Why was Anakin so angry to not receive the rank of Jedi Master?

Again, these aren't rules that are just there "because". The rules are there to protect the Jedi, the Order and the non-Jedi because being attached, having pride, having an ego etc... leads to the darkside.


But they didn't treat him like something smelly on the bottom of their shoes. They treated him like a Jedi. They wanted him to live by the same rules every Jedi for over 2000 years lived by, the rules that were there for a very important reason and worked. It was Anakin who thought he was better then other Jedi and deserved special treatment that was the issue. If Anakin checks his ego at the door, if Anakin doesn't think he deserves special treatment and stays unattached to Padme, he doesn't become Vader.

Just look at his line from AotC - I will learn to stop people from dying - Anakin doesn't believe the rules apply to him. Hes special, hes different etc... That atitude and disregard for those who are smarter and wiser then him (ie - his ego) is why hte Jedi order was destoried.


Palpatine doesn't authorize all Jedi missions.

 

The Jedi simply can't have it both ways. If they want Anakin to be an ideal Jedi and want to be a stickler with him, then they shouldn't have recruited him as a spy. If they recruited him as a spy, they were going to have to be more flexible in how they dealt with him. He determines what the Jedi find out, after all. If they anger him, they could end up with no information at all, or perhaps even a leak. Ideally, they should have had a counterspy ready - someone to follow, observe, and if necessary, kill both Anakin and Palpatine if things got out of hand. But they obviously didn't think it through that far ahead, and one can tell this plan was cooked up on the fly.

 

Ones got nothing to do with the other. Theres NOTHING that says Jedi can't/don't/shouldn't spy/gather information before acting.

They sent Obi-Wan to "spy" on the seperatist in AotC. Before the Jedi act they need information, they need to KNOW what they are doing and know they are doing the right thing.

Why do they nee dto be more flexible with him just because hes gathering information for him? Hes still a Jedi. He can still fall to the Dark Side.

"If they anger him, they could endup with information at all" - if Anakin is that petty, that arrogant, that disobedient, he should still be a Padawan, plain and simple.

 

But he's not a Padawan. He's a Knight. There's no going back, and they need him.

Also, Obi-Wan was spying on an enemy faction, something the Senate would be less critical off, especially since Obi-Wan's information probably saved their asses by tipping them off about the droid army ready to rampage through the Galaxy. The Council asked Anakin to spy on the Chancellor, which is treasonous and could probably turn the Senate against them. They have literally no precedent for what they're doing, so if they're caught, they are DEAD. Anakin has a fall-back; if prosecuted, he could negotiate a plea-bargain, rat out the Jedi, and escape with acquittal or a reduced sentence, on account of "just following orders." The Council doesn't have that luxury. As has been said before, Anakin is loyal to people, not institutions, and would not hesitate to sell out the Order, possibly excepting Obi-Wan, if it meant he could escape. Cowardly, yes, but the Jedi have to account for this.

And honestly, the whole Dark Side argument is rather moot since he fell to the Dark Side partly due to the Jedi Order's rigidity anyway. You are thinking in such bifurcated terms that it is impossible to comprehend a situation where the Jedi act more flexibly with Anakin (i.e. adding incentives to make him more likely to spy on Palpatine). That does not lead to the Dark Side. It's simply good sense.

 

Sure, no one doubts in hindsight the Order didn't act "in good sense." How many people/institutions? Hindsight is 20/20.

But Anakin didn't *think* as well.

Honestly, had the Order made (more?) allowances for Anakin (starting from his induction in the Order) how far should that have gone?

Allowed him to see his mom? How often? Sleepovers? What if the other initiates started to resent his "privileges?" Oh - let them start to see their parents, too.

Wait, now the older Jedi might get resentful..

See, everything has a consequence. The fact they didn't anticipate them all is human. Some turned out horribly bad. No one denies that.

Anakin got a raw deal; so did the Order.

In short, Houston, we've got a problem. Miscommunicating.

