Star Wars is full of symbols, that's one of the things I love best about it. Everything has the potential to mean so much more than what appears on the surface, and I have often wondered which symbols are meant to be messages to us as audience members and which are meant to be understood by the characters themselves.

Most of the time when I wonder something like this it has to do with names. For instance, Padme means lotus. When I learned that it told me a lot about who Padme is. The lotus is a symbol of motherhood, the physical world, and eternal renewal. But is that symbolism a code that is meant only for the audience and kept secret from the characters within the GFFA? Or am I supposed to believe on some level that Dooku understands his name means poison, or that Maul is cognizant of the fact that he got his name for some pretty violent reasons? I'm not sure, but as I was watching ESB the other day. I found myself wishing and hoping that the characters were aware of what messages are behind some of the more symbolic names.

It all began as the movie was ending. Vader had revealed to his son what their true relationship was, and had returned to his Star Destroyer. I watched him standing alone on the bridge like I have a hundred times and then he said it,

Luke.

And it hit me. In the context of the story Padme chose that name, and not just any name. She chose a name that means something. It means light. At the end of ROTS I think that Padme knew she was dying, that she wouldn't live to see Anakin again, but that doesn't mean she didn't have one last thing to say to him, to remind him of. Whenever Vader calls out to his son he's literally calling out to the light, and I like to believe that that's just what Padme wanted him to do. It's a message in a bottle not just for us, but for her husband, one that says "come back. I love you."

What do you think?
MTFBWY