Chief Seattle on "Angelus"
Linda
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Ok so the title is derivative, but it was just too accurate a summation
of Angelus (at least before 1898) to pass up. Anyway I had intended to
finish this character sketch some time ago but just have not been able
to find the time. It will be posted as part of my final round of
updates on my site: (http://members.tripod.com/chiefseattle00/)
I am, however, also behind on these. I hope the revisions will be
ready within the next 24 hours.
Spoilers for all things Angelus
The Personality of a Vampire
The events surrounding the "birth" of Angelus are recorded in "the
Prodigal". Here we see him rise from Liam's grave and take his first
steps towards becoming a savage and remorseless killing machine. And
if that was all to Angelus there would be nothing very interesting to
write about. But, in spite of what Giles says, there is more to a
vampire than just being "a vicious, violent animal."
First of all they are rational beings. According to Anya they
may "think with their teeth" but there is plenty of evidence to show
that they can and do forgo the satisfaction of short term appetites for
a longer term goal. The classic example of this is in "Becoming 2"
when Spike forged a temporary alliance of convenience with the slayer
to help him get revenge on Angelus and make sure Drusilla stayed with
him.
Then Vampires have emotions. They can hate; they can want revenge.
Their emotional make up can even leave them with psychological flaws.
In "Somnambulist", for example, Penn's hatred of his family (his father
in particular) led to a pattern of killing which almost led to his
downfall.
This combination of emotion and the rational response to it and he way
that the inter-reaction between them varies from individual to
individual produces what we know as personalities. Although, as I hope
to demonstrate, the personality of a vampire is not the same as the
personality of the human it took over, it nevertheless does make the
vampire a recognizable individual, unlike the sometimes anonymous
demons we sometimes see, especially on BUFFY. For example Spike is
impatient, direct and iconoclastic. Angelus on the other hand is
cautious, his methods are indirect and well thought out and he seems
entirely comfortable with the idea of a hierarchy. This is one of the
reasons why it seems to me that vampires remain the villain of choice
for so many viewers. Apart from Spike and Angelus just think of some
of the vampires that we have seen:
· Drusilla;
· Dalton (the bookworm burned by the Judge);
· Mr. Tick;
· Sunday;
· Russell Winters; and
· Penn.
Each has a different and interesting personality which in turn
influences the way they behave.
Like all of these Angelus' personality was shaped by the cardinal
influences in his own past and in its turn this influenced who and what
he killed; why he killed and how he killed. How was that personality
shaped?
It is, I am afraid a much used and abused quote but our starting point
here must be Giles' description of a vampire in "Angel":
"A vampire isn't a person at all. It may have the movements, the, the
memories, even the personality of the person that it took over, but i-
it's still a demon at the core, there is no halfway.
This established from the very beginning of the BUFFY (and in the
context of its most important vampire) the link between the personality
of the vampire and of the human whose body it inherited. It is,
however, in some ways a very unsatisfactory statement in that it gives
no hint of the subtleties and complexities inherent in forming the
personality of the vampire. And the clue to these subtleties is
contained in the statement that the vampire isn't a person, that is to
say isn't human. In particular it lacks the defining feature of such a
person: a human soul. One of the clearest statements about the nature
of the soul comes in "Five by Five". When talking about Marquez,
Wesley says:
"He may be a ruffian, but he's already got a soul, and therefore - deep
down inside - an urge to do what's right."
In distinction, the demon which inherits the human body has an instinct
to do what is evil. Personality is the characteristic way in which a
particular individual thinks, feels, and behaves. It embraces a
person's moods, attitudes, and opinions and is most clearly expressed
in interactions with others. Almost by definition the personality of a
demon cannot be the same as the personality of a human because the
disposition to good or evil will fundamentally affect the way the
individual will relate to others.
We were not born to hunt and feed from one another so presumably the
addition of that instinct is also a product of vampirism. The human's
higher intellectual functions (perception, understanding, logic etc)
may be inherited by the invading demon. It can, therefore evaluate,
remember and plan in exactly the same way as the former human. But the
moral standards that it applies to what it perceives are now very
different. And the related social and moral values would also
disappear and be replaced by different values. These regarded strength
as the greatest, perhaps the only, virtue and held many of our highest
values including compassion in contempt. Therefore, while some traits
that would be recognizable in the human would remain, the overall
personality of the vampire that would emerge would be a distortion
rather than a true reflection of the personality of the human. It
seems to me therefore that in talking about the personality of a
vampire, a more accurate description comes from Darla in "the Prodigal":
"What we once were informs all that we have become."
