Buffy faces a dilemma which high school students know all too well, i.e. how to steer a course between, on the one hand, the stifling conformity of obeying rules and fitting in with one's peers, and, on the other hand, the danger of undisciplined or chaotic self-assertion. True to its inspiration from mythologies of terrifying powers unknown to modern science, the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (BtVS) responds to this dilemma in a way remarkably similar to admonitions given by the super-natural powers known to the ancient Greeks as "Eumenides," and to the Romans as "Furies."

In this paper I begin by showing how BtVS portrays Buffy as struggling against forces that seek to control her and stifle her naturally exuberant and unruly individuality. Next, I show how BtVS presents serious problems resulting from the very individuality that it celebrates: to reject oppression completely threatens a descent into the chaos of anarchy. Finally, I argue that although in some sense BtVS suggests there can be no real solution to this dilemma, in some sense life must always remain a struggle between slavery and anarchy, nevertheless it does find at least a resolution in this continued struggle: as the Furies declare in Aeschylus' Oresteia, the only way to avoid both the anarchic life and slavery in despotism is to revere justice.