Luke Skywalker’s journey from farm boy to Jedi Knight is not just about facing his fears and looking evil in the eye. It’s also about seeing things and people with his own eyes, not those of people who came before him.
By Stephen Kent // Star Wars is many different things to many different people. As the host of the Beltway Banthas podcast I look at Star Wars through the lens of a socio-political space opera, but there is another narrative I have long favored. Star Wars, as we have come to understand it, is more the story of Darth Vader’s redemption, than it is simply Luke Skywalker’s journey to being a hero and Jedi Knight. Central to the original trilogies message is the idea that anyone can be saved from the dark, and that love has the power to overcome hate, against seemingly insurmountable odds and the discouragement of your friends.
Last week I was enjoying a new episode of the Full of Sith podcast, all about Star Wars connection to real world history and politics. Guest Bobby Roberts, a former host of the podcast, brought this to the forefront in a discussion about election 2016 and the road ahead for healing our countries wounds, as well as our own. I want to share some of my takeaways from that conversation.
Much of the talk around Thanksgiving this year was how to survive sitting at the table with your Uncle who voted differently than you in the election. As we head into the Christmas season and more family dinners inevitably loom ahead, can we pause to recognize how crazy it is that politics have gotten to this point? We live in a time where degrees of disagreement on politics is now interpreted more as differing degrees of humanity.
(above) That face you make when your friend publicly expresses love for their crazy Uncle who sends around the chain emails.
I get it, I do. I have that actual uncle. Ever since I added him on Facebook, that relationship has been more challenging. I knew his politics beforehand, but we all know how these things play out on social media. You are bombarded all day with their memes, click bait, trash talk, and “news” you know at first glance is a bonafide fake. Engaging with that person then illustrates that genuine conversations now play second fiddle to penning multi-paragraph rants with the expectation everyone will read the whole thing and submit your point of view because the word count was legendary. Political polarization has been the talk of the town for a few years now as the existence of our partisan alternate realities have become clearer.
Thought leaders from across the political spectrum (Van Jones, Glenn Beck, Jon Stewart) are changing their tune, many calling for us to stop demonizing one another. They are calling on us to listen and to see the good in one another despite having different points of view.
Luke Skywalker is primed in Star Wars to believe that his father was murdered in cold blood by Darth Vader. Not long after this, Darth Vader claims the life of his friend and mentor, Obi-Wan Kenobi. From that point on the conflict and pain placed into Luke by these losses is not shown on screen–until The Empire Strikes Back, in the cave. Luke faces a Force apparition of his fears, and it is Vader, but underneath the surface of this test lies the real terror. Luke strikes down the apparition of Darth Vader, and underneath the mask, he finds not the face of some scaly, deformed monster, but himself. Is this a visceral reminder to Luke that he too could fall to darkness? Yes. But it also serves to show Luke in a tangible way that what might lie beneath Vader’s cold exterior is humanity, lost.
Moving past his first battle with Darth Vader, Luke returns to Dagobah in Return of the Jedi to convene with Yoda and get the truth of his parentage confirmed. Yoda offers this confirmation reluctantly, and after his death the reason why becomes clearer. He, and Obi-Wan Kenobi, did not want Luke to see Vader as family, human or redeemable.
“He ceased to be Anakin Skywalker and became Darth Vader, when that happened the good man who was your father was destroyed.” 
That face Obi-Wan is making is the face of someone knowingly dehumanizing an enemy so you can convince someone else to kill them with a clear conscience.
Even as Obi-Wan tells Luke the full story of Anakin’s fall, he utters his iconic line about the nature of truth and our individual points of view. It’s worth considering that Obi-Wan himself is embracing the Sith narrative of identity by accepting that Anakin is in fact gone. Luke, who is an outsider to Jedi tradition and dogma, doesn’t see it this way. He sees more.
“There is still good in him” -Luke
“He’s more machine now than man. Twisted and evil.” -Obi-Wan
“I can’t do it Ben.”
“You cannot escape your destiny. You must face Darth Vader again.”
“I can’t kill my own father.”
“Then the Emperor has already won.”
The approach of the elder Jedi was to wedge Luke and his father apart, for some perceived greater good. The risk of letting Luke pursue the soul of his father was that Luke could be corrupted, or even killed. Luke, like he did in The Empire Strikes Back, goes his own way but with love in his heart instead of justified anger, resentment, and fear.
When is the last time your uncle cut off your hand and froze your buddy in carbonite? If the worst offense he committed was chewing you out on Facebook about corporate tax rates or what a legitimate form of protest is, you have it pretty good in comparison.
The point is not that your uncle is simply lost in the darkness and in need of saving. No. It’s just about love and seeing the good in the other. The metallic suit of Darth Vader is a perception, not the reality of the individual within. I do not remember where I heard it but someone once said that at some point your parent becomes Darth Vader to you, then you grow up. There are a handful of people out there who actually wake up every day committed to organized hatred, and you should call those people out when and where it makes sense to do so. It’s okay to be that rebel and stand up to darkness, but before you can do this, you have to be able to separate what is evil for evil’s sake, and what is just principled differences of opinion.