What mythic/historical figure has more similarities with Anakin now?

Now that the saga is complete and we know the whole story behind Anakin's journey through both sides of the Force, which historical charachter or mythic figure has more similarities with Anakin/Darth Vader?

 

Anakin is based on many mythological characters, it is impossible to connect him to just one or to assume that one is a dominant influence.

There are far too many.
To use Campbell's expression, there is a hero with a thousand faces.

-Seldon

 

which part of his journey do you want answered?
his birth? lets see?
gilgamesh
apollo
adonis
jesus
culchucain
odin
hercules
horus
osiris
superman
theseus


point is, lucas uses what is already there. he just changes names.

 

Adam?

I think its a good one, Adam falls to the dark side because of a woman (eve).. just like Anakin falls to the dark side because of Padme.. different circumstances im sure.

 

As I stated in an earlier thread, Anakin's life very like the life of Siddhartha. They both start out ordinary, become great, become evil becasue of love, and then return to the light side before they die.

 

Need I actually mention Frankenstein's Monster?

Palpa-stein screws with the ultimate power in the Universe, the Force, to create the ultimate being, but in the end, he gets his come-uppance, and his creation turns on him.

 

Anakin is all of those characters.
Hence Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces.
They are all the same, all the same character.

Oh, the humanity of it.

-Seldon

 

Richard Nixon. From former Nixon aid Willam Safires' memoir:

" Nixon , who always knew he had a deep and dark rage within him , mastered his temper in just about every other arena , but kept " flicking off the scab " , in his skin-crawling metaphor, when it came to the quintessintial " them " ( the press ). He had contempt for them , as elitist , antidemocratic , lordly, arrogant lookers-down-their-noses at the elected representative of the folks , and he did everything he could get away with to destroy them - becoming , along the way , elitist, lordly, and dangerously arrogant. "

Take the press that Nixon is pissed at and replace it with the Jedi Council in Anakins' case. This opinion was formed entirely only after seeing RotS. I immediately thought of the above passage after seeing how Anakin acts in RotS.

 

Didn't Faust sell his soul to the devil because of someone he loved?

 

I guess this is more literary than mythic of historic, but when I think of Anakin, I think of Othello.

 

severian28

That's not a terrible comparison.

Like Anakin, Nixon had some issues related to his mother and the death of a loved one(his brother.) As Anakin is a slave from a backwater planet, Nixon was a nobody and definitely not from the

Add his defeat due to mob electioneering and TV(despite actually doing decently in his debate) in 1960 and I can definitely see the Anakin-ness there.

 

Mythical: Hercules with some elements of Orpheus & Agamemnon thrown in there.

 

What about the myth of Oedipus the King? In his search for power and control over people's destiny, he caused the very future he tried to prevent (the death of Padme).