In other words the human personality is merely the starting point for
the vampire personality, rather than something that is transferred to
the demon wholesale and without modification.
We do not know nearly enough of Angelus' history between 1753 and 1898
to attempt to analyze his actions chronologically. Rather, bearing in
mind the forgoing general statements about the nature of vampire
personalities, I would like to examine certain specific aspects of his
behavior.
"The most vicious creature I ever met"
Where better to start than with the Master's encomium for Angelus. In
these words he was identified as something beyond other vampires in
terms of his cruelty and his enjoyment of that cruelty. As the First
Evil says in the guise of Margaret:
"But you see, that's what makes you different than other beasts. They
kill to feed, but you took more kinds of pleasure in it than any
creature that walks or crawls."
And indeed what is most striking about Angelus is the malevolent,
deliberate relish in his cruelty; the sheer pleasure he got out of
terrifying women especially. This may be illustrated by the way he
taunts Jenny in "Passion" or later Rebecca in "Eternity"
"In all my years, I've never killed a famous person before. But, with
no witnesses, who's gonna believe me? Maybe we can take a picture. I
know! We'll do it like we did back in the day. I'll keep your head on
a stick.as proof."
Both scenes are perfect illustrations of the own hunting methods
referred to by Angel is "Somnambulist"
"I. I stalk them, toy with them, mark them while they are still alive.
And before they can die from their fear, I feed on them."
These characteristics and habits seem to have been particular trade
marks of Angelus; something that marked him out from the generality of
Vampires. This raises the obvious and intriguing question of the
extent to which they were influenced by anything unique about the
personality of Liam.
Cruelty, and the enjoyment of it, are of course common currency among
Vampires. This itself (when taken in conjunction with hat I have said
about the difference between human and demon souls) tends to suggest
that it is inherent in the nature of the demon rather than the human
being. Certainly we know nothing about Liam as a human that would
suggest there was anything innately vicious about him. The worst we
saw was that he was involved in a few fist fights. As a comparator we
can take the Gorch Brothers.
Giles: "They're from Abilene. They, uh, they made their reputation by
massacring an entire Mexican village in 1886."
Buffy: "Friendly little demons."
Giles: "That was before they became vampires."
As humans they were already ruthless killers. As vampires they seemed
quite average. This itself would tend to support the proposition that
the degree of Angelus' brutality was not simply a reflection of some
hidden viciousness within Liam. But there may be less direct ways in
which the scale and nature of Angelus' crimes were influenced by the
person Liam was.
There is considerable textual support in "the Prodigal" for the
proposition that Liam's strained relationship with his father
influenced Angelus. Liam was a "terrible disappointment" to his father
and felt that fact very keenly.
Liam: "Disappointment? A more dutiful son you couldn't have asked
for. My whole life you've told me in word, in glance, what it is you
required of me, and I've lived down to your every expectations, now
haven't I?"
Dad: "That's madness!"
Angel: "No. The madness is that I couldn't fail enough for you. But
we'll fix that now, won't we?"
Liam seems genuinely to have loved his father and equally genuinely to
have wanted to please him. But he could not break out of the vicious
cycle of low expectation and low self-esteem he was trapped in. This
sort of self-doubt is something a vampire would despise. We saw this
is the reaction of both vamp Jesse and alt.Willow to their former
selves. Vamp Jesse for example spoke about the contrast between the
way he felt now and his former self in the following terms:
"Okay... Let's deal with this. Jesse was an excruciating loser who
couldn't get a date with anyone in the sighted community! Look at me.
I'm a new man!"
It was this feeling of needing to prove he was no longer a looser that
led him to get the better or Cordelia. Similarly Angelus would have
felt very keenly what he perceived as Liam's weakness. As a Vampire he
would not have felt love for his father as such, any more than he would
have felt the love Liam once felt for his sister. But the residue of
that love was there in the form of a desire to prove to his father he
had now really amounted to something. That is why, when offered his
choice of anyone in the village to kill, he chose the whole village.
The scale of the slaughter would prove just how powerful he now was.
