PT is it the jedi council fault anakin turned to the dark side?

Like all other sentient beings, the Jedi were imperfect.

Even if this is true, who is to say that someone other than Obi-Wan and the Jedi would have stepped up and talked some sense into Anakin? I am not saying that this would have happened. But I cannot pretend that Anakin would have ignored them and given in to Palpatine anyway. I don't know what would have happened if the circumstances had been different. How can I or anyone else pretend otherwise? This is not something that can be set in stone.

 

Because some people in this world are so irrational, or so one-track-mind, that they cannot be easily dissuaded. Anakin refused to accept that there was no way to save someone that he cared for. It scared him to admit that death was real and permanent and that the Force was not all powerful.

 

I don't agree with you. I'm sorry, but I do not. Life is very inconsistent and chaotic. In fact, it is so much so that nothing or no one can be that easily predictable. Not on that level. I will agree that it is possible for Anakin to give in to evil, despite different circumstances. But I do not agree that it is probable.

 

Yes, it is probable. Anakin is too focused on his own greed and fear. Palpatine has been preparing for this moment. He has conditioned Anakin into being fearful, irrational and greedy. The only reason Anakin turns back is because he realizes that he is no longer afraid of death and what it means. For Anakin to not turn at all, he would have to do what Yoda told him to do, which was nearly impossible for him to do.

 

It wasn't the Jedi Council's fault, but they could have done far more.

 

I'm with darth-sinister on this. Whilst the Council certainly made mistakes with Anakin if left entirely to his own devices he would most likely remain a Jedi (albeit probably doing a Qui-Gonn style rebellious Ronin thing) or jacking the whole lot in to raise a family with Padme. But with Palpatine tugging his strings and manipulating his pride and his insecurities he was far, far more likely to dive off the deep end.

 

There's only so much the Council can do for Anakin. He has to do it on his own. That's why Obi-wan and Yoda couldn't help Luke against the Sith. Dealing with the death of his loved ones was his Jedi trial and the Master has to let his/her Padawan stand on their own.

 

There are reasons why kids Annie's age, are too old to be trained as Jedi.

They tried to say no, but Qui Gonn and ObiWan insisted that they were going to train the little fart.

The Emperor had a hand in it.

The Jedi were only culpable in not securing his Mum at any point before the sith hit the fan.

 

No, people sy not making him a master n stuff was wrong, but all it would have done is fed his ego. It's Anakin's fault. He chose his wife over the entire Gaalxy and his religion. He was thinking with his "lightsaber" not his brain.

 

