Azure Jane Lunatic (Azz) 🌺 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
azurelunatic) wrote2002-06-03 02:16 am
azurelunatic) wrote2002-06-03 02:16 am
On Skywalker psychology: Spoilers
Yes, the Ani/Padme dynamic was really damn creepy. It felt like it was supposed to be that way. Am I the only one who felt that Ani in Ep 1 wasn't whiny *enough*?
I was ready to grab little Anakin in the middle of the battle scene with the Trade Federation ships and say, "Look, kid, this is some scary shit and you don't know what you're doing other than how to aim this thing, and even so your reflexes are all set for gravity flying. You are *going* to be crying for your mommy."
I do not expect the teenager who's going to turn into Darth Vader, with his whole "I haven't seen you in the past twenty years; how's about ditching your friends and heading off with me like a daddy and son should?" schtick to ever have a functional relationship, especially a romantic one. I couldn't see him abandoning the Jedi order unless he was thoroughly dissatisfied with it, given that he thought it was ever so "wizard" when he was just a small fry.
Anakin Skywalker, having never had a father-figure, clearly idealizes the position far too much. When Kenobi fails to act as a "proper father" should, Anakin lashes out, becomes rebellious, does everything he can to either make Kenobi notice him and behave as a father should, do something fatherly outside of Jedi guidelines, or else drive him away. He is drawn to Palpatine's fatherly influence, and will eat up anything Palpatine tells him, even if deep down in his Jedi-trained soul he knows it not to be true.
The prophecy that Anakin will bring balance to the Force has to have impacted the attitude of Kenobi and the other elder Jedi towards Anakin. Anakin will have sensed that he is treated ever so subtly differently from any of the other students. Even the other students will single him out in their thoughts and actions. He will not have bonded with the other Jedi students: they entered the order at two, three, four; they have grown up in each other's pockets ever since then. While forbidden specific attachments other than the master/padawan bond and the natural bonds one makes in training, they will have grown to be a cohesive Jedi unit, each one anticipating the responses of the others, even without the Force to guide them. Anakin, dropped into the program a full four years or more after the rest, will always be treated as an outsider, always be an outsider: he will always have strong memories of life outside the Jedi order, and he will not have the history with the other Jedi apprentices that allows them to so easily act as one. Even if the other students welcome him with open arms, he still will not be one of their number. They have no experience in interacting with other Jedi their age who don't have their common experiences, and it will show. Anakin will always compare their behavior to the standards of Tatooine, and the Jedi just may wind up falling short here and there. It is this external experience that will allow him to even contemplate the actions that will ultimately send the Jedi system crashing down about Yoda's pointy green ears.
Anakin has imprinted on the first beautiful woman he runs into (coincidentally, she resembles his mother), and is determined to do right by her, as his (absent or nonexistent) father did not by his mother. We can only imagine what conclusions he's drawn about his birth father or lack thereof; children don't always believe everything their parents tell them, especially when basic biology is contradictory of Mom's story. After joining up with the Jedi, they may or may not have told him the midichlorian story. If they did, he may feel that the Force has cheated him out of a father. This is all the more reason to go searching for a father that the Force provides to him.
Anakin clearly did not bond with Klieg Lars; he views Mr. Lars as an interloper, and an incompetent one at that: Lars has freed, protected, and taken care of Shmi where Anakin could not, but Lars has failed in this most essential duty. Were Anakin in any profession other than Jedi, he would have saved up money from this new apprenticeship to buy his mother's freedom and rescue her from Tatooine. When he returns to Tatooine, Lars has bought and freed her, but not rescued her from the sandy hellhole. Nor has he been able to protect her from the raiders. Whether or not Anakin would actually have been able to protect her had she been living with him, Anakin clearly believes that he, being a Jedi and a teenager and therefore doubly indestructible, could have done it better. Anakin has failed as a son by not keeping his mother safe, and it is the Jedi order who have made him fail. Lars has failed as a husband and father by failing to keep Shmi from all harm. Lars could have redeemed himself in Anakin's eyes by doing everything in his power to retrieve Shmi safely; he did not. Lars knows when to give up. Ani will never surrender where love is concerned.
