PT Obi-Wan dismembering Anakin in RotS, Compassion?

It was an odd choice for ROTJ - but the ROTS junior novel does a good job of showing how Obi-Wan might have come to think in those terms.

 

The argument "Obi-Wan couldn't do it" to me fails for one very important reason.
Obi-Wan already did do it. Obi-Wan "killed" Anakin. He inflicted a fatal wound, one that he knew would kill Anakin unless someone else interfered. So Obi-Wan knew that Anakin would die and he would die because of what he, Obi-Wan did.
So Obi-wan has already showed that he was willing and able to kill Anakin. What he somehow is not able to do is to give Anakin a quick death. He instead chooses to give Anakin a slow and very painful one.
And it sort of seems that Obi-Wan wants Anakin to suffer .
Of course the real reason is that Anakin can't die yet.

Ex. if person A poisons person B with a deadly poison that WILL kill the other person in about five hours but it will be extremely painful. If person A then simply shoots the poisoned person to put them out of their misery, is it really a "mercy killing"?
Person B was dying because of what person A did so the shooting isn't really "killing" the other person, it just ends their suffering quicker.

Obi-Wan had time to weigh the situation, he cautioned Anakin to jump towards him. I think Obi-Wan is a skilled enough swordsman that he could have killed Anakin directly when Anakin jumped over him. Instead he choose to dismember him.
Even in normal circumstances, dismembering a person will almost certainly kill them unless they get help. Where they were, death is even more certain. So Obi-Wan killing Anakin directly or dismembering him would amount to the same thing, a dead Anakin. The only difference is that one would be quick and relatively painless, the other much less so.

The first time I saw RotS this really bugged me as I felt it was totally out of character for Obi-Wan to be this cruel.
I think it could have worked better he had disarmed Anakin and asked that he yield. But Anakin won't hear it and jumps away but lands on a ledge that breaks and Anakin falls down, and there is fire and Obi-wan turns away.
Plus the "I have the high ground" never made much sense. Anakin could have jumped ashore some ways away from Obi-Wan and walked up to him and the fight would have gone on.
I could see this as a taunt, that Obi-Wan wants to goad Anakin into making a foolish move so that he can end the fight.

Bye for now.
Blackboard Monitor

 

It follows the Jedi and Sith philosophies that when you turn to the dark side, you stop being that person. Dooku and Palpatine only use their birth names as part of their disguise and deception. Palpatine only refers to Anakin as Vader in the films from that point on. Note in the OT, Obi-wan now addresses him by his Sith name and Vader himself states that his real name no longer matters, while Luke says that it is his true self. Vader represents the darker nature of Anakin given form. It is a new identity that he has forged.

It's the same way that Superman and Batman have referred to their dual identities as separate people.

 

I think with the "Obi-Wan couldn't do it" argument it would be more accurate to say "Obi-Wan couldn't finish it." Yeah he did do it but he didn't DO it ... he inflicted the fatal wound but Anakin was not yet dead. To me, the way Obi-Wan walked away indicated that he just couldn't stand the situation anymore. Obi-Wan didn't want to him to suffer, but he didn't want to do anything more to him either. He was done, he mentally and emotionally couldn't bring himself to do one more thing. He just wanted to leave. At least that's how I interpreted the argument. I'm still not sure I agree with it though, as the idea of letting Anakin suffer for longer still seems ... I don't know, out of character. I guess I'm just arguing out of incredulity? I hope not.

Also I once read (in this thread? I don't remember) that because the fight was over but Anakin was not going to make a last-minute conversion, there was nothing left to do but leave Anakin alone to make his peace and to leave Anakin's fate to the will of the Force. I'm not sure what to make of those ideas. I don't know if Obi-Wan considered the idea that the Force would will Anakin to survive and come back for revenge, but I thought he would try to prevent that if he knew?

Maybe Obi-Wan just didn't know what to believe anymore (such as with that "chosen one" deal).

Heh, yeah I'm confused but I appreciate everyone trying to make sense of this issue.

