PT Why did anakin skywalker stay on the dark-side after Padme died?

The only reason that Anakin joined the Emperor in the first place was because, whether or not Sidious/Palpatine was lying, he promised him that the darkside of the Force could save people's lives. Anakin had the Jedi arrest the traitorous Sith, he reported him to the Jedi, but in the end, succumbed because he was desperate to save padme from dying in childbirth, to luke and leia. He had premonitions, or visions, through dreams, that foresaw her dying from childbirth. If Vader was strong enough in the darkside, he could save her. Anakin became Vader before he got the iconic suit, it was a ceremonial name the emperor gave him.

Whether or not it was a story that the emperor made up to tell anakin, or he told him the truth, anakin joined and believed him and helped him betray the jedi and republic, and did bad things, to get powerful enough to save Padme. Yet, Padme died in episode 3. After that, anakin, now darth vader and a cyborg, became the emperor's 2nd in command, ruled the galaxy as a sith for over 20 years, had the empire do evil things, like Alderaan and the death star for instance, and the events of the original trilogy happened, until he eventually betrayed his master and saved his son.

Why did anakin stay with the empire/sith after Padme died? It doesn't make sense. He turns to the darkside for one specific goal, then, after that goal fails, he just stays in the evil state he was before. His original purpose for becoming evil was gone, and he failed at saving his wife, so why did he still serve as a sith for 20 years? It doesn't make any sense at all. Padme was gone, why not turn back to the light side, there's no point in saving her now.

An interesting what if, is, if Padme lived in episode 3, would he have still stood by the Emperor's side for another 20-30 years or so? Did her death drive him to madness? Or, could she have brought him back sooner than Luke did if she lived?

 

The way the novelization handles it makes it clearer why Anakin stayed dark.

A TV Troper summed it up as:

The novelization, when handling the scene where Vader's just been assembled on a slab, leaves out the Big "NO!" and adds a moment of Never My Fault before he realizes that it is his fault. Then he tries to call on the Force to kill Sidious - but he's lost so much of his power that he can only destroy droids and equipment, he can't even touch Sidious - and in the end he doesn't want to, because now this is all he has left. The same person who caused him to kill his wife, their unborn child, and thoroughly alienate everyone he ever thought of as a friend is now the only person who will understand, and forgive, and care. Anakin - or now, Darth Vader - will spend the rest of his life burning in self-hatred the way he burned on the shores of the river of lava. All alone, with himself.

 

It’s made pretty clear in ESB and RotJ that once a person gives himself over to the Dark side, there is no going back (with a few exceptions).

So the question is why returning from the Dark side is so exceptionally hard/nearly impossible, and I think that in Anakin’s case (and most other cases) it is a matter of self-hatred.

Self-hatred stems from the idea that you have to be perfect and that it is possible to be perfect, but since we are not perfect we can never live up to the ideal and so we reject ourselves and hate perhaps certain qualities in ourselves. It prevents us from accepting ourselves as we are. The way I see Anakin’s character, I think he harboured self-hatred for all of his life, but that it wasn’t until he turned to the Dark side that it became an all-dominating factor.

When someone who is not evil of nature commits deeds, such as slaughtering Jedi children, it will weigh so heavily on one’s consciousness that one has essentially two choices: 1) go mad with regret and grief, which can be a slow or a quick process, or 2) harden one’s heart and forsake the conditions of morality and autonomy by developing a notion that permits/justifies one’s actions and cling mindlessly to that.

Anakin’s justification for the atrocities he committed was saving Padmé (and to a lesser extend bringing peace to the Galaxy), and when she died he lost not only his conviction but also believed he had killed the love of his life and their unborn child, which lead to feelings of immense guilt, shame, anger, and bitterness – all of which increased his self-hatred to a point where he became incapable of acknowledging it because it would have driven him mad with guilt and grief. Therefore he shifted his self-hatred to a deep-seated hatred for other people (mainly the Jedi that survived Order 66) – especially the people who had been closest to him and who he blamed for his failings: Obi-Wan and Palpatine – and he found another conviction to replace the previous one: bringing order to the Galaxy.

