Damon is the sizzling bad boy we love to hate. His endearing love for Elena and his desire to be good in order to win her, even as he realizes that he doesn’t really deserve her, captures the audience and fascinates us. His pain at killing Rose in “The Descent” is intolerable to him; he wants to flick the switch and turn off his feelings. This is depicted in this amazing final scene.
Damon: What’s your name?
Jessica: (sobs) Jessica
Damon: Jessica, I have a secret. I have a big one. And I’ve never said it out loud. I mean- what’s the point? It’s not gonna change anything; it’s not gonna make me good…make me adopt a puppy. I can’t be what other people want me to be. What she wants me to be. This is who I am, Jessica.
Jessica: (terrified, plantively) Are you gonna hurt me?
Damon: I’m not sure. Because you (inaudible) choices. Do I kill you? Do I not kill you?
Jessica: Please don’t.
Damon: But I have to, Jessica. Because I’m not human. And I miss it. I miss it more than anything in the world. That is my secret. But there’s only so much hurt a man can take.
Jessica: Please- don’t!
Damon: Okay. You’re free to go.
(She runs. He catches her and bites, killing her.)
What we witness here is Damon’s internal struggle. He wants to be good for Elena but at the same time he feels like that is not the essence of who he is. He’s tired of fighting because he never wins and he is not rewarded with her love even when he does master his darker, baser desires. He lets Jessica go but at the end, his control is not strong enough and he snaps, killing her.
While we are not vampires, in many ways we undergo the same internal struggles that Damon does. In Judaism, this is referred to as the battle between the Yetzer HaTov (the Good Inclination) and the Yetzer HaRa (the Bad Inclination). R’ Avraham ben HaRambam in his Discourse on Aggadah writes, “The yetzer tov is the intellect; the yetzer hara is bodily desire and other such desires.” Leo Levi in his work Torah and Science, page 99, writes similarly: “The drives of man are varied, but the ways of responding to them can be put into two categories: the impulsive and the deliberate reaction. By impulsive we mean a reaction which gives the drives, innate or acquired, full autonomy, without inference by the intellect, while the deliberate reaction is one in which the alternatives are examined and evaluated, including consideration of their long-term effects, before a decision is made. Perhaps we are justified in identifying the evil inclination with the impulsive and the good inclination with the deliberate mode of reacting.”
Had that woman- Jessica- been Elena, Damon would have been able to conquer himself and would have refrained from killing her. Quite to the contrary, he would have laid down his life, if possible, to protect her. However, he chose to accede to his baser desires, needs and impulses and killed Jessica. We understand why he did it- he feels tortured, in incalculable amounts of pain. But the amount of pain one feels does not give one the right to cede control of their actions to their desires and whims rather than to act according to what is noble and good.