He taunts his father with this very fact:
Angel: "You told me I wasn't a man. You told me I was nothing. And
I believed you. You said I'd never amount to anything. Well, you were
wrong. You see, father? I have made something out of myself after
all."
The motivation to prove he was someone was human. The method was
vampire. It is an interesting example of the melding of the two
strands into a composite personality.
And it may be possible to recognize in Liam certain characteristics
that shaped Angelus' predatory behavior. Liam sought refuge from his
troubles with his father in the limited pleasures that were available
to him - alcohol and women in particular. It may be that this
hedonism also influenced Angelus' personality. The need for pleasure
had assumed a far greater importance for Liam than would be the norm.
If, as suggested by Darla in "the Prodigal" Angelus continued to be
troubled by the memories of his father, he may equally have sought to
forget by concentrating on pleasure. Of course, as a vampire, what
constituted pleasure for him would have been very different to the
forms of enjoyment Liam sought out. What mattered for Angelus was the
hunt and the kill.
And here we come to yet another interesting connection between Liam and
Angelus. As we have already seen, Angelus did not go for the simple
kill. Nor was he content with mere brutality in the form of branding
irons and railway spikes. While he obviously enjoyed inflicting pain
the only occasion we saw him resort to such direct methods was
in "Becoming 2" when he was principally interested in obtaining
information. His preferred methodology was more refined than that and
involved the infliction of psychological torture: raising fear within
the victim. And this was something that he took considerable pains
over. It involved imagination, careful planning and precise
execution. The classic example is, of course, the way he left Jenny's
body for Giles to find. The champagne, the note, the flowers and just
the right romantic aria from Puccini playing in the background. It was
the work of an artist. And here I recall how Penn described his own
work in "Somnambulist":
"First class killer? An Artist? A bold re-interpreter of the form?"
Penn, of course, learned at the feet of the Master and I do not think
it is too much of a stretch to see his use of an artistic metaphor for
killing as a reflection of Angelus' own attitude to what he did.
We know about Angel's interest in fine art and literature. We know
from "Helpless" what his idea of a good read is. And everywhere he has
lived he seems to have had a very tasteful collection of statues and
paintings. Angelus himself is a very skilled sketch artist and it is
strongly implied in "She" that he had close connections with the
artistic community in Paris in the mid-19th century. It is in this
context that I recall what Liam said to Darla in the ally in Galway
before he was vamped:
Liam: "I never been anywhere myself. Always wanted to see the world,
but...".
Darla: "I could show you."
Liam: "Could you, then?"
Darla: "Things you've never seen, never even heard of."
Liam: "Sounds exciting."
Darla: "It is. And frightening."
Liam: "I'm not afraid. Show me. Show me your world."
It is not to hard to imagine Liam as a thoughtful, sensitive,
intelligent young man with artistic sensibilities feeling trapped in an
environment where he was unable to find any expression for them. As a
vampire he would have access to ready money (not hard to guess from
where), be able to travel and move in circles where he would find a
conventional outlet for his interests. But in addition to that he may
well have found a natural marriage between his intellectual and
artistic tastes and his desires to kill in the form of his appreciation
of the more refined forms of cruelty.
On this view, it is of course the basic drives of the vampire that
predominate. I have given examples where the human personality traits
have been moulded and shaped so they suit the demon. And that this is
the nature of what happened can, I think, be illustrated by the way in
which one particular personality trait not so much changed but replaced
by its antithesis. Liam, as a human, seemed to be a gregarious type.
Angelus was quite the opposite. Witness the following conversation
between the faux Angelus and Spike in "School Hard":
Spike: "I haven't seen you in the killing fields for an age."
Angel: "I'm not much for company."
Spike: "No, you never were."
This solitary approach to killing may very well have been a product of
his particular method of killing and the enjoyment he got from it.
Except for Darla and the odd pupil like Penn, whom he taught to imitate
his methods, he probably would have found other vampires would just
have interfered with his pleasures. Certainly, therefore, this seems
to be one personality trait which is derived from the nature of the
vampire and which has nothing to do with the human.
"Mocking God"
Of course I have to point out that none of these elements in Liam's
character - the hedonism, the thoughtfulness or the artistry - would
have been unique. I doubt therefore that they could account on their
own for the intensity of Angelus' killing spree. The defining
characteristic of the vampire is the basic desire to do evil. This is
what separates demon from a human and it is a distinction of key
importance because it is the desire to do evil that is the key
motivating factor in the demon.
