Lit An Analysis of the New Jedi Order and its Role in the Star Wars Mythos

As I previously teased in A Cynical Walk Through the NJO, I'm creating this thread for the purpose of providing commentary on -- at least initially -- Traitor and The Unifying Force, the two most philosophically heavy novels in the series which best give insight into the themes behind the series, and exploring those themes and how they fit into the larger Star Wars mythos. It's my contention that the New Jedi Order series is the perfect companion piece to the Star Wars saga of films, with Jacen's hero's journey serving as the logical third step after those of Anakin and Luke, and I'll explore that too. With these two books, we'll see Jacen's two important teachers in the series, apart from Luke: Vergere and Sekot, and compare and contrast them in the two books.

Before I get started, I want to say what this thread is not going to be -- at least, not what I intend for it to be and not what I plan to contribute toward if others take it in that direction: first, I don't want to debate Vergere or whether she contradicts the films in what she says. The parameters of this thread is that 'canon' is irrelevant, because the books we're discussing are no longer canon, and I feel that the films are open to interpretation, and I don't desire to argue interpretation here. I do have an earlier thread:
Socrates in Star Wars: Vergere in the NJO and philosophy, which has had these sorts of discussions, but to be honest if people choose to take that debate there I likely won't contribute because I'm pretty much done with it.

Second, this isn't a thread for discussing the New Jedi Order series in general including its minutiae. I am creating this thread for the specific focus on the philosophical underpinnings of the New Jedi Order series and how it takes its lead from Episode I specifically but supports the entire saga broadly as a companion saga. This thread is essentially spun off from Cynical_Ben 's thread A Cynical Walk Through the NJO, where I felt this discussion was essentially being derailed by broader discussion of the series.

Third, as something of a corollary to the first point, I don't intend to discuss Dark Nest, Legacy of the Force, Fate of the Jedi, or Crucible in this thread, or their associated spin-off stories, e.g. Kemp's duology and Mercy Kill. Pretend we're in November of 2003, The Unifying Force was just released into bookstores, and the New Jedi Order is the cutting edge of the timeline: Jacen's fate in the post-NJO stories is immaterial to the discussion, as is retroactive continuity effected on the New Jedi Order series.

Now, I'm going to repost the commentary for the prologue and chapter one from Traitor from the A Cynical Walk Through the NJO for the purpose of continuity and to spark discussion in this thread -- I am going to expand upon my commentary for chapter two before re-posting it, likely along with chapter three.



PROLOGUE

THE EMBRACE OF PAIN

Outside the universe, there is nothing.
This nothing is called hyperspace.
A tiny bubble of existence hangs in the nothing. This bubble is called a ship.
The bubble has neither motion nor stillness, nor even orientation, since the nothing has no distance or direction. It hangs there forever, or for less than an instant, because in the nothing there is also no time. Time, distance, and direction have meaning only inside the bubble, and the bubble maintains the existence of these things only by an absolute separation of what is within from what is without.
The bubble is its own universe.
Outside the universe, there is nothing.

The beginning of the prologue more or less explains the central or founding premise on which the novel is built, explains why there's "no dark side," explains why everything Vergere says is a lie (and the truth!), explains everything. We'll revisit it in the epilogue.

Jacen Solo hangs in the white, exploring the spectrum of pain. He's bothered by the physical pain of the Embrace of Pain, by the pain of betrayal by Vergere, by the pain of Anakin's death. He feels Jaina giving into her darkness in response to both Anakin's and Jacen's apparent death.
Eventually, he feels the caress of Vergere's hand under his jaw. Jacen says he trusted her, and she asks why. Jacen notes how alien Vergere is to him, and attempting to read her body language...

Long bright eyes the shape of teardrops, a spray of whiskers curving around a wide, expressive mouth . . . but expressive of what? How could he know what the arc of her lips truly signified?
It resembled a human smile, but she was nothing resembling human.
Perhaps her species used the crest of iridescent feathers along her cranial ridge for nonverbal signals: right now, as he stared, feathers near the rounded rear of her oblate skull lifted and turned so that their color shifted from starlight silver to red as a blaster bolt.
Was that what corresponded to a smile? Or a human's deadpan shrug? Or a predator's threat display?
How could he possibly know?
How could he have ever trusted her?

Jacen falls into an endless pit of epistemology, which I suspect would please Vergere could she read his mind. In response to her question, he mentions that her tears healed Mara.

"I did? And if I did, what significance do you attach to this?"

Vergere there rattles off a variety of possible motives she could have.

"Which -- which was it?"
"What do you think it was?"
"I -- I don't know . . . how can I know?"
"Why ask me? Should I presume to instruct a Jedi in the mysteries of epistemology?"
"What do you want from me? Why have you done this? Why are you here?"
"Deep questions, little Solo."

Vergere then tells Jacen he's dead. Rigor mortis, habeas corpus. Jacen tries to reach into the Force...

"The Force is life; what has life to do with you?" Vergere strips Jacen of the Force. Jacen is not happy!

"But I'm a Jedi . . ."
"You were a Jedi."
"I don't . . . I don't understand anything . . . Nothing makes sense to me anymore . . ."
"Jacen Solo. Listen well. Everything I tell you is a lie. Every question I ask is a trick. You will find no truth in me. Though you believe nothing else, you may rest your faith on this."
"What are you?"
"I am Vergere. What are you?"

Vergere's first lesson seems to rest on epistemology. There's some hint at the reason why this is the lesson toward the end -- specifically, now that Jacen is dead, he is no longer a Jedi. This ties back into what we saw in Ruin, with Jacen seeking an identity for himself as a Jedi in the same way that Jaina had one as a pilot for Rogue Squadron. Vergere is taking "Jedi" off the table for Jacen as an identity. "What are you?" She's making epistemology the first subject because Jacen can't look to without to find the answer to that question, he can only look within. But he won't realize this for quite some time...

