This entry is based on what information I have prior to watching the final installation of the STAR WARS films - being EPISODE III THE REVENGE OF THE SITH, to be released in theaters only a week from now.

My present view is that mercy cannot redeem Darth Vader.

This is a terrible problem! I know from my young fan days reading STAR WARS insider and other sources that Lucas’ focus is really on the idea of a fall and redemption for Vader: Vader is the main character of it all, I-VI, if Luke is the major character of episodes IV-VI.

Watching Return of the Jedi, I want a sense of closure for Vader’s redemption terribly, I even get caught up in the drama and believe it, and then afterwards.. I don’t. I do not mean that a person who had commit crimes to the extent of Darth Vader’s would be irredeemable. On the contrary I believe that someone with Vader’s crimes could be redeemed if the circumstances are right.

I will speak religiously. You may be able to skip the next two paragraphs and comprehend me - I’ll speak of Mercy, Justice, Innocence, Accountability, Grace, and Redemption. I’ll address these concepts as I see them in my own religious/philosophical framework, which like many (more on this next post), can be projected into the Star Wars universe.

Primeval man, Adam, was innocent: not even comprehending the difference between good and evil. I believe in the primeval state the innocent inclination was to good. In this sense, man was dog. And if Adam ever did evil, it was without knowing why or how it was evil. .. that just made a light go on relating to an old religious question of mine. And it’s relevant here. Eve was innocent of the crime of her fall, because she did not know the nature of what she was doing - the serpent deceived her that it was all hunky-dory. This is where Mercy has sway - forgiving a crime because there was no evil intent. Where there is intent to harm, Justice must.. consume.. the soul of a person (okay I just realized I paused on that word because it’s a Yoda word).

In the fall, Adam lost innocence - he became capable of evil. He could gnash his teeth and intend to hurt, not just to survive. He became corrupt - rent from God and left to devilish, fleshy, selfish impulses. I believe this applies for everyone since Adam (all his children born into this world). Since the fall it was impossible that any man would live without falling to devilish impulses many times (all except for the later redeemer - again in my view). Still worse, every man at one point or another did devilish things knowingly. In such a place, men are left wide open to the demands of Justice, being that those who knowingly commit evil must pay for it - eternally. The divine nature of man is that he is tied to the consequences of all his actions: this is Accountability. I think we can say that it is in this sense that Yoda instructs: “Once you step down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny.” But by Mercy, man can be rescued from that dark fate. If a man does what he can to break himself from his wrongs and repair them, giving good in their place, Mercy can intervene and rob Justice, saving the man from an inevitable doom and Redeeming him. This process of redemption is Grace.

In my framework, people who do terrible things without comprehending that what they do is evil - these are claimed and redeemed by Mercy, Grace. DEAD MAN WALKING had indications of the main character being inchoate as to the nature of his crimes. So also the main character’s best friend in THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION.

But where is Grace for Anakin? If we look at the evidences of Anakin/Darth Vader’s accountability for his crimes in EPISODES IV-VI, to me he seems highly intelligent, calculating, indeed not so much a slave to the Dark Side as boasting in his prowess of it.

Side gripe: this is a weird problem - evil is always under the deception that it is good, and does not identify itself as evil; so for me there is a problem in the many lines of Vader/Emperor Palpatine referring to their persuasions as “The Dark Side”.

Of course there is recourse for those who, even knowing that they were doing wrong when they did it, seek thereafter to repair their wrongs. I qualify this however - I do not believe that cold-blooded murder is a sin that can be knowingly commit and later repented of. And I believe that cold-blooded murder is Anakin’s crime - beginning in EPISODE II of the sandpeople and continuing from there to the slaughter we know is coming in EPISODE III - the Rebel captain and assisting the terracide of Alderaan in IV, the trail of erring officers in V.

If his first murder of the Sandpeople is a crime of passion (passion overwhelming reason and removing accountability), I find nothing beforehand to show susceptibility to such. Insane loyalty to a treacherous person can make good people do awful things in an instant, but Anakin had no such loyalties at that pivotal moment. There was not any strong leaning to disloyalty either. His mother was a merciful person, so that in identification of that bond, Anakin would be merciful to the sandpeople. If the idea is to murder for enmity against “the system” - the Jedi Council and his step-brother Owen who failed to intervene to prevent his mother’s death - we don’t see any of it, or any inclinations against “the system” so strong as to drive to murder. To be so explosive as he was to the sandpeople there would have to be much stronger undercurrents than what I feel were established. The Jedi Council is kind of detached, but Anakin’s mother equipped him with very ample patience and tolerance.. I think.. man alive even that isn’t really clear! The picture I have of him when his mother dies is of mild disaffection with others, not severe, plus a very bright, open mind.

Interestingly there was a bit in the EPISODE I script (I read the whole thing before the film release - utterly foolish) of young Anakin in a brawl with then young Greedo (the green bounty hunter alien on Han’s trail in the cantina of EPISODE IV). Give me these kinds of details and throw in more than just juvenile dissafection and you may have ingredients for crimes of passion that mercy could save from.

If the origin of his criminality isn’t believable, nothing that follows is: Vader is a caricature of evil. The strange thing is that evil doesn’t have to be explained at depth to be compelling as a force we want the heroes to throw down. My problem is that, the origin of the evil being unclear, there isn’t any clear place to root for the villain to turn it around.

That said, EPISODE III is getting great reviews for the most part, so that perhaps at least as of EPISODE III we can believe Anakin’s crimes to be of passion and he lacking the accountability to be held by justice as damned. This would be required to redeem him in VI; he would have to eventually come to comprehend his errors in order to change. The only change offered in VI is Anakin killing his master to defend his son. That alone doesn’t compensate for the death of millions: nothing in the mortal plane can. Vader saving his son only shows that he values the protection of his son’s life more than any other life, but it doesn’t show that he won’t murder other people. It remains that some cause moved him to mass murder. As such the risk remains of him murdering millions more, even if he saved his son. I don’t understand the cause for which Vader murdered millions. For Vader to change from mass murder to peaceable, he must recognize a false cause, and the audience along with him. What was Vader’s cause? What was he after? What would persuade him of the wrongness of his cause? What would make him want to change? I believe the change would be precipitated by his son’s influence.