Saga Did Anakin truly bring Balance to the Force?

Considering how dangerous racing is (we see plenty of crashes in the movie race alone) and how, as a slave, Anakin is not getting paid for doing it - he's putting his own life at risk, for free.

 

Many racing drivers race for free. And it's not out of selflessness. It's because they like it.

 

But in this case, the danger is higher. And Anakin, as a slave, has nothing to offer them but his skills (and his secretly built Podracer). Yet he does.

It's reasonable to call it "selflessness" and "compassion" even if not "self-sacrifice" so much.


I've been watching Rebels Recon recently - and a point was made that the Jedi take selflessness to such an extreme - that it forgoes compassion and caring - for Anakin at least.

Selflessness can be taken too far.

 

It's a larger than life analogy. Naturally the danger is enhanced.

That's reason that "selflessness" proves problematic is because it's only selfless in the context of what the Jedi consider to be selfish. And that usually means anything that's not expressly in the interests of the Jedi order.

Anakin was being cooperative, helpful and pragmatic. He has no issues with pod racing as a rule. It would have been selfish if he had, in spite of having no more to lose than every other time he has indulged in his favourite sport, said to Qui Gon "I only race for my enjoyment, and not for anyone else's profit. " purely out of spite or to extort a reward out of them that he either doesn't need or wouldn't normally enjoy.

Selfless is if Anakin agrees never to enjoy podracing again so that he can use his talents for a higher purpose.

 

Shmi summarised Anakin's actions there pretty well - "He gives without thought of reward".

 

That was Qui-Gon. Schmi said he knows nothing of greed.


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I thought Shmi said both. Either way, the point being that Anakin is "being giving" not just acting for his own gratification.

 

QUI-GON: You should be very proud of your son. He gives without any thought of reward.
SCHMI: Well, he knows nothing of greed...etc...

I think your point is supported even more strongly by the fact that the quote was from a Force sensitive outsider, and not a doting mother

 

What was Anakin "giving" all the other times he raced?

What property does Anakin have to give?

Many a precocious child is want to invite people that impress them to come to their home and be impressed by their own hospitality. It's an endearing aspect of childhood innocence.

The only thing that's truly remarkable about the whole pod racing solution is that Anakin is intelligent enough to propose it. He neglects to mention he has never finished a race until it is already too late for anyone to have second thoughts.

Not being greedy or selfish is not the same as being selfless. It would simply be perverse or selfish for Anakin to be uncharacteristically reluctant to race his pod because someone plans to gamble (and cheat) in order to solve their money problems.

 

The pod.

Those times, he was a slave under orders from his master. And he can still be "giving" by being helpful to other slaves who are in need.

Watto has no pods left - Anakin can only race if he hands over his secretly built pod to Qui-Gon (if he handed it over to Watto - he'd be in danger of being punished for pilfering from Watto's yard).

I think Anakin's "moment of selflessness" is being unfairly underplayed, here. The fact that he enjoys racing, is irrelevant.

Shmi's moment of selflessness is also important - she is losing (at least in terms of mental suffering) by agreeing to Anakin's proposal. Yet she does agree.

 

I think we're all being a little too hard of young Anakin's selflessness. He is clearly intended to be shown as selfless and what he does is simply nice. No point in getting into too strict difference between all that. The problem as stated before is more in the line of this is what's used totally to justify Anakin as a good person prior to his fall. He's already going bad by the beginning of AOTC with his attitude towards OW and the rest of the PT is him spiraling. So, a 10 yr olds innocence is supposed to be our reason to think of AS as a good guy who fell to the dark side. The problem is all 10 yr olds are pretty innocent, so it's not a strong character argument for AS as opposed to all normal people, and AS was not supposed to be normal.

 

I don't know, there's plenty of bullying 10 year olds, and ones who exhibit far less in the way of "kindness" than Anakin. I'd suggest that, at least in TPM, Anakin is intended to be atypically kind.

