Long ramble on the soul thing - yawn!
Hmm, well I thought I'd get some ideas down about the soul issue in BtVS and AtS - I think this becomes something like the soul as metaphor. Don't think I resolved anything but it turned into this very long ramble nevertheless....
What started the whole thing off was this essay I found on Vampires in the Media 1975-2000 . Although the essay is interesting, there's a stunning lack of BtVS/AtS in the essay, natch, but one of the most intriguing bits was this:
"In some cultures, it was conjectured that the condition of the soul could cause an individual to become a vampire. In Romania, for example, the preservation and satisfaction of the soul was deemed to be of the utmost importance (Klingman p 170). Romanians believed that without careful attention, the soul can become lost, unable to find its way to heaven. If this were to occur, the soul would be forced to exist on the earthly plane, eventually becoming a vampire (Klingman p171). In response to this structure of beliefs, Romanians developed a rich ritualistic life that they believed would enable them to avoid becoming vampires. In other cultures, similar beliefs were held. For example, many people throughout Europe believed that the souls of the excommunicated could not enter heaven (Bunson, p88). In these instances, individuals were also assumed to have bcome vampires."
Ok, well, yes. My next question: did ME know about this? Or was it just a tra-la-la happy coincidence?
(I also read paratti's excellent essay on Spike and germainepet's interesting essay on pre-souled Angel and Spike, which both blew me immensely away and answered a lot of questions. I don't think any of what I say is particularly new but because I'm so late to the whole fangirl-squee thing, please indulge me if I repeat anything that's been said before. I think I created so many more questions rather than answers, just loads to contemplate really, no significant happy ending, just loads of out-loud rambling. Also of tremendous use was thedeadlyhook's essay on religious metaphor, plus the wonderful Wikipedia.)
And then that got me to thinking about what the Fanged Four (basically our best examples of vampires) were like pre and post demon. Was there anything about them that made them interesting enough to consider the nature of souls...And why are Spike and Angel the only ones "special" enough, out of all the possible candidates, to get them back again?
So what were the states of each of the Fanged Four's souls (in the religious sense) before turning:
Darla - an English born, American resident prostitute, cursed with syphilis, her soul would have been damned, in the strict Puritanical 17th century sense, even before the Master took an interest
Liam - a braggart, keen on whoring, drinking, disobeying and being disrespectful to his father
Drusilla - was pure but she had the Sight, something that aligns her with the devil, with paganism, with damnation. She also was corrupted and fell - the scenes with Angelus as the priest are eerie in this light - the help she is seeking is already evil, she is damned without knowing it, she worships false idols without understanding
William - He's a Romantic, a poet, he's Enlightened, a Victorian gentleman - but what of his soul? He kinda sticks out here as being, well, for want of a better word, good.
The vampire certainly plays a role as the outsider (that's Spike's raison d'etre half the time) - yet all the Fanged Four are outsiders in one way or another as humans (Darla, prostitute; Liam, rebellious; Drusilla, the sight; William, not wealthy enough). But what of the humans in the Jossverse - Buffy, Xander, Willow, Dawn, Giles, Anya, Cordelia, Oz, Riley, Ethan, Joyce, Wood, Faith, Wes, Gunn, Fred etc etc - are they outsiders? Or, then again, who is the insider? Before each of the Fanged Four are turned, none of them seem to have an inkling of what's about to happen - Darla taunting the priest/Master, Liam following a bit of skirt, Drusilla falsely believing the priest/Angelus, William "I've heard tales of bloody pickpockets." Yet none of the humans in BtVS/AtS would ever get turned through their ignorance.
Perhaps it's a good moment to try and define what a soul is. Ok - understatement. Basically, humans for the last 10,000 or so years have been trying that, so I'll hit a few of the ones that are closest to the foursome and see if our souled saviours fit into any categories.
Socratic: the soul is made up of three parts - reason (the mind or logos), appetite (body or passion) and spirit (emotion or pathos). In order for a soul to be harmonious, reason must be in control of the other two.
