“Those whom the powers wish to destroy, they first make mad” Gods, prophecy and death: the classical roots of madness in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Greek tragedy is a recurrent symbol in BtVS (for example the production of Oedipus Rex in The Puppet Show (BtVS 1009), and allusions in Restless (BtVS 4022)). And, as in Greek myth, madness in BtVS is an inescapable element of the tragic, heroic destiny.

This paper will examine four instances of madness in BtVS:

1. Drusilla’s prophetic madness,

2. Buffy’s madness in Normal Again (BtVS 6017),

3. Spike going “bonkers in the basement” at the start of Season 7, and

4. the various Season 5 madnesses: particularly Joyce, Tara and Glory, the god who both suffers from and causes madness and whose identity is therefore particularly interesting.

Drawing on the work of Ruth Padel (Whom Gods Destroy, 1995, Princeton University Press) and others, I will identify key signifers of madness in BtVS, as distinct from possession or confusion, and discuss their classical origins. BtVS madness, like classical madness, goes along with “true-seeing”: both foretelling the future and “seeing-through” illusion. BtVS madness “comes from the outside”; it is an overpowering external force, similar to the personifications of madness in Greek drama. And madness in BtVS is more often feminine than masculine, a classically-rooted gendering.

Madness in BtVs is also signified by certain outcomes. For Joyce, Tara, Spike and Glory, madness forms the beginning of a tragic trajectory (the damage-chain seen in Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides) leading to their deaths. Buffy’s madness, like that of Lycurgus, causes her to attempt to kill her “family”. Despite the modern accoutrements of doctors and drugs, madness in Buffy is both mystical and mythical, a necessary element in the construction of the tragic fate.