Saga The Writing of TESB

Correct about Lando. When Lando frees them, he doesn't say right away that they're going to race to Slave I. That's more his fault for not saying so as soon as the Stormtroopers were escorted away, than it is for Chewie flipping his lid. Han had said that it isn't wise to anger a Wookiee in the previous film. It's Threepio who has to act as the voice of reason.

 

But how long does it take to Force push a delimbed person into some lava?

 

I always assumed Obi Wan left Anakin because he just couldn't bring himself to kill him. Which, I understand, is still messed up. Because it's way crueler to leave him suffering like that. But that's always how I read the scene.

 

That's how I read it too. It's a cruel act, but I don't think Obi-Wan was trying to be cruel or have Anakin suffer. I think he just reached his breaking point and couldn't take it anymore. After everything he went through, I can't fault him for that.

 

I just want to be clear, I didn't think Obi Wan was deliberately being cruel. I just think he was conflicted about killing Anakin, and wasn't really thinking clearly.

 

Unless you're, say, Darth Vader ( or Set Harth ). But there's always the Force as an option.

 

I like what you said about TESB there.

Also, I think you're right in your general stance. Not that it's necessary to invoke such details, but there are schools of religious thought which say, as far as monotheisms go, that all sins are equal in the eyes of God.

Anyone, therefore, attempting to parcel special blame onto Anakin is really committing a sin of their own, and failing to understand the nature of sin / corruption at its root.

I like the rationalization: "Well, he's a Sith Lord, and Sith Lords tend to be evil, so..." They might be avatars of power / power-crazed, but if power is evil, then anyone attempting to gain or exert just an ounce of it over another is equally bad. Like Leia delighting in, and Chewie strangling, Lando.

And yes, all those failures you listed earlier. They're pretty damning, I'd say. Anakin has his own life circumstances that drive him to act as he does. And everyone else shares some of the responsibility in bringing about the stagnation and collapse of the Republic, even in making Anakin into the person he becomes. As Lucas once said, it's "a complex cosmic equation", with crude markers like "good" and "evil" being just the simplest manifestations of moral outrage to grasp onto.

As you say, the central flaw seems to be humanity's general inability or unwillingness to regard itself as being capable of screwing up or of having terribly narrow focus. We don't easily admit to flaw and weakness. It's more in our nature, I think, to erect a hierarchy and say, "At least I'm not as bad as X or Y". Lucas even reflects this quite subtly in the PT with Jar Jar scrapping with a pit droid in Watto's shop and having Jar Jar calling the droid "dumb". Everyone wants to be on the ladder of beauty and success and feel they're moving upwards. And that their actions and desires are internally consistent with respect to each other and the wider universe.

Every belief Anakin has comes from his social environment(s). And all of humanity is, for the time being, still in pretty much the same boat, in my opinion.

Good posts, DRush.

 

The equation of different sins is not the point.

The point is can Anakin be forgiven?

 

I would also find it very ironic if the "all sins being equal" was indeed the point DRush was trying to make. Because, to me, that seems more "black and white" than the stances of most of the other people in this thread. Just sayin'.

 

I dunno. I don't, either.

I was just putting that out there.

Well, lying is doing murder to the truth. And it's a blot on your soul.

From a certain point of view.

True. It adds a wider perspective.

Anakin's crimes remain what they are, but they're not committed in isolation.

His descent, like the Republic's, does not happen in a vacuum.

The ease with which most people can apparently view his deeds as worse makes it important -- in my opinion -- to add a different perspective.

I am not saying the other way of looking at Anakin is wrong. But there are many forms of wrong-doing and suffering. Anakin himself is another pawn in the Emperor's power games and as much a product of Jedi hebetude and arrogance as anything else.

There does, at times, need to be a fresh way of looking at everything, including our most cherished and apparently inviolable beliefs about good and evil.

Not black and white. Just black.

Or white.

I think DRush was also warning about the dangers of scapegoating. It's easier to want to point the finger and say, "Look! He's the bad guy!" rather than be willing to reach a more sobering conclusion about the interconnectedness of all people and things.

 

It's more than Anakin's evil, so there. It comes down to the fact that Anakin made choices in his life that had dire consequences compared to what Chewie did. Anakin made a conscious choice to do what he did, knowing full well that it was wrong and yet still did it anyway. He knew that he was not supposed to kill the Tusken Raiders, he even says so to Padme.

ANAKIN: "I'm a Jedi. I know I'm better than this."

This continued with each and every action that he took afterwards. The end result of those choices is that he became evil, that he caused his wife's death and was physically damaged as a result. He is an example of consequences for your actions. Lucas doesn't subscribe to the notion that a lesser sin is equal to a greater sin. He subscribes to the fact that if you choose to commit evil acts, to think negatively, to behave negatively, then the end result is that you will become lost. But in the end, if you change deep down, then you can be saved even if you can never make up for your sins.

 

It's the mystery of evil, and we won't solve it this thread.

There is the mystery of love, too. Maybe it's even more mysterious; deeper magic from before the dawn of time.

 

I don't think evil is as big a mystery as love.

 

Committing a sin? How so, when such concepts as good and evil are simple manifestations of moral outrage. To sin is to do evil, but how could we be if no such framework exists. And...how could Lucas be telling us a story of how a 'good' person fell to the darkside, fell to 'evil' without the framework of that moral outrage to hang the story from. But Lucas even gives those who are evil hideous forms; yellow eyes, greying and mangled complexions, shuffling around in capes of black. Seems to me the framework is very much in place.

