Lit Why did the Tusken Raiders torture Shmi?

I'd like to think she was just in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

 

Um...no, I do really think that Anakin would not have murdered any Jawas or humans if they had been about. I think Anakin slaughtered the tribe of Tuskens not just because they happened to be standing around when he got upset, but because they were of the same people and the same tribe as those who had just tortured and killed his parents. What, do you really think he would have just gone and attacked a nearby Sandcrawler instead, or killed any human captives who happened to be present? Maybe we're just reading this scene a lot differently, but to me, it's pretty clear (especially since he explains his actions afterwards by saying "I hate them!," i.e. Tuskens, not by saying "I was angry and wanted to kill things and there happened to be some Tuskens there!") that Anakin's slaughter of the tribe was an act of revenge for the murder of his mother, against Tusken raiders as such, and not just against random bystanders. I can't see how your interpretation holds up.

And I'm certainly not "whitewashing" the Tusken's actions in the least, nor am I saying that Anakin's actions are morally equivalent to the Nazi genocide. I'm just saying that they're really bad and inexcusable.

Certainly, the emotional and psychological state of Anakin would limit his moral responsibility and thus the appropriate punishment for his actions...but, generally speaking, slaughtering an entire tribe down to the last man is something that it's pretty darn impossible to do without having some idea of what you're doing, so I can't see any court of law simply letting Anakin off under "temporary insanity." Angry or not, stressed or not, he would still be in some measure responsible for what he did.

 

Two factors - Jedi involved in combat have a kind of 'tunnel vision' - and just how long would it take on Force Speed?

 

That would crash & burn in the face of the fact (Luke Skywalker & The Shadows Of Mindor) that Jedi feel individual deaths in the Force. Anakin knew exactly what he was doing; he felt each death in his soul.

 

Or would he - during a "psychotic break"?

 

I haven't read that book, but it seems impossible to me that the Jedi could feel each individual death across the galaxy through the Force and still survive.

Also, as Tim said, I don't think Anakin felt anything at all during that scene other than rage. He didn't even hear Qui-Gon calling him.

Maybe not each individual death, but Shadows makes it expressly clear that Jedi do feel death. So does ANH, for that matter, and ROTS, too. Anakin knew exactly what he was doing.

 

I agree. I was told, out of the blue, one evening that my mother had died - I still don't remember all that much about the following few hours.

 

Exactly. They killed his mother -- that was the whole point. I doubt he cared who or what species they were, just that the tortured and killed someone he loved.

 

I'm sorry, but I just can't, in any way shape or form, lessen the severity of Anakin's crime in my mind. I get that Anakin was angry. I like Anakin, I think he's a compelling character--even a sympathetic one. This is a kid with severe emotional issues whose problems went unrecognized and untreated for years, and which in fact were probably exacerbated by the parts of Jedi philosophy that arguably teach you to repress your emotions. Then they taught him how to use superpowers and gave him an extremely deadly weapon. I'm not surprised that he snapped when his mother died, or that he did a terrible, terrible thing in response--I can never justify it or hold him completely unaccountable, but I understand the factors that led to it.

It's hard to say what a "good" person is or isn't. Is a person who commits mass slaughter but is later sincerely repentant about it and completely reformed now a good person? Or how about Anakin, who I believe was never fully repentant about it? Intellectually he knows what he did was horribly wrong, but I think that deep down in his heart of hearts there's a part of him that still says "screw 'em, they had it coming," and that's what he's really so guilty about. So maybe Anakin isn't a good person, though Obi-Wan seemed to think he was, even after he knew everything Anakin had done before becoming Vader.

But that's not what Star Wars is about, really. Star Wars is about the possibility of redemption even after decades of committing unspeakable atrocities*--it's not about absolution or forgiveness. I don't think Luke's love for his father and what he used to be means he would have argued for Anakin's complete release from punitive justice if he had survived at Endor. Luke believed his father still had good in him, and he was right. But I don't think Anakin ever saw himself as a good person. He was arrogant due to his status as the Chosen One, but all that bravado really hid a wellspring of deep self-loathing for not being the Jedi he should be. That's the reason it took so long for him to see the light; being evil was the path of least resistance, and he figured if he could never be forgiven or absolved, then what was the point of doing anything else? As Anakin, he usually strove to do the right thing, even after his unforgivable slaughter of the Tuskens, simply because he was capable of seeing outside of himself and knowing that one should do the right thing for its own sake, for the benefit of other people, and not for your own aggrandizement or validation . As Vader and as a Sith, everything was, of course, about him. It took the love of his son to make him realize that he could still choose to do the right thing even if all the other bad things he did could never be undone and would forever (rightly) be held against him.