 

Preach it, brother! This reminds me of a discussion in the Lit boards years ago where there was a small but vocal minority who thought it was wrong that Luke's order didn't recreate all the same rules the OJO had. I get the rationale behind the no attachment rules but they made the Jedi too rigid and distant from the people they were supposed to help. People who don't see the Jedi's part in Anakin's fall either forget or don't want to acknowledge that there's also a reason Yoda and Obi-Wan allowed Luke and Leia to be raised by normal families. If actions speak louder than words, it's an ear splitting admission that the rules were wrong (something made more obvious in the novel). It's also very telling that they leave Luke to create his own order with his own rules.

To bring up the EU, I really like this quote from Luke.

It says something special about Luke when he already knows something that took Yoda 800 years to learn. This line sums up what led to the OJO's downfall perfectly.

 

@FalorWindrider - WHich is why he needs to stop acting like a Padawan. You're not a master because you're being forced on the council. The Jedi think Palpatine is hiding something so they ask you to investigate/spy on him. You're not on the same level as Yoda or Mace, so you don't get all the info they have - thats LIFE. He needs to check his ego and accept reality. Hes a Jedi, but he acts like a spoiled brat. Its not up to the Jedi to make Anakin feel good about himself. When he went to talk to Yoda in RotS, Yoda doesn't blow sunshine up his ass, tell him "look at the technology we have, your friend won't die giving birth", he tells me to stop crying and accept the fact that people die. Just like its not up to the real military to make soliders feel great about themselves, its up to the soliders to fall in line and followe orders. And again, how DO YOU KNOW there is precedent for spying on Palpatine? How do you know the Senate would turn on them etc... You're assuming things to make the Jedi look shady. There is ZERO evidence for any of that.

@Valairy_Scot - You're right. The Jedi is an order/orginization of thousands of members. ANd each one of these members is/can be a WMD. So they have rules in place for the safety of the Jedi and for everyone else. They can't start making exceptions for each and every Jedi. The problem was Anakin - he thought he was special, he though he was different, he thought the rules didn't apply to him.

@celera - Luke and Leia were hidden. Obi-Wan and Yoda didn't say "wow, these rules and the way we've doing things and thats works for thousands of years its totally and completely wrong". And its not "telling" that they left LUke to create his own order. When the novels written about Luke creating his own order were written the prequels didn't exist. If Zahn wrote that trilogy today, Luke would be living in the Jedi temple on Coursant. The OJO's downfall was caused by one powerful, arrogant, ego driven Jedi.

 

Agreed, sluggo.

Oh, and of course Ben and Yoda "left" Luke to create his own order, they were DEAD.

 

ANd when would brending or breaking hte rules for Anakin, or looking the other way, stop?

 

Are you kidding me? Are you saying the Senate would actually tolerate the Jedi Order spying on it? The Senate would view it as an affront to their authority and their powers as the parliamentary body of the Republic - which they did. The moment the Jedi definitively took action, the Senate turned against them. The Jedi DO look shady. The Senate DOES turn on them. The fact that they gave a mission off-record, when the precedent was for it to be recorded, downright STATES that the mission was unprecedented, or at least had zero legal basis whatsoever. You are very Jedi-centric.

It was not so much that the Council did not give him enough information. They gave him an assignment outside the normal workings of the Order, an assignment, which, in the long run, depended largely upon how much Anakin liked them. Face it, Anakin is their sole source of information. They've known Anakin for thirteen years. They KNOW he has a large ego, which is central to his character, and they choose to ignore it. Moreover, Anakin is not a trained spy. For most of the Clone Wars, he was a general. There is no hint that he has any talent in subterfuge at all. But if they wanted to use him, cooperating with him was essential. It showed that they had some confidence in him. Whether he had an ego or not is in fact irrelevant. The Jedi chose to use him, they were going to have to work with him.