 

It's selflessness, and how it or its presumed absence is used as the defining quality necessary to avoid evil that is problematic.

We are introduced to a boy who isn't selfish about something he enjoys doing anyway in the context of the strangers predicament and/or a bully, who winds up saving Naboo by accident.

The only purpose for this set up would be to show that Anakin no longer has the same motivation or values when he begins to fall to the darkside. If he'd stayed the same as he was when he was nine then everything would have been ok. But that is never conveyed coherently. It's the fact that Anakin can't let go of the things he became attached to, and which nurtured his "selfless" qualities as a child, that initiates his downfall which confuses this issue. Also that the next films show us that Anakin's good works have more to do with his spontaneous notions of the right thing to do. When it happened to coinicide with the aims of the Jedi, it was selfless. When they didn't, he came to be seen as selfish.

 

I wholeheartedly agree that is what is intended in TPM with young Anakin's portrayal, I wasn't trying to say it wasn't. And yes, there is bullying even at 10 years of age, but you're missing the point bc you're using the possibility of not being 100% true in all cases as justification against my statement. I'm talking about normalcy bc typically no one thinks of 10 yr olds as horrible people and most are innocent in the sense of being mostly honest, nice, etc. Thus, a 10 yr old's innocent kindness shouldn't be used as a real consideration of previous innate goodness when talking about later bad actions. Thus, it doesn't sell as the proof of AS's goodness prior to his fall bc it's the same goodness most kids have around that age. And I don't think that the world of SW is much different than our world in terms of normalcy for the galaxy in terms of societal interactions/notions. If it is, then how can we know anything about it? We'd need a full guide to SW society on how it operates.

 

I think that's overstated, personally. To me, the amount of "goodness" Anakin displays is a bit above what "most kids" display.

Throw in his upbringing (regardless of how good a parent Shmi is - his situation is still pretty grim) and I can easily place Anakin as "unusually good by 10-year old slave standards".

 

Iron_lord, that's fine, only thing I'd say then, awesome, you'd think I must be a great kid like Anakin since I'd probably do just what he did except I wouldn't wind up like him at the end....

 

Some fiction takes the approach that the best people, with a sufficiently enthusiastic corruptor, are the ones that can be turned into the worst people.

 

true, but I don't think it's the best fiction personally, I'd much rather have the classic hero like Luke, but do you think that AS had a sufficiently enthusiastic corrupter?

 

I think Palpatine was pretty enthusiastic. Plus we've got hints (the Anakin and Obi-Wan comic for example) that for most of the time between TPM and AOTC, he's been steering Anakin's perspective, convincing him that the ends justify the means, etc. So that's nearly 10 years of patient corrupting work. And the Clone War may have helped as well, in presenting Anakin with opportunities to do the wrong thing for the "right reasons".

 

okay, on this board, I just figured we're only using the movies for justifiable reasons, so I wasn't thinking to comics, etc...., I think we're supposed to believe Palpatine is pretty enthusiastic even in only the movies, it just was so blatant to us the viewer that all I got was how stupid is AS for falling for it....

 

"Newcanon" stuff is more applicable than "Legends" stuff - and that was a newcanon comic. Similar principles might apply to newcanon reference books.

 

I'd say Palpatine is pretty enthusiastic what with him acting so fatherly with Anakin, always whispering exactly what he wants to hear about the Jedi, thus earning his trust. It still took him 13 years to fully turn him to the darkside, so I don't think it was THAT easy. He had to earn his loyalty first because we see Anakin is loyal to people, not principles.

 

As he did so many other times.....again. Did you think Watto would let him keep the winnings?

He wants to race, regardless. This just gives him a reason to race again.

 

The fact that he's enjoying what he's doing, doesn't change that, in this case, if he hadn't donated his own secretly built Podracer to Qui-Gon, he wouldn't have had to race.

 

I think the point is that he's not doing it for his own gratification this time but to help people in need which is a very important Jedi trait in my book. No matter the risks, he's going to help them because he knows it's the right thing to do.