Aristotelean: The soul becomes the core essence of a being, what makes something essentially what it is. A knife cuts, a pen writes, a book informs etc
Christian: From Wikipedia: "Souls are immaterial subjects of mental properties. They have sensations and thoughts, desires and beliefs and perform intentional actions. Souls are essential parts of human beings."
Hmmm so when William says in FFL "I prefer placing my energies into creating things of beauty". his mind certainly seems to be in control - does reason win out over spirit in poetry writing? Certainly in the post-souled moments of Angel's character, his reason (in the majority) seems to be in control. But Angelus is all about appetite (which is certainly closer to Liam's behaviour) - so in order to control this, Angel must use his mind over matter. It is interesting in the early parts of S7 when we see Spike freshly re-souled he does seem to be battling against his appetite and his spirit (his madness) - it's as if there's an internal struggle going on within him, which reason must win out. Darla, too, is more about appetite whereas Drusilla, cursed/blessed with the Sight, comes more toward spirit. You could argue that William is both spirit and reason equally separate and together - but he has huge amounts of spirit with reason in control.
Take any of the human characters and try to figure out their essence, what makes them innately them
Willow - magic
(Listening to the OMWF soundtrack this morning, I was struck by the line in Tara's song Under Your Spell, which generally paints the picture of Willow's magic dominating Tara, "Nothing I can do/You just took my soul with you")
Giles - protecting Buffy
Dawn - the Key
Oz - the werewolf
Buffy - the Slayer/protecting Dawn
(I got a bit stuck on Xander and Anya lost her essence, didn't she?)
Ok I do see that this is all very lack of choice and free will territory but I'm trying to tease something out here.
If the soul is the essence of something, then what is the essence of a vampire? What is its meaning in life? What is its point in being? Surely it's the demon. It's what generates it to fight, to kill, to feed. Right?
Well, not always. You could argue that from S5-7 Buffy is Spike's reason for living, she's his inner essence that drives him onward to be good. And Angel? His reason for being is to help the helpless. Or perhaps it's Buffy? Darla? Connor? Spike?
AtS5 complicates both vampires existences - in Aristotelean terms their essential drives become strongly refuted (Connor is mind-wiped from existence; Buffy is off shagging the Immortal). Is this what motivates the writers to go for Spangel in AtS5? Both vampires discover their reason could be each other - their very uniqueness brings them together to work the mission, to save the world.
In any case, Spuffy and Spangel work within canon - S5,6,7 Buffy on the whole is Spike's reason to do good, but if you shipped Spike/Wesley, Spike/Giles, Spike/Dawn, Spike/Tara there are examples of each character enabling Spike's motivation to exist - but what unites all these is Spike's ability to love.
Ok let's take another point of view - how did each of them die, what was their motivation in becoming a vampire.
Darla - was on the point of death and wished to escape the inevitability of this mortal coil
Liam - was seeking adventure, excitement, worlds he'd never seen
Drusilla - if anything we can only pity Dru, but her death is also an escape of sorts
William - he seeks something light, effulgent, transcendental
In effect, the souled vampires do get what they want. Liam becomes the star of the show - he's the hero with the romantic love of a brave heroine, trusted friends, scrapes and japes and fights, he is the quintessential hero of an adventure story. But he must suffer (just like other heroes, Hercules etc) - just as Connor is Liam's greatest reward, Drusilla is his greatest sin.
William becomes transcendental light by saving the world at the end of Chosen.
There seems to be an element of free will in the turning of Liam and William too, that doesn't exist for Darla or Drusilla.
Michel Foucault once wrote "the soul is the prison of the body" and the Victorians thought "a body..enveloped...indeed enthralled...its soul" (Vampire in Media). Well, this certainly works in Angelus' favour - and why a moment of true happiness with Buffy sends his soul scurrying and the birth of Connor does not. Pleasures of the flesh, sins of the flesh - with the presence of a pure soul we should know how 'best' to use our bodies. Darla, too, has a soul trapped inside her body - Connor - which makes her selfless act of killing herself for him - both intriguing and perplexing.
kassto wrote in response to thedeadlyhook's essay:
"When the New York Times asked Joss what a soul meant, in terms of his shows, since it meant one thing for Angel, and yet Spike seemed to be trying to be good without one, Joss' reply was that the soul was whatever the plot needed it to be at any point in time."