So in my opinion it was Anakin’s (and many other Darksiders) self-hatred that kept him firmly rooted in the Dark side, and the only way to overcome it is by doing the hardest thing: forgiving yourself – and essential for doing that is acknowledging who you are and what you’ve done, and view yourself with acceptance and compassion. With Luke’s help, Anakin was able to do that and return to the light.

That is my two cents...

 

Did Anakin go mad with grief because padme died (lost the will to live), or because the emperor lied to him and he believed he was responsible for it? Was it out of guilt or sadness that he lost someone? Did guilt of being responsible for padme dying drive him to the darkside, or just sadness at losing Padme?

 

Fear of Padme's dying drove him to the dark side; her death and the grief/guilt kept him there.

 

I think his guilt drove him deeper into the Dark side. I think, that deep down he hated himself for killing the Jedi, but he could live with it because in his mind, saving Padmé justified his actions. When she died he could no longer justify the evil deeds he had committed and his guilt over killing innocent people – especially the idea that he had killed Padmé and child – caused his self-hatred to become so great that the only way he could deal with it without going mad was shifting all that hatred onto others.

 

It's interesting, how Padme lost the will to live due to the atrocities he committed, like against the Jedi, and she died of a broken heart. It definitely wasn't the best idea that Lucas could use, but it made some sense, that has happened to some people in real life. His force-choke isn't why padme died, it's because he did all those bad things and agreed to serve a traitor-the Emperor.

But, the reason that anakin force choked Padme was because he believed she betrayed him when Obi-wan sneaked off of the ship, he thought that she brought him there. And the Emperor lied to him, claiming that is why Padme died. But it wasn't. She died of a broken heart.

Yet, if obi wan never sneaked onto that ship, Vader never would've force choked her, therefore never believing the Emperor's lie that she died because of him and driving himself to madness and guilt and grief and being consumed in the darkside and a lust for power, for a very long time, the entire time of the original trilogy. He would have known the reason why she died- eventually, by losing the will to live, and never would have been driven to the darkside by guilt. And his role as a villian in the originals never would have happened. Ironically enough, it seems like Obi-wan is responsible for darth vader's 20+year long life of evil, not from a moral point of view, since he never supported his former friend and apprentice's evil deeds, kenobi remained a good guy, but from the perspective of the actions that the characters did and the consequences that they had, obi wan was totally responsible. Maybe anakin would have turned against the emperor much earlier.

 

Anakin was already lost to the Dark side by the time Padmé reached him on Mustafar, that's why she was unable to convince him go go with her and leave everything behind. Even if Obi-Wan hadn't been there, I still think it would only be a matter of time before Anakin would (unintentionally) hurt Padmé; they were on opposing sides (she held to democracy while he held to dictatorship) and Padmé makes it clear that she can't condone the things that he has done and the things he's planning to do, and sooner or later she would push him to far - and having given himself to the Dark side, Anakin would be unable to control his reaction.

As you say, the reason Padmé died was because she lost the will to live, so even if Anakin hadn't choked her it is likely she would still have died and Palpatine would simply make up another lie to increase Anakin's hatred.

The primary people responsible for Anakin's fall to the Dark side is Palpatine and Anakin.

 

I say blame the Force. It created Anakin.

/just have to join in the blame game

 

This does seem illogical, but when somebody is so far gone, they become illogical.

 

You’re right!

The Force also decided that for Anakin to fulfil his destiny and restore balance to the Force he first had to help destroy it completely...

 

I don't think Anakin was created by the Force as a weapon to destroy the sith and be the chosen, a supernatural agency (force), creating a messiah (anakin). I think that the emperor or his master used the darkside and midichlorians to create anakin, making him a creation of a darkside sith experiment. But I'm not sure.

 

Was Luke the only way that Anakin could be brought back to the light side?

 

"For once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny. Consume you it will, as it did Obi Wan's apprentice."

