Great Stories, Part 3: The Common Quality

Today’s post will be long, as a warning. There will also be about a million “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Angel” spoilers.

It happens that I’m a huge fan of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." I never watched the show while it was on, having been a toddler when it began, but Netflix is beautiful. I actually pulled an all-nighter my first run through. I did the same after ordering the Season 8 comics. And now I'm saving for Season 9...

But I digress.

My point isn’t that I love the show, but why. To me, it’s the perfect combination of hilarious and scary. The dialogue sparkles, the characters are great (except maybe Riley – so beneath Buffy), and though the show changes through the seasons, I never cease to love it.

Today I want to talk about the character of Faith.

I don’t want to go into too much detail, but what you have to understand is this:

Buffy and Faith slay vampires. They’re the only Slayers. Buffy’s nice, honest, has good friends, etc. Faith is damaged, wild, flirtatious – Buffy’s foil. The two are friends for a time, until a chain of reactions is set off.

This begins when Faith accidentally kills a man. Instead of dealing with the event (and she almost does), she denies it, then turns to killing for hire. She takes the same joy out of it as from Slaying. Buffy & Co. try to reach her, but no one seems able to.

That's until Angel intervenes, anyway. He's Buffy's undead boyfriend, who's been stuck with a soul since getting cursed by Gypsies. Now he can't stop reliving old murders, and that's why Faith is attracted to him: He's the only one who could possibly relate.

But we couldn't have a happy ending here, could we?

The Watchers’ Council breaks in to arrest Faith. (They’re a group of old British guys that oversee Slayers and hire goons to beat/lock up rogue ones.) Faith escapes, naturally, but more events and she ends up in a coma for half a season. When she wakes up, it’s to wreak yet more havoc, ruining Buffy’s life in the process. Then she heads to LA, and the show Angel (a BtVS spinoff.)

Angel is, pretty obviously, Angel’s show. Faith’s been hired to kill him, but he still wants to save her from herself. A few events occur, and Faith seems pretty bent on carrying out her job. She even kidnaps Wesley, her former Watcher and Angel’s friend. She is torturing him in an apartment when Angel breaks in.

There’s a fight sequence. Lots of broken glass. Angel and Faith fall out of a window into the street below, a distance of maybe four stories.

The fight continues, but the viewer can tell Angel’s letting up. It begins raining, then pouring, and Faith is screaming. “You don’t know what evil is!” she says. “I’m bad! Fight back!” Angel responds quietly – by now his arms are still. “Nice try, Faith. I know what you want. And I’m not gonna do it – I’m not gonna make it easy for you.”

The viewer doesn’t know what he means; just that Faith is suddenly collapsing. She’s still fighting, but her screams are more like sobbing as Angel draws nearer to her. “I’m evil! I’m bad!” she continues. “Do you hear me?!” Angel ignores this.

“I’m evil!” she says, weeping and shaking in his arms. “Please just do it!... Just kill me!”

There’s a clatter as Wesley, standing behind the pair, drops a kitchen knife.

To me, this is an amazing moment - so much comes to a head. I won’t bore you with the details, but I’ll say this: Someone who’s gotten into “Buffy” and now “Angel” will be affected by this moment. Faith is such a human character, and Eliza Dushku’s acting is fantastic.

Instead of examining the scene further, I want to make a point about great stories. I’d argue that they all hold a common quality: They entertain us as they reveal truths about the human condition – most especially, but not necessarily, on how we deal with death.


Applying the Theory

My solution applies pretty obviously to Faith's story. She commits horrible murders, but as a coping mechanism. When Angel comes to her with the possibility of redemption, she responds, before the chance is cruelly snatched away. Now, she seems hopelessly stuck on a serious downward spiral. She doesn't know what to do but act out violently. She tortures Wesley viciously, but it's really an appeal to Angel to end her confusion and suffering. He's still the face of her salvation; it's the solution itself that's changed.

So how do other stories deal with the human condition?

Glad you asked. I'll use my favorites as examples:

Franny and Zooey (Novella):
A college student, Franny, is bothered by the superficial characters surrounding her. She becomes obsessed with the "Jesus prayer" and suffers a nervous breakdown on a date. She then heads to her parents', where her brother, Zooey, points out that her constant prayer is as "egotistical as the egotism against which she rails."

The scene best illustrating this novella's power is the last. In the scene, Zooey's on the phone with his sister, Franny, telling her how he lives for the "Fat Lady" - the unremarkable woman in the audience of a game show in which they participated as kids. He took the idea from their older brother, Seymour, who'd committed suicide several years before. This is important to Franny because the Fat Lady isn't just the Fat Lady - she's everyone, "even Christ himself." The story inspires Franny to coexist with others in contentment, even joy. And even after Zooey hangs up, she holds to the phone, listening to the dial tone. She finds it "extraordinarily beautiful"... "the best possible substitute for the primordial silence itself." Perfect, right?

To Kill a Mockingbird (Novel & Film):

"Set in the small Southern town of Maycomb, Alabama, during the Depression, [the novel] follows three years in the life of 8-year-old Scout Finch, her brother, Jem, and their father, Atticus--three years punctuated by the arrest and eventual trial of a young black man accused of raping a white woman."

There are so many moments proving my theory: when Dill shares his dreams, when Atticus tells Scout what real courage is, when Miss Maudie says how some men are born to do our unpleasant jobs, or when Jem realizes why Boo’s stayed shut up for so many years. In the end, I couldn’t decide on my absolute favorite moment: It’s either Reverend Sykes’ words at the trial’s end – asking Scout to stand for her father – or a quote from the novel’s end, when Scout remarks:

 Atticus was right. One time he said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them. Just standing on the Radley porch was enough.

The novel (and film) are all about coming of age, coming to understanding suffering and what true courage is. And, of course, how beautiful mockingbirds - symbols of innocence and goodwill - are. This novel is poignant and clever, quietly revealing truths on nearly every page.

Looking for Alaska (Novel):

"Before. Miles “Pudge” Halter's whole life has been one big non-event. Then he heads off to the sometimes crazy, possibly unstable, and anything-but-boring world of Culver Creek Boarding School, and his life becomes the opposite of safe. Because down the hall is Alaska Young. The gorgeous, clever, funny, sexy, self-destructive, screwed-up, and utterly fascinating Alaska Young pulls Pudge into her world, launches him into a new life, and steals his heart. After. Nothing is ever the same."

This book's a heartbreaker, and it's full of hilarious, witty quotes. I was so moved after my first reading that I spent a summer writing a (horrible) novel attempt nearly identical to it. If I could give one example of this novel's power, it'd be the final line: 

Thomas Edison's last words were 'It's very beautiful over there'. I don't know where there is, but I believe it's somewhere, and I hope it's beautiful.”

It's the theme of death and the human condition, all over again. And I didn't even mention Alaska, a character every reader falls in love with. I mean, the girl uses her spare time to reflect on Simon Bolivar's "labyrinth of suffering" (from Garcia Marquez's "The General in His Labyrinth.)

I could go on, detailing how various novels can illustrate various philosophies, but this post is long enough already: Technicality can follow.

So, for now:

What do you think?