PART ONE: DESCENT

ONE: COCOON

Jacen is hanging in the Embrace of Pain, trying to solve the Riddle of Pain, because he'll be taken to Yun-Yuuzhan when he dies and will need to solve the riddle to enter the afterlife. When he reaches his breaking point, the Embrace of Pain will temporarily release him, allowing him to sleep. Despite his inability to use the Force, the meditative techniques he learned as a Jedi help Jacen cope with the pain. Vergere is there on occasion when he's released from the embrace. She lectures him about pain and the True Gods of the Yuuzhan Vong -- as opposed to the false gods, you see.

"Why are you doing this to me?"
"This? What am I doing?"
"No -- No, I mean the Yuuzhan Vong. The Embrace of Pain. I've been through a breaking. The breaking makes a kind of sense, I guess. But this . . . Why are they torturing me? No one even asks me anything . . ."
"Why is a question that is always deeper than its answer. Perhaps you should ask instead: what? You say torture, you say breaking. To you, yes. To our masters? Who knows?" ... Perhaps you are not being tortured. Perhaps you are being taught."
"Oh, sure. What's this supposed to teach me?"
"Is it what the teacher teaches? Or what the student learns?"
"What's the difference?"
"That is, itself, a question worth considering, yes?"

I think this exchange is pretty self-explanatory. We later learn that the Yuuzhan Vong are trying to convert Jacen to the True Way -- he needs to develop the ability to withstand this torment to do so in their eyes. To Jacen, he's simply being tortured and broken without reason. Vergere is teaching Jacen. But she doesn't teach Jacen through instruction. What Jacen needs to learn, he needs to learn through self-enlightenment. Vergere lecturing him won't help him learn who he is. She can only show him the door, but he must walk through it.



She does this through kōan, questions, statements, and stories intended to provoke doubt in Jacen, to make him question his preconceptions, to make him think. But I'm getting ahead of myself here.

"What is pain for? Do you ever think about that, Jacen Solo? What is its function?"

Vergere lectures Jacen at length about possibilities.

"I don't think anything. I just want it to stop."
"I am such a fool. All this time, I had thought I was speaking to an adult. Ah, self deception is the cruelest trick of all, isn't it? I let myself believe that you had once been a true Jedi, when in truth you are only a hatchling, shivering in the nest, squalling because your mother hasn't fluttered up tofeed you."
"You -- you -- How can you -- after what you've done --"
"What I have done? Oh, no no no, little Solo child. This is about what you have done."
"I haven't done anything!"
"Exactly."

"I give you a gift, Jacen Solo. I free you from hope of rescue. Can you not see how I am trying to help you?"
"Help? You need to brush up on your Basic, Vergere. In Basic, when we talk about things you've done to me, help isn't a word we use."
"No? Then perhaps you are correct: our difficulties may be linguistic. When I was very young -- younger than you, little Solo -- I came upon a ringed moon shadowmoth at the end of its metamorphosis, still within its cocoon. I had already some touch with the Force; I could feel the shadowmoth's pain, its panic, its claustrophobia, its hopelessly desperate struggle to free itself. It was as though this particular shadowmoth knew I was beside it, and screamed out to me for help. How could I refuse? Shadowmoth cocoons are polychained silicates -- very, very tough -- and shadowmoths are so delicate, so beatufiul: gentle creatures whose only purpose is to sing to the night sky. So I gave it what I think you mean by help: I used a small utility cutter to slice the cocoon, to help the shadowmoth get out.
"You cant help a shadowmoth by cutting its cocoon. It needs the effort, the struggle to break the cocoon forces ichor into its wing veins. If you cut the cocoon --"
"The shadowmoth will be crippled. Yes, it was a tragiccreature -- never to fly, never to join its fellows in their nightdance under the moons. Even its wingflutes were stunted, and so it was as mute as it was planetbound. During that long summer, we sometimes heard moonsong through the window of my bedchamber, and from my shadowmoth I would feel always only sadness and bitter envy, that it could never soar beneath the stars, that its voice could never rise in song. I cared for it as best I could -- but the life of a shadowmoth is short, you know; they spend years and years as larvae, storing strength for one single summer of dance and song. I robbed that shadowmoth; I stole its destiny -- because I helped it."

Jacen tells Vergere she's dumb and she wasn't helping the shadowmoth at all. Vergere asks how he would have helped the shadowmoth:

"I suppose the best help you could offer would be to keep the cocoon safe. Hawk-bats hunt shadowmoth larvae, and they especially like newly cocooned pupae: that's the stage where they have the most stored fat. So I guess the best help you could offer would be to keep watch over the larva, to protect it from predators -- and leave it alone to fight its own battle."
"And, perhaps, also to protect it from other well-intentioned folk -- who might wish, in their ignorance, to `help' it with their own utility cutters."
"Yes..."
"And also, perhaps, you might stop by from time to time, to let the struggling, desperate, suffering creature know that it is not alone. That someone cares. That its pain is in the service of its destiny."
"Yes..."
"Then, Jacen Solo, our definitions of help are identical."

Jacen's mind is blown. But that's not the important part. The important part is:

Jacen Solo hangs in the white, thinking.
For an infinite instant, he is merely amazed that he can think; the white has scoured his conciousness for days, or weeks, or centures, and he is astonished now to discover that he can not only think, but think clearly.
He spends a white eon, marveling.
Then he goes to work on the lesson of pain.