In this context I would draw attention to two particular episodes. As
we have seen, in "Somnambulist" Angel recalls his former modus
operandi. One of the things he did was to "mark" his victims with a
cross while they were still alive. The purpose of this was to "mock
God". Whether that was meant to signify that vampires believe in a
personal Deity is a moot point, although as supernatural creatures
themselves scientific rationalism wouldn't pose much of an obstacle to
belief. But I don't think it is important here. The importance of
the action was that it represented an expression of the helplessness
of "good" in the face of evil. The cross was something that vampires
feared. By marking this symbol of goodness on his victims and then
killing them Angelus was affirming the superiority of evil. Hence he
was mocking God.
Equally striking from this point of view was what he did to Drusilla.
In "Lie to Me" Angel referred to her as being an obsession of his.
In "Becoming I" we saw the sort of person that the human Drusilla was,
demonstrably the pure and sweet and chaste girl described by Angel
in "Lie to Me". Clearly what impelled Angelus to stalk her was not any
sexual obsession with her. Even though after "Innocence" he clearly
enjoyed being with her he never showed that sort of feeling for her.
Rather I think that the need he felt was to corrupt her goodness. That
was certainly the suggestion in "Becoming I" when he told her:
Angelus: "Oh, hush, child. The Lord has a plan for all creatures, even
a Devil child like you."
Drusilla: "A Devil?"
Angelus: "Yes! You're a spawn of Satan. All the Hail Marys in the
world aren't going to help. The Lord will use you and smite you down.
He's like that."
Drusilla: "What can I do?"
Angelus: "Fulfill his plan, child. Be evil. Just give in."
Drusilla: "No! I want to be good. I want to be pure."
Angelus: "We all do, at first. The world doesn't work that way."
So, I think we can see in Angelus far more than just a creature who has
appetites that he seeks to satisfy by killing in an entertaining
manner. He is in fact quite consciously and deliberately an agent of
evil. I think that this is an important point that should not be
overlooked.
Angelus and Darla
Even a demon, though, can have can have "emotional attachments", at
least to other demons. Spike and Drusilla are a good example of this.
In "Surprise" the Judge referred to them in the following terms:
"You two stink of humanity. You share affection and jealousy."
Whether Angelus ever felt this emotional need is an interesting
question. In "Surprise" and "Innocence" the Judge seemed to suggest
not. He felt he could burn Spike and Drusilla because their emotional
attachments were a residue of humanity in them. He couldn't burn
Angelus because...
Judge: "He is clean."
Spike: "Clean? You mean, he's..."
Judge: "There's no humanity in him."
As against that, in "The Prodigal" there is some stress on just how
close Angelus and Darla were. The way that she shepherded Angelus
towards his first kill and the way he looked back at her for
reassurance before completing it brought to mind almost a mother-child
relationship. This was the most meaningful look at what it is to be
a "sire" in the Vampires' world we have ever been given. And certainly
in "Five by Five" we see that he feels very "comfortable" with Darla.
When she gives him the gypsy girl he says:
"What would I do without you?"
Of course the full story of the relationship between Angelus and Darla
has still to be told. In "Angel" Darla suggested they were involved
for "several generations". But there is no sign of her when we see him
with Penn in the late 18th century and one might doubt whether she was
with him in London in the 1860's when he encountered Drusilla.
Nevertheless, contrary to "Innocence" the suggestion here is that
Angelus was not too different from Spike in his capacity for affection.
The important point though it that this feeling is not, however, the
same as romantic love in the sense that humans know the experience.
The Judge did not use "love" to describe what Spike and Drusilla felt
for one another. "Affection" is a much weaker term. In particular a
relationship between vampires seems to lack some of the higher feelings
we associate with love. As I have already said, the great difference
between the human soul and the demon soul is that the former has a
basic instinct to do good. In a relationship with another person this
will mean a selfless desire to do what is good for the other person.
In a demon soul the only interest in a relationship can be what is in
it for you in terms of satisfaction of your emotional needs. Is it any
wonder then that one of the key things defining the relationship
between Spike and Drusilla is jealousy which is essentially a selfish
feeling. And Darla's reaction in "Five by Five" when she realized
Angelus had been given a soul was interesting. It was disgust and
perhaps fear. She seemed to show no concern whatsoever for the
suffering of the unhappy Angelus under the weight of the soul's sense
of guilt. Love in a vampire, therefore, seems to be an expression of
some form of emotional need, no different in principle from the need to
get back at his father felt by Penn in "Somnambulist."
