:: Restless: Leaving Childhood
Behind - Part IV: Buffy's Dream - The Hands ::
Written By
ShadowKat
(Other parts to this essay series
available at
"The Collected Musings of Shadowkat")
(All Btvs quotes come
from Psyche Transcripts. I also want to thank Lanna De La Rossa and Rosalind for
the inspiration.)
We know what mind, heart, and spirit mean, but do we understand the meaning of
Manus: the hands? First Manus - is Latin for hand. Some cultures, including our
own, see the hands as a source of healing, example: laying down of the hands? Or
in massage - if you press on certain points on the hand you can relieve pain. In
many western religions, such as Muslim, Christianity, Judaism - hands can be
interpreted as a means of uniting followers or of receiving instruction. While
in Eastern philosophy such as China's Tao Te Ching - the right hand corresponds
with the principle of action, the left with wisdom or non-action. In India, the
left hand is associated with lunar quality of desire and emotion, the right with
solar principle of action../../nbsp; Some yoga schools believe that each finger on the
hand corresponds with a different element: thumb with fire, the forefinger with
ether, the middle finger with water, the ring finger with earth, the little
finger with air../../nbsp; An enormous amount of energy flows through our hands - energy
to heal, to create, to balance, to communicate, and to transform. They are our
most powerful interface with the world and with others. (Taken from The Hand as
a Microcosm at www.sol.com/kor/12_01.htm..)
In Season 4, Btvs, it is made clear that Buffy is the Hand. She is Manus. The
card with one hand open and one closed like a fist. She uses her hands to slay
the demons and her hand to remove Adam's heart../../nbsp; But it is equally made clear
that the hands cannot act alone. They need mind, spirit and heart. Without the
other three - she could use them in the wrong manner. And what happens when she
doesn't use her hands? When they are chopped off? Or she rejects them? Or when
she forgets that hands are used to unite and heal as well as destroy? The SG
puts themselves time and again into Buffy's hands. And Buffy unites them, all of
them, Xander, Willow, Giles, Anya, Tara, Spike, Dawn.... Even when she was dead,
they stayed united in her name../../nbsp; What happens when you lose the hand? Does the
world enter into chaos? Isn't the hand the means of keeping the balance, of
keeping order? This seemed to be the result in Bargaining, when the SG lost the
Hand. Demon Bikers roamed Sunnydale and trashed the town, not a pleasant image.
(See Bargaining Part I & II, Season 6, Btvs.)
Yet the Hand cannot act alone, it needs mind, heart, and spirit to guide it. All
must act as one, united../../nbsp; In Yoko Factor after Buffy insists on attacking Adam
by herself - Willow states: "Oh, great../../nbsp; And then when you have your new "no
arms" we can all say "Gee, it's a good thing we weren't there getting in the way
of that!"" If Buffy acted alone without the mind, heart, and spirit currently
encompassed by her friends, she may have lost her arms or hands.
When we grow up, we have to learn how to incorporate mind and heart and spirit
in ourselves. We have to sometimes act alone, independent of the group. We have
to know how to depend on ourselves. Buffy has gotten used to depending on
Xander's heart, Willow's moral spirit, and Giles' mind for far too long. She
longs for those easy days of high school when they all met in the library and
planned their attacks on the demon world. But childhood ends sooner or later and
people move on and you have to learn how to incorporate some of these skills in
yourself../../nbsp; In season 6, her friends reluctantly meet at the Magic Box to help
but they clearly have lives outside of slaying. Slaying was not their sworn
duty. They are not the Slayer or the Hand. They can help, provide support, but
they can no longer be a major part of it. It is long past time for Buffy to
learn how to handle the job on her own.
In each of their dreams, the first slayer attempts to warn Xander, Willow and
even Giles that continuing on this path could lead to their deaths. Your magic
won't help you, Willow. Your heart won't protect you, Xander. Your mind won't
guide you, Giles. The slayer must act alone, at times between worlds; she is of
the world and outside the world. If you continue to take an active role in this
battle, you will be destroyed. You cannot hope to know the source of our power,
or for that matter understand it.
