Star Wars

by John

Part IV: The Metaphor of Good Versus Evil

When asked what the Star Wars saga is about, or how to explain its popularity, the typical response is often, "Well, it's a story about good versus evil."

That is just about the blandest description imaginable of any story, and it doesn't help explain why Star Wars stands out as an exceptionally popular series over the multitudes of other, less influential movies that could just as easily be described as being about good and evil.

Yes, Star Wars is very much concerned with good and evil. It describes a greater mystery to its established cosmology, a mystery described as the Force, which is made up of a good Light Side and an evil Dark Side. It has virtuous, courageous, and noble characters assaulted by selfish, corrupt, and destructive characters.

But this is just a literal reading, a superficial description of what Star Wars denotes, as opposed to what it connotes. Part of what makes Star Wars so compelling is that the core of the saga transcends a literal reading of good and evil, and uses metaphors to communicate its main themes.

Looking at both the original and new trilogies as six episodes of one grand story, we see that the central character is, in fact, Anakin Skywalker. We witness his descent into corruption in Revenge of the Sith, as the audience is familiar with his adopted persona of Darth Vader from the original trilogy.

Basically, Anakin's journey to becoming Darth Vader informs the audience on a metaphorical level to what dangers people are capable of succumbing. In the original trilogy, Anakin as Vader is a menacing and seemingly powerful antagonist, but it's more accurate to say that his life as Darth Vader totally revolves around the will of his master, Darth Sidious, otherwise known as Emperor Palpatine.

In Revenge of the Sith, Anakin decides to conform to a system of logic: the Emperor's plan of tyrannical rule, and his philosophy of using anger and hatred to satisfy selfish needs of power and control-that is, artificial and unnatural forces coerced upon life rather than in harmony with it.

The fact that the Empire manifests such evil serves a metaphorical purpose. Through the metaphor of evil, we better understand the message of not conforming to an unnatural mode of thinking that is harmful to our compassionate nature.

This message is pushed further by the metaphor of the machine in Star Wars. The Empire that Vader chooses to serve is characterized by an overdependence on technology. Vader's own ability to survive is dependent on a mechanical life-support system after he sustains serious injuries in a fight with his mentor and friend, Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Here, we see the machine as a metaphor for an outlook that is artificial when compared with the normal order of life. Vader is hooked up to a machine to survive, just as his willingness to conform to the Emperor's teachings of anger and hatred leads him to become dependent on an artificial system of ordering the universe, defined by abject oppression and tyranny.

Anakin's failure, then, is in not choosing to listen to the compassionate nature of his own humanity. Instead, he is driven to obey an external system of unnatural thought by his selfish need for power and control, instead of simply accepting the realities of life. The films metaphorically translate this external system as pure evil.

Anakin is only redeemed by his son Luke in the saga's sixth chapter, Return of the Jedi, when he finally chooses to disobey the Emperor's contrived outlook and kills him in order to save Luke. At that moment, he ceases to be Darth Vader - the soulless servant of the machine - and returns to his true self, having reclaimed his lost compassion and humanity.

Part V : Final Analysis of the Prequels