*Warning to all: Because this article acts primarily as an in-depth analysis of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and one of its major characters, it is NOT spoiler-free. If you plan on watching the series or have not finished yet, proceed at your own risk. Though, they do say knowing the end of something does not decrease your enjoyment. Own risk, am I right?
Last week, I introduced the idea that Willow Rosenberg, the most famous witch character on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” might be closely linked to the narrator of Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, “The Tell Tale Heart.” I argued that because the Willow character is written as so highly sympathetic, the audience tends to quickly forgive her crimes (including murder) because Joss Whedon and his team of writers have created such a rich and redeemable history for her. Furthermore, I suggested that this places her on the level of the murderer in Poe’s story because this character is created as so relatable to the human condition that it is easy to forgive him for a homicide the reader actually sees him commit. This week, I will detail some examples of Willow’s “good” characteristics that tend to overshadow or justify her wrongdoings and how those traits link her to the narrator in “The Tell Tale Heart.”
Arguably, Willow is the most dynamic character in the canon of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” She begins as a shy and nervous girl who scores well in school and displays aptitude for technology. Already, audiences feel connected to and proud of Willow since in 1997, it was still relatively unprecedented that a female character could be the most intelligent. For several seasons of the series, Willow either has an unrequited crush on her longtime best friend, Xander, or she is in a loving relationship with guitarist Daniel “Oz” Osbourne (Seth Green). Her parents are negligent, which is especially evident in the season-three episode “Gingerbread.” Here, Willow’s mother is entirely unaware that her daughter is practicing witchcraft and that she is in a romantic relationship with a musician. Additionally, she proves a loyal friend to Buffy time and again, and near the end of the third season, she commits herself to saving Sunnydale from the evils of the Hellmouth (the demonic portal upon which the small California town sits).
This decision is often interpreted by fans to reveal two things about Willow’s character—her loyalty to Buffy and her dedication to heroism. In the season-three episode “Choices,” Willow is one of the characters confronted with a difficult decision. She must decide if she will leave Sunnydale to attend Oxford University. However, she instead decides to attend the University of California – Sunnydale with Buffy and gives the following statement as her reason:
“Actually, this isn’t about you. Although I’m fond, don’t get me wrong, of you. The other night, getting captured and all, facing off with Faith [the other Vampire Slayer who “turned evil”]… things just got kind of clear. I mean, you’ve been fighting evil here for about three years, and I’ve been helping out some, and we’re supposed to be deciding what we wanna do with our lives and I realized that’s what I want to do. Fight evil. Help people. I think it’s worth doing.”
This is a major mission statement from a character who, unlike Buffy, is not predestined to fight the forces of supernatural darkness. After hearing this, the audience automatically does something peculiar. It puts Willow on a pedestal of goodness. She has sworn herself to the light side, the audience infers. Therefore, all of her proceeding decisions will be good and just. At this point, it seems appropriate to compare Willow to the narrator in “The Tell Tale Heart.”
Just as Whedon and his team of writers set the “Buffy” audience up to sympathize with Willow, Poe uses the same characterization technique at the beginning of “The Tell Tale Heart.” Probably the strongest example of sympathetic characterization he employs is when the narrator claims that he had no true “object” for killing the old man because he “loved [him].” To use the word love this early in the narrative or at all is an excellent step in creating a sympathetic murderer. Poe wrote murder stories, likely, because he wanted his fellow American readers to question this national dream they had been dreaming for about a century. Since America was originally colonized under Christian principles, the earliest Americans were already conditioned to find the good (the “God”) in the people around them. By creating a murder character who claims he is capable of literally loving his neighbor, Poe takes typical American beliefs and turns them darkly. Murderers, often, have grown up in identical or similar environments as people who never kill.
The aforementioned statement is also true of Willow Rosenberg. Canonically, she was raised in an Orthodox Jewish household, where her parents would have especially enforced moral and religious principles. Despite the fact that Willow’s parents never learn much about their daughter’s personality or interests, it is evident that religious tradition (perhaps overzealously) is important to them. In the episode “Gingerbread,” when Willow finally confesses to her mother that she has been practicing Wicca, her mother finds this terribly scandalous and sinful, as opposed to the monotheistic and more widely accepted faith that Willow was made to practice before. Much of the time, Willow upholds these moral standards in relatively high esteem. For approximately the first four seasons of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” the audience never catches Willow doing a thing to betray Buffy, who embodies the “good” side of the wide war. Compare this to Poe’s narrator and his love for the old man whom he eventually kills. It appears that the two are friends, but then, the narrator is ultimately a fierce enemy. At the conclusion of “Buffy’s” sixth season, a similar dynamic shift occurs between Willow and Buffy.