Angel and Angelus
It takes no great imagination to appreciate the horror it must be for
Angel to share a body with a creature with the sort of instincts that
Angelus has. I would, however, ask you to spare a thought for poor old
Angelus in all this. What must it be like to share a body with Angel?
It's not only the continual guilt about the crimes that Angelus
committed. Actions which should only have been for him happy memories
are now the subject of reproaches. Perhaps even worse was the fact
that for over a hundred years of brooding he was without any outlet for
the instincts and desires that were central to his being. It would be
as if Rembrandt had suddenly been turned into a quadriplegic. As
Angel himself observed in "the Dark Age"
"I've had a demon inside me for a couple hundred years... just waitin'
for a good fight."
Angel's good intentions were, of course, an affirmation of the good in
human beings that Angelus felt so impelled to reject. As such they
would themselves have been anathema to Angelus. Nevertheless, the
outlet his combat with demons would have provided for Angelus'
destructive instincts might actually prove to be a welcome relief to
the demon. The smirk as he carried out the cold blooded assassination
of Russell Winters in "City of." may very well derive from the
satisfaction felt be the demon at the sight of violent death, even of
another vampire.
Just how unbearable the curse made the situation for Angelus can
perhaps be gleaned from his attitude to Buffy, even after it was
lifted. As I have already said I do not think that you can equate the
sort of affection shared between vampires with the genuine romantic
love felt by Angel for Buffy. Indeed love of that sort disgusts
Angelus because it represents the "good" higher feelings of which a
human being is capable and which essentially differentiate them from
vampires. But even after Angel's soul was stripped from the vampire
Angelus was stuck with the memory of those feelings which, given their
importance to Angel, were clearly very strongly imprinted in him. To
add to this he may very well have felt a strong sexual attraction to
Buffy. For him this must have been a form of torture from which he
could not escape. And this, I think, is the key to understanding
Angelus' actions during the last half of season 2.
So, while at one level he tried to maintain that he was merely using
psychological warfare to defeat a particularly powerful opponent. This
was certainly the conclusion that Giles reached when he referred to
Angelus' tactics in "Passion":
"Uh, uh, look, it's-it's classic battle strategy to throw one's
opponent off his game. He-he-he's just trying to provoke you.uh, to
taunt you, to, to goad you into, uh, some mishap of some sort."
But that never made sense. Angelus could easily have killed Buffy
while she slept at the beginning of "Passion". He would not then have
needed to throw her off her game. I think Angelus gave away the truth
when he said:
"She made me feel like a human being. That's not the kind of
thing you just forgive."
Killing Buffy would have removed her as a physical threat. But that
would not have helped remove the memories of what she and Angel had
together. That is what Angelus had to do and I think that is what the
stalking was intended to achieve. Stalking is a way of taking control
of a victim - dominating her life and dictating how she lives it. This
seemed to be the intention behind Angelus' actions. Leaving drawings,
deliveries of the roses, tormenting and killing her friends. It seems
to me that he intended to take control of Buffy's life as a way of
proving to himself that he was the one in control rather than the one
being controlled by the memories of feelings for Buffy left behind by
Angel.
But of course he miscalculated. The harder he pushed the stronger
Buffy became and the more willing she was to kill him. Or perhaps it
wasn't simply a miscalculation. Perhaps his own fears and hatred of
genuine human love, his own insecurities had by now warped his
judgment. It was Spike (a shrewd enough judge of these things) who
suggested that he wasn't playing with the full deck.
In any event the climax to his campaign came in "Passion". When he
killed Jenny he wasn't remotely interested in Giles. It was Buffy's
reaction he wanted to watch and the fact that afterwards he barely
escaped from her with his life may well have convinced him that
stalking her was just not helping. This is why he tried to awaken
Acathla. I think he would ordinarily have missed this world as much a
Spike. He was "one happy guy" killing, torturing and maiming. But
with Buffy still free from him he could not escape the haunting
memories of love and seeing Buffy sucked into Hell with the rest of the
World was the only thing left for him to try to make those memories go
away. That is why when he said to Acathla
"You will be free."
he added as he drew the blade of a knife across the palm of his hand
"And so will we all."