Saga Anakin Skywalker: The Family Man

Might it seem as if almost every major act that Anakin commits as a force user in the Saga, whether for good or evil, stems from the belief that it will protect or avenge a member of his family?

In AOTC, Anakin spends the majority of the first act defending Padme then later, he violently strikes down all of the sand people in response to them murdering his mother. In ROTS, Anakin executes Dooku, who had engineered the assassination attempts of Padme as well as consorted with the Trade Federation who had occupied Naboo in TPM. Then later, Anakin turns to the Dark Side and becomes Darth Vader in order to keep Padme from dying.

Anakin is not aware that he has any living family members in ANH but in TESB, he goes to great lengths to capture Luke alive and then offers to undergo the sizable undertaking of overthrowing the Emperor, in order for the two "to rule the galaxy as father and son." In ROTJ, though Vader does duel Luke, it is never implied that he would have killed his son if he had won the duel. Finally, there is what seems to be a surprising decision by Vader to save Luke by throwing the Emperor down the shaft. This is followed by Anakin's desire to look at Luke with his own eyes and for Luke to tell his sister that "you were right."

Is it possible that the real Saga of Anakin Skywalker was that he was never truly a Jedi or a Sith, but simply a man willing to use The Force in whatever way he felt necessary in order to defend his family?

 

of course...but he was wanting to protect himself from the pain of losing his family more than the actual loss itself, methinks.

 

Hm, to some degree, yeah. You do bring up some interesting points.

Though I'm not sure I agree entirely. Anakin was a Jedi, a [really] bad one at times, but still a Jedi until ROTS. When he was willing to use the Force to do want whatever he wanted, in other words, become a Sith.

Though really, a lot of what Anakin was doing was really about himself. In AOTC, Anakin wanted revenge. Not for his mother, maybe to some degree, but revenge is about making yourself feel better. Now in ROTS, sure he wanted to save Padme, but as he said, "I want more [power]".

In the OT, he wanted Luke for a lot of selfish reasons. To defeat Palpatine and rule the Galaxy, but deep down a part of him also just wanted to be Luke's dad. Hence, why he saved Luke from Palpatine. I'm also not convinced he could have killed Luke in ROTJ.

 

His desire to save Padme was selfish and for himself because he obsessively loved her. He feared for his own loss before genuinely fearing for Padme

He didn't realize that fact until it was too late. It was only later when he placed Luke before himself that he allowed himself to love not possessively, but selflessly

That is a valuable and powerful lesson to take to heart, I think

 

Well, in the end, he considered the Emperor to be his family as much as he did Luke. The reason he chose to save Luke and betray the Emperor is because Luke believed in him despite all the horrible things he'd done, while the Emperor viewed him as nothing more than an extension of his evil will.

He rejected his evil father and sacrificed his life for his good son.

 

Word. He sounds like an abused housewife when he says "I must obey my master!"

 

More like that he doesn't believe that he is worth saving for all the things that he did in the name of power. He's conflicted because he values people over principles and for a Jedi, this is a dangerous thing. He doesn't want to make a sacrifice and this is why he suffers as he does until he finally decides to sacrifice everything for Luke, but this time it is for the right reasons.

Right. Anakin is afraid to be alone and to live a life without his family. He's feared this since he was nine and had his vision of Shmi disappearing when he was an adult and came back to free her. Everything that he does is because he wants to protect that which he cares for and has become a greedy and selfish person, because he thinks of himself and not of others.

 

That is a good point. I am curious though as to why Anakin would want to take the risk of overthrowing the Emperor with Luke If his actions were driven solely by selfishness and greed for himself. it would have been a lot easier for him to just kill Luke and continue the solid deal that he had going with the Emperor. He could never have desired to rule with Luke solely for selfish personal reasons because he never knew Luke personally. I suppose that his motivation could have been that he just wanted to use Luke merely because he was a powerful force-sensitive, in order to overthrow the Emperor and become the Dark Lord of the Sith himself, but Anakin having that motive would only reinforce just how little he cared about Palpatine being some sort of father-figure even as early as TESB.

There seems to be a clear line that Anakin sets between his family like Shmi, Padme and Luke, versus even his closest unrelated companions like Obi-Wan and Sheev. Why was Anakin willing to kill Obi-Wan, who had taught him the ways of the Force and had lived by his side for 10 years, but was unwilling to kill Luke whom he had hardly met? I do not remember an instance where Anakin really wants to protect anyone who he is close to for if he is not related to that person, with Obi-Wan and Palpatine being the clearest examples.

