From: Betty Ragan bragan@aoc.nrao.edu
Neil wrote:
A death is a death is a death. Who killed whom is immaterial. What
makes
Avon so special? What makes Blake so special? Avon killed plenty of
other
people through the course of the series. Come to think of it, so did
Blake.
There is a difference, though, between killing someone who is an enemy and someone who is (or has been) your friend. Or comrade-in-arms, even, if you don't like to think of Avon and Blake as friends.
No. A death is a death is a death. If we ascribe particular importance to one killing in an environment when killing takes place on a regular basis (no episode can claim to be entirely deathless) then we diminish the significance of all the others. In effect, we end up condoning killing as a whole and condemning one particular killing. All of the regular characters have participated in violence, even Vila. To exonerate them from the act of killing, we would have to deny the actuality of the violence inherent in the premise of the series.
Emotionally, there's a difference, and even someone who's fairly cold-blooded (as I think Avon generally is) about killing strangers and enemies is going to feel differently about killing someone with whom he's had a close relationship (whatever you percieve the nature of that relationship as being).
I agree he's going to feel differently, however cold-blooded he might be or appear to be or try to appear to be, but that does not alter the moral significance of his action in relation to all the other killings that have preceded this particular instance.
Morally, you could argue that killing someone who is supposed to be your friend makes the action even worse: the crime of betrayal is added to the crime of murder.
It was, not, however, a voluntary betrayal, nor intended as betrayal, and was if anything a response to what Avon perceived as betrayal. By killing Blake, he was attempting to deny to himself the horror of being betrayed.
This is, of course, merely an explanation of what happened, and does not in any way exonerate Avon from his responsibility for killing Blake. He's the guilty party, no doubt about that. But then I have never seen Avon as a man who would deny responsibility for his actions, however much he might regret them.
And Avon, in my reading of the character, is someone who is capable of carrying a lot of guilt over betrying someone or otherwise fatally letting them down (which seems to be the way he reacted to what he thought had happened with Anna).
Whilst guilt is undoubtedly a natural response, I don't see Avon as considering it a healthy burden to carry. To claim guilt would be effectively selfish, to claim to be the only party with any measurable responsibility for everything that happened, when he was merely one player in a complex tragedy. Nor, however, do I see him as protesting a measure of innocence, as a hapless pawn of happenstance seeking to lay some or all of the blame elsewhere. That kind of recriminative attitude is not the kind of thing that Avon would want to sink to, though he may well be tempted. The only thing he can do is acknowledge his own actions and his personal regret for the consequences, which he will typically keep to himself but admit to if asked. He can live without Blake if he has to. He can carry on alongside Blake if it turns out that Blake has somehow survived.
He's intelligent enough to know that he made a terrible mistake, but also aware that a deed once done can neither be undone nor wished away. He knows full well that any account he might offer will attract blame from some quarter or other, but he's strong enough to withstand it for as long as he has to. He can hope that he might not make the same mistake all over again, but sufficiently self-aware to realise that under similarly stressful circumstances he might very well do so.
But the one thing he is not is a quitter.
Neil