The sixth and penultimate season of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” is rather unarguably (among fans, that is) the season in which Willow is at her most deplorable. She spends a large chunk of the year being morally dubious as she becomes addicted to dark and powerful magic—so addicted that in order to get her fix, she puts Buffy’s younger sister, Dawn (Michelle Trachtenberg) in mortal peril because the magic high turns her spirit reckless. However, in the final three episodes of the season, Willow turns from morally ambiguous to plainly evil. Her girlfriend, Tara Maclay (Amber Benson, is wrongfully murdered, as a bullet intended for Buffy pierced Tara’s heart instead. Willow and Tara had just reignited their romance the night before. Tara’s murderer is Warren Mears, an ex-high-school classmate of Willow and Buffy, who has been their antagonist for about a year. At this point, Willow’s immense grief coupled with her addiction to powerful magic become too much for her soul to handle. She pushes all of her admirable characteristics so far into herself and lets her power-hungry and evil tendencies come to the fore. Gone is her friendly ginger hair, which is replaced with straight black locks (not unlike those of “Harry Potter” antagonist Severus Snape). Her eyes turn from human to coal-colored. She has but one concept on her mind: murder.
To avenge Tara, she chases down Warren and flays him alive. For a moment, the audience is dumbfounded. Their favorite sweet geek has just murdered a man in cold blood.
And what does a large number of that same audience begin to do? Justify Willow’s actions.
Warren was already a murderer. Willow loved Tara, and this is a revenge story. It should be! They were perfect for each other, and they would have been happy if she just lived. Willow is good. She is so good. Even when she kills someone, she is still so good.
These justifications are not entirely wrong. However, what is entirely wrong is murder. Willow Rosenberg, from the season-six episode “Villains” forth, is a murderer character. Any justification she or the audience might put forth does not erase that she committed a serious crime. However, the amount of fan justifications is extremely similar to the in-text justifications Poe’s narrator lists in “The Tell Tale Heart.”
In “The Tell Tale Heart,” the narrator is mostly concerned with proving how sane he is despite his seemingly illogical murder of an old man. He assumes that the reader would “fancy [him] mad,” but this is not true, he alleges. He “wisely… proceeded” with the murder and “cautiously” waited for the opportune moment to strike. A lunatic could never succeed in such stealth, or so he argues. He also makes note of how “very, very dreadfully nervous” he was to murder the old man, which tugs at the heartstrings of readers for at least two reasons. One possibility is the amount of modifiers Poe uses to describe the narrator’s anxiety. If the narrator simply claimed that he was nervous, the diction would not create an especially strong emotional response. Nervous is an ordinary word, and it is easy to glance over while reading. However, it is difficult to avoid words like “very” and “dreadfully” because these adverbs suggest that the narrator’s nervousness must be extraordinary. Readers want to know what has him so terrified. Once they have the answer, they probably figure he is not so cold-blooded. If he was nervous before he killed the old man, he cannot be evil, they assume. That is human.
If Willow was grieving Tara before she killed Warren, she cannot be evil, “Buffy” viewers assume. That is human.
Another reason why the overstatement on Poe’s narrator’s apprehension is so effective is because of its place in the narrative. It is a phrase in the story’s opening sentence. Poe could have just as easily written something like, “On the night I killed the old man…” but that would have alienated his readers instantly. When people read stories, they want their narrators to be relatable humans. By creating a character with the basic human emotion of fear in his premiere appearance, Poe wildly suggests the following: A murderer is a human. Every human has the same capacity to kill. The difference is that not everyone chooses to allow that capacity to take over.
But in 2002, Willow Rosenberg’s character did make that choice.
Earlier, I mentioned that by committing murder, Willow was actually betraying Buffy. I suggested that this might create a potential link between Buffy and the old man in “The Tell Tale Heart.” This concept will be explored in next week’s concluding volume, along with the significance of this essay’s title.
