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Date Posted: 05:26:56 05/02/06 Tue
Author: Kana
Subject: Spike's Reconciliation

I think I may have read similar theories on this board. I kind of liked them so I interpreted them and Spike’s journey and came up with this.

Some fringe theories actually postulate that Spike's earning of a soul was something that he had been fighting for before he knew that he was fighting for it. His vamping was an attempted seperation from himself because his human soul had been stripped of all dignity. Before he lost his soul as a vampire, he lost his soul as a person because the one thing that kept his soul intacted was human love. He tried to love Drusilla but her love was of a perverse nature, or rather a need to pervert love. Spike's love for Drusilla was reminiscent of his love for his mother and Cecily, a true devotion and we see this as he attempts to restore Dru to health but as soon as she's well and Angelus comes back she flirts with Angelus and doesn't return Spike's love and affection (only superficially but doesn't display the same devotion as Spike does.) A lot of ppl put this down to Dru insanity but there is a certain deliberate agenda in all this and we see the possible realisation of how Dru (and possibly Angelus) perverted William's once pure love.

Spike’s brawling goes beyond the demon and into the heart of what makes him human: Insecurity. It’s his insecurity that separates the Spike in two and distances his new self from his soulled self. The self that never completely disappears. It resurfaces whenever he is with Drusilla because that self still craves the love back, but it struggles, it brawls, it destroys on almost the same level Lorne’s subconscious works to resolves his conflicts.

In Lover’s Walk, Spike reminisces that he and Dru were happy but they never were and Dru knew that on a level, maybe at first on a psychic level beyond her understanding at the time. Spike loved the dream but it was never the full realisation of his reconciled self.

When Spike was chipped, it was not only his demon that was suppressed but his ability to physically act out his seemingly everlasting battle to reconcile his self. The human side that craved empathy sought out the Scoobies in what appeared to be a act of pragmatism. This act of ‘pragmatism’ hide a deeper to desire to find a way for his human side to manifest but insecurity kept him from being the tender poet. The tender poet was destroyed by society and cannot fight defend himself unlike Spike the demon who can destroy all around him of disapproves but he can only hide the other part of himself and not destroy it. His fighting of the demons unconsciously set him on the path to find himself. He begins to do good although he sees it as self serving and even sides with Adam to suppress this desire. His love of Buffy begins the process of becoming the man. We see that Spike shows himself to be more ‘human’ than other vampires because he cannot completely hide or destroy that part of himself. He had a twisted outlet for it with Dru but this couldn’t last forever as he wished it would because her demonic passions were more akin to those of Angelus anyway. He devoted himself to the idea of Dru but he didn’t truly love her. He then fell in love with Buffy and even threatened to kill Dru for her. This twisted act served as symbolic act of transition to: destroy the vessel of his rebirth that led him to separation of himself to embrace the path of redemption through reconciliation of his selves. To reconcile the soul with the man. Buffy’s rejection did only a little to stifle this as we saw with the Buffybot but this was quickly resolved with Spike’s selfless act which Buffy at least recognised. This perhaps one of Spike’s biggest steps towards his reconciliation. In the later part of the 5th season we see Spike inwardly warring between his feelings of empathy which he is experiencing mainly towards the Summers’ girls and his corrupted self. In season 6 Spike is the outsider and he feels it. It’s a long way off but the feeling of humanity are within him and he craves some form of human solidarity. We see this also in season 5 when the group tell Spike to get lost. I feel we are meant to feel empathy towards him because he cares that he is being outcast, there is the appeal that we are supposed to feel towards his humanity because it exists.

Spike being able to hit Buffy seemed a triumph for his corrupted self. He even tries to return what he was but he fails and attacks Buffy. Buffy’s treatment from this point onwards sets off the inner struggle. All the pain, and violence and twisted love which he received from his vampire family have become meshed with his potential salvation: Buffy Summers. This led to the rape which forced Spike to redeem himself with the final act of trying to reconcile the selves: literally fight to gain the soul back. The end of season 6 was the ceremony but the fight began along time ago. Spike had now for most part reconciled the selves, but he needs to deal with this and he needs to gain a more conscious insight into very nature of his psyche. He’s done this to a degree in Lies My Parents Told Me and Damage.

. How did you read Spike’s journey? Do look simply at the metaphysics of soul or no soul or do you see something else? What do you read into William the poet, William the Bloody/or soulled Spike? Questions, comments? Lol

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