PT Obi-Wan dismembering Anakin in RotS, Compassion?

I hardly think Zam represented the same kind of threat Vader did, and I certainly don’t think that merely cutting off his mechanical arm would in any way have stopped him (RotS Vader was not AotC Anakin) – I don’t even think cutting off both arms would have stopped him, considering the state of mind he was in.

I agree that if a person is dying a terrible death and begs for death, then it would be compassionate to end that person’s life. But what if that person doesn’t want to die – what if that person wants to have a chance at surviving or just wants to survive just a little longer despite the pain? Is it then right to take that person’s autonomy over his own life from him? I must admit I find that line of thought disturbing. In my country, when people over a certain age is admitted to a hospital they are asked whether they want the staff to try and revive them in the case of cardiac arrest. In your opinion, those people shouldn’t be given a choice in the matter as long as the doctor deems that reviving the patient would only result in him surviving a few more hours in agony. Is that ethically acceptable? Or what about the policeman who has wounded a criminal in a gunfight and then killed him because he (the policeman) decided that the murderer would only survive a little longer and be in terrible pain. Do you think the policeman has the right to end his suffering even though the criminal has no desire to die? Isn’t that a lot of power to put into the hands of one person?

And how would a Jedi be qualified to decide if an injury is mortal or not when even trained doctors can sometimes be wrong?

 

Vader's ruin was of his own making...​

​

If Kenobi had killed him, fans would have gone ballistic...​

even if Palpatine revived him arrived in time to do the Venamis thing.​

 

Anakin didn't give Obi-wan any other choice. He wasn't going to stop until one of them is dead or in Anakin's case, chopped into pieces and on fire.

But leaving him to burn to death wasn't compassionate.

 

But he didn't spare him. That would require that he expected him to live. Leaving a limbless burning man alone by a lake of lava is not sparing his life, it is allowing him to die a drawn out and excruciating death.

 

I don't see Obi-Wan's dismembering of Anakin as an act of compassion. I see it as an act of self-defense.

Leaving a limbless Anakin to slowly burn to death on a lava bank simply strikes me as cruel and vindictive.

 

FARK2005

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1) My first point was that Jedi are unlikely to be trained to dismember enemies, cutting of a hand or going for a quick kill yes but not this. Dismemberment is gross overkill in this regard so it would not be something that Obi-Wan could fall back on by instinct.

2) The films disagree with you. Take AotC and Obi-Wan after Dooku wounded him. The wounds were not that severe but it put Obi-Wan down and he had great difficulty to use the Force afterwards.
The films are pretty consistent here, lots of pain makes it very hard for Force users to use their powers. So if Obi-Wan had cut off Anakins arm and grabbed his lightsaber with the Force. Then Anakin would be in too much pain to use the Force to any great extent and he would have no weapon. He might be able to walk but little else. Now Obi-Wan has ended the direct threat and could demand that Anakin submit to him.
I think that this might have worked better, Obi-wan demands that Anakin surrenders but Anakin won't have it and tries to run away but falls down a fire pit of some sort before Obi-Wan can get to him. There is some fire, a scream and Obi-Wan turns his eyes away and walks off. Later we see that Anakin survived but was horribly burned.

First any comparison with doctors is flawed because doctors aren't trained to kill people. Jedi are trained to fight and kill if need be. You might even say that they have a license to kill in some way.
They are trained to fight and they serve the republic and that job sometimes means they must deal with violence and have to use lethal force.
If the Jedi decides that an enemy has to die then that Jedi have the authority to make that call.
In RotS the Jedi hunt Griev with the intent to kill him. It doesn't sound that they think this is immoral on their part.

Take Anakin on Geonosis, when he and Padme lands and make their way into the plant.
They are spotted and some Geonosians attack them. Anakin responds by killing some of them.
Did he have the right to that? Didn't those Geonosians deserve the right to their own life?
Anakin was trespassing on their land, shouldn't they have the right to defend themselves?

Second, about the dying person asking to die. What if the person wants to die but can't do anything except scream in pain? Or what if this person can't talk because their throat is damaged? Or the pain is so extreme that they pass out?
Is it moral to leave such a person to die because he/she can't say that they want to die?