All of which is to say, in a roundabout way, that you can sympathize with Anakin and recognize all the heroic things he did, while still realizing that none of it excuses or lessens what he did to those Tuskens and nothing ever can or will.

*Er, sorry Jello. I meant to say "legal and justified acts in the service of HIM The Emperor and for the preservation of the civilized and secure society that has forever defined his compassionate rulership."

 

Star Wars Republic: Last Stand on Jabiim makes it clear that it's not all that deep down- when he attacks Hett. I think words along the lines of "Every Tusken should die" were used. Hett revealed himself to be human- and talked the issue over with Anakin. And there's a strong hint of, as you said "they had it coming" from Anakin. Hett leaves it up to Anakin whether to confess or not to the Order.

 

You should so put that in your sig.

 

*cough*KOTOR Tusken History*Cough*.

They aren't animals. Or is the Empire full of animals for stuff like this?

Spoiler

Or how about Lusankya? Or Sidious torturing Lemelisk to death, only to resurrect him and threaten to torture him again if he screwed up.

Sounds awfully animal like to me.

 

I think a "monster" was born in Anakin that day when he murdered the Tuskens. A darkness within him that will become worse and worse as the years go by for him.. Until he can murder a man in cold blood, slaughter innocent people, children included, and feel no remorse/guilt for his actions.


Personally i wish Lucas didn't make Anakin out to be such a "monster" in AOTC. Couldn't Lucas have done something different, to show Anakin begin in fall to the darkside without slaughtering children? It's hard for me to sympathies or even see Anakin as a good man in the end of AOTC, and in TCW, because he has murdered men, women, and children, all in cold blood and for revenge. That is something a villain would do, not a hero/good man (it makes it even worse when Anakin is not shown justice for said crimes, and Padme's response to them is lame/unrealistic)

Perhaps if Lucas did not have Anakin mass murdering in AOTC, then Anakin's butchering in ROTS would have been more of a surprise to me.

If lucas had made it so Anakin escaped with his mother's body, without murdering Tuskens (perhaps killing some who attacked him, but only in self-defense), and showed him resisting the temptation for revenge killing, then i think that would have improved Anakin's character, which would cause his ROTS fall to be even worse, because we then know that he is capable of being a good man, and resiting revenge killing like good men should do, but instead chooses to go the opposite path.

 

Don't know about the "in cold blood" bit. In the RoTS novel he compares his action then, with killing Dooku "now" and sees it as different- with him being in an uncontrollable rage then, and being very much in control when he killed Dooku.

In the darker kind of fantasy fiction, it does happen- but generally the hero is called on his actions by somebody. A good example would be in David Gemmell's The Sword in the Storm, when the hero's wife has been murdered by a powerful tribe he's at feud with, and he goes to the village ruled by the murderers, and kills everyone there.

 

Or as Stover might say... a Dragon?

 

????

I don't get the reference.

 

Stover's "dragon" always seems to be fear rather than rage.

Whenever Anakin's thinking about losing Padme, in the RoTS novel it's characterised as "a dragon coiled round his heart". Becoming Vader has him "kill the dragon" but later in the novel it starts whispering again.

"All things die, Anakin Skywalker. Even stars burn out."

 

Yeah, I know. Hell, I still maintain that it was Anakin's fear that allowed Mace's Vaapad to react as strongly as it did. One of the best scenes in ROTS

"The dragon tried again to whisper of failure, and weakness, and inevitable death, but with one hand the Sith Lord caught it, crushed away its voice, it tried to rise then, to coil and rear and strike, but the Sith Lord laid his other hand upon it and broke its power with a single effortless twist.

I am Darth Vader, he repeated as he ground the dragon's corpse to dust beneath his mental heel, as he watched the dragon's dust and ashes scatter before the blast from his furnace heart, and you-
You are nothing at all.
He had become, finally, what they all called him.
The Hero With No Fear."


However, there are some others in there that seem to personify the dragon as anger (after all, fear and anger are more linked than most would think), though I can't search for them now. I believe in the fight with Dooku.

 

Heh, Gemmell remains one of the best for portraying hard men - but then, he knew a few of those in real life!