This is it, he thinks. This is what Vergere was talking about. This is the help she gave me, that I didn't know how to accept.
She has freed him from his own trap: the trap of childhood. The trap of waiting for someone else. Waiting for Dad, or Mother, Uncle Luke, Jaina, Zekk or Lowie or Tenel Ka or any of the others whom he could always count on to fly to his resque.
He is not helpless. He is only alone.
It's not the same thing.
He doesn't have to simply hang here and suffer. He can do something.

Her shadowmoth tale may have been a lie, but within the lie was a truth he could not have comprehended without it. Was that what she had meant when she said, Everything I tell you is a lie?
Did it matter?
Pain is itself a god: the taskmaster of life. Pain cracks the whip, and all that lives will move. To live is to be a slave to pain.
He knows the truth of this, not only from his own life but from watching Dad and Anakin, after Chewie's death. He watched pain crack its whip over his father, and watched Han run from that pain halfway across the galaxy. He watched Anakin turn hard, watched him drive himself like a loadlifter, always pushing himself to be stronger, faster, more effective, to do more -- this was the only answer he had to the pain of having survived to watch his rescuer die.
Jacen always thought of Anakin as being a lot like Uncle Luke: his mechanical aptitude, his piloting and fighting skills, his stark warrior's courage. He can see now that in one important way, Anakin was more like his father. His only answer to pain was to keep too busy to notice it.

Running from the taskmaster.
To live is to be a slave to pain.
But that is only half true; pain can also be a teacher. Jacen can remember hour after hour of dragging his aching muscles through one more repetition of his lightsaber training routines. He remembers practicing the more advanced stances, how much it hurt to work his body in ways he'd never worked it before, to lower his center of gravity, loosen his hips, train his legs to coil and spring like a sand panther's. He remembers Uncle Luke saying, if it doesn't hurt, you're not doing it right. Even the stinger bolts of a practice remote -- sure, his goal had been always to intercept or dodge the stingers, but the easiest way to avoid that pain would have been to quit training.
Sometimes pain is the only bridge to where you want to go.

And the worst pains are the ones you can't run away from, anyway. He knows his mother's tale so well that he has seen it in his dreams: standing on the bridge of the Death Star, forced to watch while the battle station's main weapon destroyed her entire planet. He has felt her all-devouring horror, denial, and blistering helpless rage, and he has some clue how much of her relentless dedication to the peace of the galaxy is driven by the memory of those billions of lives wiped from existence before her eyes.
And Uncle Luke: if he hadn't faced the pain of finding his foster parents brutally murdered by Imperial stormtroopers, he might have spent his whole life as an unhappy moisture farmer, deep in the Tatooine sand-wastes, dreaming of adventures he would never have -- and the galaxy might groan under Imperial rule to this very day.

Pain can be power, too, Jacen realizes. Power to change things for the better. That's how change happens: someone hurts, and sooner or later decides to do something about it.
Suffering is the fuel in the engine of civilization.
Now he begins to understand: because pain is a god -- he has been in the grip of this cruel god ever since Anakin's death. But it is also a teacher, and a bridge. It can be a slave master, and break you -- and it can be the power that makes you unbreakable. It is all these things, and more.
At the same time.
What it is depends on who you are.
But who am I? he wonders. I've been running like Dad -- like Anakin. I think they stopped, though; I think Dad was strong enough to turn back and face it, to use the pain to make himself stronger, like Mom and Uncle Luke. Anakin did, too, at the end. Am I that strong?
There's only one way to find out.
For indefinite days, weeks, centuries, the white has been eating him.
Now, he begins to eat the white.

***

Frankly, this puts the point of the chapter better than I could, and seems pretty damn self-explanatory to me. But who is Jacen Solo? Vergere speaks to Jacen in kōan, and he eventually pieces together the truth.

Afterward, there's a scene with Nom Anor and Vergere talking to Tsavong Lah about the Solo Project. Nom Anor is trying to sell it, and the stinger at the end is that Vergere is his partner in this, so we're meant to question her sincerity. I've noticed that this commentary is likely going to consist of a lot of quotes from the book, because they simply speak to the meaning better than I could by paraphrasing, but I will supply additional explanation if necessary.

 

NJO was a very misleading title. I thought the series would be about the actual formation/restoration of the Jedi Order, Jedi Council, etc. and them returning to become the guardians of peace and justice in the galaxy. Instead the series should have been called INVASION because it was about an extragalactic threat rampaging across the galaxy exterminating everything. Incidentally the comic series that came out much later about that era was called SW Invasion.

 

It's interesting that you make this point, because I would argue that this is exactly what the series was about, and that's something which will be explored over the course of this thread. The New Jedi Order isn't something that is established through Luke's fiat, which I think is a point you accept because otherwise you would just take the Jedi Academy trilogy as that story: it's something that is earned. In this story, the New Jedi Order earns its status through the crucible that is the Yuuzhan Vong War: it avoids falling into the trap of total war that their forebears fell into insofar as that its existence is initially threatened by schism between those seeking to avoid getting sucked into total war through engaging in war, and those whose desire to defend requires engaging in total warfare. How this dialectic is resolved will be discussed once we get into The Unifying Force. But by the conclusion of the series, the New Jedi Order comes out of it wiser and better equipped to be the guardians of peace and justice in the galaxy.

 

Well said DigitalMessiah!
The NJO series was the first true test of the NJO as a whole. The Vong to the OJO's Sith of old if you will. Are they going to be able to weather the challenge and stand on its own two feet or will it be swept away like the OJO was. Will the next generation be able to join ranks with Luke, Han and Leia and the rest fighting to protect freedom around the galaxy and weather the YV storm or will they fail?

 

I would say Destiny's Way may be relevant to this discussion too, especially the characters of Jacen, Luke, and Vergere in that book. There were especially some great Vergere-Luke discussions.