There really wasn't any turning back for Anakin, until he saw the Dark Side rejected in the name of love, rather than embraced for it(in which that love turned to jealousy).

Plus now the Dark Side is literally burned into him. Severely wounded and burned from his duel with Obi Wan, and his hatred towards him for it. And losing Padme and their child, and the guilt he felt for it. His humanity was pretty much stripped away.

 

Destroy it? What is "it"? Do you mean the Force? There was no destroying of the Force, nor is there any indication that such a thing could really be accomplished ( unless, perhaps, all life in the galaxy were to be killed off ). If "it" means the Jedi, he did not have to turn to the dark side and facilitate the eradication of the Jedi in order to fulfill the prophecy; that's just how things turned out. He could have chosen differently in the Chancellor's office.

 

Anakin was created to destroy the darkside of the Force. If there are no Sith, the darkside doesn't exist anymore. But the light side still exists. But that's only a theory. Anakin had a miraculous birth, that's for sure. Qui gon said he was conceived by midichlorians. Shmi skywalker said, "there was no father. I carried him, I gave birth, I cant explain what happened". But some fans speculate as to what happened-did the lightside of the Force create him as a messiah to destroy the darkside, or if the Sith (palpatine and/or plageius his master) used their power in the darkside to, quote Palpatine "influence the midichlorians around him to create life". George Lucas hasn't confirmed which theory is true.

An interesting thought: was his desire to save someone (like what happened to Luke), the only thing that could turn anakin away from the darkside? Here's what I don't get about the darkside. One minute, darth vader is trying to make Luke join the empire and become a sith, not too long later, he becomes good. I don't get how doing one action, such as Anakin saving someone close to him, made him a good guy, or more accurately, not on the darkside anymore, on the lightside, again.

 

From the 2nd movie: "Anger, fear, aggression- The Dark Side are they"
Destroying the Sith won't put an end to these- even if it might "bring the Force back into balance".

There's a theory that both ideas are true- yes, Anakin was created to destroy the Sith- but it was through the Sith's own attempt at "creating life" that he was born. The Force is, in effect, using the Sith's arrogance to have them create their own destroyer.

As to how Anakin ceased to be on the Dark Side- it might have to do with him realizing that Luke still believes in him- still loves him- and that's what made him sacrifice his own life to destroy Palpatine (in the novels, Palpatine's told him in the past that Force Lightning will disable the suit keeping him alive).
It's that self-sacrifice which is the core of being Jedi- as opposed to selfishness, which is strongly associated with being Sith (at least, as the Jedi teach it).

 

I think George Lucas left it open, as to Anakin's creation.

 

Yup. Even EU books that go into more detail and confirm Palpatine wasn't lying about Plagueis, and portray Plagueis as doing weird things around the date of Anakin's conception, still don't come out and say whether theory A, theory B, both, or neither, are true- wisely.

 

No one was created to destroy the dark side. No one can destroy the dark side without somehow destroying the Force itself. No one in canon ever said the dark side would or should be destroyed.

Untrue. The Sith and the dark side are not the same thing. One is a side of the Force; the other is a group of individuals. Removing these individuals does not somehow take a side of the Force away.

 

The darkside is only created because of how a person uses the Force. The force is a tool that can be used for good and evil.

 

Incorrect. The dark side is always there regardless of how anyone uses the Force. It was described by Lucas as an essential part of the Force.

 

Even places can be affiliated with one side of The Force:

"That cave- is strong with the Dark Side of the Force. A domain of evil it is."

Even if there were no force-users, there would still be The Force if there are living beings at all.

 

Good observation. It isn't the existence of the darkside itself that's evil, it's the people who use it, that cause the imbalance in the Force.

 

No, I'm talking about "the balance" of the Force. If Sidious' presence was ruining the balance, having Anakin turn to the Dark side and help wipe out most of the Jedi must have done even more damage - at least that is how I understand the concept of the balance of the Force, feel free to correct me if I got it wrong.