Yep, good ole Joss. Disingenuous much? I've read fanfic which tries to get at this difference, mainly through the sire question. Did Drusilla bite but William drink from Angelus? Because Drusilla was so young, it caused an imperfection in Spike that gave him a conscience (of sorts) or an ability to love deeply? (For what it's worth, perhaps they meant Angelus to be his sire, and then realised the censors might not allow that. JM says the taking of blood is like the taking of a woman in one of the S4 extras - which comes before a lovely moment where he talks about the chip being a metaphor for impudence - bless him - meaning impotence.)
Did Darla love Angelus? Did Angelus love Drusilla? Take the Gorches - they kept up their fraternal bond even after they were turned.
Well in any case the difference between Spike and Angel pre-soul can be done in an exploration of psychoanalysis, which historically marked a development from the exploration of metaphysical evil (say that sounds like Angelus) to psychological dysfunction (how many times did Buffy say to Spike "you're sick!"). I'll just deviate quickly here to remark on Angelus/Angel - "the devil..would be a gigantic composite id, the subconscious of all of us" (Vampire Media) - Angel is constantly trying to suppress the id. It's interesting that Angelus arrives in BtVS 2 after 'Angel' wakes up and in AtS4 resurfaces again after Angel's dream of making love to Cordelia - YET the reaffirmation of Angel comes in a fight with Faith in a dreamworld, from which he reawakens into being Angel.
For Angel, having a soul means repression - locking up Angelus within the prison of his body so that he never surfaces to cause mayhem. A large part of Angel's character (even when not in context of the soul) is all about keeping things (not just Angelus) locked up - in BtVS2 he keeps the knowledge of Drusilla and Spike hidden until the last moment, he hides Connor away like a secret, he represses his desires and can only have them played out on a fantasy level (dreamworlds with Darla and Cordelia; alterna-realities with Buffy). It's interesting in AtS 4 that in order to discover the Beast, Angelus needs to be let out.
Spike, on the other hand, is almost never about repression. He lets out his feelings all the time - even to the detriment of himself, he's the truth-teller, the spur of the moment guy. Is William repressed? Well, I would think no - he has the courage to show his feelings to Cecily and never stints from showing emotion toward his mother. So when he becomes Spike, I think it's more about the demon overwhelming William, than repressing him. This allows moments for William to creep out (loving Dru, saving the world in S2, still reading poetry) in a more integrated way. Is Angelus repressing Liam, or channeling him? One of his greatest motivations in life (rebelling against his father) caused him, upon being turned, to commit the worst possible crime (matricide and patricide) - which Angel then has to repress later, and which Liam was possibly repressing the desire as a human. Spike never has to go through this process of repression until LMPTM - but even then, the murder of his mother is not about revenge, but love. It's still all very Freudian, but at the end of the episode, we see that he comes to terms with killing and loving his mother, rather than locking it away and hating it. For Spike/William, his deepest expression of himself is to love, getting the soul is for the girl - to an extent Drusilla fulfills his desire to love, but he is never satisfactorily loved back. In fact, is he ever? Maybe the soul becomes about loving himself?
And on this point, when Angel gets re- and un-souled what happens? His eyes seem to light up with this huge orange glow (Shakespeare wrote that the eyes are the windows to our souls) - but it’s interesting that the demon inserts his soul into the area around his heart - this is where we see the flash of light. On the point of his death, his body burns with this orangey yellow light (that's yes, very flame coloured). I dunno why the difference - but it's worth noting.....
