Star Wars as Christian Allegory

The key sequence of the original Star Wars trilogy involves the awakening of Anakin Skywalker within the sarcophagus of his shadow, Darth Vader. The eponymous event — the return of the Jedi — marks an enantiodromia, Jung’s term for the opposites turning into each other, in which the villain becomes the hero. Other than Moana, I cannot think of another hero’s journey in which the villain becomes the hero.

Up until the great reveal in the prequel, The Empire Strikes Back, one would have anticipated the hero slaying the villain: Luke will kill Vader with a lightsaber, the empire will collapse, and all the galaxy will rejoice. Then Vader tells Luke what the Jedi who trained him would not:

I am your father.

(How Freud would have rejoiced: a trilogy in which the father and son both cut each other’s hands off (castration motif) as well as a dream sequence in which the son cuts off the father’s head (another castration motif), all with phallic symbols.)

Now the expected climax cannot be. If the hero kills the villain, he will be committing patricide. If this has ruined the expectations of the fans, think of the confusion of the hero. He was an orphan who suddenly has a family — a genocidal monster whom he thought had killed his father, but turned out to be him. His two masters have died, leaving him bereft of a father figure, only to find out that this father, in Dutch translation, is his ‘Dark Father.’ The dharmic has become karmic. The political has become personal. The quest has become family.

Luke and Vader duel with their lightsabers as peers in the key sequence. Up to this point, this had never happened in Star Wars. Obi-Wan had fought Vader briefly, only to willingly transcend into the Force. And in Luke and Vader’s first battle, Luke lost his hand along with his narrative that he knew his enemy, knew himself.

Only once Luke becomes enraged at the threat of his sister’s seduction to the Dark Side do the tides turn. With his rage, Luke shows he is his father’s son by fighting not like a Jedi, but a Sith. He overpowers Vader, climaxing with the castration motif of a hand amputation, the reciprocation of his own hand having been amputated in the prequel. Luke looks at his own prosthetic hand and realizes what Nietzsche warns:

He who fights monsters should take care not to become one.

If Luke kills Vader, he will become Vader. To kill your father is to lose your soul. To succumb to the same vice, wrath, that your father succumbed to, is to become your father. This is explicit through the Emperor’s cajoling:

Strike down your father and take his place by my side!

Evil brings out our own evil. We would all feel justified in dropping Hitler in a vat of acid, which sounds like the sort of thing that…Hitler would do. We use others’ shadows as an excuse for indulging our own.

Only then does the meaning of the confrontation reveal itself. Vader has wanted power, and it is this monomaniacal obsession that both he and the Emperor project onto Luke:

If only you knew the power of the Dark Side!

Luke’s destiny is not to have more power than ones who sacrificed their souls to gain it. This is not a good vs evil epic. The villains focus their religion on power, as Orwell described it in 1984, as an end in and of itself. The hero walks his path to find it leads him to love. Luke throws away his weapon and stands naked before the Emperor: a final sign that Luke is not here to kill, nor to use his power to save himself. At this point, Luke is addressed by the title he has finally earned, ironically, by Emperor Palpatine:

So be it, Jedi.

Then the Emperor tortures Luke.

We have a being in Luke who is capable of miraculous power but has put that power aside for the sake of love. The one for whom he has given himself has not recognized the gift at this point, as Vader has attempted to kill Luke in body or convert him to the Dark Side in spirit. After casting aside his power at the expense of saving himself and giving love to those who would misunderstand and even harm him, he is tortured relentlessly while he screams helplessly for his father.

Father, please!

Luke’s arc is precisely that of Christ. The torture of Luke is the Passion of the Christ. And who is torturing Luke? The Empire, just as the Roman Empire tortured and crucified Jesus.

The Return of the Jedi titularly parallels The Return of the King in The Lord of the Rings, both finales in trilogies that focus on the return of a messianic figure whose ascendance ends an evil reign. Aragorn even has an immortal bride in Arwen just as Christ has one in the Church.

Anakin is a clear Christ figure. He dies to become Vader only to later resurrect, fulfilling a prophecy. He is called ‘The Chosen One’ and had a virgin mother who conceived him miraculously.

I believe George Lucas split the Christ archetype: Jesus the human as the son, Luke; the Harrowing of Hell as the Emperor; Christ the resurrected as the father, Anakin.

Jesus’s Passion — Luke’s Torture

Christ’s going to Hell — The Emperor’s Fall

Christ’s Resurrection — The Return of the Jedi

It is through his suffering that Luke awakens the father Anakin never was. This harkens back to Nietzsche:

He who has no father must become his own father.

Luke showed Vader what selfless love is. It is transcendent. It is unconditional. And it is quixotic. Luke is being tortured like a mouse before a cat.

Power controls reality. Love awakens consciousness. The Sith use consciousness as a means to the end of reality. This is what they seek to control: not themselves, but their surroundings. The Jedi — with Luke as the only one, for a time, seek to control themselves so as to become one with their surroundings. (It is a bit like comparing the psychology of Adler vs that of Jung.)

While Vader was prophesized to bring balance to the Force, it was Luke who brought balance to Vader. When Luke tells his dying father, ‘I’ve got to save you,’ Vader delivers an opsimathy for the ages:

You already have.

Also read The Other Virginity in Lord of the Rings and Moana I: Converting Gods and Devils.

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