And, what is this sin that we might be committing? Reason? Compassion? reason because we see that the actions are different in nature. The actions, not the person because;

..hasn't really been the argument here at all. Strawman much? It is that Anakin does the things he does, with calculation - knowing them to be wrong, knowing that the consequences (let alone the actions themselves) will be hideous. At the same time that he is calculating, he is calculating on the basis of a negative emotion. We can all react with regards to our emotions, and I am aware that other characters can as well, so that;

..not just Leia, but perhaps the audience as well is drawn to delight at Lando being throttled. That's the nature of the story-telling. This Lando guy has just betrayed Han Solo. Was Chewbacca strangling Lando knowing that doing so would allow Fett to get away with Solo? Yes it has consequences but...not in the same way that coldly butchering 'younglings' is consequential.

Is it right to strangle Lando? I suppose it depends upon what level of moral outrage one might note a sin. Can I understand it? Damn right I can. Can I understand going out and coldly committing murder of the defenceless? No. No I can't.

Perhaps that (that I can't understand Anakin's actions in ROTS, in the same way that I can Chewie's actions on Bespin) is what you are getting at? Are you suggesting that I, and others who have argued reasonably the distinction between Anakin's actions and those of other characters referenced here, are doing so from an inability to regard myself as capable of screwing up? In my own case that makes no sense. I know that I have and that I do. I am acutely aware of what I am capable of. But, that is beside the point. The points that have been made here, that you are addressing, say nothing about what individuals see in themselves and...I have to say this...there is a certain level of intellectual insult implied in such an argument - 'you don't get it because...'

 

But it can be more evil!

Wait, what?

that's how I read that scene too, I think it's more powerful that Obi-Wan leaves him. Not only is it a great visual, it's just like, "To hell with this, I can't take this anymore, I can't look at him anymore, I'm done". More exhaustion and being unable to deliver the killing blow because he simply can't process that it went this far, and he cares about Anakin, but he's also basically in shock about everything that happened. So he walks away. Anakin was going to die, Obi-Wan couldn't look at him anymore. But Anakin's hate made him powerful, etc...

 

The basic definition of the word "scapegoat" is "one that is made to bear the blame of others". A person can be disproportionately blamed for things they did do with no regard for the the sins of the multitude. Hence scapegoating.

True.

And I like what you said earlier in contrasting Chewie and Anakin:

Beautiful. And I thank for you for it.

The problem with Anakin's self-rebuke, as above, however, is that he is still labelling himself:

"I'm a person and my name..."

"I'm a Jedi...."

He is creating an archetypal image of goodness and wholeness to ring-fence himself within, which, ironically, apparently leads to violent inner turmoil and outer aggression.

Not everything in Star Wars, like life, is as straightforward as we may presume, imagine, or wish it to be.

If Lucas thinks that, then it surely applies to all the other characters as well.

It can't simply be one rule for Anakin and another for everyone else.

I don't, therefore, entirely disagree with what you're saying, but -- in my opinion -- it lacks nuance.

Sorry, are you talking about the villains, or Gungans, perhaps, and Kaminoans, and politicians, and Jedi?

Identifying "evil" by the way one dresses, or what one's complexion is, seems -- to me -- to be freighted with evil of its own.

The visual coding is also a lot more complex than you're giving the series credit for, in my opinion.

Lando was actually helping to free Leia and Chewie at that point and thwart the plans of Vader -- and he gets strangled for it. Conversely, neither the younglings that Anakin draws his lightsaber on, nor the separatist leaders, who have deliberately entered into a galactic civil war with the Republic for material gain, are necessarily defenceless, let alone innocent.

And the life circumstances of Anakin are critically important here. Lucas has crafted an allegory in which anyone in his position might well do exactly what he does. Of course, his actions aren't "right" in a normative moral sense, but that shouldn't absolve other characters of their part in his downfall, or the primitiveness of them following -- if only momentarily -- their own dark sides, whether in this part of the story or elsewhere.

Well, you're a better man than me, Gunga Din, because I am not "acutely aware" of what I am capable of. I think that's a gross simplification of the problem of human insularity, blindness, and apathy. If I were to rephrase it, what I am capable of does not necessarily bother me -- it's what I'm doing (or not doing) in the present moment that is of prime importance. We are puffed up with vanity and locked in our own mental prisons. The average person in their very averageness is no less poisonous than Anakin as Darth Vader. I think that's a new way of looking at morality which we're not really ready for yet. The pretensions and conceits of humanity are vast!

"You were banished because you were clumsy?"

^^ Says the guy who also leaves Anakin for dead.

We're not keen to really be honest with ourselves. We prefer to ignore and to cast aside.

 

So . . . you're using Lando's betrayal - an act that was born from his attempt to spare the people he governed from death and destruction - as excuse for Chewie "venting his frustrations". You call Chewie trying to strangle someone to death in a fit of anger as "venting his frustration"? You know what? Lando had a better excuse for betraying Han than Chewie did for strangling Lando, and Leia did for supporting Chewie's action. If Leia and Chewie had any brains or had managed to overcome their stupid emotions, they would have realized that Vader's presence on Bespin - something that would have never happened if Han had realized he was being followed by Boba Fett - had put Lando in a bad situation.

People haven't changed one bit. Many fans want to pretend that they're capable of seeing the moral ambiguity in all fictional characters, including those in the SW saga. But in the end, they can't do it characters who are openly regarded as "the good guys", because some childish part of them need to believe that "the good guys" are inherently good. And they need to harbor this belief because they want to believe that the average human being is inherently good.

 

'The Writing of ESB'? Talk about off-topic.

Cryogenic and DRush76 - don't go around telling people that they're incapable of recognising moral ambiguity or not being honest with themselves, just because their opinions don't fit snugly with your own.

Had enough of this psychoanalysing other fans and their opinions - and that's this thread locked.