But then I thought, well a soul is supposed to define our humanity, it's the "thing" that makes a human what it is. Vampires are inhumane - so does giving a vampire back their soul makes a vampire more human? But what is humanity? Is it conscience? Desire to live?
But first, how does Angel react with the soul? In China, shortly after his resouling, Angel returns to his family, to what he knows best, even if the killing sickens him. He saves the baby and loses Darla forever-ish over it (we presume she goes off to the Master and there's no further rapprochement til AtS2). So for about a hundred years he struggles with the soul - we see this in microcosm in AtS2 with the 1950s story, he saves the girl from the mob of crazed hotel guests but doesn't save her from the greater and longer threat posed by the demon, there's no apparent connection with her. It takes a message from the PtB (if we flow with the chronology of Morpheus) before he 'changes'. Does the soul have anything to do with this? Or does it come down to personality - we saw that Liam was selfish as a human, can a soul change that intrinsic characteristic?
William, on the other hand, is a different kettle of fish from Liam; he seeks no retribution from his peers after they mock him (he goes off to sit on his own), if anything he takes it out on himself by ripping up his poetry in the street. You have to wonder, without the freedom, the desire, the destruction of inhibition that the demon gave him, would he have done anything to get his own back as a human? He doesn't seem to be motivated by revenge, the way that Liam is constantly rebelling against his father so as to hurt him; William's motivation comes from loving long and hard. He cares for his mother - to the point of obsession. Making his mother into a vampire and then having Drusilla as his paramour shows a smooth transition from man to demon - he still cares and looks after his 'mother' even 100 years after he's turned. What did Angelus do? And was that purely Liam's reaction?
Darla in The Prodigal
"What we once were informs all that we have become. The same love will infect our hearts - even if they no longer beat. Simple death won't change that."
Even Harmony, although she is a bitch throughout high school, she is loyal to Cordelia and we see in a moment at the end of her mortal life when she signs Jonathan's yearbook, that she's good at heart.
I always thought it was a shame that we didn't see more of a progression from Spike gaining the soul to being possessed by the First. I read a wonderful piece of fanfic where Spike journeys back to Sunnydale, constantly plagued by the First in the guise of Angelus. But I really think that the plotline of the First really complicates the soul issue, which is a huge shame in this context.
So does the soul alter character? Willow killed Warren and Rack with a soul - but she was heavily driven by magic, driven by her essence. Giles killed Ben - but was this a deviation from his character, from his desire to protect Buffy, to make the hard decisions, to walk the thin line between good and evil?
In the larger scheme of things, as the essay on Vampire in the Media suggests, the vampire becomes a metaphor for the evil in all of us. So, does the soul become a metaphor for redemption? Aha! But what about pre-souled Spike - is Buffy then truly his soul? He even complicates matters after he's turned in "Destiny" "Crush" by saying to Buffy that Drusilla is the "face of my salvation" - salvation being given the gift of eternal life, eternal damnation. spikefan andelisi's comments are more useful below.
(ETA - I changed that bit above!)
I think, intrinsically, the difference comes down to character - that and the fact that they've had hundreds of years to adjust. So Angel was cursed with a soul (and spent years afterward repressing), Spike won his back (in order to learn to love himself).
It's interesting to think that if Angelus had been chipped, whether he would have begun a similar path to redemption without a soul as Spike did. I really don't know the answer and to be honest I don't think I want to know. The thing that makes Angel so interesting is the unpredictability that Angelus is always underneath, always lurking at the surface. But then, Spike helped to save the world even in BtVS2 - because he was driven by his essence, his desire to love.
I think the most obvious conclusion I can draw is that the show says one thing on the soul issue, but Buffy says another.
Finally, I had a quick think about what was the backdrop for human Spike and Angel being vamped. Just because it's quite a nice parallel: Angel was turned around the time of the Enlightenment's heyday - Sapre aude! Have courage to use your own intelligence! (Kant) - the main premise being to turn chaos into order, finding the rational, orderly, comprehensible universe, a free individual being most free. Spike was a Romantic (be it a late one) - for the romantics, the universe is already self-ordering, there is an emotional and organic sense of the world through imagination and freedom. Hmmm - sounds slightly familiar?
