{"id":23,"date":"2017-11-16T10:54:12","date_gmt":"2017-11-16T15:54:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/postcolonialstarwars\/?page_id=23"},"modified":"2017-12-08T10:39:54","modified_gmt":"2017-12-08T15:39:54","slug":"luca-barton-cain","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/postcolonialstarwars\/anthology\/fall-2017\/luca-barton-cain\/","title":{"rendered":"Luca Barton-Cain"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rebellion and Revolution of Anakin Skywalker<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Rebellion is a major theme in the Star Wars saga. In the original trilogy, the entire narrative arc consists of the story of the rebel alliance, led by Luke and the other protagonists, taking down the empire. Luke, a farm boy on a remote planet in the outer rim, yearns for adventure, to join the rebellion maybe (even before the empire murders his aunt and uncle). Han Solo is a smuggler who rebels by simply not abiding by the Empire’s laws. Before all of them, there is Anakin, who goes through many different stages and types of rebellion. This paper seeks to examine the way Anakin fits into Camus\u2019 model of a rebel and the way these rebellious impulses become corrupted and lead him down a violent path as a murderous revolutionary. This analysis is both an interesting way of understanding one of the most important characters in the saga, Anakin\/Darth Vader, and also applicable to the real world. <\/span><\/p>\n

Anakin Skywalker embodies, at different times in his life, many characteristics of the rebel as Camus defines it. Applying Camus\u2019 ideas from <\/span>The Rebel<\/span><\/i> to Anakin\u2019s life and choices helps explain many of his decisions and actions. One of Camus\u2019 ideas that applies is the distinction between rebellion and revolution. [<\/span>1] He discusses this idea in the context of historical rebellions. [2]<\/span> Another concept that relates to Camus\u2019 ideas about revolution is that of cycles of abuse or oppression, wherein the abused becomes the abuser, the oppressed becomes the oppressor. Lastly, the final applicable concept is metaphysical rebellion, a type of rebellion against nature itself. [3]<\/span><\/p>\n

First, Albert Camus makes a definite distinction between rebellion and revolution in his essay <\/span>The Rebel<\/span><\/i>. Rebellion is the act of turning toward one\u2019s oppressor and saying \u201cno more,\u201d \u201cup to this point yes, beyond it no.\u201d [4]<\/span> The rebel refuses to accept the continuation of a long string of offenses, of intolerable infringements against his rights. \u00a0Beyond blind disobedience, he disobeys on the basis of a refusal to accept some higher moral wrong. A rebel is a slave rebelling against the violation of his rights, of his liberty, and affirming that he has a right to be free, to not be enslaved.<\/span>\u00a0Revolution, on the other hand, is a revolt against a government that is behaving unjustly but with the explicit objective of instituting a new government to replace it. [5]<\/span>\u00a0Rebellion does not imply anything beyond the moment of rebellion, it is \u201cby nature, limited in scope. It is no more than an incoherent pronouncement.\u201d [6]<\/span>\u00a0It ends at the point of rebellion. In contrast, a revolution implies the existence of a plan to be implemented after the revolt. It contains \u201cthe absolute certainty of a new form of government.\u201d [7]<\/span>\u00a0Being a revolutionary means one has a desire or plan to become the ruler, and thus the oppressor.<\/span><\/p>\n

When applied to Anakin, these concepts correlate to different moments in his transformation from a young Padawan to an accomplished Jedi to a Sith apprentice who leads a revolution against the galactic republic. [8]<\/span> He had been a slave as a child, and seen the horrors of war firsthand from a very young age. As a young Padawan he sees slavery and rampant organized crime in the outer rim. As a result he desires to end slavery and bring peace to the galaxy. [9]<\/span>\u00a0He sees injustice in the world and rejects it; he refuses to accept it and wishes to become powerful enough to fight back and rebel against it. During this phase he is a rebel because he simply refuses to accept what he sees as wrong and wishes to rebel against it; he does not have any plans beyond abolishing the oppressive system.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

From the moment he joins Palpatine, having assisted him in murdering Mace Windu, [10]<\/span>\u00a0Anakin becomes a part of a revolution. They plan to overthrow the political establishment of the Senate and the Jedi Order and then institute a new government. Despite revolution being the \u201clogical consequence of metaphysical rebellion,\u201d [11] the two are incompatible with each other.<\/span>\u00a0A revolutionary is at the beginning simultaneously a rebel, but a true rebel ends up taking sides a<\/span>gainst the revolution since \u201cevery revolutionary ends by becoming either an oppressor or a heretic,\u201d [12]<\/span>\u00a0The two attitudes are caught in contradiction as he who was a rebel, and denounced his oppressor, becomes the oppressor himself. When Palpatine recruits him as his apprentice, Anakin begins working toward a total restructuring of political power in the galactic government. I<\/span>nitially they\u00a0rebel against the status quo rulership of the Jedi Order and the Republic, but then later the objective becomes the concentration of power and the establishment of a galactic empire with Palpatine at the helm. This causes a contradiction, and therefore Anakin becomes a revolutionary and not a rebel. And as Camus discusses in his section on historical rebellion, revolutions almost always leads to more oppression, not less.<\/p>\n

In his section on \u201chistorical rebellion,\u201d Camus discusses the historical phenomenon where violent revolutions result not in an improvement of the condition of the people, but instead in a growth of the oppressive state, or more precisely the creation of a new, even more oppressive state (e.g. the Soviet Union, Mao\u2019s China, Khmer Rouge, etc.). [13]\u00a0<\/span>This is essentially the society scale version of the tendency of parents who themselves were abused as children to abuse their children\u2014the vicious cycle of abused turned abuser and oppressed turned oppressor. Perfectly analogous to Anakin’s progression, this is exactly what happens in the <\/span>Star Wars <\/span><\/i>saga. The Galactic Empire becomes far more oppressive than the earlier Galactic Republic had been, and Anakin (Darth Vader) becomes its enforcer, an intimidating symbol of its dominance.<\/span><\/p>\n

Over the course of his life, Anakin goes from being an oppressed slave boy to the enforcement arm of a brutal imperial regime via revolution. Anakin is abused and treated as a subordinate by everyone. In barely a single moment of his life is Anakin not in some sort of oppressive relationship. As a child he is a literal slave, working as a mechanic for Watto on Tatooine. [14]<\/span>\u00a0Qui-Gon Jinn frees him only for him to become what is essentially a slave to the Jedi order. [15]<\/span>\u00a0With its oppressive amount of rules, regulating everything from what they are allowed to study to their relationships, and the requirement that they refer to their teachers as \u201cmaster,\u201d a Jedi\u2019s life is hardly free, especially considering that the children are not given a choice of whether to become a Jedi. Jedi are taken away from their homes at an extremely young age and raised in the cult-like religion of the Jedi order. Furthermore, the Jedi order held him back from reaching his true potential because they were afraid of his power. After finally breaking free from that repressive cult, he immediately became the apprentice, and therefore servant, to Darth Sidious.<\/span><\/p>\n

Considering this long line of master\/slave relationship in which he is controlled and oppressed, it is no surprise that he repeatedly lashes out in acts of unnecessary brutality, beginning in episode 3 during the purge of the Jedi:<\/span><\/p>\n