Neither for that matter, does Buffy. Up until now I was convinced the theme was
like that old Beatles song - all I need is a little help from my friends. Or
that line Buffy sings in OMWF - "what can't we face if we're together?" Now, I'm
beginning to see that some things particularly in adulthood - have to be done on
one's own. The hero's journey is often a solitary one. This does not mean,
however, that you can't have companions or friends traveling along the path with
you, just that in the final battle - you are alone. You are making the journey.
Just as Willard in Apocalypse Now must go on alone to confront Kurtz. At the end
of his journey, his companions are no longer with him. The final part of the
journey is his alone.
But being alone and abandoned is what Buffy fears most. It is what she has
always feared. And it plays a central role in her dream. In Fear Itself - her
mother assures her: "I will *always* be here for you../../nbsp; And you got Mr. Giles and
your friends../../nbsp; Believe me, there is nothing to be afraid of"(Season 4, btvs)
But the little fear demon warns her: "They're all going to abandon you, you
know" This explains why Buffy reacts the way she does. Her dream like those of
the other three Scoobies, centers on what she said in Yoko Factor: "So . . . I
guess I'm starting to understand why there's no ancient prophecy about a Chosen
One . . and her friends"
Buffy's Dream - Rejecting the Hands
Buffy's dream starts in her dorm room not the Summer's House. It's interesting
that both Willow and Buffy start out in the dorm. It is also interesting that
none of Buffy's close friends: Giles, Willow or Xander really appear in her
dream. Anya is her dorm roommate not Willow. She is facing Willow's bed, but
Anya is the occupant. In the first scene Anya is trying to wake Buffy up.
ANYA: (whispers) Buffy, you have to wake up right away!
BUFFY: I'm not really in charge of these things. (Closes eyes)
This is the first time Buffy rejects the advice of a guide in her dream. She
rejects it by denying responsibility even for something as simple as waking up.
I'm not in control she says. Leave me alone. An attitude that reminds me of this
season - from Afterlife through Normal Again - Buffy has been acting like
someone else is in charge. It's as if Season 5's take-charge attitude did her
in. She had to take charge of Dawn, handle Dawn not being real but a key,
protect Dawn, deal with her mother's death, help Riley, fight the Knights,
handle Spike's sudden devotion to her and somehow use it to her advantage, keep
the peace between the SG, and save the world again, this time by sacrificing her
life for her sister. Buffy thought she was done. Finished. She was at peace. In
heaven. Until her friends tore her back to their reality. Woke her up.
(Bargaining Part II and Afterlife, Season 6 Btvs. ) It's not the first time they
did it either - way back in Prophecy Girl (Season 1 Btvs), Xander brought her
back to life after the Master killed her. (She was supposed to have died then,
that had been the Prophecy.) So it's understandable that her first response is
to ignore Anya and go back to sleep. But the first slayer won't let her - when
Buffy rolls onto her back she sees its face snarling down at her.
The scene then shifts to Buffy's room, but it's not her room, it's the room
Buffy and Faith were in during Faith's dream in This Year's Girl (Season 4, Btvs).
It's Joyce's den. And Buffy is lying in the same bed she made with Faith in
Faith's dream.
(Cut to Buffy standing in the doorway of the bedroom, looking at the bed.)
BUFFY: Faith and I just made that bed. (Shot of the bed, still rumpled but now
without Buffy in it.)
TARA: (offscreen) For who?
BUFFY: I thought you were here to tell me.
BUFFY: (looking back at bed) The guys aren't here, are they? We were gonna hang
out (looks at Tara) and, watch movies t-
TARA: You lost them.
BUFFY: No. (Looks confused) No. I think they need me to find them.
Once again Tara is used as a guide. Buffy and Willow's dreams parallel one
another: Willow's starts in her bedroom with Tara while Buffy's starts in her
dorm room. Tara asks both girls if they know who they are and what's to come and
appears to try to warn them about what lies ahead. In both dreams Tara seems
almost ghostlike, like a spirit that is outside the action of the dream,
unaffected by it../../nbsp; In Willow's dream Tara asks about their cat and shouldn't
they give the cat a name. In Buffy's dream Tara asks whom they made the bed for.