What started the whole thing off was this essay I found on Vampires in the Media 1975-2000 . Although the essay is interesting, there's a stunning lack of BtVS/AtS in the essay, natch, but one of the most intriguing bits was this:
"In some cultures, it was conjectured that the condition of the soul could cause an individual to become a vampire. In Romania, for example, the preservation and satisfaction of the soul was deemed to be of the utmost importance (Klingman p 170). Romanians believed that without careful attention, the soul can become lost, unable to find its way to heaven. If this were to occur, the soul would be forced to exist on the earthly plane, eventually becoming a vampire (Klingman p171). In response to this structure of beliefs, Romanians developed a rich ritualistic life that they believed would enable them to avoid becoming vampires. In other cultures, similar beliefs were held. For example, many people throughout Europe believed that the souls of the excommunicated could not enter heaven (Bunson, p88). In these instances, individuals were also assumed to have bcome vampires."
Ok, well, yes. My next question: did ME know about this? Or was it just a tra-la-la happy coincidence?
(I also read paratti's excellent essay on Spike and germainepet's interesting essay on pre-souled Angel and Spike, which both blew me immensely away and answered a lot of questions. I don't think any of what I say is particularly new but because I'm so late to the whole fangirl-squee thing, please indulge me if I repeat anything that's been said before. I think I created so many more questions rather than answers, just loads to contemplate really, no significant happy ending, just loads of out-loud rambling. Also of tremendous use was thedeadlyhook's essay on religious metaphor, plus the wonderful Wikipedia.)
And then that got me to thinking about what the Fanged Four (basically our best examples of vampires) were like pre and post demon. Was there anything about them that made them interesting enough to consider the nature of souls...And why are Spike and Angel the only ones "special" enough, out of all the possible candidates, to get them back again?
So what were the states of each of the Fanged Four's souls (in the religious sense) before turning:
Darla - an English born, American resident prostitute, cursed with syphilis, her soul would have been damned, in the strict Puritanical 17th century sense, even before the Master took an interest
Liam - a braggart, keen on whoring, drinking, disobeying and being disrespectful to his father
Drusilla - was pure but she had the Sight, something that aligns her with the devil, with paganism, with damnation. She also was corrupted and fell - the scenes with Angelus as the priest are eerie in this light - the help she is seeking is already evil, she is damned without knowing it, she worships false idols without understanding
William - He's a Romantic, a poet, he's Enlightened, a Victorian gentleman - but what of his soul? He kinda sticks out here as being, well, for want of a better word, good.
The vampire certainly plays a role as the outsider (that's Spike's raison d'etre half the time) - yet all the Fanged Four are outsiders in one way or another as humans (Darla, prostitute; Liam, rebellious; Drusilla, the sight; William, not wealthy enough). But what of the humans in the Jossverse - Buffy, Xander, Willow, Dawn, Giles, Anya, Cordelia, Oz, Riley, Ethan, Joyce, Wood, Faith, Wes, Gunn, Fred etc etc - are they outsiders? Or, then again, who is the insider? Before each of the Fanged Four are turned, none of them seem to have an inkling of what's about to happen - Darla taunting the priest/Master, Liam following a bit of skirt, Drusilla falsely believing the priest/Angelus, William "I've heard tales of bloody pickpockets." Yet none of the humans in BtVS/AtS would ever get turned through their ignorance.
Perhaps it's a good moment to try and define what a soul is. Ok - understatement. Basically, humans for the last 10,000 or so years have been trying that, so I'll hit a few of the ones that are closest to the foursome and see if our souled saviours fit into any categories.
Socratic: the soul is made up of three parts - reason (the mind or logos), appetite (body or passion) and spirit (emotion or pathos). In order for a soul to be harmonious, reason must be in control of the other two.
