Saga The Twin Suns: What does it mean, and what "did" it mean?

One of the most iconic images, and probably the most iconic recurring image, in the saga is the Twin Suns of Tatooine. It's also one of the most potentially meaningful.

Watching the saga as a whole, it's easy to get guess their basisc symbolic purpose; they are two linked celestial bodies revolving around the same planet, much the same way the saga tells the story of two protagonists linked by blood and by fate, both coming from be same planet.

But it occured to me that this likely has not always been the driving idea. Our first encounter with the Suns is A New Hope, obviously, and during the making of that film, as it's widely known, George Lucas had not yet determined the identity of Luke's father, or indeed that the saga as a whole would come to be just as much Abakins story as it was Luke's. So what, then, did the Twin Suns symbolize in 1977? Was it merely a powerful image for Luke to gaze off into as the force theme swells in the background, or was it something more? Would like to hear anyone else's thoughts on this.

 

Hope for a better future than just being on Tatooine for the rest of his life.

 

Twin destinies?

 

tatoo 1 and 2.

 

two suns made it other worldly.
that's about it.

 

Then I think Luke was looking and hoping for a better future.

Of course, like the twin suns lots of things come in two's in the Saga:

• Skywalker twins - Luke and Leia
• Sith- Sidious and Maul; Sidious and Dooku; and finally Sidious and Vader
• Jedi in the OT- Obi-Wan and Yoda
• The droids- C-3PO and R2-D2

 

A split path

We who live in the real world have one star we orbit. We don't have other planets we can fly off to and explore a whole galaxy

Luke is at that point more than ever contemplating his future. Does he follow one sun, stay on Tatooine and live as he has? Or does he take to the other sun and go out to pursue his dreams of finding a greater purpose?

 

I think it is linked to the Son of Suns which is never explored or explained unfortunately.

 

It was originally just a way for Lucas to distinguish "this is space" I think.

But looking at it now, I kinda take from it, Luke's about to meet his father and his destiny. The son of suns.

 

I've analyzed some of the symbolism here before, but I'll repeat myself:

I'd say it means Lucas is a fan of Richard Wagner's operas.

*coughsiegmundsieglindecough*

Or, to put it in a word:

Incest.

 

Well, alright then.

 

Suns rotate about planets?

 

This might be my derpiest moment.

 

Luke is looking away to the future, the horizon. He wants adventure and something beyond a meager existence in a backwater hell, but he is torn between desire and duty.

 

Yeah, I agree. Two suns - it's a planet other than Earth. The 'Son of Suns' prophecy was included after it was established that Tatooine (previously named Utapau) would have two suns, and I don't really think there was much to this prophecy other than to establish an epic, mythical tone from the get-go.
(Of course, GL eventually went with the more fairytale-style of preamble, with 'A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...', intended to evoke 'Once upon a time...')

It's much like the references in the drafts and film of SW/ANH to the 'Clone Wars' - I doubt GL thought much about the specific details of the clones and their part in this past conflict, it was just a spacey-sounding name.

 

Ah, then it's sort of like the issue of who Darth Vader was originally "meant" to be. Was his name meant to echo the words "Dark Father"... or did GL just name him after a classmate from high school in Modesto?

Things like that usually don't mean anything at first, until the writer picks up on the underlying symbolism in his or her story... and then suddenly they do mean something.

 

Well...

The Darth Vader issue has been debated ad nauseam, but once again, the name was not originally meant to echo 'Dark Father', and I doubt very much that this thoroughly coincidental connection had the slightest impact upon GL's later decision to create 'Father Vader'.

Yes, 'Vader' is the Dutch translation for father, but it's pronounced 'Vah-der', not 'Vay-der', and, far more importantly, the name 'Darth Vader' was originally given to an Imperial officer who would provide the basis for Tarkin. If the Sith Knight Prince Valorum of the Rough/First Draft bore the name 'Darth Vader', there might be a basis for connecting the name to the plot twist, but he didn't. Name aside, the original character to bear the name 'Darth Vader' shares no further DNA with the one we're familiar with, in any form.