Yoda, in his private audience with Anakin, grabbed the Idiot Ball with both hands and jumped off a cliff. He didn't even answer Anakin's questions. His questions were about premonitory dreams, not simply dying. An answer from Yoda should have been "Careful you must be, young Skywalker, lest you turn these dreams into self-fulfilling prophecies. Careful you must tread, when dealing with the future. Always in motion it is." Bam. That's the answer. Not "celebrate the passing of loved ones into the Force." Yoda shows a lack of understanding of Anakin as a person, and frankly, that tells me that he made the wrong call in choosing Anakin for this assignment.

Say you were a soldier and your commanding officer ordered you to carry out a coup against the sitting government, when such action is illegal, against the spirit of the laws, and against a person that you personally do not object to. Would you do it?

 

And you know Zahn enough to say that? You jumped into his mind? Yes, the prequels didn't exist at the time the Thrawn trilogy was written but that doesn't mean Zahn would have had the same opinion as you regarding the OJO. The evidence suggests otherwise. He's the one who created a wife for Luke. And in Survivor's Quest (written after AOTC came out), he basically says that their marriage was right no matter what the OJO did.

That would be a valid argument if neither had the ability to FORCE GHOST and give him instructors.

You're partly correct. It's not exactly what they say but Yoda does admit some fault in the novel when he's speaking to Qui-Gon on Pollis Massa.

"Too old I was. Too rigid. Too arrogant to see that the old way is not the only way. These Jedi, I trained to become the Jedi who had trained me, long centuries ago-but those ancient Jedi, of a different time they were. Changed, has the galaxy. Changed the Order did not-because let it change, I did not."

And later.......

Granted, I don't know whether it was Stover or Lucas who came up with this scene. But if so many people have complained that Lucas made the Jedi into victims of an Idiot Plot on several different threads (a dead horse I don't wish to revisit), then they're not the saints you're making them out to be.

 

to answer the question probably because he got berated for really no reason in front of a room full of people.

If Mace wanted to give his little speech to anyone it should have been the one who put himthere,not the person who was ordered to be there.

 

Yes. Real worl government and polictians are watched and "spied" on by their own governments. Its part of national security. And gathering information is not definative action. And the Senate didn't do anything when the Jedi did take action, Palpatine did.


Wrong. I'm starting to wonder if you've seen the movies at all. Spying and gathering information on a potential threat is excatly the type of assignment the Jedi would give it. Its an every day assignment, not a special one. And it only depends on how many Anakin likes them because ANakin is a spoiled brat who doesn't believe the same rules that apply to other Jedi apply to him.


No, they expect him to act like a Jedi.


They actually ordered Anakin to stay out of the coup itself. Reporting to the Jedi on whether or not Palpatine is a danger to republic is not illegal (as far we know). And soliders follow orders. They are trained to follow orders. They understand that those above them in the cahin of command likely have more infomation then they do. If they object, there are channels they can go through, but no solider would say "I'm not going to do this, I don't like my commanding officer, they aren't respecting my ego".


I think its a very safe bet, yes. And sure they got married in Survivors Quest, they got together in Vision of the Future which was released in 98. And even if you were right and the marriage idea for them came AotC (which it didn't) there were examples of Jedi being married post RotJ before Luke and Mara. If the post RotJ EU started after PT, it would be much different.


More valid then the authors were not aware that Jedi were not allowed to marry so didn't take it into consideratin at all?

I'm not making them out to be saints, but they are not to blame for Anakins decisions.


The reason he got berated is because when he was told something he didn't like, he acted like a child and threw a little temper tantrum.

 

I'd have to read the whole thing to judge was Yoda is saying. Obviously its easy to take one line and say "see".

But from what you said hes not saying "Anakin was right, we should have let him do whatever he wanted". Just that he could have done things differently.

 

There is huge grey area between "Anakin was right and should have been allowed to do whatever he wanted" and "The Old Jedi Order was perfect and everyone should have bowed down and worshiped the ground they walked on as opposed to ever having an original thought of their own." This thread seems to not be allowing for any of that grey area.