Aristotelean: The soul becomes the core essence of a being, what makes something essentially what it is. A knife cuts, a pen writes, a book informs etc
Christian: From Wikipedia: "Souls are immaterial subjects of mental properties. They have sensations and thoughts, desires and beliefs and perform intentional actions. Souls are essential parts of human beings."
Hmmm so when William says in FFL "I prefer placing my energies into creating things of beauty". his mind certainly seems to be in control - does reason win out over spirit in poetry writing? Certainly in the post-souled moments of Angel's character, his reason (in the majority) seems to be in control. But Angelus is all about appetite (which is certainly closer to Liam's behaviour) - so in order to control this, Angel must use his mind over matter. It is interesting in the early parts of S7 when we see Spike freshly re-souled he does seem to be battling against his appetite and his spirit (his madness) - it's as if there's an internal struggle going on within him, which reason must win out. Darla, too, is more about appetite whereas Drusilla, cursed/blessed with the Sight, comes more toward spirit. You could argue that William is both spirit and reason equally separate and together - but he has huge amounts of spirit with reason in control.
Take any of the human characters and try to figure out their essence, what makes them innately them
Willow - magic
(Listening to the OMWF soundtrack this morning, I was struck by the line in Tara's song Under Your Spell, which generally paints the picture of Willow's magic dominating Tara, "Nothing I can do/You just took my soul with you")
Giles - protecting Buffy
Dawn - the Key
Oz - the werewolf
Buffy - the Slayer/protecting Dawn
(I got a bit stuck on Xander and Anya lost her essence, didn't she?)
Ok I do see that this is all very lack of choice and free will territory but I'm trying to tease something out here.
If the soul is the essence of something, then what is the essence of a vampire? What is its meaning in life? What is its point in being? Surely it's the demon. It's what generates it to fight, to kill, to feed. Right?
Well, not always. You could argue that from S5-7 Buffy is Spike's reason for living, she's his inner essence that drives him onward to be good. And Angel? His reason for being is to help the helpless. Or perhaps it's Buffy? Darla? Connor? Spike?
AtS5 complicates both vampires existences - in Aristotelean terms their essential drives become strongly refuted (Connor is mind-wiped from existence; Buffy is off shagging the Immortal). Is this what motivates the writers to go for Spangel in AtS5? Both vampires discover their reason could be each other - their very uniqueness brings them together to work the mission, to save the world.
In any case, Spuffy and Spangel work within canon - S5,6,7 Buffy on the whole is Spike's reason to do good, but if you shipped Spike/Wesley, Spike/Giles, Spike/Dawn, Spike/Tara there are examples of each character enabling Spike's motivation to exist - but what unites all these is Spike's ability to love.
Ok let's take another point of view - how did each of them die, what was their motivation in becoming a vampire.
Darla - was on the point of death and wished to escape the inevitability of this mortal coil
Liam - was seeking adventure, excitement, worlds he'd never seen
Drusilla - if anything we can only pity Dru, but her death is also an escape of sorts
William - he seeks something light, effulgent, transcendental
In effect, the souled vampires do get what they want. Liam becomes the star of the show - he's the hero with the romantic love of a brave heroine, trusted friends, scrapes and japes and fights, he is the quintessential hero of an adventure story. But he must suffer (just like other heroes, Hercules etc) - just as Connor is Liam's greatest reward, Drusilla is his greatest sin.
William becomes transcendental light by saving the world at the end of Chosen.
There seems to be an element of free will in the turning of Liam and William too, that doesn't exist for Darla or Drusilla.
Michel Foucault once wrote "the soul is the prison of the body" and the Victorians thought "a body..enveloped...indeed enthralled...its soul" (Vampire in Media). Well, this certainly works in Angelus' favour - and why a moment of true happiness with Buffy sends his soul scurrying and the birth of Connor does not. Pleasures of the flesh, sins of the flesh - with the presence of a pure soul we should know how 'best' to use our bodies. Darla, too, has a soul trapped inside her body - Connor - which makes her selfless act of killing herself for him - both intriguing and perplexing.
kassto wrote in response to thedeadlyhook's essay:
"When the New York Times asked Joss what a soul meant, in terms of his shows, since it meant one thing for Angel, and yet Spike seemed to be trying to be good without one, Joss' reply was that the soul was whatever the plot needed it to be at any point in time."
