Jacen Solo as the tragic hero

As we all know, Jacen had a lot of potential to be a great Jedi, and then he fell to the Dark Side, and it's just getting worse as LOTF goes on.
According to the form of the Greek tragic hero (Oedipus, and more recently Hamlet, Othello, and Macbeth), Jacen fits the pattern of the tragic hero. He is of noble birth and is brought down more and more through a tragic flaw. The whole pattern makes him look like a idiot and makes us either cry or grit our teeth and wonder how such a nice guy got into so much trouble. There has been some discussion on this topic on Wookieepedia.
Any ideas?

 

he has no tragic flaw. He is just stupid and evil, no more, no less.
Macbeth didn't want evil done. He never lied to himself about evil. Jacen does. Macbeth knew what he did was evil throughout the whole play. Jacen is intellectually dishonest. He lies to himself about his intentions and believes them. And Jacen isn't fit to have the word hero in his title

 

I feel like he can't be a hero because there's no cause. He and Lumiya created the entire situation. There was no antagonism until the created it.

I don't think Palpatine could be considered heroic because he ruined everything for his own glory. That's what Jacen is doing. In fact, he's even more of a parasite. Palpatine took advantage of a situation was already there. He was needed by some, and the galaxy was divided.

With Jacen, no one asked him. He didn't earn any love or respect, like even Palps did. He is just a mean selfish bully, and not smart. He doesn't know how to charm.


he has no tragic flaw. He is just stupid and evil, no more, no less.
Macbeth didn't want evil done. He never lied to himself about evil. Jacen does. Macbeth knew what he did was evil throughout the whole play. Jacen is intellectually dishonest. He lies to himself about his intentions and believes them. And Jacen isn't fit to have the word hero in his title

QFT, babe.

 

Didn't Palpy actually create the civil war, what with controlling both sides and everything?

Palpy created a need for himself and then secured his place in the galaxy through it. He had the blood of billions on his hands.

As far from a hero as one could get.

 

To be fair....Jacen didn't really CREATE the situation. Some of his actions may have inadvertantly caused the war to escalate, but he hasn't really been out there trying to create a galactic war. Lumiya, certainly. We have seen shades of her involvement in getting people riled up and I would assume that she can be credited with even more than we have already seen.

Of course, I still don't really view Jacen as a Tragic hero, as I think he see what he wanted to see. I think he wanted an excuse to grab forbidden knowledge.

 

I don't see Jacen as a hero at all, tragic or otherwise. The tragedy of the series isn't Jacen's fall to the dark side, which lacks purpose, but rather everyone else inability to see what he was becoming and put an end to it before it happened.

Anakin Solo was the tragic hero. He was the good son, the one with the higher calling. He was strong and had sense of what was right and wrong and he died defending those he loved. That's what being a tragic hero means. Jacen is far from that.

Jacen is evil, yes, but it rings hollow for me. As I said above, there's no purpose. There isn't a driving force behind his turn. He's no more than a puppet and that makes him boring to me.

 

Jacen Solo is pretty much the lamest character in the entire Star Wars universe. His socks smell. So I don't like him.

 

Jacen is tragic because the only reason he fell to the dark side was due to the fact that the writers wanted to make more money. Sith was selling so they decided to come up with this crappy Dark Jacen plot.

 

Except that Jacen is freaking stupid. You would think that the Jedi Code would have something about stupidity and ignorance in it. There's actually quite a few of his actions that I agree with, but his motivations are completely wrong. There's little that he can do as a Sith that he couldn't have done as a Jedi.

 

That's what makes JINO even dumber. The Jedi Code does have something in it on those lines:

There is no ignorance, there is knowledge

 

I guess that explains it. You can't help ignorance if you don't even believe it exists

 

Funny part is that it's been an intergal part of the Jedi Code since the KOTOR Era.

 

Jacen so far has only used violence & Murder as the only solution to every problem he's faced in this series. In the real world that sort of thing done by people in positions of power leads to conflicts. Lumiya created the groundwork for this civil war and Jacen actually created the war single handedly.

 

Ulic Qel-Droma was a tragic hero. He tried to infiltrate the darksiders and ended up falling himself and killing his own brother, then was stripped of the Force, and spent the next bunch of years suffering from guilt, finally found peace, then was shot but died as a Jedi Master. Anakin Skywalker (and maybe Anakin Solo) were tragic heroes. Anakin had so much potential and a great Jedi Master in Obi-wan Kenobi, but he still loved Padme too much, and that love drove him to do everything.