I don't think anyone here is saying that Anakin was 100 percent right or that his behavior was appropriate. But there are several of us who, for valid reasons, are not getting on board with the "Anakin is a [insert Childhood Playground Insult of the Day here] and therefore he could not possibly have a valid concern about anything the Council was asking him to do" argument or the "The Old Jedi Order was perfect and the post-ROTJ novel writers, like the posters on this thread, were just not enlightened enough to realize that" argument. (If I've misrepresented the argument, by all means tell me, but that is the gist of what I am getting from these posts.)

Anakin could have and should have behaved differently; maybe he could have asked Obi-Wan privately (when Obi-Wan gave him the assignment) why the Council was so concerned about the Chancellor and also addressed the concern that the Jedi could be accused of treason. However, the Council was still trying to have it both ways--they wanted to use Anakin's skill and his friendship with the Chancellor when it suited them.

There is also some differences in opinion here as to what kind of organization the Jedi Order was. I don't see them as comparable to the US military. As Mace Windu said, they were keepers of the peace, not soldiers. They were more of a specialized boarding school for kids with a particular skill.

 

The Senate didn't know about the Jedi taking action until they already had, but would the Senate really care if Palpatine was a Sith? He had just, to their knowledge, led the Republic through the most destructive war in a millennium. He has more political clout than the Jedi, by far. As for spying, yes, national security dictates that some knowledge of the executive's actions, but their actions are essentially legal. For example, many of the actions of the CIA are, while dubiously legal, still sanctioned by the government, until a media furor gets in the way. The Jedi Council had absolutely no legal authority to actively spy on the Chancellor. It was not sanctioned by any arm of the civilian government and there was absolutely no oversight. Your argument would therefore allow a military to overthrow a head of state, regardless of the wishes of the civilian government. In any other case, this would be ethically reprehensible, but because they are Jedi, it is fine. That's rather myopic.

And I have seen the movies. I doubt you have. The Jedi are generals, diplomats, and peacekeepers. The fact that they went out of their way to keep their assignment off-record SHOWS that this is not everyday fare. That it is essentially treasonous and will probably get them killed or disbanded if discovered. And if they wanted to use Anakin, they were going to have to accept that Anakin was a spoiled brat. There's no changing that, not this late in the game. Complaining that a person is not the ideal is irrelevant when one desperately needs them to do something.

 

Yes, I'm pretty sure they would care.


Again, you're assuming to prove a point. Theres is NOTHING to say the Jedi are not whtin their duties to gather info on Palpatine.


You do know that in the USA the electorial college has the power to vote the way they see fit right? They do not have to follow the votes of the people. its a check/balance to protect the people from themselves. The Jedi are an independ group that is, at least partly responsible for government security. They had reason to believe Palpatine was becoming a problem, so they decied to gther information. You're trying to make it into a much bigger deal then what it would have been to try to prove your opinion.



There is nothing treasonous about gathering information about someone. Unless you think every reporter is g uilty of treason. Whether Anakin was the ideal Jedi or not isn't the point, he WAS a Jedi and needed too/should have acted like one. He can be pissed at the council all he wants, but at the end of the day hes a Jedi. And considering you just just agreed that Anakin was a spoiled brat, I g uess I won this.

 

Just like theirs big difference between saying the Jedi are perfect, and the Jedi are right in believing/forcing Anakin to behave like a Jedi and not a spoiled child.


If you can find a post wehre someone said "the old Jedi order is perfect" then please show me wehre it is. And no one has said the EU author weren't enlightened enough. They couldn't look into the future. To make his point, you just go to silly extremes.


So how is the council wrong, in annyway, for giving Anakin a mssion like they would any other Jedi? They assigned a Jedi with the skill and connectoins needed to accomplish the mission. Sounds like good (if not basic) leadership to me. You expect them to go ask Jim Bob who snever met Palpatine to get the info for them?


Who lead stroops into battle, ran a war and took military rank. Sound like soliders to me. And they did teach children with special skills, skills that carry a very serious downside, so they have rules to safe guard against them, rules Anakin showed zero regard for. And that was his downfall.

