Anakin Skywalker – the slave,the victim, the killer and the offender
anakin skywalker
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trigger warning
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tw:death
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tw:depression
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tw:slavery
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who are you really
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Anakin Skywalker, later also known as Darth Vader, is one of the most popular anti-heros in popculture and one of the protagonists in the biggest science fiction saga ever by George Lucas.
His
development from the innocent boy Ani to the ruthless dictator Vader is the
core of the six Star wars movies. Without paying attention to existing flaws in
the script, especially in the 3 newer movies I’ll try and break down for you
the complex character that is this man with the many names.
Defining
his personality and grasping his identity is quite difficult, partly due to his
extreme metamorphosis during the saga, and partly because Anakin has an
unsteady self-perception and always changing image of himself.He has a huge self-hatred (which leads to frustration and anger towards others) for not being perfect, for not being able to reach the high expectations other have of him. He seems very confident, almost arrogant and self-absorbed but at the same time is always seeking the constant reassurement and approval from others, always has to fight for his right to be treated equally and with respect.
He’s got a
certain self-awareness of knowing he shouldn’t feel that way, he shouldn’t feel
that doubtful and at the same time he shouldn’t always ‘want more’( let me just
add this quote:
‘I want more and I know I shouldn’t’).
He is very aware and almost paranoid about what others could think of him, he jumps to conclusions and is very impulsive, in combination with impatience he’s basically a ticking time bomb.
‘I want more and I know I shouldn’t’).
He is very aware and almost paranoid about what others could think of him, he jumps to conclusions and is very impulsive, in combination with impatience he’s basically a ticking time bomb.
He is passionate, even obsessed about certain
people, very headstrong and stubborn, he is selfish in a way that he wants to
protect people at all costs, even if that involves hurting them.
He is honest and straightforward, he may have a lot of flaws, but being manipulative or dishonest was never one.
In some sources I read are statement about signs of mental illnesses in his behavior, borderline or symptoms of being a sociopath, but in my opinion he isn’t ill, all those horrible things happen because of desperation and pain, not because of a mood swing and he doesn’t enjoy doing those things, he feels remorse for the things he did. His motivation isn’t lust for power but appreciation, need to be needed and fear of loss.
He is honest and straightforward, he may have a lot of flaws, but being manipulative or dishonest was never one.
In some sources I read are statement about signs of mental illnesses in his behavior, borderline or symptoms of being a sociopath, but in my opinion he isn’t ill, all those horrible things happen because of desperation and pain, not because of a mood swing and he doesn’t enjoy doing those things, he feels remorse for the things he did. His motivation isn’t lust for power but appreciation, need to be needed and fear of loss.
In his life
he took many roles, some of them he portrayed better than others, some of them
he wore over years, others just for a short term of time.
In the
first movie he’s a young boy, a son and a slave.
Three roles that he didn’t
chose, but accept. He’s a fixer of things, maybe not only lifeless objects and
robots, but also metaphorically speaking.
He meets Qui-Gon-Gin and Obi-Wan-Kenobi, two Jedi who visit his home planet and are looking for help for their spaceship. One of his character traits is helpful- and kindness, he is willing to help even those complete strangers by entering a dangerous, deathly podrace. You already see how confident he is and how much he believes in his abilities. You could even say, that he’s not that selfless, because I always dreamed about being part of a podrace, but he never had the chance to until now. He sees his chance and ignores the fears of his mother.
He meets Qui-Gon-Gin and Obi-Wan-Kenobi, two Jedi who visit his home planet and are looking for help for their spaceship. One of his character traits is helpful- and kindness, he is willing to help even those complete strangers by entering a dangerous, deathly podrace. You already see how confident he is and how much he believes in his abilities. You could even say, that he’s not that selfless, because I always dreamed about being part of a podrace, but he never had the chance to until now. He sees his chance and ignores the fears of his mother.
He stops
being the kid nobody really cares that much about, as Qui-Gon later analyses
his blood and the midi-chlorian count of over 20000 could mean that he’s
someone special, the one who could bring
the balance to the force.
We can see
a parallel to Jesus, a boy who’s born under mysterious circumstances, never had
a father, grows up in a poor household and with hard work, turns out to be the
chosen one.
