Today's stream of conciousness : Darth Vader and Ebenezer Scrooge

Hi All,



As I often like to get started with a ‘stream of consciousness’, I thought I would put a brief bit of my daily stream here:

We have recently had the festive season, to wit there is usually multiple versions of Dicken’s ‘Christmas Carol’. I also watched the ‘star wars’ films and noticed how they complemented the festive Christmas Carol. While at first glance it would appear that what is a mid-Victorian moral/social commentary and what is an epic space fantasy have nothing in common. But the crux of the 2 stories is the same, which is that of redemption. It is not just that the ‘good guys’ win, but that the ‘baddie’ in both is redeemed, that is ‘bought back’.

Thus Scrooge is initially a ‘good’ individual who even falls in love, but eventually looses that and his scruples, being twisted into a bitter, evil man. At the end of Christmas Carol and its variants, it is often conceived that Scrooge is a changed man for good, which is true. But more specifically Scrooge’s transformation is one which sees him go back to the person that he was at the beginning of his years, that is he is ‘brought back’, or redeemed.

Likewise Darth Vader, the antagonist of Star Wars, was originally Anakin Skywalker, a hero and all out good guy who was also in love and was eventually, for various reasons, twisted into a monster. Yet Vader is redeemed or brought back to being a Skywalker, by the love that he has for his own son, Luke, who is being killed by the even more evil ‘Emperor’. In saving his son, Vader once again becomes the ‘good’ Anakin Skywalker, but at the cost of dying, which Luke desperately wants to stop. Vader’s last words to Luke is that ‘he already has’ (saved Vader) is telling.

Discuss.