Third, yes this is a difficult moral and ethical question and doesn't have an easy answer.
But I just cant' see that the Jedi would say "If you wound an enemy so terribly that they will die in extreme pain you are forbidden to ease their passing." "Instead you must leave them to suffer horribly." I would think a Jedi would be trained to kill quickly if they must kill. A Jedi should avoid messy deaths as much as possible.
On a battlefield if the choice is "Kill a dying enemy soldier or try to save their lives." Then I think the choice to kill them is very iffy. But if the choice is "Given them an easy death or just leave to die anyway." That becomes much harder.
If you can help them but won't and instead leaves them to their pain. That also doesn't sound very nice.

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A legless person that is missing an arm and is on fire on a lava bank WILL die. No one would think that such a person would survive unaided. I doubt Obi-Wan thought Anakin would live. So we come back to Obi-Wan, he sees Anakin dying in extreme pain, he knows that he did this, it is by his hands that Anakin is dying, he is responsible. That he decides just leave is very iffy to me and I certainly don't think he did this out of any compassion towards Anakin. And IF Obi-Wan's dismemberment of Anakin WAS deliberate and rationally planned by Obi-Wan, then I have an even harder time to see him just leave.

Bye for now.
Old Stoneface

 

"Don't try it!"

Consequences happen.

 

So as punishment for his stupidty, Anakin deserves to have a long, drawn-out painful death?

 

Deserves? Anakin was gone... Darth Vader brought destruction upon himself.

Kenobi owed Vader nothing.

 

1)No, they are trained to neutralize enemies and dismemberment may in some cases be the only way to do this – like for instance in AotC where Obi-Wan cuts off several of the Acklay’s limbs before delivering the killing blow.

2) The films shows Jedi being wounded, not powerful Sith Lords completely drunk on power or filled with hatred and rage. His hatred allowed Anakin to survive what would certainly have killed others, clearly indicating that Sith and Jedi are very different when it comes to dealing with injuries and pain.

Again you assume that once Anakin jumps Obi-Wan has plenty of time to analyze how and when to strike, but unless he has a supercomputer instead of a brain he doesn’t have time to make a conscious decision about how to strike.

Also, du you really think loosing his mechanical hand would have hindered Vader that much? Being shot in his mechanical hand certainly didn’t stop Luke in RotJ, indicating that the pain receptors in artificial limbs were not as sensitive as in real ones.

It doesn’t matter that doctors aren’t trained to kill, they still deal in life and death. They also carry out passive euthanasia, which essentially is not that different from the active kind since in both cases the patient will end up death.

But since you don’t like examples with doctors then what about the policeman? Do you think a law enforcement officer has the right to decide whether a wounded criminal should live or die?

I’m not so sure they, as servants of the Republic, had a right to decide that – I’m quite certain that had Mace managed to kill Sidious there would have been legal repercussions.

Actually Yoda words are: “Act on this, we must. The capture of General Grievous will end this war. Quickly and decisively we should proceed.”. The Jedi likely knew that they may be forced to kill Grievous, but the intention was to capture not kill.

Not a very good example. Yes Anakin is trespassing, but the Geonosians do not give him a chance to explain or surrender or leave, and they do attack without a warning. So I would say Anakin has a right to defend himself.

And how do you know that person wants to live and not die? When in doubt about what a person wants, is it just better to kill him?

Exactly! Which is why I think it’s likely that in difficult situations, Jedi may have left it to the “will of the Force”.

I never said it would be forbidden to end an enemy’s suffering, but again if that person expresses no desire for the Jedi to ease their passing is it then right that the Jedi do so regardless? And how can the Jedi know with 110% certainty that the person will die, when even trained and experienced doctors are sometimes wrong?

Except a person DID survive that – he survived long enough for aid to reach him and thus walked away with his life. If Obi-Wan had killed him he would effectively take away all chance of survival. So if Obi-Wan concluded that Anakin would die and then had killed him, he would have been wrong, and then you have murder instead of mercy killing.

Neither do I, but since Obi-Wan is a human, who in a very short time has seen and experienced things beyond most peoples comprehension, and not a machine I don’t see him even considering the possibility of Anakin’s chances of survival until he is safely away on Padmé’s ship.

When I see Obi-Wan after he has cut off Anakin’s limbs I certainly do not see a rational man. Rather I see a man that has been pushed beyond his limits and therefore is not capable rationality or logic.

 

Well from a certain point of view...

 

Anakin was "gone"? Oh please! Anakin was always Anakin, whether he was that nine year-old kid that Qui-Gon and Padme first met, or Palpatine's Sith apprentice for over twenty years. He was one and the same. Using morality to sub-categorize a fictional character strikes me as amateur hour.