Both Willow and Buffy think Tara will provide the answers but she just provides
more questions. The other parallel is with Xander - Xander is also looking for
his friends in his dream, Joyce informs him that they've left, just as Tara
informs Buffy that she has lost them. The difference is that Xander is afraid of
being left behind, Buffy is afraid of losing them. What does Spike say to her in
Smashed (Season 6 Btvs.)? "Poor little lost girl, got no one to love?" And what
happens in Normal Again? (The following occurs in the asylum reality - the
world with Buffy's parents and the safe hospital. Buffy appears to be
hallucinating this reality due to a demon toxin that she has been poisoned with.
The Doctor is discussing what keeps dragging Buffy back to the world of
Sunnydale, which the Doctor considers the false reality.)
DOCTOR: Yes ... but I'm talking about those things you want there. What keeps
you going back.
BUFFY: My friends.
DOCTOR: That's right. Last summer, when you had a momentary awakening, it was
them that pulled you back in.
She can't lose them. She is desperately afraid of losing them. Someone asked why
Buffy has kept her current relationship with Spike a secret from her friends -
and I think this is the key. Fear of losing them. Fear of being rejected. Of
being abandoned. Of being the "poor little lost girl". So if she's lost them,
she needs to find them, it's what she believes is her mission. Finding her
friends../../nbsp; But is it? Really?
BUFFY: (upset) It's so late.
TARA: Oh ... that clock's completely wrong. Here. (Shot of Tara's hands holding
out the Tarot card "Manus" (the hands). It has a picture of two hands crossed,
one open, the other balled into a fist.)
BUFFY: I'm never gonna use those.
TARA: You think you know ... what's to come ... what you are. You haven't even
begun.(Shot of the bed, now neatly made.)
BUFFY: I think I need to go find the others.(She leaves.)
TARA (softly) Be back before dawn.
Tara tries to tell Buffy that finding her friends isn't what's really important
here. What's important - is "the hands" What Buffy is. Just as what was
important in Willow dream was what Willow really is. But Buffy rejects the
Hands. Buffy's more worried about the time and finding her friends - both items
that Tara dismisses as unimportant, handing her the Manus card instead. (Which
may actually be the key to finding her friends, if Buffy would only take it.
After all the closed fist and open hand symbolize uniting that which is within
with that which is without. The interior world with the exterior world.) "I'm
never gonna use those," Buffy says instead../../nbsp; It's the first time Buffy rejects
the hands - the slayer../../nbsp; She does it at least twice more in her dream. Just as
Xander circles three times back to his basement, avoiding the stairs, and Willow
has people mention how she is still in costume at least three times, before it
is finally ripped off. In response to Buffy's statement, Tara says the same line
that is later echoed by Dracula: "You think you know ... what you are ... what's
to come. You haven't even begun" (This line is stated at least twice in
Restless. It is important to remember what is repeated in each dream. Xander:
"that's not the way out" Willow: "again these are just my clothes, not a
costume".)
Buffy may not pay attention to Tara in Restless, but she does pay attention to
Dracula. It scares her that she doesn't understand what she is. The hunger that
Dracula senses inside her worries her. Even though she fights him off and tells
him it doesn't matter and he doesn't know her at all, she still asks Giles to
help her figure it out at the very end of B vs. D episode. (Which is why Giles
decides to stay in Season 5 and not return to England as originally planned.)
It's also important to note that at the end of Buffy vs. Dracula, Dawn shows up,
similar timeline to Tara's statement: Be Back Before Dawn. Somehow the two are
connected. That's not the end of this theme, "you think you know who you are,
what's to come…", which is explored sporadically through Season 5../../nbsp; In Fool For
Love, Buffy consults Spike, the killer of two slayers and as close an expert as
she has on slayers and vampires. In a dark take on the Giles/Buffy training
study session, Spike instructs Buffy on the relationship between Slayers and
Vamps. And at one point he even tells her that she's asking the wrong questions,
just as the First Slayer states towards the end of her dream. "Ask the right
questions. You want to know how I beat 'em? The question isn't 'How'd I win?'.