This is his
opportunity, the unimportant little boy could be someday a mighty Jedi, he
could have a future outside the slavery.
He leaves
his mother with this great responsibility of knowing that he’ll be powerful and
important and at the same time with a feeling of being lost and insecure.
Anakin is unsure
about his potential and his powers, as already stated, he’s aware of him being
suddenly ‘the chosen one’, he feels the power and pressure as well as the Jedi’s
doubts and suspicions, but at first doesn’t take it too seriously (remember the
scene with Padmè and the apple ).
He is gifted and bored, he overestimates his abilities and this self-assureness makes it impossible for him to be humble,open-minded, self-controlled and to think rational.
At the same time he’s afraid of not being powerful enough to save everyone, especially his mother and wife, which made it later easy to convince him to join the dark side, after the chancellor seems to be willing to share the secret of life and death with him.
He is gifted and bored, he overestimates his abilities and this self-assureness makes it impossible for him to be humble,open-minded, self-controlled and to think rational.
At the same time he’s afraid of not being powerful enough to save everyone, especially his mother and wife, which made it later easy to convince him to join the dark side, after the chancellor seems to be willing to share the secret of life and death with him.
His biggest
flaw and most important part about him is that Anakin feels everything
intensely and his feelings always guide him. This leads to a weakness of
fearing to lose his beloved ones, attachment-issues that cloud his judgement
and spontanous, impulsive behavior without thinking about the consequences.He has no control over his emotions and their sudden change, the most dominant one’s are anger, fear, frustration and love.
His life is the constant battle to balance the positive and negative feelings.
How his inner demons finally seemed to have overcome the good parts in him is very obvious portrayed, the darkness spreads from his inside to the outside, his emotional change within the movies is reflected by the progressively darker clothes which leads to the popular known Darth Vader costume.
With
unstable feelings come ambivalent relationships: the Jedi who switch from being
his unreachable dream to being his destiny to being his family and finally his
enemy, his long-term friend or even brother Obi-Wan, the lack of a father
figure, his actual family in form of his mother, his first and only love Padmè
Amidala, , and of course his children Leia and Luke.
Let’s start from the beginning. The Jedi and their code.
Loyalty is a very dominant part of his personality, but so are trust issues and once he feels betrayed by someone he trusted, he cuts all the strings and immediately turns against them.
A good example is, how he reported the Chancellor to Mace Windu once Darth Sidious’ true identity was revealed, however when he saw Windu’s intention to kill Palpatine he switched sides, killed Windu and by submitting to the Sith lord, he became a slave again.
With the same kind of sudden change of heart he throws Palpatine - a few movies later - in the reactor shaft to save Luke’s life.
As a Jedi his duty is to protect others, which he takes very seriously and a step too far.
Anakin’s priority is always to save someone he loves before saving himself or many strangers.
This keeps him grounded, focused, as long as he has the purpose of protecting someone he sees a light that guides him.
At first it’s his mother, then Padmè, in the end Luke.
Every time someone he felt responsible to protect dies, a big part of him dies with them and he loses his self and the “good” path a bit more. After the death of his mother he loses his temper and brutally kills the Tusken.
When he believes that he killed Padmè, he feels like he has nothing left to lose and turns to the dark side, which leads to the fight against Obi-Wan that almost kills him.
Actually it does kill the part of him that’s left after his mother and his wife died, it kills Anakin and marks the rebirths of him as Darth Vader. Anakin comes back years later, after he meets his son and his compassion and need to protect his loved ones awake again. More about this later.
What we see here is, that he’s loyal to people before concepts, values revenge over justice, he may have the best intentions but he can’t see the ‘big picture’ and his heated temper and burning love for certain people is a threat not only for him, but for others and his beloved one’s as well.
After suffering from nightmares about his mother’s painful death he takes Padmè from the safety of Naboo to make sure that Shmi is okay, later he’s willing to sacrifice everything a Jedi stands for, just to save Padmè’s life, even though it isn’t actually in danger at first.
You can basically say, he’s always on a mission for someone but never for something.
This attitude isn’t compatible with the moral concept and ideals of the Jedi, they see him as their savior, but also as a risk, he feels isolated from the other Jedi and not respected or even welcome. In the third movie, he believes that Obi-Wan was holding him back from reaching his true potential and that the other Jedi were jealous of his power and purposely trying to hold him back, too.