 

But as FalorWindrider has pointed out before, you are focusing on Anakin's behavior at the expense of the larger picture. It doesn't matter how you or the Jedi Council believes that Anakin "should have" acted. Did they want the mission of spying on the Chancellor accomplished or not? Did they want Anakin to do the mission, or not? At this point, forcing Anakin to be someone he wasn't, was not an option for them. If they wanted Anakin to perform this mission, they needed to work with the Anakin they had, not some ideal of Anakin who didn't exist.

In fact, if Anakin fit the picture that you and a few others in the thread prefer, he probably would not have been friends with Palpatine in the first place. Palpatine would not make friends with your "ideal Jedi," whatever that is. Palpatine probably would not have befriended a more roguish Jedi like Qui-Gon. Therefore, the ideal or more obedient Jedi would be in no position to spy on Palpatine.

Now if you wanted to make the point that the Jedi should have expelled Anakin years earlier for not fitting into their mold, I could take that side of the argument, but there would be consequences to that as well. Palpatine would have still found him, and Anakin probably would have turned to the Dark Side years before he did. And if he had turned early enough to not father Luke and Leia, the Empire might have lasted much longer than it did. But that could be another discussion.

Define "behave like a Jedi". Blind unquestioning obedience? That sounds more like the definition of "behave like a member of the GAR" to me.

Really? I missed the part in which the thread title was changed to "Was Anakin a spoiled brat?" There would be no "winning" that argument anyway, just as small children don't win an "is not! is too! is not!" argument.

But by all means, if you want to start a thread with that title, you should go for it. I would think that the "Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!" and "Is not!" answers would get rather tiresome after awhile though. What's to discuss there? Either you agree or you don't.

The title of the thread is "Why was Anakin so angry not to receive the rank of Jedi Master?" "Because he is a spoiled brat" is a non-answer as it operates on the assumption that "spoiled brats" never have a genuine reason to be angry. And even if that's the only answer you have, it seems that the only reason behind posting it would be to shut down discussion.

People have made baseless assumptions that if Zahn wrote the Thrawn trilogy now, Mara would not have existed and Luke would have trained Jedi in a Temple on Coruscant. There is no evidence whatsoever to support those assumptions, other than a further assumption that the OJO did everything perfectly and of course the NJO writers would have followed their footsteps.

If they wanted the "ideal Jedi" or even a well-behaved Jedi, yes, that was their choice. Palpatine would not cozy up to an "ideal Jedi" the way he cozied up to Anakin.

Only because of the Clone Wars. In the 25,000 years or so of their existence prior to 22 BBY, they were not soldiers, nor were they bred to be soldiers. Did the Jedi suddenly change their basic structure to resemble the US Marine Corps in 22 BBY? (If so, they should have also begun refusing to take anyone under age 18.)

And your electoral college

 

There have been lots of wars the Jedi fought in written about and who knows how many that havn't been written about. They are a para-military order.

And I was just pointing out that the electorial college HAS the power to ignore American voters (which doesn't bother me, since I'm canadian). They have that power so if the American people elect a racist war monger (I realize its unlikely) they have the power to stop it. The Jedi are a military order (at the very least, they are warriors with tremoundous power) and they are independent of government control while also being part of and loyal to the republic. If they see a treat to that republic from inside the Senate, there is NOTHING that says they are not within their power to act on it.

yes, Anakin was the Jedi in the position they needed. And Palpatine cozing up had nothing to do with him not being ideal, it had to do with him being so powerful. He wanted the most powerful force user to be the next Sith Lord. Unfortunatly Anakin wasn't a very good Jedi.

Sure, believe what you want. NOTHING would chang ein the EU if the PT came out in 1990. LOL

[quote="Why was Anakin so angry not to receive the rank of Jedi Master?" "Because he is a spoiled brat" is a non-answer as it operates on the assumption that "spoiled brats" never have a genuine reason to be angry. And even if that's the only answer you have, it seems that the only reason behind posting it would be to shut down discussion.][/quote]

Hes angry because hes a brat. Hes lets his ego rule him. Hes a child. Hes not happy with what he has, only upset at what he doesn't have. He doesn't feel the rules apply to him. Hes a flawed character, hes susposed to be a flawed character, and whining and crying because he doesn't get to be called "master" is just part of his character flaws.