 

NJO was the best moment for the big 3 to pass the torch, too bad after that the writers still stick with them and refuse to let the new generation truly lead the galaxy and Jedi.

 

I should have the new and improved chapter two posted tomorrow, hopefully along with chapter three, time permitting.

Re: Destiny's Way, I think it and Balance Point as hardcovers are significant for the series and Jacen's hero's journey, with Vector Prime and Star by Star perhaps more important in the macro. I'll probably discuss Vergere and Luke's scenes in the context of Traitor, specifically how Vergere is more or less paraphrasing Thích Nhất Hạnh, a famous Vietnamese Buddhist monk, when it comes to anger -- rather than endorsing it, she's telling Luke how to deal with it when it arises.

 

The most relevant scenes:

Destiny's Way, p168-170

"I've spoken to Jacen about his captivity," he said.
"Your apprentice bore it well," Vergere said. "You are to be congratulated."
Anger swirled in Luke's heart. Exhaling a deliberate breath, he banished it.
"Perhaps Jacen didn't have to bear it at all," he said. "He said that you led him into captivity no less than three times."
Vergere's head bobbed. "I did," she confirmed.
"He was tortured," Luke said. "Tortured to the point of death. And you led him to it. You could have escaped with him earlier than you did."
"Yes."
"Why?" he asked.
Vergere held herself still, as if listening intently to a voice that Luke couldn't hear. "It was necessary that your apprentice learn certain lessons," she said.
"Lessons in betrayal?" Luke tried to keep the anger out of his voice. "Torture? Helplessness? Slavery? Degradation? Pain?"
"Those, naturally," Vergere said blandly. "But chiefly he had to be brought to the edge of despair, and then over it." Her tilted eyes gave Luke an intense, searching gaze. "You taught him well, but it it was necessary for him to forget every lesson you gave him, by showing that none of the gifts you gave him could help him."
"Necessary?" Luke's outrage finally broke through his reserve. "Necessary for what? Or for who?"
Vergere tilted her head and looked at him. "Necessary for my plans, of course."
"Who gave you-" Luke suppressed his anger. "Who gave you the right?"
"A right that is given is as useless as a virtue that is given," Vergere said. "Rights are used, or they have no value, just as virtues are performed. I took the right to lie to your apprentice, to betray him, to torment him and enslave him." Her piebald feathers fluffed, then smoothed again: a shrug. "I also take upon myself the consequences. If you, as his Master, wish to punish me, so be it."
"Was there a point to this? Luke gazed at her. "Other than exercising your rights, I mean?"
Vergere nodded. "Of course, young Master," she said. "Jacen Solo had to be bereft of friends, of relatives, of teachers and knowledge and the Force and everything that could help him. He had to be reduced to nothing - or rather, to himself only. And then he had to act - to act purely out of himself, out of his own inner being. In that state of complete disinterest, everything else having failed him, he had no choice but to be himself, to choose and to act."
Her voice turned thoughtful. "I regret the means, of course, but I used what I had at hand. The same inner state could have been reached more gently, given time and opportunity, but neither were at hand. I tricked the Yuuzhan Vong into preserving his life and inflicting the Embrace of Pain. I made the Yuuzhan Vong my instrument." She gave a little dry cough, or perhaps it was a laugh. "Perhaps that was my greatest accomplishment."
Vergere's words resonated in Luke's mind, and as he followed their reasoning he found his anger abating, if only by virtue of his own abstraction.

Destiny's Way, p182-184​

​

"It was my observation that on your last visit, you were angry with me. You believed that I had deliberately harmed your apprentice - which was accurate - though your anger was moderated somewhat when I explained my motivations."​

"That's true," Luke admitted.​

"Now, my question is, was that anger dark? Was it an evil passion that possessed you, such that the dark side might have taken you as a consequence?"​

Luke chose his thoughts carefully. "It could have been. If I had used that anger to strike out at you, or harm you, particularly through the Force, then it would have been a dark passion."​

"Young Master, it is my contention that the anger you experienced was natural and useful. I caused deliberate harm - pain and anguish and suffering, over a period of weeks - to a young man for whom you had accepted responsibility and for whom you felt a measure of love. Naturally you felt anger. Naturally you wanted to break my thin little neck. It is absolutely natural, when you discover that a person has inflicted deliberate pain on a helpless victim, to feel angry for that person. It is equally as natural an emotion as to feel compassion for the victim."​

Vergere fell silent, and Luke let the silence build.​

After a moment, Vergere bobbed her head. "Very well, young Master. You are correct when you said that if you had entered my cell and struck out at me through the Force, that such an action would have been dark. But you didn't. Instead your anger prompted you to speak to me and find out the reasons for my actions. To that extent, your anger was not only natural but useful. It led to understanding on both our parts."​

She paused. "I'm about to ask you a rhetorical question. You need not answer."​

"Thank you for the warning."​

"My rhetorical question is: why wasn't your anger dark? And my answer is: because you understood it. You understood the cause of the emotion, and therefore it did not seize power over you."​

Luke thought for a moment. "It is your contention, then," he said, "that to understand an emotion is to prevent its being dark."​

"Unreasoning passion is the province of darkness," Vergere said. "But an understood emotion is not unreasoning. That is why the route to mastery is through self-knowledge." Her tilted eyes widened. "It's not possible to suppress all emotion, nor is it desirable. An emotionless person is no more than a machine. But to understand the origin and nature of one's feelings, that is possible."​

"When Darth Vader and the Emperor held me prisoner," Luke said, "they kept urging me to surrender to my anger."​

"Your anger was a natural response to your captivity, and they wished to make use of it. They wished to fan your anger into a burning rage that would allow the darkness to enter. But anyunreasoning passion would do. When anger becomes rage, fear becomes terror, love becomes obsession, self-esteem becomes vainglory, then a natural and useful emotion becomes an unreasoning compulsion and the darkness is."​

"I let the dark side take me," Luke said. "I cut off my father's hand."​

"Ahhh." Vergere nodded. "Now I understand much."​

"When my rage took control, I felt invincible. I felt complete. I felt free."​

Vergere nodded again. "When you are in the grip of an irresistible compulsion, it is then that you feel most like yourself. But in reality it was you who were passive then. You let the feeling control you."​

​

 

Vergere served as a mentor, and regardless of her ultimate ambitions I think she truly wanted Jacen to become what she knew he was deep down: more than a Jedi.