The question is 'Why'd they lose?'" But Buffy is afraid to ask the right
questions, she's afraid of what the slayer is, afraid to let it define her as
she believes it defined Faith. (Remember what Faith said in Bad Girls : "Hey,
slaying's what we were built for. If you're not enjoying it, you're doing
something wrong" And that was not long before Faith killed a man without
remorse. Buffy is terrified of becoming Faith.)
FIRST SLAYER: You're afraid that being the Slayer means losing your humanity.
BUFFY: Does it?
FIRST SLAYER: You are full of love. You love with all of your soul. It's
brighter than the fire ... blinding. That's why you pull away from it.
BUFFY: (surprised) I'm full of love? I'm not losing it?
FIRST SLAYER: Only if you reject it. Love is pain, and the Slayer forges
strength from pain. Love ... give ... forgive. Risk the pain. It is your nature.
It will bring you to your gift.
And what is Buffy's gift? Death - according to the first slayer and Spike. Again
they echo each other: "Death is your art, you make it with your hands day after
day …" and the First Slayer: "Death is your gift" That may be what scares Buffy
the most. And it may also be what is causing her to miss the point. Rejecting
who she is - rejecting who we are - closes us off to those who love us../../nbsp; Isn't
that what has happened in Season 6? Buffy is rejecting her calling and herself,
and as a result she has become closed off from her friends, from emotion, from
love. What did she tell her mother all the way back in Fear Itself? "I don't
know. - I'm starting to feel like there is a pattern here. - Open your heart to
someone, and he bails on you../../nbsp; Maybe it's easier to just not let anyone
in"(Season 4 Btvs.) But it's more than just a fear of abandonment - it's also
self-hatred. Buffy has rejected herself on a deep subconscious level. ("I came
back wrong. I am wrong," she tells Tara in Dead Things. ) If you can't love and
respect yourself, how can you love or respect anyone else? How can you be the
slayer? The Hand? End of digression - Back to Buffy's dream.
In the next segment of the dream she is back at Sunnydale High and she is asking
people if they have seen her friends. "Have you seen my friends? They wouldn't
just disappear?" Along the way she passes her mother who is living in the walls
of the school. This whole portion of her dream may be a metaphor for the journey
between adolescence to adulthood. The part about her mother living behind the
wall = rebellion? You block off the parent figure who's been pestering you, by
encasing them behind a wall, leaving a hole big enough for their face to peek
through occasionally. I don't want to deal with you any more, you're no longer
necessary, so I will conveniently block you out. And in a sense that is what
Buffy has done to her Mother all along. In the beginning of Restless, before the
gang goes to sleep, Joyce mentions how this is the first time she's met Riley.
Buffy has been dating and sleeping with Riley all year long and this is the
first time Joyce met him? Her mother lives in the same town../../nbsp; All during high
school Buffy has put Mom someplace convenient where she can locate her whenever
she wants to. (Hence the fact her mother is behind a wall in Buffy's high
school.) "I'll always be here for you," her mother tells her in Normal Again,
"you'll always have me," she says in Fear Itself. And in a sense that's true -
inside Buffy there's a place her mother will always reside. (Although I hope
it's the world of the asylum and not the walls of Sunnydale high.) In the dream
Buffy eventually leaves her mother and the world of high school to locate her
friends, believing them to be in trouble. She does the same thing in Normal
Again - she leaves the world of her parents and childhood to be with her
friends.
The next segment of the dream - she follows someone who looks like Xander up the
stairs. This makes sense, in Season 5 and most of Season 6 - Xander appears to
be ahead of her on the road to adulthood. Upstairs is clearly adulthood, or the
next stage after high school../../nbsp; When she climbs the stairs, Buffy exits the sunny
world of high school to the darker world of Riley and the Initiative, the first
stage of her adulthood. The world is no longer black and white with Mommy nearby
and the bright sunny halls of high school. The villains are no longer just
demons, but possibly the government, possibly even your boyfriend.
RILEY: We're drawing up a plan for world domination. The key element?