Let’s start from the beginning. The Jedi and their code.
Loyalty is a very dominant part of his personality, but so are trust issues and once he feels betrayed by someone he trusted, he cuts all the strings and immediately turns against them.
A good example is, how he reported the Chancellor to Mace Windu once Darth Sidious’ true identity was revealed, however when he saw Windu’s intention to kill Palpatine he switched sides, killed Windu and by submitting to the Sith lord, he became a slave again.
With the same kind of sudden change of heart he throws Palpatine - a few movies later - in the reactor shaft to save Luke’s life.
As a Jedi his duty is to protect others, which he takes very seriously and a step too far.
Anakin’s priority is always to save someone he loves before saving himself or many strangers.
This keeps him grounded, focused, as long as he has the purpose of protecting someone he sees a light that guides him.
At first it’s his mother, then Padmè, in the end Luke.
Every time someone he felt responsible to protect dies, a big part of him dies with them and he loses his self and the “good” path a bit more. After the death of his mother he loses his temper and brutally kills the Tusken.
When he believes that he killed Padmè, he feels like he has nothing left to lose and turns to the dark side, which leads to the fight against Obi-Wan that almost kills him.
Actually it does kill the part of him that’s left after his mother and his wife died, it kills Anakin and marks the rebirths of him as Darth Vader. Anakin comes back years later, after he meets his son and his compassion and need to protect his loved ones awake again. More about this later.
What we see here is, that he’s loyal to people before concepts, values revenge over justice, he may have the best intentions but he can’t see the ‘big picture’ and his heated temper and burning love for certain people is a threat not only for him, but for others and his beloved one’s as well.
After suffering from nightmares about his mother’s painful death he takes Padmè from the safety of Naboo to make sure that Shmi is okay, later he’s willing to sacrifice everything a Jedi stands for, just to save Padmè’s life, even though it isn’t actually in danger at first.
You can basically say, he’s always on a mission for someone but never for something.
This attitude isn’t compatible with the moral concept and ideals of the Jedi, they see him as their savior, but also as a risk, he feels isolated from the other Jedi and not respected or even welcome. In the third movie, he believes that Obi-Wan was holding him back from reaching his true potential and that the other Jedi were jealous of his power and purposely trying to hold him back, too.
Something that might have contributed to his trust issues is the lack of a father figure or the constant change (death or leaving) of it.
At first it’s Qui-Gon-Gin who takes care of him, then Obi-Wan, who’s actually never willing or able to step into the footsteps of a father, but takes the place of a good friend or even a brother, later on it’s Palpatine who fills in the gap of a seemingly loving and caring father.
One of my
sources called palpatine the ying and
Padmè the yang of Skywalker’s life and I’d
like to use those terms for describing their relationship.
Padmè and Palpatine are opposites in every way, he’s male, old, ‘ugly’, manipulative
and a sith, she’s a young, beautiful, honest woman with the aspiration to change
the world to the better.Both influence Anakin’s life, Palpatine as already mentioned and Padmè as the ‘Angel’, the girl he had a crush on for years, the woman he marries and who carries his children, one of the few people who seem to take him seriously, he can be himself around her, she doesn’t care if he’s a mighty Jedi or just a boy and loves him unconditionally.
Something he has only experienced once in his
life,his mother’s love kept him grounded and ‘soft’ while the world around him
was hard, he made it through slavery and as a young adult survived a war,
imagine how much worse he could have gotten without his mother’s care in his
childhood.
How to take
care of a child was something he never got to try, he meets his twin son and
daughter when they were already grown-ups.
Luke is one
of the most important people in his life, because he is the one who awakens the
Anakin-part in Darth Vader. After thinking that he had lost everyone he cared
about, Anakin was out of control, nothing could hold him back or keep him
grounded, he has never gotten the respect and admiration he thought he
deserved.
(Excursion: Like Stiles (coming soon, in my bed and the blog post haha...ha...) he chooses to be a role (Vader), he’s not able to live any longer as Anakin, he creates the new figure, that suits his new personality traits better, he lets Anakin die in the lava and with him all the memories and experiences, he separates himself from his old self to cope with the lost he experienced in the last few years. But in contrast to Stiles he can’t accept his weakness and kills himself, almost literally. He chooses to be someone else, to not take responsibility, he flees.)