Yep, good ole Joss. Disingenuous much? I've read fanfic which tries to get at this difference, mainly through the sire question. Did Drusilla bite but William drink from Angelus? Because Drusilla was so young, it caused an imperfection in Spike that gave him a conscience (of sorts) or an ability to love deeply? (For what it's worth, perhaps they meant Angelus to be his sire, and then realised the censors might not allow that. JM says the taking of blood is like the taking of a woman in one of the S4 extras - which comes before a lovely moment where he talks about the chip being a metaphor for impudence - bless him - meaning impotence.)
Did Darla love Angelus? Did Angelus love Drusilla? Take the Gorches - they kept up their fraternal bond even after they were turned.
Well in any case the difference between Spike and Angel pre-soul can be done in an exploration of psychoanalysis, which historically marked a development from the exploration of metaphysical evil (say that sounds like Angelus) to psychological dysfunction (how many times did Buffy say to Spike "you're sick!"). I'll just deviate quickly here to remark on Angelus/Angel - "the devil..would be a gigantic composite id, the subconscious of all of us" (Vampire Media) - Angel is constantly trying to suppress the id. It's interesting that Angelus arrives in BtVS 2 after 'Angel' wakes up and in AtS4 resurfaces again after Angel's dream of making love to Cordelia - YET the reaffirmation of Angel comes in a fight with Faith in a dreamworld, from which he reawakens into being Angel.
For Angel, having a soul means repression - locking up Angelus within the prison of his body so that he never surfaces to cause mayhem. A large part of Angel's character (even when not in context of the soul) is all about keeping things (not just Angelus) locked up - in BtVS2 he keeps the knowledge of Drusilla and Spike hidden until the last moment, he hides Connor away like a secret, he represses his desires and can only have them played out on a fantasy level (dreamworlds with Darla and Cordelia; alterna-realities with Buffy). It's interesting in AtS 4 that in order to discover the Beast, Angelus needs to be let out.
Spike, on the other hand, is almost never about repression. He lets out his feelings all the time - even to the detriment of himself, he's the truth-teller, the spur of the moment guy. Is William repressed? Well, I would think no - he has the courage to show his feelings to Cecily and never stints from showing emotion toward his mother. So when he becomes Spike, I think it's more about the demon overwhelming William, than repressing him. This allows moments for William to creep out (loving Dru, saving the world in S2, still reading poetry) in a more integrated way. Is Angelus repressing Liam, or channeling him? One of his greatest motivations in life (rebelling against his father) caused him, upon being turned, to commit the worst possible crime (matricide and patricide) - which Angel then has to repress later, and which Liam was possibly repressing the desire as a human. Spike never has to go through this process of repression until LMPTM - but even then, the murder of his mother is not about revenge, but love. It's still all very Freudian, but at the end of the episode, we see that he comes to terms with killing and loving his mother, rather than locking it away and hating it. For Spike/William, his deepest expression of himself is to love, getting the soul is for the girl - to an extent Drusilla fulfills his desire to love, but he is never satisfactorily loved back. In fact, is he ever? Maybe the soul becomes about loving himself?
And on this point, when Angel gets re- and un-souled what happens? His eyes seem to light up with this huge orange glow (Shakespeare wrote that the eyes are the windows to our souls) - but it’s interesting that the demon inserts his soul into the area around his heart - this is where we see the flash of light. On the point of his death, his body burns with this orangey yellow light (that's yes, very flame coloured). I dunno why the difference - but it's worth noting.....
But then I thought, well a soul is supposed to define our humanity, it's the "thing" that makes a human what it is. Vampires are inhumane - so does giving a vampire back their soul makes a vampire more human? But what is humanity? Is it conscience? Desire to live?
