Revenge of the Sith

In class we have been studying John Gardner’s Grendel and analyzing a lot of the different existential and philosophical aspects of the novel, looking at how the brutal monster from the Old English classic, Beowulf, is actually an intelligent, insightful, and angst-filled creature who has a lot to say about criticizing both society and the universe itself. As part of a chapter project we were assigned a specific chapter of the book, in my case Chapter 6, where Grendel has just accepted his role that the dragon has given to him as a terror to Hrothgar’s people and also torments the want-to-be hero Unferth, leaving him embittered and angry. The other night, while watching Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith for the first time in years, I immediately saw and realized I could make a connection between Anakin’s turn to the dark side and what he does following his fall to Grendel’s own transformation and what the creatures turns into as well. The film chronicles the birth of the most iconic villain in film history, Darth Vader, but explores how a good man like Anakin could fall from grace into the world of brutality, lies, and deceit. Like Grendel and the Shaper, Anakin has his own belief of what his role in life is and what gives him purpose, which is to be a Jedi Knight who guards and protects others for the better good of the galaxy. This is the role that he has had his whole life, just like Grendel, but he longs for the discovery of more truth and knowledge which could help him to assure the safety of his wife Padme. To find the answer, Anakin seeks out his own “dragon”, which is Chancellor/Emperor Palpatine for answers, who forces him to question all that he thought to be true. In a slithery tone he tells him, “All who gain power are afraid to lose it. Even the Jedi…good is a point of view Anakin, the Sith and the Jedi are similar in almost every way, including their quest for greater power”. Both Grendel and Anakin go to the character who is representative of the devil and are offered a Faustian-deal with them. For Grendel, it was to accept his role that the dragon gave him as a vicious mead-hall wrecker without a conscious because of the lack of meaning that the world really has to offer compared to what the people think. For Anakin, the Emperor makes him a deal that if he accepts his teachings he can help save his wife. He entices him, saying, “You have much wisdom, Anakin. But if I were to die, all the knowledge you seek about the true nature of the Force will be lost with me. Learn the power of the Dark Side, Anakin. The power to save Padmé”. To this, Anakin and Grendel both sign their deals with the Devil and selfishly consume their new power. For Grendel it was to pointlessly decapitate a soldier. For Anakin, it means storming through the Temple and killing every Jedi knight and child all to satisfy his ferocious desire to prevent Padme’s death. As democracy collapses with the rise of the Galactic Empire, along with the violent death of the Jedi order, Obi Wan finally confronts Anakin, but finds that he is not the same boy that he once trained. As Yoda noted, “Twisted by the Dark Side, young Skywalker has become. The boy you trained, gone he is... Consumed by Darth Vader”. Grendel also found himself to be transformed, or “born again” as he so ironically put it, by his deal with the Devil. Anakin is “born again” as well, with the new name of Darth Vader as evidence of it. Each of their pacts seemed to have led to a transformation that superficially satisfied their quests, as Grendel found himself to be existentially enlightened and Anakin felt himself to be advancing in his knowledge to work to save Padme. When confronted by Obi-Wan, he boldly declares, “I see through the lies of the Jedi. I do not fear the dark side as you do. I have brought peace, freedom, justice, and security to my new Empire”.  But it is ultimately the nature of Faustian deals to never turn out as they initially planned. For Grendel, that meant him immediately realizing just how alone in the world he really was. For Anakin, it meant inadvertently destroying the love that he was trying so hard to keep intact. When Padme finally sees what Anakin has become, so says, “You're going down a path I cannot follow… because of what you've done... what you plan to do” With this, Anakin chokes his wife to the point of death, and following this ultimately loses in his confrontation with his old master, Obi Wan. While by this point it has already become clear that both Grendel and Anakin have been born again as a result of their selfish quests, for Anakin the idea is not solidified until the very end of the movie, as Anakin is literally reconstructed from what remains of his burnt body. And as the mask is slowly placed on top his charred face, the audience gets chills as the terrorizing villain slowly breathes through his mask for the very first time.

