This is a blog about something I have come to understand more fully than I used to, but it is probably something you have comprehended far before me. The funny thing about SW is that I can watch it a million times, and yet sometimes the importance of an issue doesn't hit me until the trillionth.

Today I found myself watching ROTJ once again, and a peculiar realization came across me: Luke Skywalker had a whole lot of his father in him, more than I ever knew.

Both Luke and Anakin lived their young years on Tatooine, and both dreamed of getting off that planet. Both were strong in the Force and became good pilots at young ages, and both began their Jedi training at unusually late stages in their lives. But those things are not even the most striking resemblences between them.

What I really began to comprehend today was the undeniable emotional likeness between the two; the same anger that boiled in Anakin's veins ran through Luke's, and that same anger almost caused Luke to follow in his father's footsteps as he released it and slashed away at his very own dad. I never realized this before, but in ROTJ Luke used the Force to choke two guards on his way into Jabba's palace. The same choke that Anakin used on Padme. The same choke that Vader used countless times to kill countless people.

Now I'm not trying to paint a picture of an evil Luke; I am simply trying to understand the significance of his similarities to his father. What really matters is the fact that Luke did something different than Anakin: Luke gave in to his anger for a moment, not for half his life. He jumped to an almost certain death in ESB and threw away his lightsaber in ROTJ rather than join the Dark Side.

And Luke did the unthinkable, the unimaginable, the nearly impossible; he reclaimed his father and the truly good qualities that both father and son possessed somewhere, deep down inside, and he made the truest statement of all time:

"I am a Jedi, like my father before me."

And that made all the difference in the galaxy.

Picture of Luke and Anakin

Here is my new website, which is devoted mostly to Luke, but it also contains many other pictures, including many of Anakin. It is still under construction but viewable!