 

It's an interesting view, but I don't think it rings true.

Anakin in TPM podraces for total strangers with no thought of reward.

Anakin wasn't related to Padme early in AOTC. I just don't think she qualifies as family until the end. I think it's a relevant distinction.

He also uses the Force to attack Padme in ROTS. Not sure how he's protecting or avenging her there.

Going back to Padme not being family in AOTC...if anything, Obi-Wan is, or at least should be, even from his pov, more like family than Padme. Anakin does say Obi-Wan is like his father. He does Force jump to save Obi-Wan just in time. Then of course Anakin says "don't make me kill you" to a guy who was his brother.

I don't see how hounding the rebellion across the galaxy is protecting Luke. Seems like if he wanted to protect Luke, he'd just let Luke go.

Not sure how torturing Han and Leia so Luke would feel it is protecting Luke. Not sure how engaging Luke in a duel, beating him up and cutting off his hand and then cornering him until he jumps to his likely doom is protecting him. You could make the case that literally disarming Luke is protecting him from himself, but I think it's pretty dubious. You could say he was trying to protect Luke by freezing him in carbonite, but despite the test on Captain Solo, Vader knew it to be a risky procedure, and I'm not sure how freezing Luke and taking him to the Emperor is protecting him. If he really wanted to protect him, instead of asking Luke to join him, he'd join Luke.

I'm not sure how taking Luke to the Emperor in ROTJ is protecting him. I'm not sure how throwing a lightsaber at him is protecting him. I'm not sure how taunting him with the idea of turning Leia is protecting him.

You can make arguments, I guess, but they'd be bad ones, even from Anakin's view.

Vader was actually a pretty terrible father until the very end, and Anakin was actually a terrible family man who essentially killed his wife while she was pregnant with twins, and he put his son through hell, and he threatened to put his daughter through hell. He unknowingly tortured his own daughter and forced her to watch as her home planet was blown up, and he tortured her lover and friends.

Anakin Skywalker: The Family Man? Nah.

 

Oh, I guess I'll add a few more details.

Anakin is ordered to protect Padme in AOTC, it's his job. That's a bit mitigating. But not really, I guess, he certainly was passionate about it.

I'd also like to put the entire Jedi Order up for familial consideration. I mean, they did raise him from the age of nine, they fed him, clothed him, educated him, trained him, etc. He was "one of them", he was a member of the order. I guess maybe Anakin never quite felt like he belonged enough to consider them family, but...well, I consider them his family, and he helped murder them all. I'm probably the only one who sees it this way, though, I concede that.

He attacks his brother Obi-Wan in ROTS, not sure who he was protecting there...and when Obi-Wan intentionally lets go and drops his guard in ANH, Vader ruthlessly finishes him off, and then steps on his remains.

For a guy who was trying to protect or avenge his family, that's quite a list of terrible offenses against his family...against like three examples of him trying to protect or avenge his family. Two of those three examples were, well, terribly misguided, to say the least.

 

I, too, believe the Jedi were "family" but not necessarily to Anakin (I sure wish we'd have some insight into the years between TPM-Aotc - probably a lot of Palps "they of course consider you their savior, not family" mutterings).

Thing is, Anakin's family is those who, in a sense, return his affection and loyalty. As soon as Obi-Wan opposed him, "turned" Padme against him, he became no longer family. Padme rejected him by rejecting his offer to go away - she betrayed him, she didn't appreciate what he had done for her.

As for Luke, well, Vader had many years between him and Anakin. My personal fanon is that Obi-Wan's reappearance awakened just a glimmer of the man he had been, and then Luke sparked that by reigniting the buried regret over losing Padme, his family. By the time of Vader's, "It's too late for me, son," - well, I think Anakin was poking some holes through Vader's soul.

 

Incidentally that is the reason I like the "Wrong Jedi" arc as much as I do, because it shows that Anakin actually does have the ability to surpass that attachment for more than a brief moment. He didn't just save Luke, he also could have become a good man.

 

I guess Anakin was the Family Man who allowed the fear of loosing his loved ones become a problem of greed. I don't believe that it was always the case. In TPM, he thinks only of reward and knows nothing of greed. By the time of AOTC, I guess at least at the beginning it's not an issue and only becomes one once he finds his mother dead. But then again, he doesn't always act with his loved ones out of the fear of loosing them, or out of the greed, and it's really only when the fear becomes to great that it overcomes him and he becomes Darth Vader.