But first, how does Angel react with the soul? In China, shortly after his resouling, Angel returns to his family, to what he knows best, even if the killing sickens him. He saves the baby and loses Darla forever-ish over it (we presume she goes off to the Master and there's no further rapprochement til AtS2). So for about a hundred years he struggles with the soul - we see this in microcosm in AtS2 with the 1950s story, he saves the girl from the mob of crazed hotel guests but doesn't save her from the greater and longer threat posed by the demon, there's no apparent connection with her. It takes a message from the PtB (if we flow with the chronology of Morpheus) before he 'changes'. Does the soul have anything to do with this? Or does it come down to personality - we saw that Liam was selfish as a human, can a soul change that intrinsic characteristic?
William, on the other hand, is a different kettle of fish from Liam; he seeks no retribution from his peers after they mock him (he goes off to sit on his own), if anything he takes it out on himself by ripping up his poetry in the street. You have to wonder, without the freedom, the desire, the destruction of inhibition that the demon gave him, would he have done anything to get his own back as a human? He doesn't seem to be motivated by revenge, the way that Liam is constantly rebelling against his father so as to hurt him; William's motivation comes from loving long and hard. He cares for his mother - to the point of obsession. Making his mother into a vampire and then having Drusilla as his paramour shows a smooth transition from man to demon - he still cares and looks after his 'mother' even 100 years after he's turned. What did Angelus do? And was that purely Liam's reaction?
Darla in The Prodigal
"What we once were informs all that we have become. The same love will infect our hearts - even if they no longer beat. Simple death won't change that."
Even Harmony, although she is a bitch throughout high school, she is loyal to Cordelia and we see in a moment at the end of her mortal life when she signs Jonathan's yearbook, that she's good at heart.
I always thought it was a shame that we didn't see more of a progression from Spike gaining the soul to being possessed by the First. I read a wonderful piece of fanfic where Spike journeys back to Sunnydale, constantly plagued by the First in the guise of Angelus. But I really think that the plotline of the First really complicates the soul issue, which is a huge shame in this context.
So does the soul alter character? Willow killed Warren and Rack with a soul - but she was heavily driven by magic, driven by her essence. Giles killed Ben - but was this a deviation from his character, from his desire to protect Buffy, to make the hard decisions, to walk the thin line between good and evil?
In the larger scheme of things, as the essay on Vampire in the Media suggests, the vampire becomes a metaphor for the evil in all of us. So, does the soul become a metaphor for redemption? Aha! But what about pre-souled Spike - is Buffy then truly his soul? He even complicates matters after he's turned in "Destiny" "Crush" by saying to Buffy that Drusilla is the "face of my salvation" - salvation being given the gift of eternal life, eternal damnation. spikefan andelisi's comments are more useful below.
(ETA - I changed that bit above!)
I think, intrinsically, the difference comes down to character - that and the fact that they've had hundreds of years to adjust. So Angel was cursed with a soul (and spent years afterward repressing), Spike won his back (in order to learn to love himself).
It's interesting to think that if Angelus had been chipped, whether he would have begun a similar path to redemption without a soul as Spike did. I really don't know the answer and to be honest I don't think I want to know. The thing that makes Angel so interesting is the unpredictability that Angelus is always underneath, always lurking at the surface. But then, Spike helped to save the world even in BtVS2 - because he was driven by his essence, his desire to love.
I think the most obvious conclusion I can draw is that the show says one thing on the soul issue, but Buffy says another.
Finally, I had a quick think about what was the backdrop for human Spike and Angel being vamped. Just because it's quite a nice parallel: Angel was turned around the time of the Enlightenment's heyday - Sapre aude! Have courage to use your own intelligence! (Kant) - the main premise being to turn chaos into order, finding the rational, orderly, comprehensible universe, a free individual being most free. Spike was a Romantic (be it a late one) - for the romantics, the universe is already self-ordering, there is an emotional and organic sense of the world through imagination and freedom. Hmmm - sounds slightly familiar?