James Gray considers Anakin Skywalker’s conversion to the Dark Side unconvincing. He wanted more Hobbesian philosophy like is implied in the original trilogy. Such thinking is presented as part of Anakin’s view on the world, in episode II at least when Anakin and Natalie Portman are frolicking in the meadow and they have an unusually artfully scripted back and forth about politics. But even without that, I think Anakin’s conversion was one of the most satisfyingly executed parts of the prequels. There are some ways it could have been even richer but nonetheless I felt it viscerally when I read the book and then the first five or six times I watched Revenge of the Sith in the theaters. Here is how I saw the psychological process of Anakin Skywalker over the course of the three films.
Imagine being the most powerful 8 year old human being in the world. You can do virtually anything you try. Things no other human can do. Then one day the freakingJedi show up and take you away on their starship and you’re like, YESCANMYLIFEGETANYBETTERTHINGSARESTILLGOINGENTIRELYMYWAY!!! Oh, and you singlehandedly defeat an entire robot army with your piloting skills and luck. That you can do anything you want, and have anything you want, is the lesson life has taught you so far.
But then the Jedi spend a decade mistrusting you. They try and hold you back from fulfilling your powers. For your mentor, you have to deal with a stick in the mud who you’re actually more naturally powerful than. He’s constantly on your butt. You secretly think he holds you back because of his own fears due to his own limitations and because he resents deep down that he knows you’re better than he is. You become a creepy control freak because as a kid you never had to deal with frustration and you’re still not totally convinced you have to, but all your superiors force you to.
Also, you’re deeply in love with NATALIE ****ING PORTMAN and SHE WANTS YOU TOO (after you push through her initial resistance to get your way as you think you’re entitled). And yet you’re forced into a constraining celibacy. You secretly defy the rules anyway and you have this marriage you always wanted–but you need to keep it completely hidden.
NOW, also since you were 8, ever since you arrived in Coruscant you get to hang with this awesome old SUPREME CHANCELLOR OF THE GALAXY who has been like the father you never had. But better, he’s like the grandpa you never had. He doesn’t treat you with fear, suspicion, discipline. He basically lets you stay up all night and do whatever you want. He believes in you. He tells you you’re the most powerful Jedi ever and you should go with your feelings–that you know better than the council. You shouldn’t buy into their limits they’re putting on you. He also teaches you about politics, about how a galaxy needs a strong hand to impose order, etc. He undermines everything the Jedi are trying to teach you at home and stokes those your ego and those rebel fires in your heart. He’s the only one besides Natalie Portman that you tell after you kill the sand people. You know, those sand people who killed your mom when your callous mentor was telling you to ignore the danger she was in, when you were clearly having premonitory dreams warning you she was in danger?
Now, the moment of truth comes. You have reason to believe that the one person you’ve completely invested your heart into is in mortal threat–but you don’t know how or why or when, and you’re terrified. The only advice Yoda has for you is “go, let her. attached, be you not. a sucker’s game, that is.” And you’re like, BUT I’M IN LOVE and it’s NATALIE ****ING PORTMAN. And Grandpa tells you, “dude, you ARE powerful enough, I have secret powers too and TOGETHER we could stop her from dying. I’m one of those Sith you’ve been taught to hate but all that is lies and deceptions. We’re really the good ones. The Jedi are holding out on you, man. They don’t care if Natalie Portman lives or dies BUT I DO.”
Now Jules from Pulp Fiction, who’s been giving you dirty looks since you were 8, is on the verge of KILLING GRANDPA. You’ve heard rumor the Jedi are going to stage a coup. You already know firsthand they’re politically conniving as they’ve unethically asked you to exploit your relationship with Grandpa for information. And now here’s Jules threatening to kill the supreme chancellor and the only guy who has a plan to save the woman you love. The only way to save her is to kill Jules. Finally you’re like, “**** it, if I have to choose between Jules and Yoda on the one hand, and Grandpa and Natalie ****ing Portman on the other, I’m going with Grandpa and Natalie ****ing Portman.”
After that the political philosophy just falls into line as a matter of removing cognitive dissonance. Anyone who’s been through an ideological/identity/community conversion should get it. One day you’re on one side technically but with this mass of other beliefs and values you are sympathetic to but won’t quite accept because of your loyalties/identity/community/dominant paradigm. You’ve already been learning your political views for a decade from Grandpa. You’ve already been primed. Then one day the switch flips, the Gestalt shift happens, and you’re killing Younglings. Trust me, I’ve been there! I deconverted from a religion, replete with a decisive deconversion moment, and I was viscerally satisfied with Revenge of the Sith for the way it evoked what that’s like. I’ve never seen anything else come close to expressing what it is like. The Godfather is the other great conversion series, but that’s about the slow process. This was about the day and night changeover.
Then, the part I loved most was the way it made sense of Vader’s reconversion at the end of Return of the Jedi. Because at his core, Anakin was a guy motivated most of all by love. He could not deal with the Jedi commitments to rules over love. He couldn’t deal with the demand to cast off love as an ascetic. He could not deal with holding back his powers when those he loved were on the line. And the Jedi completely disillusioned and failed him because they didn’t know how to have a constructive channel for his love or his power. They didn’t teach him to harness it. They tried to make him extirpate it. They failed him in the most fundamental way. Their religion was fundamentally flawed and harmful to him. Only a kid raised from infancy could deal with it. And then in his unleashed passion and intensity for control he winds up losing his mind and trying to control the one he loved to the point of accidentally killing her. An utterly devastating moral failure, right out the gates after being freed to trust his heart completely out of an over-corrective extreme. And he is physically destroyed. Psychically and morally and politically enslaved to the emperor. More machine than man. Throws himself into his work. Throws himself into running the empire. Until the day that he discovers his son and realizes he has a chance to overthrow the emperor if only they team up. He becomes obsessive about the plan. He has, ahem, A New Hope.
Then at the end of Jedi, Luke redeems Anakin by loving him to the point of death. Luke could kill Anakin but he refuses. He would rather let the emperor kill him. In that Anakin sees the light. He sees someone with his own heart. His own priorities. Willing to die for him. And Anakin is like, “WTF have I been doing with my life? **** this ****.” And he kills the emperor and himself. He’s found someone who loves like he did, but more wisely. That son of his is worth dying for.

Just a copy and pasta - it just really resonates with me and, minus the swearing and latter parts about the Jedi not reevaluating their methods and/or the Jedi 'failing' Anakin (which we are given an indirect answer for anyway in the films - PEACE FOR A MILLENNIA - anyone? what about stoicism and being in 'control' of your emotions, not bastardizing/reacting to them) its a nice piece on the Fall of Anakin.

 

No

The council were not responsible for Anakins fall, that was completely on him with some goading from Palpatine. Not sure why people seem to have a beef with the council, particularly Mace Windu. I mean if I saw a grown adult throw a tantrum for not getting promoted the way he wanted to, I wouldn't trust him either.