It's purely a coincidence - GL did attend school with a 'Gary Vader', and given his original predilection for phonetic implications within character and location names (as opposed to the more literal connections he would adopt during his development of the PT), the simple fact of the matter is that 'Darth Vader' = Dark/Death Invader.

GL was wrestling with all manner of plot difficulties when he developed ESB, and the creation of Father Vader was the solution to virtually all of them. It eliminated a third wheel/Jedi in both the dark backstory he'd established for Darth Vader and a clumsy scene on the 'bog planet' involving Force ghosts in his sequel. It re-established a mortal father figure for Luke, now that Obi-Wan was dead, and brought back the theme of redemption for a Sith Lord, originally present in the rough/first draft - the combination of which allowed GL to develop the idea of a 'Dark Father', with which he could confront his personal issues with his own father, a man he never saw eye-to-eye with.
And it worked - brilliantly.

A linguistic coincidence had absolutely nothing to do with any of it.

 

^^^^^^^^This.

"IT HAS AWOKEN!!!!!"

 

I didn't see any special meaning behind the suns.

I simply see a planet with two suns.

I don't think everything has a symbol or special meaning in Star Wars.

 

Well, yes, Darth Vader was the name of an Imperial general in the 1974 rough draft. But as I've said before, it probably occurred to GL at some point (likely during the writing of ESB, but just possibly earlier) that this would be a spectacularly good name for a character who was, in fact, Luke Skywalker's father.

Which came first, the Sith Lord or the secret father? It's a chicken-or-egg question, I suppose.

As Freud said, "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."

The operative word being sometimes.

 

I think most of the deeper meaning was probably layered onto it retrospectively, but it's certainly laden now isn't it!?

 

No, it isn't - the Sith Lord came first, and he acquired the name 'Darth Vader' in Draft Two, in which Luke Starkiller's father is present, alive and well, and survives the film (he appears at the very end). What isn't there, however, is the redemption arc for this Sith Lord, he's just a villain, plain and simple.

I'd say that GL switched names because it's a harsh, villainous-sounding name for a harsh, villainous character.

 

No redemption arc? That's certainly possible. Of course, it's hard to say for certain, since GL hadn't written scripts for the next two films back in 1975.

"But you know this, don't you, Gandalf?"

Still, there is that tantalizing comment, also from 1975, when GL described the third "book" in the series to Alan Dean Foster as "the saga of the Skywalker family." That description applies pretty well to ROTJ as it now stands.

 

Also, it's worth remembering that the "Sith Lord" in the 1974 rough draft is a far cry from the irredeemably evil, deformed, backstabbing monsters later signified by that term. Prince Valorum, the "Black Knight of the Sith," is a good guy who just happens to be working for the wrong masters--and of course he switches sides by the end of the film.

Plus, at that point, neither the Sith or the Jedi had anything resembling Force powers... besides what we might call (as Frank Herbert put it) prescience.

 

Precisely - the Sith Knight Prince Valorum of the first/rough draft was simply a noble man fighting for the wrong side who eventually chose to do the right thing (a straight adaptation of General Tadokoro in The Hidden Fortress). There were other Sith Knights in this draft, but we don't know much about them.

However, from Draft Two onwards, the Sith Lords took on a far more sinister aspect, there were no such honourable defections, and it's in this draft that Sith Lord #1 was given the name Darth Vader - which, apart from the living presence of the hero's father in the story, would suggest that any connection between the names 'Vader' and 'Father' wasn't on GL's radar at all. Notes which date to the period between Drafts Two and Three state that the Sith Lords are monstrous beneath their masks - "like Linda Blair in The Exorcist".
While Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader would eventually bear hideous deformities due to wounds, it's extremely unlikely that GL was considering in 1974/1975 that such an orc-like creature had any sort of familial connection to the hero - particularly considering that the hero's father was still alive in the drafts (Rough/First/Second) up to that point, anyway.

He might have originally gotten the name from a 'Gary Vader' who attended his high school in Modesto, or maybe not, but it's still just a coincidence that 'Vader' translates to 'Father' in Dutch. The most likely connection in terms of any sort of deeper linguistic symbolism is much simpler - the word 'invader'.