"A Dream"

While searching for a poem to write about for this week’s blog I could not help but think about our class discussion we had on Friday on Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, which philosophically explored the question of whether it is better to be enlightened with the knowledge of truth and light, or live out in blissful ignorance, never fully aware of the truth that lies beyond our own minds. This led me to try to find a poem that involves discussing the satisfaction of life in both our waking reality and the illusions of our dreams in Edgar Allan Poe’s “A Dream”. Poe drenches his short poem with a plethora of meaning, found first in the opening lines that state, “In vision of the dark night/I have dreamed of joy departed-/But a waking dream of life and light/Hath left me broken-hearted”. Poe details to the reader how his heart can find no place of happiness or joy in subconscious thought, the final possibility for him to find it. All other places that surround him throughout his waking moments only serve to remind him of the wretchedness of how his life has played out. If looking at this with respect to Plato, Poe is twisting the philosopher’s perspective to show that ultimately there is no escape to discover some enlightening truth of lives that can hope to change us into better people, but in fact both the disillusioned world of our lives and our dreams are both equally filled with pain and misery that no power can serve to alleviate. Poe’s commiserations of the bitter truth of the world continues as he says, “What is not a dream by day…turned back upon the past?” Again, Poe explores his own internal disillusionment and embracing of the bitter truth of the world by reflecting on his dreams. Dreams, by their own nature, are reflections of our own lives that play out into our subconscious thought. Thus, the reason that Poe’s dreams are full of misery and woe is because his dreams are simply a reflection of the world lodged in reality. There is no escape from the pain of our world, as the dream world we try so hard to create can only reflect the sad truth of our own lives. Anyone who deems otherwise that there is some glimmer of goodness left to find in the world is only ignoring the harsh truth of what each and every one of our lives has become. Poe makes his final point very clear, lamenting, “That holy dream-that holy dream…What could there be more purely bright/In Truth’s day-star”. The final lines of the poem reflect just how obvious the point that Poe is trying to make. The truth of how the world really is, full of only pain and sorrow, is something that so many people adamantly do not wish to accept and base their lives around avoiding it. Ironically, Poe portrays the dark and foreboding nature of the world to be like a light that shines brightly; one that encompasses all that it sees and spares no one. Such is the nature of the world, and not even the illusions and fantasies of dreams can spare a person from the truth.

  

A Dream

In visions of the dark night
I have dreamed of joy departed-
But a waking dream of life and light
Hath left me broken-hearted.

Ah! what is not a dream by day
To him whose eyes are cast
On things around him with a ray
Turned back upon the past?

That holy dream- that holy dream,
While all the world were chiding,
Hath cheered me as a lovely beam
A lonely spirit guiding.

What though that light, thro' storm and night,
So trembled from afar-
What could there be more purely bright
In Truth's day-star?

Edgar Allan Poe

 

Willard and Prufrock

The other day in class we analyzed T. S. Eliot’s poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, essentially reading through the poem and trying to figure what we thought to be the “so what” idea of both the seven separate sections that we split the poem up into and as a whole. At the same time, we have also been extensively studying Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio and delving deep into so many of Anderson’s underlying themes in his “novel” of sorts. By now, it’s almost impossible not to see how many similar motifs, themes, and ideas that are present in Eliot’s poem appear also in Anderson’s work. One of the most introspective themes that is present between the two writings is that of the reflection of the passage of time. In Eliot’s poem, it is toward the end with the speaker reflecting back of his life and saying “And would it have been worth it, after all/would it have been worthwhile/after the sunsets and dooryard and the sprinkled streets/after the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor-/and this, and so much more?” (lines 99-103). Here the aging speaker looks back on all the various aspects of his life, from the awe-inspiring sunsets to noticing what a girl was wearing, and wondering whether or not his life has had any true meaning to it. He ponders whether he spent all his long years to the fullest extent, or would it have been worth it to have done so much more instead. Likewise, a similar thought process pains George Willard, the young protagonist of Anderson’s work, who in “Sophistication” starts asking many of the same questions as J. Alfred Prufrock. Still recovering from the death of his mother, George traverses the street of the eponymous town of Ohio and ponders about his place in the world with the passing of time and, “for the first time he looks out upon the world, seeing…countless figures of men who…disappeared into nothingness…with a little gasp he sees himself as merely a leaf blown by the wind through the streets of his village” (239). In this moment George breaks free of the mold of childhood that he has been for the whole book and must finally face up to one of the harshest truths of adulthood.  He looks at everyone else that has born, lived, and died, and realizes he is no different than any of them and destined to suffer the same fate.  Like Prufrock in Eliot’s work, George must look at the progression of time, though not in retrospect and hindsight like the old man of the poem, but in fear in apprehension of how he is going to spend the rest of his life and what the future may have in store for him. He knows that unless he makes the right decisions throughout his life, then he will suffer the same fate of becoming a “grotesque”, one who is but a haunting shadow of who they once were as a result of discovering some inner truth about themselves that they embrace all too easily and quickly. Both George and Prufrock suffer from the same ailment of the progression of time, with J. Alfred Prufrock weary of how he has spent up his entire life and whether or not it has all been worth doing, and George Willard who is apprehensive about what the progression of time could possibly have in store for him.