And by the way, NO ONE deserved to be left on a lava bank with missing limbs in order to slowly burn to death. That is just pure cruelty, even for a Sith Lord. If Obi-wan wanted Anakin dead, he should have swiftly killed the latter when he had the chance.

 

If I weren't thinking straight (as Obi-Wan probably wasn't), I wouldn't think Anakin/Vader, whatever, was left to die a slow death.

I'd think he had just seconds left (and spared having to issue the final blow, give those few seconds to Padme).

 

Could you please stop flying off the handle everytime someone in here dares to have a discussion about, you know, the movies? TIA.

Meanwhile, for those of us who enjoy having different interpretations instead of being spoon-fed everything, my interpretation is this: Anakin obviously thinks he can make the jump and strike down Obi-Wan. Anakin was wrong. Obi-Wan disarmed Anakin and would have been just as satisfied with killing him as he was by severing those limbs.

Trying to kill someone in combat is one thing, but killing a completely helpless foe is seen by many as cold blooded (Anakin himself says something along those lines after he had disarmed Tyranus). So once Anakin was completely helpless, Obi-Wan couldn't bring himself to kill him on the spot. He certainly felt no need to help him, but didn't feel it would be right to do the killing himself.

 

Correcting someone's incorrect statement is not "flying off the handle."

 

What did I say that was incorrect? The book does contradict the film, especially in this case. In the film, there's never a hint that Palpatine is approaching as Obi-Wan is looking down at Anakin, nor does Obi-Wan ever give any indication that he's seen him arrive. The fact that he pauses to put his hand on Padmé's shoulder instead of getting out of there as quickly as possible is pretty strong evidence of that.

Not to mention the fact that the book makes no sense in this case. If Obi-Wan saw Palpatine coming, wouldn't it make sense to kill Anakin rather than condemn him to serve this man and be unleashed as a horrifying monster upon the galaxy? And Palpatine arriving should in no way prevent Obi-Wan from taking 0.1 seconds to kill Anakin.

I discount the ROTS novel because it has some very serious contradictions with the film so I don't let it dictate my perception of the series. It is clearly one man (Stover's) interpretation of the films. And I don't think his interpretation is any more valid than mine so I don't take his word as law.

 

How about if it was Lucas that agreed to part of the factors behind Obi-Wan's decision being "sensing Palpatine's approach"

http://boards.theforce.net/threads/...scussion-thread.5816889/page-68#post-25369475

What's in that book is there because Mr. Lucas wanted it to be there. What's not in that book is not there because Mr. Lucas wanted it gone.

 

Don't worry about it. It's just Beezer attempting to start yet another canon debate. It seems that he takes every opportunity to argue with everything I write here.

 

Still doesn't really matter to me.

I'm a big proponent of Death of the Author. I think it's fine to look at the author's words in order to try to further understand a work. But I don't think the author is the be-all-end-all in terms of how you interpret a work. Why? Well, it's kind of explained by the very name of the trope. In 100 years, George Lucas will be dead. Realistically, how many people who watch these films are going to have access to all his interviews or even read the book? Not many, I would wager. Even today, how many of those who saw the film read the book? Again, a small minority.

I think any interpretation -- as long as it is supported by the film in terms of evidence -- is valid. Including an interpretation drawn from the EU. Sometimes, I like the way a particular author or poster interprets something and thus I incorporate it into my view of the Saga. But I don't think that an EU author's view (or even Lucas') is more legitimate than my own. A piece of art stands on its own.

Otherwise, it would be easy for an author to dismiss reader opinions simply by stating that that is not what they intended their book to be about. For example, Twilight is often condemned because it portrays Bella and Edward's relationship as abusive. Meyer, the author, might contend that she didn't write the relationship as abusive but I don't think that in any way alters the fact that it can be (and is) seen as such by many people.

 

So, the 'anecdote' for Anakin's the-plot-demands-it driven stupidity and Obi-Wan's illogical the-plot-demands-it fighting ethics (I won't call it 'cruelty') is.......the Dual-Persona* get-out-of-jail-free Theory? Ugh. (a theory which btw, should only exist in that SW universe where Vader literally killed Annikin)

*Anakin and Darth Vader are two completely different persons

 

I think Obiwan convinced himself that he'd done enough to kill Anakin so that he didn't have to do the thing that he couldn't do, finish the job for certain.

 

Well if he killed him then there goes the OT...

 

Obi-Wan caused a lot of trouble by not cutting his (bald) head off.

 

Well, in his defense, he didn't really think Vader would survive the amputations and burning.

 

Yes, very true, very true.