Sound, Scene, and Symbolism

The atmosphere “Hush” created has been tripled if not quadrupled in “The Body.” In “Hush,” our attention was on the background noise, the music. In “The Body,” there is no music, no background noise at all; in fact, all sound (meaning voice, since this is very nearly the only sound) has been hushed in this episode.

It is dramatic; it is eerie, it is significant of an end, but most importantly, it rivets the audience’s attention. We as the viewers are glued to the screen. So used to listening to the music to clue us in to what is happening and how we are supposed to feel about it, without sound we are left searching every inch of the scene for clues. We pay attention to every detail due to the lack of the usual atmosphere...

Such as the fact that all the windows are open. In Buffy house, when she leaves the body the window by the back door is left open and we hear the fist sound that is not vocal since she found her mother’s body... wind chimes. Faint, delicate, moved by a touch of the air, this Romantic harp has often been used in poetry as a symbol of the spirit or soul.

Perhaps the idea of these little details that we, as viewers are now so focused on is the release of Joyce’s spirit. Open window let her pass out of their lives, but they don’t shut them on her as she leaves. Buffy opens all the doors she passes (the back door of her house, the front door at Giles’s entrance, the door to Dawn’s classroom) and leaves them open, almost as a sort of goodbye she doesn’t want to accept.

Dawn, in her denial and search for closure, closes all the doors and bars them shut. She won’t accept her mother’s death, won’t let her leave. When she slips away from the Scoobies to sneak into the morgue at the hospital, she closes and locks the door behind. Our thought is that she doesn’t want anyone getting in, but really a little bolt isn’t going to stop the slayer. The lock is a symbol that the young fourteen-year-old girl/key does not want her mother to leave her; she doesn’t want to let her go.

She can’t win against death though as we see when she fails to fight off the hungry vampire lying on the surgical table near her mother’s own deathbed. Buffy has to help her, but Buffy isn’t going to battle against the forces of nature and she won’t let anyone else either (symbolized by her smashing the locked doors off their hinges). Dawn has her closure, so she no longer needs to close her mother in. She can let her pass away.