 

TWO: THE NURSERY

The ship Jacen was imprisoned on docks with the seedship. Jacen has been released from the Embrace of Pain for some time, and his wounds have healed. Vergere is there to take him somewhere else, and reveals that the ship they've been in will be digested by the larger ship. Jacen gets a self-healing robe.

"Putting it on hurt. Slower to heal than his skin, his shoulders and hip joints grated as though packed with chunks of durracrete, but he didn't so much as grimace.
"This was merely pain; he barely noticed."

Vergere has some sort of hook in her hand, but Jacen seems to forget about it. Vergere leads Jacen through the ship, which is a massive worldshaping enterprise, and explains that this ship will be responsible for shaping the new Yuuzhan Vong homeworld. Eventually, they reach the eponymous nursery, which is a massive space with a simulated star and slaves working throughout. The slaves demonstrate absolutely no coordination or cooperation.

"Magnificent, isn't it?"
"Madness. I mean, look at this -- This, this insanity . . . How can you call this magnificent?"
"Because I see beyond what it is, to what it shall become."

***

"What you see around you is the work of powerful, undisciplined infants . . . playing with their toys."
"These aren't toys. These are living beings..."
"I will not argue names with you, Jacen Solo. Call them what you will. Their use remains the same."
"What use? What possible value could anybody get out of this -- this pointless suffering?"

***

"Here they hone their skills, of mental mastery and the coordination of many disparate life-forms, that one of them will later use as the World Brain."
"One of them . . ."
"Only one. The games these children play are more than serious. They are deadly. These infant dhuryams know already the basic truth of existence: win or die."
"It's so . . . so horrible."
"I would call it honest."

There's a few different ideas here. In the prologue, Vergere refers to the Force as being too dangerous for children when she strips it from Jacen, and in chapter one, she compares his inaction to an infant's behavior, wailing until his mother saves him -- which one might infer as a reference to his behavior earlier in the series. So one can't help but notice that the dhuryams are also children like Jacen, which is important for Jacen and his dhuryam to become BFFs. Unlike Jacen, the dhuryams have already learned the basic truth of existence, according to Vergere: win or die. She's not sugarcoating the universe for Jacen, not talking in idealistic terms. She's being purely a realist. Part of Jacen's problem, and perhaps a problem for the Jedi as a whole, is that they can't accept to see life on these terms. This is something that is revisited in Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor with Luke Skywalker facing a similar realization of the rottenness of life, and it might be worthwhile down the line to explore that in comparison to Jacen's reaction, and how they deal with that (but not right now).

There's also Vergere's claim that it's magnificent because she sees past what it is into what it will become. This language will see repetition in referring to Jacen -- and is true of Jacen earlier in the series, and of all characters that undergo well-written arcs. The character needs to be flawed in order to overcome those flaws. This novel is the stage of the hero's journey where the hero journeys into the land of the dead to achieve something -- which can be anything, but is usually some piece of knowledge -- which will help them achieve their quest. In this iteration, Jacen is literally told that he is dead by Vergere, and freed of all obligations in life. He's no longer a Jedi. He's no longer in Luke's shadow, or Han's shadow, or even Anakin's shadow. He has no expectation of their aid. All he has is himself. And the piece of knowledge he has to acquire is self-knowledge, self-mastery, gnothi seauton, temet nosce.


"I am Vergere. What are you?"
"Who is Jacen Solo?"
"Choose, and act."

Finally, Jacen's question about the possible value of the suffering calls back to their discussions on pain in the prior chapter. Initially, Jacen holds a hedonist worldview -- as do perhaps the new Jedi: the only new Jedi in this book is Jacen, so he's standing in for them -- pleasure is good and pain is evil. At the start of this novel, pain and suffering hold no value for Jacen. At the end of chapter one, he started to realize this wasn't true, that pain had a lot of value for him in life, even if he didn't realize it. But even so, he's not able or willing to see past it in this case. Obviously, there's an issue with the morality of the Yuuzhan Vong using these people as slaves. But like Jacen being tortured by the Yuuzhan Vong, the issue isn't that the Yuuzhan Vong are doing this: Jacen and Vergere can't control the Yuuzhan Vong. The issue is how they react to it. In the earlier chapter, we saw that Vergere was actually helping Jacen by not simply freeing him from pain. He never would have had his realization about pain if she had freed him. The lesson here is that life is harsh, and we can't control that, and the Yuuzhan Vong and other people are a part of that. We can mitigate it, but we need to proceed with wisdom in doing so -- acting from the position that life isn't fair as though we can do something about making it fair is a useless endeavor, because it will never be fair. Jacen can't fix the nursery, he can't kill all the Yuuzhan Vong and rescue all the slaves. Getting caught up on the rottenness of it is paralyzing him from mitigating it in ways he is able to do so.


