Fading..
Good stuff June 8th, 2005As time passes I am more and more content with the way Revenge of the Sith seems to lay the groundwork for an actual redemption of Anakin, so that I no longer feel compelled to fix it.
Which isn’t to say I haven’t collected other problems relating to Return of the Jedi abundantly, and besides the main one that Sith seemed to solve.
I’ve thought more about Anakin’s youth also. I’ve said that what his mother gave him in just the six or so years before he left laid a solid enough groundwork to resist the.. philisophical nincompoopery of the Jedi. But.. I think if I spent ten years under Yoda and Windu and Obi-Wan’s psychologically detaching attributes.. I might go bonkers too.
But only in the circumstances of Episode III. I’m still unconvinced of Episode II’s psychology and am beginning to consider the set of films ideally as fast-forwarding through most of Ep. I-II, then wholeheartedly indulging III-V, then doing my best to overlook my complaints for VI.
And it’s not like I’ve been writing anything more or posting complaints from my old archives either: I’m waiting for my decisions on the pivitol element of Anakins role, and if I swing back in favor of Return of the Jedi as it is, this whole blog is a graveyard.
June 8th, 2005 at 7:50 pm
Alex,
I find this blog remarkable because I have the same “Major Problem” with the Star Wars Saga. My problem is also religious, but I come from a different perspective…I’m Jewish; and I still can’t accept Anakin’s redemption. I know you’ve come to the belief that “Episode III makes a strong case that he doesn’t comprehend the wrong of it”. I don’t agree, I think he knows what he’s doing and is committed to any action that will achieve his goals. The only way I could see him being forgiven is if there is some dual/split personality and that Anakin and Vader are two different beings sharing the same body. I see evidence of this in Revenge of the Sith. What do you think?
June 9th, 2005 at 7:53 pm
What is your view on why Anakin knows what he is doing is wrong?
June 10th, 2005 at 11:21 am
I think the narrative is clear that he knows he’s committing terribly immoral acts, it’s even clear that he’s conflicted about them. He knows what he is doing is wrong (how could murdering childen be anything else) but accepts that it’s the only way to achieve the power necessary to save Padme. My religion sees good and evil not as metaphysical states but as actions free willed people choose to commit. (Obviously some/most choices may not be so clear cut, but murdering children?)
June 10th, 2005 at 1:36 pm
Pardon me if I drill: I want to play out all the elements surrounding Anakin’s accountability. I’ll get to a question after an elaboration of my view.
First I’ll say I don’t support Anakin’s choices. That said, their rationalization can be explained.
In my view, this is the lie that Palpatine/Darth Sidious led Anakin along:
The reason that I view Anakin as redeemed is that he did not comprehend this as deception as he passed into it. The Jedi teach him no concept of immortality; therefore he has no conceptual immortal plane to release Padme to. The first we hear in any of the Star Wars films about the concept is in Yoda’s mention of Qui-Gonn after Anakin has already fallen. As explained above, in his view Padme’s death a consequence of the Jedi order, so that he thinks he must overthrow it, root (padawan children), trunk (jedi), and branch (pretty much anyone else who now stands in the way of his cause).
But where one does not comprehend one’s evil, justice cannot claim them for it. The eventual dawn of knowledge will come upon a wrong, and Atonement (in whatever form you believe in it and by whomever) will recompense for the damages: mercy will intervene.
My view of free will is the same - people choose right and wrong - though if they choose wrong without understanding that they do so, and I think that is Anakin’s case - they are not accountable.
Even so, society is insane when it does not limit the available choices of people who perpetually choose serious wrong, whether or not those people comprehend it. You jail a person who kills whether it’s a crime of passion or cold-blooded; to protect society.
All of this said, I’m further curious: where do you think the narrative shows that Anakin is conscious of his acts as wrong?
June 15th, 2005 at 1:44 pm
Alex,
Sorry for the delay. Interesting eleboration. I’ll answer your question after I ask my own. You say, that in your view this is the lie that Palpatine/Darth Sidious led Anakin along:
“I am greater than the Jedi. Others must sacrifice for my wants. But they will not sacrifice even for my lawful entitlement of marriage to Padme. They will not sacrifice even to prevent her death. Her death is in their hands. They, and their kind and order, are death. I am life and death. Their death is in my hands.”
If your assessment is correct wouldn’t you agree that Anakin is not a very good person, so if he fell it may not have been so far? As to your question, where I think the narrative shows that Anakin is conscious of his acts as wrong; I was clearly unclear in making my argument and I apologize. What I meant to say was that the narrative shows him committing evil acts and that there was some level of conflict he was experiencing. If he has conflict one can’t argue that he didn’t know “on some level” that he was committing an immoral act. Ultimately it is the behavior that I care about, his psychology is only meaningful as an explanation if he is mentally ill. He didn’t “choose wrong without understanding that [he did] so, but chose to do wrong because he believed the means would justify his end, because any means would justify his end. Is redemption possible, perhaps, but not so cheaply.
June 17th, 2005 at 6:01 pm
I think Anakin was a very good person to begin with. He was slowly and carefully seduced by small and increasingly large lies - then finally very swiftly seduced into serious wrongdoing. You say:
Internal conflict is not proof of a sense of right and wrong. It could simply be about deciding who to be loyal to on the basis of what would benefit him most, quite apart from right or wrong. It could be this or any number of other things. If he was clear on morality questions, the narrative would show it. The only pre-fall example I can think of is his confession to Padme that he feels lost, that he wants more [power] and he knows he shouldn’t. But I’m coming to clarify my view here. I think before he was lulled into his treachery, he did question whether such acts are wrong - though less and less over course of time of Sidious’ influence. Ultimately I believe Darth Sidious’ deceptions bypassed rationalizations of ends justifying means. The deception was very skillful: in the moments where Anakin become totally, absolutely, insanely loyal to the treacherous Sidious, it was no longer about justifying the end of saving Padme. It was about the Jedi - in the perverse delusion that they were at an end of justness and goodness, that the Jedi have lost all innocence and are themselves (so goes the scapegoat delusion) the means of all possible destructive ends. In that insane sphere of thought, Padme and everything was already at an end for Anakin; there was no hope, nothing to go on, everything obliterated already, so that obliterating that imagined cause of all wrongs - the Jedi - became the only option in his mind. And not out of any questions of justice (though he would say this), but of an imagined necessity of survival. As much as I sypathize with Anakin, he is not in any place to say Padme must not die - though of course the quandary was that the situation barred helping her that she might not die.
You say:
I hone in on the psychology specifically because Anakin is mentally ill. The situation left him vulnerable to increasingly believe lies, such that nothing would lend escape from them, meaning that it was not his fault, and because of this, ultimately, I think his redemption can be purchased cheaply.