Metaphorically Speaking

As the first season comes to a close, Buffy’s character is clearly coming closer to growing up. The series also begins to make use of more explicit metaphors to emphasis some of Buffy’s major themes.

The ‘’big bad” is the vampire to end all vampires- the Master. Apart from his very 1990s-esque special effects, the Master is truly grotesque. He shows his vampire face at all times, without the cover up of the human façade of his younger lackeys. More than any other vampire, the Master is recognizably evil. His very existence obligates Buffy to fight, forces her to put more emphasis on her slaying duties, rather than one the important things like dating and high-school.

Also, unlike the unorganized, blindly vicious vampires that Buffy stakes by the dozen every episode, the Master is logical and calculating. He plots and schemes the best way to destroy Buffy’s life and gain power. He has a focus on prophesies and magical books that would make Giles proud, and this cold professionalism is what makes him so difficult for Buffy to defeat. She ultimately does of course, with only a very short interval of death. She even deals with her own fear of her inevitable end, when she smashes the Masters bones in season two, metaphorically smashing her own haunting mortality.

The later segments of Buffy also begin to explore more in depth Buffy’s personal and romantic relationships. In his appearance in Never Kill A Boy, the sweet, shy Owen represents the normal boy Buffy wants but can never have. Owen is, at the beginning, completely innocent, as can be seen by his very light shirt when he comes to pick Buffy up. Thus attired, he spends an evening at the Bronze discussing the morbidity of Emily Dickenson, and death in general- which he admits, he’s never experienced. However, as Owen learns about Buffy’s life, and attempts- pathetically- to help her fight, he’s seen in a dark over shirt, very similar to that worn by a ensouled vampire. Buffy tries to protect Owen as a token of her normal life, but it’s too much for him. At the end of Never Kill A Boy, Buffy much watch him- once again in his light shirt- as he walks away, taking her dependence on her innocent, pre-Slayer life with him.

Xander unwittingly sums up the metaphor of Owen as the boy who Buffy can never have, saying she “Needs someone who knows your deepest, darkest secrets.” Cue Angel, (and of course his giggling fangirls) Buffy’s perfectly mismatched counterpart, who is everything Buffy needs, but can never let herself have.