Darth Vader is certainly not the Family Man, but I would argue that Anakin is one for the most part.

 

"Anakin, as Skywalker, as a human being, was going to be extremely powerful, but he ended up losing his arms and a leg and became partly a robot. So a lot of his ability to use the Force, a lot of his powers, are curbed at this point, because, as a living form, there’s not that much of him left. So his ability to be twice as good as the Emperor disappeared, and now he’s maybe 20 percent less than the Emperor. So that isn’t what the Emperor had in mind. He wanted this really super guy, but that got derailed by Obi-Wan. So he finds that, with Luke, he can get a more primo version if he can turn Luke to the Dark Side. You’ll see, as this goes on, Luke is faced with the same issues and practically the same scenes that Anakin is faced with. Anakin says yes and Luke says no."

--George Lucas, quoted in J. Windolf, “Star Wars: The Last Battle,” Vanity Fair, 2005

"At this point, Vader’s plan really, now that he knows he’s his son, is to convince him to come with him. Join the dark side and together they’re going to overthrow the Emperor, which is the thematic devices used through the whole movies in terms of the Sith, which is Sith Lords are usually no more than two because if there are three, then two of them will gang up on one to try to become the dominate Sith. Anakin would have been able to do it if he hadn’t been debilitated and now he’s half machine and half man, so he’s lost a lot of the power of the Force, and he’s lost a lot of his ability to be more powerful then the Emperor. But Luke hasn’t. Luke is Vader’s hope. His motives at this point are purely evil. He simply wants to continue on what he was doing before which is get rid of the Emperor and make himself Emperor. He only sees his son as a mechanism for the ambition. His mad lust of power."

--George Lucas, TESB DVD Commentary.

"And when he finds out Luke is his son, his first impulse is to figure out a way of getting him to join him to kill the Emperor. That's what Siths do! He tries it with anybody he thinks might be more powerful, which is what the Emperor was looking for in the first place: somebody who would be more powerful than he was and could help him rule the universe. But Obi-Wan screwed that up by cutting off his arms and legs and burning him up. From then on, he wasn't as strong as the Emperor -- he was like Darth Maul or Count Dooku. He wasn't what he was supposed to become. But the son could become that."

--George Lucas, Rolling Stones Interview, 2005.

"The Emperor wants Luke to kill Vader so that he will have a new young Jedi. Lets face it Vader is half mechanical and he is not half as good as he could be. He is not nearly as good as he was hoping Anakin would become because Anakin ends up in the suit. He is hoping he gets a new better apprentice in Luke. If he kills his father then he would take his place as an apprentice; which actually there is something that in the next film is how Anakin becomes his apprentice. There are a lot of things repeated in these movies. Fathers vs Sons."

--George Lucas, ROTJ DVD Commentary.

He wants to kill Obi-wan because Obi-wan is going to kill him.

"He doesn’t want to do it because its his duty. Its his destiny. Now he must confront his friend who wants to bring justice -just like him. So they both want to do the same thing. One is doing it out of strength and power and doing things he knows is wrong and the other one (Kenobi) is doing the inevitable things that he has to do but he really doesn’t want to have to do which is get rid of his friend."

--George Lucas, ROTS DVD Commentary.

"One of the problems of Sith is that they are always quick to anger. This scene with her it was very important that we set it up to the point where he chokes her as he does with one of the generals in ANH. But at the same time he doesn’t kill her and he just causes her to faint but you get to see that flash of anger which he now doesn’t have much control over. The whole point in a Jedi is that you can completely control your anger and now he’s at a point where he cant control it at all and its because of his need for his control for power and he gets very upset when he cant have it. And now he’s assuming that she’s with Obi-wan, not necessarily in a love relationship or anything, in the basis that they are both on one side of the path and he’s going down the other."

--George Lucas, ROTS DVD Commentary.

 

^This. In ROTS Anakin makes the compromise of joining Sidious because when it comes to Padme, "he can't live without her."

Yet in ROTJ, Anakin coming to full circles, chooses Luke's life over his own. He finally understand the Jedi way.

 

I think that when Luke lets Vader live at the end of ROTJ, Vader finally understands what it means to love. This leads to his redemption shortly afterwards.