Hmm, I'm not sure about that? All people are multifaceted. Just because they give a different name to each facet doesn't mean they are different people, it just means there are different sides to every person.We put on different faces for different roles, sometimes extremely different ones, such as our work life or home life, but we're still the same person.

I think that Palpatine, by the way, gives Vader a new name as a way to control him, to convince him he's a different person, "forget that Anakin guy he's wrong, you're Vader now." Vader still has Anakin's memories, and Palpatine is still aware of, plans, and is responsible for the things he does as Darth Sidious.

The only exception I can think of is a mental illness, dissociative identity disorder ... is this what people get when they turn to the dark side? Is Darth [X] a dark-sided person's "alter?"

 

You're misunderstanding dual identities. A dual identities is where you have two identities and in certain bits of lore, the character sees themselves as someone else. In classic Superman lore, Kal-El is the real person and Clark Kent is a disguise. However, Kal-El refers to Clark as a separate person and is even jealous of him while as Clark, he is envious of Superman. Batman since 1992, as referred to Bruce Wayne as the mask and Batman as the real face. And that Bruce Wayne died a long time ago and that he's been Batman since then, even before he knew that was what he was going to become. Even once saying in "Batman Beyond" that he knew he wasn't crazy because if he was, the voices in his head wouldn't call him Bruce, but would call him Batman instead.

In "Star Wars", it is similar. That is why Yoda says that the boy that Obi-wan trained is gone, consumed by Darth Vader. Vader is what is left. Physically he is Anakin Skywalker, but mentally, he is Darth Vader.

 

Obi-Wan knew he probably granted Anakin a slow and painful death, but it wasn't out of anger or spite. He left because he no longer wanted to be in a situation where he had to fight with his padawan, his friend, his brother.

For me, Obi-Wan telling Anakin not to jump is him being sincere, not goading so he could dismember his 'brother'. He saw the circumstances, he knew he had won. He was trying to be a good Jedi, trying to end the conflict without anymore blood shed.

Perhaps, this was Obi-Wan testing whether Anakin had completely turned or whether he would listen to reason to try to stop the conflict.

 

Hey, that's great, but imo Jedi and Sith philosophies are delusional on this matter.

For the Sith, the expressed purpose of the new identity is self-delusion. For the Jedi, it's a matter of convenience.

I'd say he has forged a delusion for himself.

No one is misunderstanding anything, they simply disagree with the idea.

Identity is a conceit of the mind; dual identities are a particularly delusional conceit imo, especially for Vader.

Your Batman/Superman comparison isn't a particularly good one. Batman and Superman have disguises and secret identities which are necessary and practical, they're leading double lives. Vader does not have a disguise or a secret identity, he's not leading a double life.

Batman, Superman, Bruce Wayne, Clark Kent, Kal-El, Darth Vader, Anakin Skywalker; these are just names and don't really matter. Regardless of what name they go by, the person is the person.

Now, the dual identity idea is certainly part of many stories, but that doesn't mean they resemble reality or are otherwise agreeable or even enjoyable (for me, sometimes they can be fun). In the instance of Anakin Skywalker, the idea of (his) dual identity doesn't even resemble the reality of the Star Wars galaxy, imo.

 

Why are they delusional?

Actually, they do matter. Your identity is who you are. When one chooses another identity, they can effectively become that person. In the case of Superman and Batman, it is more than just leading two lives. It is who they view themselves as and how they define who they are. The dual identities represent both aspects of themselves. The strong, just and noble person who goes out to fight the good fight while wearing a fancy costume. The other represents all their failings and flaws. The parts of themselves that has trouble reconciling with their other side. For Batman, he literally had someone cut out Batman in order to be free of it. Free of all the emotional and mental guards built up over time, so that Bruce Wayne could kill what he had become and then give new life to it.

In Anakin's case, the good man died when he burned up on Mustafar. The fire burned away who he was and left this twisted and evil individual that was left. He is a monster now. A thing. Luke comes in and starts to resurrect Anakin, but proving that the good man was still there underneath all that evil and hate. Vader is the one who dies now and Anakin is the one who is transformed into a Force ghost.