 

While I believe the council didn't handle Anakin as well as they could have, it was still Palp's who is at fault at turning Anakin. He influenced Anakin for most of his life and screwing with his head.

 

There's one person to blame for Anakin's fall and one person ONLY - Anakin. Palpatine never forced him to do anything, merely presented him with the opportunity to make a choice - the Jedi Order, or Padme? Palpatine, or Mace? The good of the galaxy or Anakin's own desires? Sidious might have been manipulative and deceitful in the way he guided Anakin, and the Council may not have gotten every call right in handling the situation, but it was Anakin who chose his destiny in the end.

 

It's definitely Anakin's choice, but I think the Council's choices in regards to Anakin were a contributing factor. Like - Anakin's choices don't exist within a vacumn, but they're still his.

Just to offer an example, I don't know if anyone's read the Obi-Wan and Anakin miniseries, but there's a scene between Palpatine and Mace Windu. Basically, Palpatine asks, "Let me talk to Anakin," after seeing a confrontation between Anakin and another group of Jedi padawans, and Mace is like, "Nah, Obi-Wan's got this." Of course, Palpatine plays the, "I'm the chancellor," card, and Mace agrees to send Anakin to him.

There's no concern over why a middle-aged man wants to see a twelve-year-old. No alarm bells are ringing in Mace's head, no, "STRANGER DANGER," alarm is going off; even after this whole creepy moment, they allow Palpatine to foster a relationship with Anakin, and in ROTS, use that relationship. In fact, later in the comic, Obi-Wan gets a little frustrated that the chancellor wants the company of a twelve-year-old over Obi-Wan's.

If literally anyone had raised the question, "Uh, why does Palpatine want to speak with a child so often?" we probably wouldn't have had the problems we had in ROTS, but, again, it's still Anakin's choice to be a murderer. Just because your guardians made a massive mistake in their duties doesn't mean you get a free pass to slaughter babies.

 

Yeah, of course Anakin is at fault for making his final decision. The decision was always his to make and it's his own undoing. Though, the Council is at fault for neglecting Anakin's needs. He became a Jedi when he needed a family most and the Council should of done more as an exception to the "We train Jedi from birth." Qui-Gon could've filled that void and Obi-Wan did his best but the Council as a collective could of done better for Anakin. They planted the seeds of distrust and 13 years of manipulation by Palpatine in his developmental stage was obviously going to have negative consequences.

 

Anakin did have a surrogate family from Obi-wan, Ahsoka, Palpatine and Padme. That was never a problem. In fact, it was the problem because he became attached to people. The Council being more paternal wouldn't change his decisions. He wanted one thing which was power. Having a family wouldn't change that. His mother was the only one who could stop him and she's dead.

The reason Palpatine had been allowed to be friends with Anakin was that it was a good thing for him, as far as they were concerned. He was the Chancellor and he had proven to be very effective at reaching Anakin when Obi-wan couldn't. The Jedi had no reason to think that he was corrupting the boy because he was a Sith Lord.

 

Anakin definitely wanted more in life, sure. IT wouldn't have helped all of his issues but it would've definitely made it harder to break the bond between the Jedi that Palpatine was so desperate to break. Padme was barely in his life, and by the time she became fully his fam, he was already in Palpatine's grasp. Palpatine was definitely a father figure but encouraged all the wrong qualities and desires Anakin had. I consider Anakin to know too much power was a bad thing. "I want more and I know I shouldn't." Obi-Wan was as close to a positive role model Anakin had in his adolescence and yet, Obi-Wan was only doing the best he could. I don't mean the Jedi needed to be fathers and mothers literally but should've treated him with more trust instead of secluding him. Teens and very young adults don't react well to that and that creates lots of turmoil and doubt. Whether it was all in Anakin's mind and the Council did the best they could for him, that's a subjective opinion I'd disagree with but he needed more trust and more people who weren't continously putting him in postitions where doubt would be able to stir.

 

Which is where the whole ''he is too old'' argument the Jedi made actually rings pretty true. Rightly or wrongly, Jedi apprentices/Padawans were always chosen at a very young age and bought up nearly from birth to follow the Jedi path - their family, their friends, their way of life was the Temple and it's inhabitants. They wouldn't feel secluded, or mistrusted. They would feel that they are being taught something valuable but left to learn it for themselves.

Anakin on the other hand is old enough to have established a more traditional family life in as much as he had a home and a mother and even a father figure in as much as Watto was a male authority figure (and didn't treat him particularly badly all things considered.) He was then torn out of that and plonked into a totally unfamiliar set up and way of living at the age when most humans are beginning the most confusing and impactful years of their lives.