As already
mentioned earlier, Anakin needs people to attach to that keep him focused and
himself.
Vader wanted the dominance of the empire and not until finally meeting his son and ‘defrosting’, his priorities changed again, Anakin came back and he was able to snap out of the circle of anger and sadness.
In the end, his compassion and attachement to people over concepts saved his son and destroyed the republic, he was able to let go of his fear (of death), could let go of his need to control everything and eventually brought the balance to the force by not only destroying ‘Vader’, but all the Sith.
Think about it, some of the first words of Obi-Wan to Luke, that Vader killed his father, were actually true. And so are those: Anakin killed Vader. And as paradox as it sounds, the reason he joined the dark side in the first place – searching for a way to save his wife and unborn children – were his savior in the end.
Without Padmè, Luke and Leia he may have never chosen the dark path, but without them he wouldn’t have chosen the ‘right’ way in his final hours.
Vader wanted the dominance of the empire and not until finally meeting his son and ‘defrosting’, his priorities changed again, Anakin came back and he was able to snap out of the circle of anger and sadness.
In the end, his compassion and attachement to people over concepts saved his son and destroyed the republic, he was able to let go of his fear (of death), could let go of his need to control everything and eventually brought the balance to the force by not only destroying ‘Vader’, but all the Sith.
Think about it, some of the first words of Obi-Wan to Luke, that Vader killed his father, were actually true. And so are those: Anakin killed Vader. And as paradox as it sounds, the reason he joined the dark side in the first place – searching for a way to save his wife and unborn children – were his savior in the end.
Without Padmè, Luke and Leia he may have never chosen the dark path, but without them he wouldn’t have chosen the ‘right’ way in his final hours.
In
conclusion, it can be said, that there are 3 things that define Anakin Skywalker:
his deep and uncontrollable feelings that go hand in hand with his ambivalent
relationships, his unsteady self-perception about his potential and the ability
to use it and that his loyality to people before concepts.
He’s overprotective,
especially over the women in his life, his life is determined by the fear of
losing his loved one’s as well as his own identity, which leads to frustration,
anger and, according to Yoda, to the ‘dark side’.
Anakin has many roles throughout his life and while he keeps repeating some behavior patterns, they keep repeating themselves. The theme of slavery can be found everywhere in his biography, he’s born in slavery, then the Jedi ‘adopt’ him but he can still be seen as a kind of slave of their believes, under Palpatine’s control he’s again nothing more but a slave and - let’s not forget - the whole time, he’s a slave of his feelings.
Anakin has many roles throughout his life and while he keeps repeating some behavior patterns, they keep repeating themselves. The theme of slavery can be found everywhere in his biography, he’s born in slavery, then the Jedi ‘adopt’ him but he can still be seen as a kind of slave of their believes, under Palpatine’s control he’s again nothing more but a slave and - let’s not forget - the whole time, he’s a slave of his feelings.
He is a slave,
constructer, son, lover, husband, father, chosen one, Jedi, brother, friend, Vader,
little boy, troubled adolescent, ruthless adult, victim, murderer, but all in
all, he’s one of the most popular fictional characters and it was an honor to
study him. After all, he is Anakin Skywalker.
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If you’re interested
in this topic, check out: http://www.academia.edu/432933/Darth_Vader_Made_Me_Do_It_
Anakin_Skywalkers_Avoidance_of_Responsibility_and_Hegemonic_Masculinity_in_the_Star_Wars_Universe
Anakin_Skywalkers_Avoidance_of_Responsibility_and_Hegemonic_Masculinity_in_the_Star_Wars_Universe
Sources
might have been:
http://quintessentialldr.com/2012/12/17/how-anakin-skywalker-became-darth-vader-a-quintessential-leadership-analysis/
http://zimbio.com
http://zimbio.com
http://www.livescience.com/10679-psychology-darth-vader-revealed.html
http://teachmix.com/dayblend/sites/default/files/Anakin_Skywalker_slave.jpg
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Anakin_Skywalker
http://teachmix.com/dayblend/sites/default/files/Anakin_Skywalker_slave.jpg
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Anakin_Skywalker
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