Browsing through some new blogs I came across this one:
The Bard and the Flanneled One

Being a Shakespeare fan myself I was compelled to read this long, but entertaining and rather impressive entry.
And in one sentence about Luke's fateful fall on Bespin, inspiration for a blog was hidden:
"We can see how desperate he was to escape the Dark--he was willing to leap down that--and we can see how close he is to falling himself."

Luke is indeed on the verge of giving in to something. But I'm not quite sure whether it's really the dark side.
Everything he knew is falling apart in that moment, when Darth Vader has his famous line: "I am your father!".
This is "Vader triumphant". He is downright certain that his son will give in and stand at his side from now on.
Then we get a closer look on Luke's face and we see the decision he has made. Do we?
Luke is standing on the proverbial ledge, ready to jump. But is he willingly jumping into death?
I don't think so.
I tried to remember what I felt in this moment, when I first saw the movie, about 18 years ago. A bit difficult but I think I managed it. I thought something like "No, he's not going to die, he wants to escape."
Because he couldn't simply die without knowing the truth.
Vader his father? Ben and Yoda being liars?
That would be too easy. He knew he had to escape, to learn the truth and perhaps to find out whether his father could be brought back to the Light.
Of course it might have been wishful thinking on my part, because I wanted to know the truth that much for myself.
Luke did choose life over death, unwilling to give himself up even in a moment of utter despair. He could not be certain to survive that fall, but he hoped to do so. And this hope is what made him choose the "jump from the ledge" instead of falling from the Jedi's grace.
It was a tough decision to make in the blink of an eye. For me, this was always one of the strongest scenes, Luke had in all three movies. Because it happened to fast you could not be certain what conclusion he had come to. Quite a lot of people I know thought, that Luke wanted to die in order to escape Vader. But that would simply not do. Had he choosen death, he would not have turned away from the darkness but instead embraced it.


Enough rambling for a Sunday afternoon. But perhaps I'm going to return to that topic later on. - Yes, that's a promise not a threat.

As usual I apologise for any grammatical mistakes or vocabular misuse and promise improvement.