And Anakin was a Jedi. He was given a mission by the council. End of story. The Council doesn't ask and bargin with every Jedi they need to do something. And this idea that they need to do things for Anakin (after letting him on the cuoncil in the first place) so he'll act like the Jedi he is stupid. End of the day - Anakin acted like a spoiled brat, not a Jedi Knight.


Not a spoiled child who needs favors paid him to do what the order requires of him.

 

At the end of the day, through all the arguments - its not the Jedi Councils job to bargin with every Jedi, everytime they need a mission completed.

Maybe Anakin didn't want to spy on Palpatine, maybe he thought it was wrong and/or didn't want to spy on his friend. Great - he was given an order. He can follow it or not, and if he refuses, we dunno what the Council could/would have done to him.

Its not up to the council to be nice to him, to playcate him, to feed his ego, allow him to break the rules of the order just to make him happy so he'll act like a Jedi. He IS a Jedi, and his refusal to act like one is on him. Not on the council for not handling him with kid gloves.

Anakin was angry because he didn't get what he wanted. Simple as that. He got on the council in a very unorthadox way, and when the rest of the members made it clear that being Palpatines representive didn't make him their equel (because he wasn't), he threw a temper tandrum.

 

Oh, I don't know. Seems that if they actually want the mission completed, they will do what it takes to get it completed, even if that means "bargaining," especially when "bargaining" would have been no skin off their noses and might have saved their lives and the Order itself. Seems that they were more concerned with their principles and their dogma than they were with the mission itself in this case.

It was so important to them to not be nice to Anakin that they ended up paying for it with their lives. Was it really that worthwhile to be ugly to Anakin? Really??? What exactly would they have lost by not talking to him the way they did? What would they have lost by granting him the Master rank?

Then again, I will never understand the mentality that being nice to someone or "coddling" someone is a sign of weakness. I'm no Marine, nor would I want to be. It is quite possible to give discipline without degrading the person being disciplined. It just takes a little more effort and a little less importance placed in being macho. Of course Anakin needed discipline, but the Jedi's efforts obviously didn't work, and it definitely was not because they were too soft. IOW, "That's not the Jedi way" doesn't cut it for me. They needed to try something else. "It worked for other Jedi for X number of years" doesn't cut it either, as Anakin was not a typical Jedi.

Again, maybe the Jedi should have simply refused to train him if they were really that inflexible with their training methods. But then we run into the fact that Anakin still had Force abilities, and who is to say that Palpatine would not have found him and turned him even earlier?

And you haven't really defined what it means to "act like a Jedi." You've said what you thought it wasn't but not what it was. So what does it mean to "act like a Jedi"? Blindly following orders? Never being angry about anything? And I didn't see any "tantrum," he snapped at Mace then apologized.

 

Because he was a cocky youth that thought due to his privileged status he should get whatever he wanted. For a Jedi, never mind the supposed 'Chosen One' he was very immature. I always thought it was Luke, anyway. Or a combination of *both*--if not for Luke the prophesy would've been for naught.

 

Yeah, he was cocky and immature, to which I say, so what? That doesn't mean that the Jedi Council was right and he was wrong, or that he didn't have an understandable reason to be angry. Yes, Anakin had choices, but the Council did as well. They were not exercising their only option or even their best option.

On the electoral college--if the majority of the people in a state elect a Democrat, the electors vote Democrat. That's the rule. I'm pretty sure the electors could not choose to vote Republican if the state's citizens voted Democrat. Our Senate could not call for a vote of no confidence in our leader the way the Canadian Parliament can, they would actually have to find something illegal to impeach him for. Something that hopefully would not involve blue dresses and cigars.

 

He was wrong. Mastership isn't a matter of self-crowning. It's a matter of skill and years of hard work. Anakin never had to *work* with the Force like everyone else. He was given abilities on a silver platter. Even so, he hadn't *earned* the rank of Master.