Jacen Solo is just a greedy, easily manipulated moron. He didn't start out as bad as Palpatine, but he's getting there. Though even during Palptine's time, the Republic was already pretty corrupt on its own. True, the escalating GA-Corellian War helped to force Jacen's decision, but its not like conventional methods had been exhausted. Some of the Corellians were still reasonable, and without more prodding, nobody else was going to help Corellia. And Jacen just conveniently forgets how Force spectors or ghosts have been helping or prodding people to kill others and themselves. I don't really remember if Jacen ever found out about the delusional Admiral who was in Betrayal and Exile, but still, Jacen just swallowed Lumiya's story as part of him wanted to get Sith knowledge, and he's partially still on that "there is no dark side" kick. As mentioned, he's just using brute force to solve a lot of problems too.

Jacen doesn't even have the "doing it all for love" excuse like Anakin did. Sure, Tenel Ka and Allana are important to him, but they aren't the center of his life like with how Anakin obsessed over Padme.

How Jacen will end up when this series is done is up in the air, though I'm personally hoping for death. Most of the Skywalker family has had at least one brush with the dark side, but most of them haven't gone as far as Jacen, except for Anakin Skywalker of course, and he ended up dying by the time he was redeemed. Not to mention how Jacen is dragging Ben down with him.

 

I wonder if Jacen is going to become all demonic in the face like Palpatine and dark side Revan.

 

At which point he will become JILTO: Jacen In Lower Torso Only.

 

As mentioned more than once, Jacen is not the tragic hero. You never really feel the supposed "nobility" behind his actions. However, if he's such a manipulative, self-deluding individual, does that necessarily make him "stupid"?

(But I am following his story to see if this WILL lead to him Palpatine-ing out. That'd probably be the best way his entire character arc could go.)

 

The only tragic thing about Jacen is how his selfishness has torn apart his family.

 

Yeah, what I don't get is why people are having trouble with Jacen as the straight up villain of the piece.

 

The whole thing has been so poorly written that it's amazing we keep picking it up. All of the characters in the series are morons. Jacens supposed fall is one of the lamest in history, because he is being written so poorly. Everyone acts as if the character exists in a vacuum. The character is what the author makes it. Nothing more nothing less. And we have seen over the course of time the total inconsistency of portrayal and contradiction of actions where all of the characters are concerned. Some times I pick up the books and have no clue who it is I'm reading about, because it makes no sense. How these supposedly intelligent and wise people can continue to make such galacticly stupid mistakes is beyond me.

Speaking as a Jacen Solo(Not Darth Caedus)fan I find this entire path and supposed string of deductive reasoning of his to be utterly absurd. And the fact that the "Authors" want us to buy into it, whether we agree with his decisions or not, to be kind of insulting. I'm a moron, I admit it. I continue to go back and by each book, because guess what, I love Star Wars. And I have hope that somehow they are going to pull it out and make the whole thing worth while. But, with each title that hope dwindles and I don't see a satisfying end whether he be Jedi or Sith. Tragic Hero? No. Tragically Written Hero? Yes.

 

Jacen Solo's a putz.

And he's never been the hero. A coward, a wishy-washy philosopher, a tool, but not a hero.

 

Jacen was perfect before Vergere got him. He had good views on how a hero should be. He had all the makings of being the best Jedi Consular in history.

 

If you havn't noticed, most of the Jedi who fell to the Dark Side seem to have really demented strings of reasoning. The Dark Side seems to have a way with playing with the minds of those that practice it. Look at Ulic Qel-Droma for instance. He's going to destroy the dark side from within! Near the end of "Dark Lords of the Sith" we see Cay, Nomi, and the beast riders burst in on him and Aleema. He's sitting there telling them that he hasn't finished learning all he knows to beat the dark side.....with a Dark Sider standing right there! Moments later, he decides to join Exar Kun to rebuild the Golden Age of the Sith and destroy the Republic! Impeccable reasoning no doubt. Injection of "Sith Poison" is included to explain his demented thinking but I feel that the magic potion was not needed....the Dark Side got into his head and what seemed obvious to him was dumb as hell. I think you can say the same thing about Reven (I'm going to save the Republic from the Mandalorians! Now I'm going to attack the Republic!) Anakin Skywalker (The Secret to saving Padme is KILLING EVERYONE!) and Jacen Solo.

 

He was even better before NJO. Del Rey put him into a complete 180, or replaced him with a clone (Which is more likely) for Vector Prime.

 

I really respect and share your opinion on the quality of the novels and the insult resulting.

I loved SW once, but I lost my faith that it's going to get better. I let them drag me till the end of the NJO (though I only skipped through the last two or three), but I refuse to follow them further. The whole thing has just become too depressing. My definition of SW is based on the OT and that one was a nice and fluffy adventure with a happy ending.

When I'm in the mood for serious literature I do not go and read Star Wars. So why do they even try to change the concept? At least for the post-OT era...