Hey guys, it's good to see that you all still want me to continue writing my blogs. To tell you the truth I was not sure how well I would be received upon my return, because of the influx of so many new people especially with those seven-day trials. I was worried that no one would care about my blog entries anymore. I am glad to see that this is not the case, and that so many people have welcomed me back, with no one coming out yet saying that I need to go away again. I am also pleasantly surprised to see that many of my older blog entries are coming back up the popular list and that you all are enjoying my older ones as well.

Anyway, let's go ahead and get on with tonight's topic of discussion; Yoda's advice to Anakin Skywalker in ROTS. Now, many have debated this topic (all over both the blogs and the message boards) about whether or not it was good advice to give? If it helped Anakin? If the advice was just one more thing that helped push Anakin towards the Darkside? Well today I am going to talk about some of these questions, but also I will discuss both what Yoda and Anakin got out of the early morning meeting (at least I assume that it's early in the morning as the scene before it is at night).

Before we begin there are a few blog entries of mine that I want to direct you all to. These blogs will cover some of the ideas that I will be presenting throughout this entry, so I encourage you all to read these before you comment on those ideas. Remember that there are more that deal with these ideas in my blog index HERE, but the ones I am linking to go over the main blog entries that talk about it. It starts with a 2-part series:
Part One
Part Two
In Your Bloodstream
We Were Wrong!
Somehow My Fault
I've Been Here Before

Let's begin shall we? I think we shall.

Yoda has always been seen as a wise old sage. One who knew what should be done, and was looked to for advice by all of the Jedi, even the most prominent ones. There has been lot's of evidence that supports this, I mean he is wise, but there have been instances when he had been wrong as well. Take for instance underestimating the Sith, and not even realizing that they were still around. This was a huge miscalculation on not just his part but also every other Jedi (links above for more). Either way he was still a considerably wise man, and I thought that it was great that Anakin went to him at all.

Knowing Anakin's personality, how he always wanted to be independent (not listed above but in the index as 'Finally Free to Do What I'm Told', and wanted to do thing's on his own, it was incredible that he was willing to go to Yoda about his particular problem. But that being said, I also feel that this attitude of his also kept him from fully hearing and understanding what Yoda was saying.

Now since ROTS came out I have felt that Yoda's advice was actually pretty good. Basically he was saying that Anakin had to train himself to let go of his fears of losing someone, so that they wouldn't control him. While some of his ideology behind this was a little off, as spoken in the links above, but his words were very good. Even though what Yoda said was actually good advice, it was the reasoning behind the words that were off and the most detrimental to Anakin. Now when Yoda was saying that he had to learn to detach himself from these feelings, his mindset is that I Jedi shouldn't have certain emotions or experience certain emotions because they believed that that was a path to the Darkside (see my 'Playing With Their Laser Swords' and the 'You Won't Like Me When I'm Angry' blogs in the index for more on this. Those are some personal favorites of mine and really go into what it meant to be a Jedi in both the PT and OT). Now I have explained at great length why this philosophy doesn't work, but I feel that this is what Yoda intended when he said this to Anakin, and Anakin knew it.

This of course, is exactly what Anakin doesn't want to hear. He needs help; serious, serious help, but he is too afraid to admit it to anyone. It's undisputable that he had reason to fear with him being married and all (talked about in the links above), but what Yoda says only seems to confound the issue. Now, I am not sure exactly what Anakin was hoping to accomplish by going to Yoda, because he obviously couldn't tell the old Master what exactly was going on. He had to walk on eggshells around the real issue, and in return didn't get the advice that he needed.

Does this mean that Yoda's advice was bad? No, in fact I think that Yoda's advice was spot on...for the problem that Anakin told him about. Clearly it wasn't what Anakin wanted to hear, nor what he needed to hear. The blame for the bad advice, for it was bad advice towards Anakin's true problem, can't be put on Yoda as so many have chosen to do in the past, but has to be put on Anakin's inability to explain the entire problem. Perhaps if he would have been forward with Master Yoda, Anakin could have been helped, but I am not here to speculate, only to work with the facts available. Instead though he walked away from the private meeting feeling no better off than he had before, in fact worse off (the ROTS novel goes more into how Anakin reacted to Yoda's advice) than he had been when he came in that morning. So when we look at it this way, Yoda's advice was indeed unhelpful, but only because Anakin wouldn't tell the whole story, or explain the entire situation.

So did this advice push him over towards the Darkside? Well, that kind of depends on how you look at it. We all know that there were many factors that led to Anakin's eventually downfall (links above), and in a way this advice could have been one of the many things that led to his dark decision. Yoda's unhelpful advice showed Anakin that he could not get the answer, nor the help that he so desperately sought from the Order's most prominent member, meaning no Jedi could help him. Which meant that he had to search elsewhere to find it. And lo and behold who was there to offer him the help he desired?--The Dark Lord of the Sith. So, yes it could have been another reason why he turned to the Darkside. I mean to him, he clearly couldn't receive any assistance from the Darkside, even though he had approached them, but the Darkside and the Sith were more than willing to help him out...for a price.

I suppose the point I am trying to make is that Yoda's advice wasn't bad, and wasn't horrible, and wasn't the thing that turned Anakin evil. Yoda's advice was good for what he had been told, but Anakin kept the whole truth from Yoda, meaning that Yoda couldn't offer any better advice than what he had given. That being said however, the advice that Anakin took from the meeting was bad and detrimental to him. It was one factor of many that contributed to his decision to turn to the Darkside.

Well, I suppose that's enough babbling for tonight's entry, and I have to return to my studies. As always I am open to comments, and hope to hear from you guys. Just try to remember that I am only making educated guesses based on the facts presented, and the studies I have done in both school and college. Also try to make sure you at least skim over those entries I mentioned and linked to, so that you understand the full ideas that I merely skimmed over in this entry, before posting comments about those ideas. I know tonight's entry was a little easy, and not as deep as normal, but as I said I have to study, but also some people may not have realized some of these things. Goodnight and thanks for reading.

--DLZ