 

Superman and Batman are doing that to protect themselves and their loved ones. Anakin was the same person with a different name. Also Obi-Wan refers to him by his name several times on Mustafar.

Except instead of a violent murderous maniac he has now become..a violent murderous maniac?...wait a minute..

So do all burn victims become "monsters" or is this just a one time thing?

 

Superman and Batman moved beyond just protecting themselves. They truly saw themselves as different people. Anakin saw himself as Vader and Obi-wan is refusing to accept that Anakin is gone until he's maimed him. That's why he speaks to him in the past tense while he's burning up.

 

Superman and Batman pretended to be different people to protect themselves and their loved ones. Obviously an identity isn't secret if act the exact same way in your alter ego. Anakin seems to try and forget about his past to get over the pain of losing Padme. Obi-Wan seems to do so to deal with his massive failure in training Anakin and coping with Anakin's betrayal. Oh yeah and getting Luke to kill Anakin. Luke, the only non-broken person in the triad here, is the only one who accepts the reality that Vader and Anakin are the same person.

 

I am not an expert but it does seem to me you could make a fairly convincing case for Vader being psychotic, literally. The stress of the whole prophecy deal, his worry about Padme specifically and more general stress/PTSD from the years of near constant warfare accumulating all piled onto a guy who was not particularly stable in the first place and had Darth Sidious poking around his thought processes and it's not inconceivable he had some sort of breakdown between Anakin and Vader - not literally being two different people but genuinely seeing them as two different identities/lives. It doesn't make an awful lot of sense to anyone who applies rational thinking to the situation but he would of course be irrational by definition.

 

That was the vibe I got whenever he said "Anakin is dead" or even "I killed Anakin" in the EU.

 

I wouldn't exactly call that pretending.

Yoda also does the same thing with Vader and Palpatine.

 

So according to Yoda and Obi-Wan, they have the option of saying "We failed, we made some horrible mistakes and decisions that led to the destruction of the Jedi," they can blame it on Anakin "transforming" into Vader. Convenient.

That's certainly and interesting interpretation of Batman. But you do know that originally Bruce Wayne become Batman to bring justice to Gotham right? That's why he has to pretend that he's not Batman during the day...so that those criminals don't come to his house and kill him.

 

One might also read into it that his other name reminds him of everything he's lost.

 

He just left him to deal with the consequences of his own decisions

 

But how have Obi-Wan "won" by jumping ashore? He is on solid ground and a bit higher up than Anakin. So what? Earlier in the fight they are in a room with a table. Had Obi-Wan jumped on the table, would that mean he had won? I don't think so.

As I said above, Anakin could have jumped ashore some ways away from Obi-Wan, walked up to him and the fight would have gone on.
For that matter, Obi-Wan's job was to stop Anakin, to kill him. Say Anakin jumps ashore and then walks away to his ship and leaves. Would that be a win for Obi-Wan? No. Obi-Wan's task is to kill Anakin or at least make him submit. Obi-Wan knows Anakin quite well, knows his temper and by now he would have seen how far gone Anakin is. Did he really expect Anakin to just immediately give up just because he is higher up? I doubt it.

Second, Obi-Wan makes two slashing cuts when Anakin jumps over him. Either he tried to kill him but failed or he deliberately dismembered Anakin. I think Obi-Wan is a skilled enough swordsman that if he had wanted to kill Anakin directly at that point, he could have.
So he choose to dismember Anakin, a slow painful death. If Obi-Wan wanted the whole thing over with, he could have killed Anakin directly when Anakin jumped over him
It would end the fight and give Anakin a quick death instead of a slow, horrible one.
But of course he couldn't do that as then the OT wouldn't work so he instead does this. Being cruel for no apparent reason.