The chapter ends with Vergere stabbing him in the chest with the aforementioned hook and implanting him with a slave seed. This would seem to be the first morally dubious act which Vergere commits in the book. However, the fact is that Jacen was going to be implanted with a slave seed whether Vergere was the one to do it or not, and I think her doing it is preferable to a Yuuzhan Vong warrior doing it, but that's just me. It's simply another example of the shadowmoth metaphor -- she's doing something which superficially seems to be hurting Jacen, but is actually beneficial to him in ways he can't see.

THREE: THE GARDEN


Some time has passed since Jacen was implanted with the slave seed, and he's ostensibly become a part of his dhuyram's tribe. However, rather than taking direction from the dhuryam projected through pain, Jacen has chosen to become the healer. Vergere comes to examine his wound from the slave seed implantation, which has become infected. She wants to check it, but Jacen refuses. Vergere asks him if he's going to back up his refusal with force, which of course it's Jacen so he's not. "Orders not backed by force are only suggestions, Jacen Solo."

"Pain means little to you now, yes?"
"Since the Embrace? I don't ignore it, if that's what you mean."
"But it does not rule you. There are some who say that humans are incapable of overcoming their fear of pain."
"Maybe the people who say that don't know very many humans."
"And maybe they do. Maybe they simply know none like you."

This little exchange is important both because it revisits the fact that Vergere has at least begun to break Jacen out of a hedonist worldview. But it also is about stereotyping and preconceptions.

Vergere then heals Jacen's infection with her tears, which amazes Jacen. She explains how even the Force blind of her species could -- an implication that Vergere is the last of her kind -- alter their tears on a molecular level. Jacen asks Vergere to help him heal all the slaves, and she flat out refuses. This goes toward the point of the prior chapter, and Vergere then asks:

"Tell me this, Jacen Solo: what distinguishes a flower from a weed? This is not a riddle. What distinguishes a flower from a weed is only -- and exactly -- this: the choice of the gardener."
"I'm not a gardener. And these are not weeds!"
"Again, our difficulties may be linguistics. To me, a gardener is one who chooses what to cultivate, and what to uproot; who decides which lives must end so that the lives he cherishes may flourish. Is that not what you have done?"
(I'm choosing to only quote dialogue, but the text makes it clear that Vergere is referring to Jacen's earlier use of clip beetles, which he killed, in order to use their heads as a suture.)
"Those are bugs, Vergere."
"So is a shadowmoth."
"I'm talking about people --"
"Were the beetles less alive than the slave? Is not a life a life, whatever form it takes?"
"You can't make me say I was wrong to do it. It wasn't wrong. He's a sentient being. Those were insects."
"I did not say it was wrong, Jacen Solo. Am I a moralist? I only point out that you make the gardener's choice."

And that last line is the crux of this. Vergere's not talking about morals or ethics at all. She's looking at the universe as it is. She's not endorsing anything. She's reporting on what she observes reality to be. If you have a problem with what Vergere is saying, it's because you're rejecting the harshness of reality. And really, in that sense, Vergere breaking Jacen of hedonism isn't about the philosophy of hedonism, so much as it's about Jacen's brand of it simply being incongruous with reality. After all, it was Jacen who decided that pain had value. Vergere never told him that. His realization in chapter one was entirely his own.

Jacen's response to this is: "You're the gardener. I'm just one of the weeds." Vergere puts her hand on his arm: "...her touch was so clearly friendly, even affectionate, that Jacen for one moment felt as though his Force empathy had not deserted him. He knew, absolutely and without question, that Vergere meant him no harm. That she cared for him, and regretted his anger, his hostility, and his suffering."

She asks how he became the healer for his slave gang. Jacen recalls internally that dhuryam gave him other directions through pain, which he ignored, and eventually the dhuryam realized that Jacen's healing had merit because healthy slaves were more effective than unhealthy ones.

I guess you could say, Jacen thought, I taught the dhuryam that sometimes partners are more useful than slaves.

Instead, he says "I told you before. You can kill me, but you can't make me obey."
"And that, Jacen Solo, is why you are a flower among the weeds."

And then...

"You're Sith, aren't you?"
She went very, very still. "Am I?"
"I know a little about the dark side, Vergere. All this garbage about flowers and weeds -- I know what you're really talking about. You're talking about believing you're above people."
Jacen goes on a little rant about the summer he and Jaina spent at Brakiss' dark side academy and tells her to pound sand with her pitiful attempt to make him a Sith.

"Sith? Jedi? Are these the only choices? Dark or light, good or evil? Is there no more to the Force than this? What is the screen on which light and dark cast their shapes and shadows? Where is the ground on which stands good and evil?"
"Save it. I've spent too much time wondering those questions already. Years. I never got anywhere."
"You got here, yes? Is this not somewhere?"
"All answers fall short of the truth."
"Very good! Very good, Jacen Solo. Questions are more true than answers: this is the beginning of wisdom."
"Your kind of wisdom --"
"Is there any other kind? Does truth come in breeds like nerfs?"

This is pretty important. For the most part in this book, Vergere asks questions, pokes holes in Jacen's worldview, and reports on reality. She doesn't tell Jacen what to think. But when Jacen says something that makes her really excited, that gives insight into what she is hoping Jacen will think. It's also worth noting that Vergere's wisdom here is Socratic wisdom. She's trying to break Jacen of preconceptions: she needs him to only know that he knows nothing. This is what he is admitting when he says all answers fall short of the truth. Additionally, I think her speech about the metaphysics of the Force, the first one in the novel, is important. But before I get into that, her parting words to Jacen:

"If the Force is life, how can there be life without the Force?"
"What?"
"You are born to be a gardener. Remember this: it is not only your right to choose flowers over weeds, it is your responsibility. Which are flowers? Which are weeds? The choice is yours."