Coffeemakers that think
BUFFY: World domination? I-is that a good?
RILEY: Baby, we're the government.(He swings around in his chair to strike a
James Bond-like pose../../nbsp; The camera shoots him from below, through the glass
tabletop. On the table we see a handgun.) It's what we do.
A world where people carry guns and the lines between right and wrong are not so
clearly drawn. A world where high school nerds could actually be worse than the
demons you fought in high school. Riley strikes a James Bond pose, wears clothes
similar to the ones in As You Were and talks about gadgets and his new
leadership role in the government. The room goes dark. And the other guy…who had
been Adam speaks to Buffy.
OTHER GUY: She's uncomfortable with certain concepts. It's understandable.
Aggression is a natural human tendency. Though you and me come by it another
way.(Shot of Buffy with the dark-haired creature behind her.)
BUFFY: We're not demons.
OTHER GUY: Is that a fact?
She is uncomfortable with the concept that humans can be aggressive, evil. In
high school - it even took her by surprise. As she states in Gingerbread when
two kids appear to be killed by a cult (Season 3, Btvs): "Someone with a soul
did this?" How can that be? So is it surprising that the idea that she could be
related to demons is so shocking to her? Demons = evil, remember? That is the
child's view. It doesn't help that Riley calls her "killer". Remember Riley
shares a similar black and white view: (New Moon Rising - Season 4 Btvs.)
BUFFY: You sounded like Mr. Initiative. Demons bad, people good.
RILEY: Something wrong with that theorem?
I think this segment of the dream explains perfectly why Buffy and Riley could
never work. In it, the sirens go off, Riley and Adam attempt to build a "fort"
with pillows to protect themselves and Buffy states she has weapons. When she
opens her bag to pull them out - she paints her face with mud instead, the face
of the slayer. The demon?
RILEY: Thought you were looking for your friends. Okay, killer...if that's the
way you want it. I guess you're on your own.
This action is repeated in Dracula and Into the Woods- he accuses her of
transferring her interest in Angel to Dracula, in Into the Woods - he accuses
her of shutting him out, not caring about him. He never once calls her "killer"
except in her dream. But I think that's what she hears when he talks to her,
that's what she fears he is thinking. It's not really his fault that he can't
grasp her struggle. As Adam puts it, Riley comes by the aggression differently
and has never really understood the mystical world. He still separates things
into logical black and white boxes like a solider.
Before we leave Riley, I'd like to address the metaphor of Riley and Adam
sitting at opposite sides of the table. And of course the gun. The gun is easy -
it represents human aggression, which is just as deadly and horrible as demon
aggression, as the Scooby gang is about to discover. Up until Season 6, Btvs has
purposefully tried to avoid guns. Only Angel really had them. Why? As Jane
Espenson pointed out in her discussion of Angel - Btvs took place in the
adolescent world of high school, guns really have little or no place
there.(Rahael's post on Ats DVD). In Buffy's dream, we see the gun clearly
displayed right after the comment about how they plan to achieve world
domination. The means aren't really important, just the aggressive, take no
prisoners desire behind it. Adam and Riley - the monster and the man? Or are
they both? Adam also symbolizes the first man - when she asks what his name was
- he replies, before Adam not a man amongst us can tell. I wonder if Buffy's
lineage dates back before Adam? The demons clearly do. At any rate, Riley leaves
and Buffy continues on her journey alone. (Once again we only have Riley - no
Spike. Which makes me wonder if they've combined the two? Possibly Adam = Spike?
At any rate Riley/Spike leave and Buffy moves on alone.)
Finally Buffy reaches the desert and is disappointed not to see her friends, for
she still believes this is the whole point of her journey, to locate her
friends. Instead Tara reappears along with the first slayer. Tara speaks for the
first slayer in the dream.
BUFFY: Why do you follow me?(The woman shakes her head.)
TARA: (offscreen) I don't.
BUFFY: Where are my friends?(Shot of the woman backing away from Buffy, still
crouching down low.)
TARA: (offscreen) You're asking the wrong questions.
