According to slayer mythology, there is only one slayer in each generation and only death can release her from her destiny. As this generation’s Slayer, Buffy faces death everyday – and there are many ways to die in Sunnydale. It is a fertility cycle of death in which vampirony rules: vampire and slayer are both victim and victimizer. Through death, they both grant and are granted life. Classmates die at the hands of vampires only to be re-born as vampires. Unfortunately, they die again, at the hands of the Slayer, whose death calls the next Slayer "to life" until she, too, dies, activating the next Slayer.

At first glance, slayer mythology appears to borrow from Sir James George Frazer’s interpretation of the goddess-as-fertility figure in death myth. But is Buffy the Vampire Slayer a modern version of this death myth archetype? Since BVS’ greatest strength lies in inverting mythology and through engaging dialogue and discourse, it is only fitting that we explore the discourse about death, heroes, and women in Buffy mythology. Borrowing from Kenneth Burke’s theories of language as symbolic action and works on mythology by Sir Thomas Frazer, Joseph Campbell, and Claude Levi-Strauss, this essay examines the mythic structure and function of death and the heroine in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

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