Third, Obi-Wan saw Anakin trying to choke Padme and he knows how strong Anakin's feelings for her is. And he tried to talk with Anakin after that but that went nowhere. I think Obi-Wan knows that Anakin is way passed the point of no return. So goading him, knowing that such comments would enrage Anakin, I think it likely that Obi-Wan did exactly that.

@Estelita

But as I said above, Obi-Wan could have killed Anakin directly when he jumped over him.
If he deliberately choose to dismember instead of a quick kill, then he actively choose a slow, painful death over a quick one. Obi-Wan had a little time to asses the situation, he could suspect what Anakin would do and prepare for it. Again, I think he is skilled enough with a blade that if he wanted to kill Anakin directly, he could have done exactly that.

So I can't buy the "He couldn't bring himself to do it". He choose a slow, horrible death over a quick one, but he still "killed" Anakin. Anakin's blood is on his hands, plus the knowledge that he gave Anakin a really painful death. How is that easier to live with than a swift kill?
Obi-Wan had killed before, he was trained to fight and kill if need be.
Yes he is torn and very unhappy about the situation. But he showed, at least to me, that he is willing and able to kill Anakin. And in a very slow and painful way as well.
Even when Vader killed people, it was still quite quick.

In closing, Anakin has to live and get burned in order for the OT to work so the duel had to work within those limitations. But still I think it could have been handled better than what it was. And not make Obi-Wan seem so out of character cruel.

Bye for now.
Mr "Insert-Name-Here."

 

Obi-Wan is generally a pretty laid back dude even by Jedi standards but he has limits and Anakin just pushed him beyond those with everything that had happened. The fight wasn't over just because Obi-Wan was standing a little bit higher up than Anakin, it was over because the high ground he happened to be on was not boiling hot lava on three sides. Anakin can't go backwards (sizzle!), he could try going sideways still on the platform thingy but every step to either side he takes Obi will match. He has to come forwards, uphill, and against Obi-Wan that's a very bad tactic. Obi-Wan telling him 'Don't try it!' was pretty much the final warning that if he DID try it, Obi-Wan wasn't going to hold off, and he didn't. Maybe he was being cruel to dismember Anakin but to him his friend has done unspeakably evil things, it wouldn't seem all that disproportionate in the heat of the moment to deliver evil unto evil. There is also the fact that if Anakin wasn't so incredibly powerful and Sidious hadn't had some sort of premonition of his peril and turned up so quickly he WOULD have died pretty fast anyway. It took Anakin's own power, the suit, and Sidious using a bunch of Sith powers and the Vader suit just to keep him alive.

 

And...there was a simple solution; have Anakin during the fight fall (as you said possibly after he had been disarmed by Obi-Wan). The burning itself could lead to the loss of limbs and the destruction of Anakin's repiratory abilities - there was no requirement for him to have his limbs amputated in the fight. Obi-Wan's speech could have come earlier in the battle, as I'm assuming that is why we had that 'immolation scene'.(actually misnamed, immolation is the taking of one's own life...)

There were so many other ways that various events in the PT could have taken place...what is actually put on screen seems, over and over, to have been among the weakest solutions.

This in particular...especially when you re-watch the scene. In the novel it has Obi-Wan jumping onto a cliff edge, in the movies he is standing on a hillock...not even that, it's like a barely prominent mound.

 

Vimes, how else could we explain Obi-Wan's actions? You seem to think he coldly just decided to make Anakin suffer. Granted a small bit of him probably did want this evil SOB to suffer (let's not forget, as I had apparently, exactly what this writing BBQ'd worm had done hours earlier.) The rest of us seem to be under the mindset that Obi-Wan couldn't bring himself to kill Anakin. He couldn't let go of his attachment. To him, that was the little Tatooine boy he met all those years ago. He was probably remembering how they first met, shaking hands in front of Qui-Gon and Anakin saying, "You're a Jedi, too? Pleased to meet you!"