Tara keeps trying to tell her that it's not about her friends. But Buffy can't
hear her. Finally Tara tells her what it is about, who Buffy is, who the slayer
is: "I have no speech. No name. I live in the action of death, the blood cry,
the penetrating wound. I am destruction. Absolute ... alone" I am the Hands. I
am a part of you that you cannot quench. The part that you cannot, should not
share with your friends.
(Shot of Buffy's hand, holding a bunch of Tarot-shaped cards. In the one on top
we see a scene of Giles, Buffy, Willow, and Xander in Joyce's living room
watching TV)
BUFFY: I am not alone
TARA: The Slayer does not walk in this world.
BUFFY: I walk. I talk. I shop, I sneeze. I'm gonna be a fireman when the floods
roll back. There's trees in the desert since you moved out. Now give me back my
friends.
FIRST SLAYER: No ... friends! Just the kill. We ... are ... alone!
(The bald guy leans in between Buffy and the First Slayer, holding up two slices
of cheese. He grins and shakes the cheese at Buffy, then retreats offscreen.)
BUFFY: That's it. I'm waking up.
Wow - denial much? Buffy isn't listening. Are we? The first slayer is trying to
tell Buffy that when it comes to slaying - they are alone. When it comes to the
vocation - it is theirs alone. The first slayer incorporates mind, heart, soul
and hands. Buffy was strongest in Primeval when all four joined inside her. Just
as she was strongest against Glory in the Gift when all four joined inside her.
The difference? In the Gift, she did it alone, on that tower with Dawn. The four
elements were clearly there - she did not require her friends to provide them.
Her moral spirit outshone Willow's, her heart outshone Xander's, her mind
outshone Giles'../../nbsp; She did it alone with the hammer with Glory. She made the
decision to include Spike, to forgive him and treat him as a man even though he
had tried to kill her repeatedly in the past, knowing he understood and would
protect Dawn with his life if necessary. (In that way her heart and spirit
outshone her friends.) She made the decision against the advice of her friends.
At the end of Season 5, Buffy moved past them on to another plane../../nbsp; In Season 6,
Bargaining Part I & II, they brought her back down to theirs. Out of time. Out
of place. Back to their world. And somehow she's lost what she is, what the
slayer is../../nbsp; She's lost the use of her hands. Rejected them as wrong, just as she
rejects herself over and over again this year. Just as she rejects the hands
over and over again in her dream. The cheese man tries to give her two pieces of
cheese held in his right and left hands - and she says - "I'm waking up now"
(The second time in her dream that she's rejected the hands.) Her hands are the
source of her power, a power that can unite, exact justice, slay evil and heal../../nbsp;
Instead she pummels the wrong people and does the wrong tasks - whether that is
beating up Spike or churning the double meat../../nbsp; The Slayer tells her that her
friends can't be in on the kill. She tells Buffy's friends the same thing. If
they continue to follow her - they will do so at the peril of their own hearts,
spirits and heads../../nbsp; Instead of listening to the slayer, Buffy screams for her
friends. Demands they continue to act together. She rejects what she learned
when she leapt from the Tower at the end of Season 5 and in doing so, has
rejected the power of her hands. Hence all the images of chopped off hands this
year.
The final image in Buffy's dream is Buffy on the floor, once again ignoring and
rejecting the first slayer../../nbsp; The Slayer is trying to tell Buffy what she is. But
Buffy pushes it aside, returning to her friends on the couch, and effectively
breaking the slayer's spell over them all. Everything seems fine again. Or so we
think. But is it? Now awake, Buffy goes upstairs and visits her Mom's den and
looks at the naked mattress. In the voice over, we hear Tara say: "you think you
know what you are…what's to come…you haven't even begun" The first slayer is
reiterating her warning.
Buffy needs to deal with who and what she is. To let go of the old childhood
dreams. To embrace the slayer. To take up her arms and move onto the next stage,
even if that means leaving Xander and Willow behind. (Giles already left.)
Sometimes when we grow up - we have to change the nature of our old high school
or childhood relationships, and if we can't? Move on without them. The next
stage of our journey sometimes has to be alone.
Thanks for reading. Looking forward to your comments as always!