Now it could be argued that the Jedi could/should be willing to change things around for Anakin because he wasn't bought up the traditional way but this is a pretty tenuous argument that relies far too much on hindsight and meta knowledge. The Jedi have been around for millennia, they have bought up thousands if not millions of apprentices over that time and lost a neglible fraction of those to the Dark Side and only twenty have left the Order for secular reasons, ever. They have every reason to suppose that their approach actually does work - because by and large, it really does.

 

I think it was partially the Jedi council's fault. I don't think they were cautious enough with Anakin. With the war going on to distract them, it's kind of understandable, but I think they should have been paying more attention to what was happening to him.

I just wanted to mention...
Anakin wasn't made a Master. He was just one on the council (weird? very). That slight contributed to his angst though, and so eventually his turn to the dark side.

 

The most significant factor in Anakin's turn to Vader was the The Clone Wars. Not helping him save his mom? Meeh, It's a grudge to hold but doesnt show them to be "evil". It was their involvement in the wars that devastated many worlds across the galaxy that made Anakin lose trust in their intentions. Of course, he fought on the frontlines in these wars, but it would later remind him about the power Palpatine told him everyone is afraid to lose. Once they decided to not promote him to rank of Jedi Master, that wasn't only an insult to Anakin, but evidence that they were scared he would threaten their "tyranny".

This is why when Palpatine just outright says "It's me. I'm the Sith that's sabotaging the Republic. Look no further. Strike me down"
Anakin only replies "I will discover the truth of all this".
But he just told him the truth! He doesn't need to discover anything else. Anakin "knew" the Sith were corrupt, but saw the Jedi behaving in a similar manner, and couldn't distinguish between the two.

The Jedi basically said "You aren't ready to be among the masters. But we still need you. Not that close, though." Yes, we know to even be on the council is a great honor. But the Jedi should've been aware what denying what hadn't been done in the history of the Jedi Order would look like to the person they didnt trust. (They are wise, right?) Also, it was for a completely selfish reason, because (as Obi-Wan said), they only wanted him to be on the Council to receive information. Anakin was a representative appointed by Palpatine, but they could've rejected both requests, as it isn't in the Chancellors place to do such a thing. "Disturbing, is this move by Chancellor Palpatine". Who cares what type of division it would've caused to reject the Chancellor's orders. Bending to corruption is still bending to corruption. Instead, the one sided gift of being a Jedi Master was denied to Anakin, while the exploitative promotion was given. How would Anakin then not see them as being just as corrupt and selfish as the Chancellor they thought was evil. When he heard their verdict and Obi-Wan's explanation for it, all he could hear was Palpatine's voice echoing in his head "All who gain power are afraid to lose it. Even the Jedi"
Anakin's reaction isn't just misguided jealousy and anger, that was him realizing they're outright using him, and dont even care to be subtle about it.

I mean honestly, what does any one expect someone to do when you tell them "We don't trust you but we want you to spy on someone who does trust you" with that person saying then says "I want you to be spy on the council for me", all while trying to decide whether or not I go against the Jedi Code or do I ....go against the Jedi Code? My padawan was framed and hunted, my mentors/peers exploit me, and to keep the only thing stable in my life that I love, it would require me to....go against the Jedi Code?



This is why he went insane.



Also, the Jedi were despised across the galaxy because of their actions in the Clone Wars. So, if he felt his views of the Jedi were wrong, he had an entire galaxy to convince him they were evil. *sigh*
At this point he couldn't just leave the Order. He felt they had done a great injustice to the values of the Republic. There was also anger and hatred for how they treated him. And you can't hate someone more than someone you used to love/care for.
The Jedi pushed him towards being an outcast, and Palpatine just brought him in. So, yes, it was completely Anakin's fault, but everyone had a hand in it. This the great tragedy of Anakin Skywalker. He was in self-induced pain because of who he was and was treated improperly because of who he might become. When you see it that way, you can see how Anakin thought Vader was always his destiny.

 

It's Sidious's fault. But the Jedi council was definitely a factor.

 

Scratch that last sentence
*When you see it that way, you can see how Vader was always his destiny.

 

Being Vader was not his destiny. That's what the Son wanted him to believe. The Father made it clear that if he stayed on the path that he did when he helped to defeat the Son, then he would be fine and he would do the same for the universe at large.

 

To the extent that they ignored a bunch of red flags and didn’t force him into some kind of therapy sooner because they placed all their faith in some Big Dumb Prophecy, sure.

To the extent that they weren’t considerate enough of Special Snowflake’s feelings and weren’t permissive enough…hell no!

 

Someones back from the dead...