A Piece of Sky

[swiftsnowmane]

Father,

 

I may be falling

through clouded skies,

broken

and bloodied,

weighted

with the horror

of unholy revelation,

but it is you

who fell long ago

from far greater heights.

 

Father, 

 

you may be standing

against the faded stars,

shackled

and suffering,

bowed

beneath the burden

of long-held darkness,

but it is I

who blaze

with undimmed light.

 

Let go

of your hate,

Let go

of your fear,

Let go

of your shrouded lies,

and I promise –

 

I will be there

I will catch you

 

and together

we will find 

our own piece of sky.

 

 

 

— t.f.b.c.

Comments

[swiftsnowmane]

Hey there! Thank you again for your kind words!

[**I’ve written a response below, but it ended up much longer than I’d realized, so apologies in advance for rambling on.]

I completely understand and relate to what you’re saying—I grew up on the Original Trilogy, and Luke was always my fave. Leia, too, to an extent, but Luke was always my childhood ‘hero of all heroes’, and much of my admiration for him stemmed from the way in which he manages to save his father, instead of destroying him, as everyone had encouraged him to do. Back then, I already really loved the father-son dynamic in RotJ, and was always deeply moved by Vader’s redemption at the end of that film, but I never really thought too much about Anakin’s overall storyline. And even after the Prequels were released, I, like so many others, dismissed them on a surface level for a long time, and didn’t really take the time to understand what they were trying to convey. So, believe me, yes, I totally see their various flaws and whatnot, but over the years (and with the assistance of additional supplementary material like The Clone Wars animated series) I have been able to gain a deeper appreciation of the *story* that is being told in those films, and of the overall purpose of Anakin’s arc.

Many dismiss Anakin as a character simply because of his evil deeds during and after his downfall, without understanding that the Skywalker saga (the PT and OT, at least) is intended to be viewed, overall, as a myth. Infused as it is with elements of heroic epics and greek drama, it is a distinctively older type of tale, played out on a galactic level. There is, therefore, something beautifully Romantic about this story that many miss, especially in the current climate of tumblr-fandom that is so myopically focused on concepts of ‘social justice.’ The more I thought about it, the more I came to love this extremely misunderstood character—this deeply loving, tragically flawed, all-too human god trapped inside a machine.

You mention Obi-Wan’s view of the past, and yes, it is interesting—Obi-Wan in the Original Trilogy is this odd sort of blend of ‘romanticizing the past’ with ‘extreme disillusionment of it’. And he even fully admits, later in RotJ, that his views are biased (“many of the Truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view, etc.). So, yes, the entire Prequel story is meant to show that the Jedi Order was not entirely ‘blameless’, and was, by its blind participation in a Sith-run war (amongst many other things), at least partially responsible for its own destruction and downfall. The location of Coruscant itself is meant to symbolize the deep levels of corruption already extant in the Republic as a whole, and to show that the Republic’s veneer of ‘civilization’ in fact is built upon a decaying foundation, one that is, by this point, being steadily and secretly ‘devoured’ by the Sith from within.

That said, there is a bit of uncertainty in terms of what, exactly Obi-Wan means when he says ‘a more civilized age’. Because he says that this age came before ‘the Dark Times’. This is a phrase that is generally taken to refer to the age of the Empire, but I wonder…does he now perhaps view the era of the Twilight of the Republic (aka, the Clone Wars) as part of these ‘Dark Times’? Because, in retrospect, he must surely realize that this is exactly what they were. And there are many moments in the TCW animated series where Obi-Wan is indeed faced with painful realizations about his own limitations, as well as the limitations and effectiveness of the Jedi Order as a whole. So, imo, perhaps by that point in A New Hope, he already *does* realize that the Republic and Jedi Order during his time were not part of this ‘civilized age’, and is instead referring to even more distant eras in the past, such as the times of the Old Republic. (Either way, he’s definitely still romanticizing ‘the past’ with that line, but maybe not in the precise manner it first comes across.)

[continued…]