This bullheaded attitude towards love clearly shows in Anakin's courtship of Senator Padmé Amidala. She was the angel who came into his life and lifted him off sandy, nasty, hot Tatooine. She is therefore destined to be his wife, and he will stop at nothing to convince her of that, especially when he can reach out with the Force and notice that she has been too busy in her political life to stop and fall in love/get laid, other than that brief flirtation she had with that guy two years older than she was. Clearly, she was saving all her love for him. Clearly, as he is the odd duck out among the Jedi, it is he who is intended to bend the Jedi rules to past snapping in order to fulfill the requirements of the tragic fated love that he and Padmé share. He was raised in the non-Jedi world long enough to gain an eight-year-old's understanding of romantic love. It's progressed some since then to include the concept of sex, something the Jedi training had to have covered, but as Jedi don't get romantically entangled, Jedi don't really train their students how to love without obsessing and without getting hurt. The Jedi rely on the indoctrination against one-to-one romantic bonding while their young Padawans are barely potty-trained to cover it all. Anakin was raised with a secular expectation of romantic love, which got stalled at an infantile level, and now has an adult sexuality to back it up.
At some point in Episode 3, Anakin and Kenobi clearly have a good old-fashioned brawl, with ass-kicking on either side. At a certain point, the young man rejects the increasingly flawed attempts of the old man to dominate him, and proves that he is a virile young stud by kicking the old man's ass and then running off to find his own cave. Darth Vader does end up as the ally and apprentice of Emperor Palpatine. It will take years before Vader matures enough to wish to kick Palpatine's ass.
When Vader re-encounters Kenobi, it is clear that the two men have some unfinished business. Kenobi acknowledges his flawed handling of the situation when Anakin was just a young Padawan, and apologizes in the classic sword-through-the-chest style, salving Vader's need for vengeance for the wrongs done to him in adolescence, and bringing closure to his stint as a Jedi.
It is finally the entrance of Luke Skywalker to Vader's life that turns Vader back to the nicer side of the Force. Vader realizes that Luke is his long-lost son, and immediately begins testing the boy to see if he is a worthy son, tough and strong enough to be a true Skywalker, and wooing his son's imagination. He tempts his son with all the power that the galaxy has to offer -- and Luke refuses. Really Damn Pissed Off, Vader slices off Luke's hand... and Luke still fails to bend. Perhaps it's deja-vu, perhaps it's family loyalty finally rising up and slaying the Master/Apprentice bond of the Sith, but Vader decides he's had enough of Palpatine's fun and games when the Dark Side of the Force begins interfering with his family life. He finally fulfills his dream of being in a proper father/son relationship, and sacrifices himself so that his son may live. In dying, he finally realizes his mother's triumph in being able to ship him off-planet to become a Jedi.
I was ready to grab little Anakin in the middle of the battle scene with the Trade Federation ships and say, "Look, kid, this is some scary shit and you don't know what you're doing other than how to aim this thing, and even so your reflexes are all set for gravity flying. You are *going* to be crying for your mommy."
I do not expect the teenager who's going to turn into Darth Vader, with his whole "I haven't seen you in the past twenty years; how's about ditching your friends and heading off with me like a daddy and son should?" schtick to ever have a functional relationship, especially a romantic one. I couldn't see him abandoning the Jedi order unless he was thoroughly dissatisfied with it, given that he thought it was ever so "wizard" when he was just a small fry.
Anakin Skywalker, having never had a father-figure, clearly idealizes the position far too much. When Kenobi fails to act as a "proper father" should, Anakin lashes out, becomes rebellious, does everything he can to either make Kenobi notice him and behave as a father should, do something fatherly outside of Jedi guidelines, or else drive him away. He is drawn to Palpatine's fatherly influence, and will eat up anything Palpatine tells him, even if deep down in his Jedi-trained soul he knows it not to be true.
