Star Words: Episode VI, Part 52

[matril]

This entry happens to come at a very emotional time for me. My beloved mother-in-law is quite sick, after over a year of enduring cancer, and we don't anticipate that she'll be here much longer. So when I write about Luke saying good-bye to his father, it hits very close to home.

Anakin's final words are quite moving. You were right about me. Tell your sister you were right. Gratitude for Luke's insight and love, acknowledgement of his daughter as well. But it's so brief. Luke wanted more time; he wanted a lifetime. He pleads with him not to go.

"Father! I won't leave you."

On one level, Luke is refusing to believe that his father is dying, desperate for some hope that he can still preserve Anakin's life. But he's not trapped in the same level of denial as young Anakin. He knows that the end has come, and he grieves. From this perspective, his words are a promise.

Luke is, above all else, fiercely loyal. He never abandons or gives up. When he felt that inkling of goodness within his father, he pursued and encouraged it and finally brought him back to the light. That loyalty continues even beyond Anakin's death. Luke will never forsake the memory of his father, his good life he lived before his fall and his final act to change and make the right choice. He will carry it with him always. And in this way, Anakin lives on through his son.

Next time, I'll explore the second-last quote of this very very long series....

Comments

[krpalmer]

Trying to express online sympathy can feel very inadequate for me, but I want to offer whatever I can. In thinking ahead to this entry I had been contemplating Anakin's last words more, but also seeing the emotion in the scene. I suppose, though, I'd also been wondering about how the discourse of the late 1990s seemed to miss it altogether, complaining "Return of the Jedi would have been such a more impactful conclusion if only Lando and the Millennium Falcon had been blown up trying to escape the Death Star..." I know I might not have thought all that much more about this scene myself at the time; I just had the almost inarticulate feeling I didn't like the thought of considering the trilogy let down by its conclusion. It might have taken all of three more movies (and maybe jettisoning the Expanded Universe novels) to fully reconfigure my viewpoint.