Saga Ghosting & Life After Death (Spoilers for CW: The Lost Missions, nonspoiler? speculation on the ST)

Because the part of Vader that is still good is something that Luke can feel, because he is more balanced now than Obi-wan was, much less Yoda. In Yoda's case, he just believed that the good was gone and that the dark side dominated one's destiny and consumes all that was once good. Obi-wan let his disappointment and frustration cloud his judgment when it came to Anakin and feeling the good within him struggling against the bad. Because Luke was raised differently, he could feel what they couldn't.

Given that Luke starts working on turning his father upon meeting each other again, that gives pause to the fact that Yoda could have started to try and save him while they were confronting each other in the hangar. Likewise, Obi-wan never once makes an effort during the various duels that they had and Anakin as we saw was hell bent on killing him each time they fought.

Exactly, but he feared to lose her to the dark side because he loved her, just like he loved his friends so much that he wasn't willing to let them go in TESB. That's why Vader uses her as blackmail in order to get to Luke (like he did with Han in the previous movie).[/quote]


The point is that love isn't the problem. It can only be if a Jedi lets it be one, but abolishing it weakened the Jedi and damn neared destroyed them.

 

But where's the correlation between the way Luke was raised and his will to save his father? The movies don't present any connection to support that theory.

I think Luke could feel it because the good in Vader was awaken when he discovered he had a son. Likewise, Luke only tries to save him when he learns he has a connection with Vader due to him being his father.

Yoda had just learned that he had fallen to the dark side when he faced him in the hangar.

He did that when he confronted him on Mustafar, but Anakin gave him no choice with his ultimatum. It's understandable that he had lost all hope and faith in him after that.

Love (not the unconditional love/compassion, but the romantic/passionate love) isn't bad, but it's a potential problem for a Jedi, and that's why they avoid it.

I disagree. The Sith nearly destroyed them, not the lack of love.

 

The correlation is that the Jedi were raised to control their emotions from birth and to avoid making emotional connections. Luke is raised normally and thus has emotional connections. We know there was good in Anakin until he finds out that Padme is dead. Obi-wan cannot sense it, but Luke can.

Doesn't change that he had plenty of opportunity to try and save him. Luke made every effort.

And he was wrong. He nearly endangered everything by not trying harder.

And it was wrong. They can love, but they must try to face the darkness within instead of denying that it exists. That's what Yoda learned.

Which only happened because they failed to adapt and change.

 

That's true, but I don't see it as the reason for why he tried to save him. Vader had some good in him, sparked by the knowledge that he has a son. If he didn't, I don't see Luke trying to save him, even with the knowledge that he had.

He made every effort, yes, but only because of he sensed some good in him. "The conflict".

The damage was already done by that point. The Jedi were extinct, and on that very scene Anakin had nearly chocked his wife to death. What could he possibly do more? Wrong is a strong word considering the circunstances.

But they don't deny the existence of emotions. They control them and don't let them affect their judgement. A great example of this is the sequence after Qui-Gon's death: Obi-Wan let his emotions get in the way and almost got himself killed by Maul. But only when he calmed himself and thought clearly, he found a way to defeat him. Another example is Luke rushing to save Leia and Han in TESB. He let his emotions affect his decisions and almost got himself killed by Vader. Luckily he had other plans and killing him wasn't his priority.

I often see this argument brought up on these boards, but I fail to see what should they have adapted to (or into) in order to prevent what happened.

 

But the difference between Obi-Wan and Luke (in their success at saving Anakin) can't be an emotional connection Luke had which Obi-Wan didn't. If anything, Obi-Wan has a far stronger emotional connection to Anakin in RotS than Luke ever developed with his father. Obi-Wan parented Anakin for ten years; Luke never knew him at all.

The difference between them was Luke's faith. And faith, by definition, is blind. There was no objective reason (ie, one which someone else could have had if only they'd tried hard enough to see the good in Vader) for Luke to believe in Anakin. He simply did, purely because the guy was his father. And since there was no objective reason, Yoda and Obi-Wan can't be blamed for failing to sense it.

Goodness in a person isn't like a piece of furniture in a room, which objectively either is there or isn't. Luke, alone in the universe, could redeem Anakin, but not because of any objective basis of there being some goodness in him which anybody else could have tapped into if they had tried harder. Just look what happened to Padmé. I'd say she believed that he was still basically good, or certainly wanted to, and she did try.