Back to the Force -- to answer her question about the "screen" on which light and dark cast their shadows is life and the universe. That's what she's been discussing with Jacen. His preoccupation with the dark side in the abstract has blinded him to reality. That is the point she is trying to make here. We'll get deeper into the Force once Vergere and Jacen reach Yuuzhan'tar.

Jacen is deeply disturbed by Vergere's question. He tries looking at it from Anakin's perspective: if the Force is a tool, and the Yuuzhan Vong can't use the Force, then it's like someone without arms being unable to use a hammer. Like it's a tool that wasn't designed for their anatomy. Jacen isn't satisfied with this, because the Force isn't a tool. "It was everything."

As days pass, Jacen's perspective of the dhuryam shifts from being a hideous alien monster that was violating him through the slave seed, to softening up to viewing it as not so bad. It's just another life-form: "It had intelligence, will, intention; it was able to see that Jacen was doing more good than harm, and it apparently consented to a working partnership. If a species that had always been blind met a species that had always been deaf, how would they communicate? To Jacen, the answer was obvious: they would have to improvise a language based on a sense that they shared. The pain from the slave seed was actually a form of communication, a primitive language that Jacen was slowly coming to comprehend, though he had not yet learned how to reply."

Jacen decides that the Yuuzhan Vong are in the Force, and that the Jedi's perspective of the Force is a narrow band of the wavelength, and the Yuuzhan Vong are on a different band. Jacen then realizes that earlier, when he felt that flash of empathy from Vergere, maybe that wasn't her projecting through the Force... maybe that was him tapping into a different band of the Force. "What if his empathy came from a part of the Force that he could still touch?" Hey there, little guy, he said inside himself. Let's be friends.

We're venturing into the most important part of the Force here, something Vergere got Jacen thinking about with her question, Episode IV and Episode V level stuff. The Force binds all living things. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. That's true of the Yuuzhan Vong, whether the Jedi can sense it or not. And now Jacen is going to try to sense it. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. Jacen is the Force -- and so are the Yuuzhan Vong. It's a bridge between the two sides, even if one is blind and the other is deaf.

Meanwhile, Vergere and Nom Anor both know that Jacen has achieved an empathic bond with the dhuryam, and discuss the Solo Project. Nom Anor is concerned by how easy it has gone so far, and Vergere tries to reassure him. We learn that seedfall is approaching, and they need absolutely no monkey wrenches in the works -- I'm not sure of an appropriate Yuuzhan Vong metaphor.

Jacen has achieved the ability to communicate with the dhuryam through the exchange of emotions and images. Jacen has, in a sense, done with the Jedi exile did in Knights of the Old Republic 2: through his empathic bond with the dhuryam, he gained the dhuryam's "sense" of the Force, in the form of its awareness of the life-forms within the nursery. Jacen has also stepped up his healing: now he is healing all the slaves, not just the ones belonging to his dhuryam. The dhuyram did not like this, but Jacen ain't going to compromise on this. He had chosen. There are no weeds here. Every slave was a flower. Every life was precious. He would spend the last erg of his strength to save every one of them.

And then his Devaronian assistant got mobbed and pushed too close to where the dhuryams were located, and a Yuuzhan Vong guard cut off his arm, a wound which ultimately killed him.

That's when Jacen thought, Okay, maybe I was wrong.
There were weeds here, after all.
He lifted his head, and met the eyes of a weed.
The warrior who had killed the Devaronian returned his gaze impassively, black-smeared amphistaff at the ready.
Which are flowers? Which are weeds? It is not only your right to choose flowers over weeds, it is your responsibility.
Vergere's words rang true. But Jacen doubted the truth he'd found in them was the truth she intended. He discovered he didn't really care what Vergere had intended. He had chosen.

He'd decided who the weeds were.

 

Such deep stuff.

 

It's going to be quite a transition from Traitor into The Unifying Force. I already wrote out commentary for the first few chapters of The Unifying Force before I started to do Traitor, and the first four or five chapters are mostly filler about some guys escaping a Japanese POW camp during World War II. Things should pick up from there, though.

 

That's what makes TUF so awesome. We have 400-500 pages to go in the war, no idea how it will wrap up and we don't start with the Big 3 or related people. It's like Luceno is saying that "This is the finale. We will get to the Big 3 later. We have important business on Selvaris.
It's like when Teddy Roosevelt Jr said on D-Day. "We will just start the war from right here."

 

Edit: Nvm, reading comprehension failure.

Also, FYI, I don't plan on discussing the novels in a gestalt sense until they're finished -- I think I'll discuss Traitor for a bit after the epilogue, and then move onto TUF, and discuss it after it ends, finally broadening my discussion to include the series as a whole.

Then I will discuss some of the other hardcovers, but I probably won't do chapter by chapter commentary for them. I might bring up Shadows of Mindor after I finish Traitor, to discuss Jacen and Luke having different or similar approaches to the same realization. I can use that as an excuse to discuss Dark Empire in brief as well.

I feel as though it's important that I go over Traitor with a fine tooth comb before I do any further discussion though, just to sort of build a case, so to speak. I need the facts put into evidence before I present my arguments.

 

Nope. On one of the Beach launch points. Teddy Roosevelt's son TR Jr launched with the troops after the beach was taken, even though it was the wrong landing point. So he said "We will start the war from right here."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Roosevelt,_Jr.#D-Day

 

I missed the "Jr."

Edit: I suspect that my commentary for The Unifying Force will be quite different than this though. For instance, I don't think I'm going to spend a lot of time discussing the jailbreak. I'm mostly going to just summarize what happens, and quote the important parts and provide commentary. So the chapter by chapter of The Unifying Force won't be as long as these are for Traitor. Plus Traitor is fourteen chapters plus a prologue and epilogue, whereas The Unifying Force is forty-five chapters. A 292 page paperback versus a 529 page hardcover.

