The whole time I was watching this episode of Buffy, all I could think of was my plethora of psychology classes. Though I couldn’t remember the name of the theorist at the time, all I found myself thinking, time and again, was how much this episode screamed the five stages of grief.
So, I did a little research. The theorist: Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, Swiss-born psychologist. The stages of grief, in the appropriate order:
- Denial
- Anger
- Bargaining
- Depression
- Acceptance
Of course, the easiest character to track through this progression is Buffy, but the others show the occasional signs as well. In fact, I think I’ll write a paper about it…followed by a paper on the metaphorical representation of the process of grief, as evident in the vampire at the end.
For the record, I feel that the vampire scene, as cheesy as its appearance might have been, was a well-thought-out and symbolically significant occurrence in the episode. Especially when one considers that it could be seen as a neatly summarized rendition of everything they went through in about 2.5 minutes.
Any thoughts?
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