Use Of Character Arcs In Buffy The Vampire Slayer

What is a convention used within the episode “Passion” and its effect?

CONVENTION

Character Arcs are a narrative convention used to display the change a character goes through, as the story develops. Typically a character arc involves a challenge (or occasionally a tragedy), that leads to change for the character demonstrating their transformation throughout the story, which eventually leads to resolution.

EVIDENCE

In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, in episode 17 of season 2 ‘Passion’ the audience sees beloved librarian character Giles go through his character arc. Originally, the audience perceived Giles to be the mentor of Buffy, a polite character who has a very wise brain, it is clear Giles is a stock character in the show. Within this episode

The director purposely presented Giles’ character arc within a short period of time to develop momentum and communicate the idea of how different people react to death. Giving the character arc to Giles specifically to embrace the anger and rashness, was purposefully done to show the device mimesis. Written by the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle in his book ‘Poetics’ (which discusses how a play can be good) mimesis means imitation. Aristotle thought that plays should be realistic and ‘imitate’ human emotions and actions in order to achieve

Furthermore, Giles’ character arc develops the idea of how different people respond to death (and through this mimesis is further achieved). Giles’ reaction to Ms Calendar's death was completely out of character for him as already established, his response was anger, on the contrary Buffy’s response to the death was sadness. This too may have come as a surprise to the audience as we know Buffy to be an angry character and always willing to physically fight, in this episode Giles and Buffy almost seem to swap. An unexpected occurrence, which displays to the audience that how people react to death sometimes has nothing to do with their character, but more just the circumstance they are in. The juxtaposition of Giles’ anger and Buffy's sadness also demonstrates the connection the two have over the death due to how Giles found out. In the moment that Giles undergoes his character arc there is a heavy use of setting as a metaphor. Ms Calendar was laid out on the bed by Angel surrounded by roses all the way from the living room to the bedroom. This clearly displays that sexual interactions were being hinted at - cruelly arranged by Angel to get Giles’ excitement up. When Giles sees Ms Calendar dead and destroying all plans of what