 

Okay. Sorry for going off on a tangent.
Looking forward to discussing Traitor and the NJO in greater detail.

 

You're getting me really excited to reread the NJO. I decided to skip the Bantam era for now and start Vector Prime after I read AND. Im sad that you'll be done with Traitor and TUF befor I get there. Oh well; I still love this thread.

 

Just throw in your observations when you get there.

 

FOUR: THE WILL OF THE GODS

The chapter starts with a description of how the Yuuzhan Vong are shaping Coruscant. Three of its moons are taken out of its orbit, while its largest is destroyed to create a planetary ring. Dovin basals on the surface slowed its orbit so it began to approach closer to its star. The three moons that were removed were then restored to new orbits around it in such a way that would stabilize the planetary ring. The seedship has arrived.

It is tizo'pil Yun'tchilat: the Day of Comprehending the Will of the Gods. The shapers begin their work for the selection of the one dhuryam which will become the World Brain of Yuuzhan'tar, accompanied by heavily armed and armored warriors, as well as a creature called a shreeyam'tiz: a sub-species of the yammosk which blocks the telepathic band of the dhuyrams to their slaves. The disconnect induces in the slaves tremendous pain, unless they contact the coraltree basal from which their slave seed was harvested, resulting in them mobbing around these coraltree basals. The slaves will be executed upon the selection of a dhuryam.

Nom Anor and Vergere watch over a viewspider as Jacen stands in the middle of an amphistaff grove. Nom Anor is not happy, but Vergere spins it as a positive thing: Jacen has chosen to stand among Vonglife rather than his own kind on the Day of Decision. Nom Anor doesn't buy what Vergere is selling, and orders his warriors to go collect Jacen and take him to his ship, and tells them he's a Jeedai infiltrator -- his survival is preferred, but not necessary. Nom Anor agrees though that the project is going well, but then Vergere tells him not to count his eggs before they hatch.

Jacen is ready to die as the warriors approach him, and wonders if Anakin felt the same way. He briefly imagines himself with his family, but Chewie and Anakin aren't there. The warriors order Jacen out of the grove, but he doesn't respond, so they kill a slave, and threaten to continue unless he complies. He moves toward the warriors, but stops in the grove.

"Farther. Move beyond the reach of the grove."
"Make me."
"Kill another."
"You are no warrior."
"What?
"Warriors win battles without murdering the weak. Like all Yuuzhan Vong, you make war only upon the helpless. You are a coward from a species of cowards."

The warrior charges Jacen, who flip kicks him overhead into the grove, where he's promptly turned to hamburger. The remaining three warriors call over guards in full vonduun crab armor, so Jacen stretches out his arms and recommends the amphistaffs comes to him through his empathic bond.

"I'd like you all to meet some friends of mine."

Nom Anor is NOT happy! Oh no. Nom Anor thinks the project is a failure because Jacen is committing suicide by Vong. Vergere wants to go out to get him, but Nom Anor says no. Vergere says her concern is not for Jacen, but Nom Anor doesn't think there's anyway that he can survive.

"Jacen Solo no longer has the Force, but that is not his only weapon. He is a warrior born: eldest son and heir to a long line of warriors. He has trained since birth in the combat arts. He has been tested and tried, bloodied in battle, and he --"
"He's nothing but a boy. Have you lost your wits? I know this boy. Humans do not honor warrior lineage. His means nothing. He is nothing."
"I tell you this: though neither he nor they yet know it, he is the greatest of all the Jedi. Jacen Solo is the living Jedi dream. Even without the Force, he is more dangerous than you can possibly imagine. You must let me go to him. He must be stopped."

Vergere then drops a bomb on Nom Anor: Jacen is going to destroy the seedship.

 

Quoted for truth.

 

Just to clarify, is there not a whole lot of discussion because I'm a jerk and was like "no don't talk about Destiny's Way right now and derail my Traitor commentary we'll get to that later," or is it because there's not a lot people have to say about Traitor, or the first few chapters at least?

 

I admit Traitor is fresh enough in my memory that I'm more interested in your overall analysis than chapter-by-chapter commentary.

Also not to sound like a simpleton but it might be easier to read if you put the passages that are directly lifted from the text in quotes or somehow otherwise marked them off from your own writing so they're easier to skip over. I reread the book like a year or two ago but more importantly I am lazy.

 

But then I can't italicize! Maybe I'll separate with lines of asterisks or something.

I feel like my overall analysis at this point would benefit from viewing the entire book. Like my insights in chapter two are something I would ordinarily ignore because I had to force myself to look deeper into it for the commentary. And I want to be able to point out where Jacen is giving meaning to what Vergere says, and it is not the meaning that everyone and Troy Denning decided it was. Like I feel like Traitor does a really good job of answering its own questions but everyone ignored it. It isn't a good look for SW readers. Or Troy Denning.

Maybe I'll revise the format. The next chapter is Jacen going on a bloodthirsty rampage, there's not much to analyze.

 

At the bolded part:

Clearly I need to reread Traitor.

BTW, I feel somewhat ashamed because I remember back when I first read Traitor (keep in mind I was fifteen years old and had read LOTF before most of NJO) that I kept looking for all the ways that Vergere was turning Jacen to the dark side. At first I felt a little vindicated at what I felt was her torturing him, and all that jazz, and even the part above, I saw it as him going dark. It wasn't until I was probably 3/4 of the way through the book that I realized that none of this was leading up to him becoming an evil maniac, and I became utterly confused. As a result, the second time I read Traitor I had a much better appreciation of everything that was going on.