The prophecy that Anakin will bring balance to the Force has to have impacted the attitude of Kenobi and the other elder Jedi towards Anakin. Anakin will have sensed that he is treated ever so subtly differently from any of the other students. Even the other students will single him out in their thoughts and actions. He will not have bonded with the other Jedi students: they entered the order at two, three, four; they have grown up in each other's pockets ever since then. While forbidden specific attachments other than the master/padawan bond and the natural bonds one makes in training, they will have grown to be a cohesive Jedi unit, each one anticipating the responses of the others, even without the Force to guide them. Anakin, dropped into the program a full four years or more after the rest, will always be treated as an outsider, always be an outsider: he will always have strong memories of life outside the Jedi order, and he will not have the history with the other Jedi apprentices that allows them to so easily act as one. Even if the other students welcome him with open arms, he still will not be one of their number. They have no experience in interacting with other Jedi their age who don't have their common experiences, and it will show. Anakin will always compare their behavior to the standards of Tatooine, and the Jedi just may wind up falling short here and there. It is this external experience that will allow him to even contemplate the actions that will ultimately send the Jedi system crashing down about Yoda's pointy green ears.
Anakin has imprinted on the first beautiful woman he runs into (coincidentally, she resembles his mother), and is determined to do right by her, as his (absent or nonexistent) father did not by his mother. We can only imagine what conclusions he's drawn about his birth father or lack thereof; children don't always believe everything their parents tell them, especially when basic biology is contradictory of Mom's story. After joining up with the Jedi, they may or may not have told him the midichlorian story. If they did, he may feel that the Force has cheated him out of a father. This is all the more reason to go searching for a father that the Force provides to him.
Anakin clearly did not bond with Klieg Lars; he views Mr. Lars as an interloper, and an incompetent one at that: Lars has freed, protected, and taken care of Shmi where Anakin could not, but Lars has failed in this most essential duty. Were Anakin in any profession other than Jedi, he would have saved up money from this new apprenticeship to buy his mother's freedom and rescue her from Tatooine. When he returns to Tatooine, Lars has bought and freed her, but not rescued her from the sandy hellhole. Nor has he been able to protect her from the raiders. Whether or not Anakin would actually have been able to protect her had she been living with him, Anakin clearly believes that he, being a Jedi and a teenager and therefore doubly indestructible, could have done it better. Anakin has failed as a son by not keeping his mother safe, and it is the Jedi order who have made him fail. Lars has failed as a husband and father by failing to keep Shmi from all harm. Lars could have redeemed himself in Anakin's eyes by doing everything in his power to retrieve Shmi safely; he did not. Lars knows when to give up. Ani will never surrender where love is concerned.
This bullheaded attitude towards love clearly shows in Anakin's courtship of Senator Padmé Amidala. She was the angel who came into his life and lifted him off sandy, nasty, hot Tatooine. She is therefore destined to be his wife, and he will stop at nothing to convince her of that, especially when he can reach out with the Force and notice that she has been too busy in her political life to stop and fall in love/get laid, other than that brief flirtation she had with that guy two years older than she was. Clearly, she was saving all her love for him. Clearly, as he is the odd duck out among the Jedi, it is he who is intended to bend the Jedi rules to past snapping in order to fulfill the requirements of the tragic fated love that he and Padmé share. He was raised in the non-Jedi world long enough to gain an eight-year-old's understanding of romantic love. It's progressed some since then to include the concept of sex, something the Jedi training had to have covered, but as Jedi don't get romantically entangled, Jedi don't really train their students how to love without obsessing and without getting hurt. The Jedi rely on the indoctrination against one-to-one romantic bonding while their young Padawans are barely potty-trained to cover it all. Anakin was raised with a secular expectation of romantic love, which got stalled at an infantile level, and now has an adult sexuality to back it up.
