him for his potential for love, rather than his potential for hate.

Similarly, 'accidental' vampires like Harmony, which weren't carefully chosen, are not evil is the same way as Angelus and Darla. While Harmony is evil, her link with her human self is much clearer. She feels no remorse at killing, but the morals of her human life still effect her unlife: thus she wanted to be good. In the episode 'Disharmony', Harmony feels the need to drink Cordelia, but she is still bound by the friendship in a way that Jesse wasn't towards Xander. Perhaps the circumstances of the turning make a difference, but I would argue that it is the vampire's human mind, not their soul, which determines much of the path they take as an immortal. As such, Spike is not born to be bad, and he has a chance at being good. While other vampires lack any real motivation for seeking redemption, in his bizarre love for Buffy, Spike has found a reason. Equally with the chip controlling his blood lust, it is possible that the evil which he has learnt from Drusilla, Darla and Angel could be negated by his desire to become good.

Yet Spike will always lack a soul. Angel, and later Darla's, remorse at their vampire killings is caused by their soul; the remorse happens the moment Angel's soul remembers, while Darla struggles with the memories. In Season 5, we see a similar thing with Glory; Ben, Glory's human side, has a soul, and it is this human soul which causes the Hell-bitch to feel guilty at killing Dawn. The soul is linked to humanity; take away a human's soul, and they become a vampire?

UNIQUE AMONG THE UNDEAD
But I would argue against that. A human without a soul isn't evil, because that would assume that all humans are innately evil, something not supported by Buffy-lore. Humans have the potential for good and evil. In reality it is not the lack of a soul which makes vampires evil; it is the demon. A vampire like Zachary Kralik would still be evil, even if he had both a soul and a demon (as Angel does). The human body can be thought of as a vessel; the mind contains all the memories of the body, as well as the personality, but the thing which makes it alive is the soul, or the presence of a demon. Because the demon is evil, a vampire is evil. But the body itself, and the mind, is not evil by default. I can become evil, as in Kralik, but humans are not born bad. Angel is a creature with two beings inside of him; a human soul, and a vampire. Angel's human soul can control that vampire, and use it to fight with; it is possible for the demon to obtain brief control, as in Angel Season One and in the Pilea episodes of Season Two, without the soul leaving the body.

For Spike, while he lacks a soul and therefore does not automatically feel remorse for his vampire killings, his demon self is under control. It can surface, but it is his human mind which controls him. The chip has the effect of suppressing the vampire, allowing the human memories in his brain to be in control. Because Spike cannot bite, the only way he can bear to exist in the world is to revert to a time when he couldn't bite: to being human. Spike then has almost the ghost of a soul; though he is not governed by a human soul, he has a mind which remembers what having a soul meant. In his current state, Spike is unique among the undead; his conscience and power to love are not truly human, as Angel's are, but feel to him as if they are. Because the vampire cannot have power, the remembered humanity does. Spike is in vampire terms insane, in the same way that the pre-vamp Kralik was insane in human terms; he doesn't conform to the excepted morality, be that that killing humans is wrong (human morality) or that not killing humans is wrong (vampire morality).

Without the chip, it is equally possible that Spike could retain control of his demon self, as it is that his demon self would once again control him. But because Spike's human soul was so lacking in darkness and evil, it is possible that Spike could be redeemed; but, like Angel, he would constantly be fighting a battle with his self. The difference being, only the ghost of a soul would stop Spike from becoming evil.

+LINKS+
Some Spike redemptionist links -
Tabula Rasa
The Bloody Awful Poet's Society

Bookmark this page Slain by Buffy