The significance and consequences of being raised in slavery

I don't think that he conciously saw being a Jedi as being a slave, but I think he both relied apon and felt restricted by the strictness of the Order. It was more subconsious.

 

I don't think that he conciously saw being a Jedi as being a slave, but I think he both relied apon and felt restricted by the strictness of the Order. It was more subconsious.

i agree with that.

i think he has an understanding of the jedi order and his job. he understands that love is essential to it and i think his faith in the order is shattered when he is made to spy on the chancellor and witnesses that the high and mighty mace windu is also not adhereing to the code.
before that he tries very hard to 'get it right' and the conflicts that entails put a lot of pressure on him.

i'm thinking that being a slave has the overall effect of denying yourself certain things, your wishes, and not being able to voice them properly. so, maybe he should have been able to walk away from it, but maybe he didn't recognize that as an option.

 

Possibly. Actually, I think this is a very good thought. Slaves, especially Tatooine ones, don't just "walk away". "Any attempt to escape, and they'll blow you up." Slave belong where they are and that's where they will stay even if they don't agree with the situation they're in unless something happens that completely messes them up. And then it's quite likely that they will exchange one master for the next. As it was the case with Anakin.

 

not sure if this is a misunderstanding, but i did mean the walking away from the jedi order, not walking away from the slavery. i'm sure we mean the same thing, just meant to clear that one up.

i think having been in that situation that you will literally not be able to change anything or you literally are not allowed to have an opinion about your situation (especially being a small kid) will not make it easier for you to deal with a situation that would actually allow you greater freedom. it's easy enough to see the parallel, calling someone new master and adhereing to new rules. he might simply sustitute it. and then have a master who doesn't encourage free thought and movement -for one reason or another- is simply not going to help at all.

 

I meant being raised in an environment that'll "blow you up" if you try to escape makes it unlikely that you'll simply walk away from other allegiances, like being a Jedi, either. You've been raised to believe you have no choice but to stay and put up with almost everything. And look at what he put up with when he was under Palpatine's thumb during the OT.

 

so we mean the same thing in essence.

 

I still don't really see it very much. If anything, I think I see it almost as having had the opposite effect.

See, I went to RIT which had NTID--the National Technical Institute for the Deaf--on campus. So though the ratio was perhaps a bit less than 1:10, there were still tons of deaf kids running around who had lots of other deaf kids around for the first time in their lives. And this kind of made them a bit arrogant and obnoxious, frankly.
Deaf folks make this loud honking noise to get each others' attention. It's loud enough to be felt through the air, the equivalent of tapping someone on the shoulder...if you hapen to be deaf. To someone who can hear, it's almost unbearably loud. And the deaf kids didn't quite understand why you got indignant when they did this in a crowded elevator...

I see Anakin more like that, if being a slave affected his life at all. Here he is, free...and he wants to flaunt that freedom. But he doesn't udnerstand why the Jedi get indignant when he oversteps his bounds, which is his natural inclination. To put it as a cliche, if you give them an inch they take a mile. Well, freeing Anakin gave him that inch; not following the Jedi Order's rules is his taking a mile.

I don't think he ever felt, even subconciously, like a slave, exactly. I don't think he ever felt un-free. I think he felt more like an artist who is not allowed complete expression, as opposed to someone who is not allowed freedom. It's a very subtle distinction, I realize, but one that is nonetheless significant, IMHO.

And that's only if Anakin's upbringing really did affect him much at all. I still don't really see it. His reaction to Obi-Wan and the Jedi Council trying to keep him in moderation could have come from anybody, not just an ex-slave.

 

well, i'm thinking if the slave issue wasn't a problem at all, then it wouldn't be part of the story.
your upbringing affects you, period. it's another point of storytelling, for sure, (why otherwise show him when he's still small?) and it's also a point of social development. if your upbringing doesn't affect you, then what does?

of course his reaction to the council could have come from other people, too, but i do believe he felt it. he has a new responsibility (he's the chosen one), he has new surroundings (on coruscant, without his mom) and he has a new set of rules to cope with, some of which he doesn't buy.
again, you might reduce it to personality, but i do believe he is a slave for a reason and i do believe he is rebelling against an authoritative and restricting order not just because he is a rebellious person.
i think it's more a queston of human rights here and allowing someone to make his own decisions. and the jedi order encourage none of these things.

 

To me, Anakin had four "father figures" in his life:

Watto, Qui-Gon Jinn, Obi-Wan and Palpatine.

Watto is selfish and greedy, yet not entirely evil.
Qui-Gon Jinn is noble, yet frequently stands in defiance of the Jedi Code.
Obi-Wan is noble, yet overly critical.
Palpatine is overly permissive, and encouraging, if only to serve his own dastardly ends.

Only *one* of these "father figures" treated Anakin like a real person, and he was killed by a Sith Lord, ten years before the beginning of the Clone Wars.

So, Anakin was then torn between his higher-self, represented by Obi-Wan, his inflated ego, represented by Palpatine, and his original "father figure", Watto.

So, Obi-wan is outnumbered from the outset.