At some point in Episode 3, Anakin and Kenobi clearly have a good old-fashioned brawl, with ass-kicking on either side. At a certain point, the young man rejects the increasingly flawed attempts of the old man to dominate him, and proves that he is a virile young stud by kicking the old man's ass and then running off to find his own cave. Darth Vader does end up as the ally and apprentice of Emperor Palpatine. It will take years before Vader matures enough to wish to kick Palpatine's ass.
When Vader re-encounters Kenobi, it is clear that the two men have some unfinished business. Kenobi acknowledges his flawed handling of the situation when Anakin was just a young Padawan, and apologizes in the classic sword-through-the-chest style, salving Vader's need for vengeance for the wrongs done to him in adolescence, and bringing closure to his stint as a Jedi.
It is finally the entrance of Luke Skywalker to Vader's life that turns Vader back to the nicer side of the Force. Vader realizes that Luke is his long-lost son, and immediately begins testing the boy to see if he is a worthy son, tough and strong enough to be a true Skywalker, and wooing his son's imagination. He tempts his son with all the power that the galaxy has to offer -- and Luke refuses. Really Damn Pissed Off, Vader slices off Luke's hand... and Luke still fails to bend. Perhaps it's deja-vu, perhaps it's family loyalty finally rising up and slaying the Master/Apprentice bond of the Sith, but Vader decides he's had enough of Palpatine's fun and games when the Dark Side of the Force begins interfering with his family life. He finally fulfills his dream of being in a proper father/son relationship, and sacrifices himself so that his son may live. In dying, he finally realizes his mother's triumph in being able to ship him off-planet to become a Jedi.
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Didn't Dooku say something when Obi Wan was captured in Ep. 2 along the lines of "Qui Gon worked for me"? I can't remember...
And it makes sense for Anakin to lose to Obi Wan; my guess is that Anakin hadn't fully gone to the dark side, but they have a big fight that somehow leads to Anakin falling into the volcano. Of course he survives, and he blames Obi Wan for disabling him. He blames Obi for turning him into Darth, and blames everything bad on Obi. That's why he's so anxious to kill Obi in Episode 4.
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http://www.starwars.com/databank/character/darthvader/index.html
Man, I LOVE this site.
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Re:volcano (trying again) {From Faithful Apprentice}
(Anonymous) 2002-06-05 07:42 pm (UTC)(link)As I am occasionally wont to tell my students, the problem with free info on the web if that it os so often worth what you pay for it. I know that's Lucasfilm's website, but unfortunately here's another example of George changing the canon. In both the film still notes from Lucas' original novelization from way back in 197(5)? (I think), AND from interviews he gave at the time, the vader backstory definitely involved a battle with Obi-Wan and a fall into a volcanic pit.
Unfortunately, that's one of many things (like the fact that Owen Lars was supposed to have been Obi-Wan's brother (also from Lucas' novelization) which has been.....conveniently....re-written and re-thought over the years. Continuity problem, you say?? Pish Posh! Lucas solved the problem by simply declaring that the only things that stand as canon are the films themselves. To which I say a resounding PHOOEY!
Anyway, just wanted to let you know your memory served you quite adequately, which apparently places you one up on Lucas!
Re: volcano (trying again) {From Faithful Apprentice}
Hm. SA Canon is not *directly* contradicted by Owen Lars being Shmi's stepson ... Shmi and Klieg could have adopted the troubled young couple as part of their rehabilitation... after all, do you think that they'd have left them on their own on Tatooine and hope they'd behave themselves? Nope. And if some Tatooine moisture farmers needed a little help around the house, they'd offer to adopt a troubled youngster in need of some guidance...
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...Contrariwise, we do hear Qui-Gon yelling "Anakin! Anakin! Noooo!" as Anakin's doing his little Dark Side fling.
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I wonder how this fits into SA canon...