Yes, Obi-Wan did fail his mission, but to be fair he had no idea Sidious would be coming so fast, much less that Sidious had the powers and capability of saving his burnt-to-hell apprentice. So Obi-Wan is either
(1) A cruel man who wanted to see his former best friend (who just got done killing Jedi and choking his wife) suffer a slow, painful death.

(2) A conflicted Jedi.

(3) A stupid person who forgot how to make a swift killing blow on opponents coming in from above.

 

And neither scenario fits with what happens on Mustafar. In no point of time does Anakin ask for Obi-Wan to end his suffering nor does he indicate that he desires a quick end to his misery – quite the opposite, in fact.

Have you ever been to a ward for terminally ill patients? I have, quite often, as part of my job, and having spoken with many patients I can say there are essentially two types: those who find that the pain and helplessness is too much, who has accepted that they will die and see no reason to prolong the inevitably and just want a quick end to their life. And there are those whom, despite the agony they suffer, wants to cling to life for as long as possible – some because they fear death, some because they just don’t want their life to end, and some because they hope, until the very end, that they would somehow overcome their illness or a cure can be found.

As far as I understand your argument, then killing off all the patients on such a ward is the right thing to do – regardless of the desires of the patients – because you judge that their agony is too great and their quality of life until the point of death is too low that what is left of their lives are not worth living. Personally, I find that to be a dangerous line of thought as it takes us to a place were others get to decide when your pain is too much and whatever time remains of your life is not worth living.

IMO, taking another person’s life against their will – no matter how great their suffering and no matter how short amount of time it is estimated that they have left – is murder. And therefore killing Anakin, who clearly desired to live, would not be mercy killing – especially considering that even though Anakin’s injuries were fatal if untreated, he did manage to survive because his desire for life kept him alive long enough to get help.

Actually, the injuries Obi-Wan inflicted on Anakin are not deadly. There are no vital organs in the lower limbs and the wounds were cauterized so there was no danger of bleeding to death.

You argument only holds true if you think that in those 20 seconds from when Obi-Wan takes the high ground to when Anakin jumps at him, he – regardless of the fact that in a very short amount of time he has barely survived being shot down by his own troops, seen the Republic he has served faithfully for most of his life become a dictatorship and label him a traitor, seen his fellow Jedi massacred, seen the person he cares for most become a twisted being capable of killing small children in cold blood and choke his pregnant wife, and he has been locked in mortal combat in an extremely hostile environment with that person for some time – coolly makes the decision that: when Anakin attacks (and somehow he knows that Anakin will come at him in just the perfect angle) he will cut off his limbs in such a way that when Anakin falls to the ground he will slide down just far enough to catch fire, and once the fire has stopped and he is completely helpless and in agony, he will leave him behind to die a slow, painful death.


As I have argued with you before, when faced with a situation similar to Obi-Wan’s, the human brain simply isn’t capable of making decisions based on reviewing, analyzing and calculating all possible scenarios and their potential impacts/consequences, and therefore the brain can’t make rational, logical decisions and whatever action taken is purely down to instincts.

 

So I thought about that for a little while and I have one possibility: assuming that Obi-Wan did exactly as intended and deliberately avoided killing Anakin at that moment, I think maybe it's because he wanted Anakin alive for a while longer so he can tell him stuff (you were the chosen one, what gives?, etc.), but his plan was absolutely to tell Anakin off first and then finish him off afterward. But after all that was said, Obi-Wan could no longer finish it. For whatever reason, he changed his mind. You could say he was "conflicted." Maybe he wished he did kill Anakin beforehand, he regretted not doing it but now it's too late because he can't bring himself to.

Yes he was trained to kill if necessary, yes he was willing and able to kill Anakin. But I guess it just looked to me, the way he walked away, that something changed in him. He just couldn't stand the situation anymore, he was done with it.

I say this because I've had experiences where I was completely ready and able to do something difficult, but eventually I became too emotionally exhausted to go on. I don't know how well this applies to Obi-Wan's case though, but if it's true then I can empathize.

That's the best explanation I can think of right now but I'm conflicted myself about how accurate or believable my explanation is, sorry.