This photo & the discussion that was started here have made quite an impact on me this morning. Ben looking on as Luke holds his father's lightsaber. Wow. What a moment.

I'm not sure that in 1977 our view of Obi-Wan's life was much different than it is now, even with the PT fresh in our minds' eyes. Before the PT, it would be incredibly easy to understand that Obi-Wan & Anakin were friends as close as brothers, that there was a "falling out", Obi-Wan's failure as a teacher & the ultimate rise of Darth Vader.

Who better to play the part of an aging, regret-ridden Jedi, than the incomparable Sir Alec Guiness? With barely a shadowy back story as his inspiration, he was able to give us this scene & this snap shot. Tired. Old. Relieved. Frightened. His look says everything you ever need to know about the character of Obi-Wan. He's been waiting 20 years for Luke to wander into his life, that moment is here, and he's faced with the reality of sending this innocent, wide-eyed young man to face his doom.

Lies. Obi-Wan has just told Luke a series of half-lies as he hands him this lightsaber. Luke's face is full of hope & satisfaction. He has a tangible artifact from his father. Luke almost looks like he can see his father's reflection in the shiny casing of that lightsaber. The reflection of a young man who, too, had been full of hopes & dreams for his own future. Can Obi-Wan see that?

Thinking of that last image, now what I see in Obi-Wan's eyes is longing & sadness. I have had friends in my life who have slipped away from me (not to the dark side on the side of a lava floe, but you know how it goes...) and I can only feel a fraction of the emotion that Obi-Wan is exuding at this moment. I've only had one friend in my life who slipped away but who I fought to get back. Luckily, she fought too and now our friendship is deeper & stronger than ever. Perhaps Obi-Wan wonders if there is any hope of bringing back Anakin.

But it doesn't matter, does it? 20 years prior he was given a mission by Yoda: kill Anakin/Darth Vader. Obi-Wan is too old now to fight the younger Vader. There is only one path for Obi-Wan to chose now: teach Luke & send him off to kill his own father. The sadness in Obi-Wan's eyes now reaches new heights of guilt. Luke wants so desperately to know his dead father, Obi-Wan knows the truth, and soon Luke will be (unknowingly) murdering his own father. If they hadn't hopped on the Millenium Falcon mere hours later & began their adventure, Obi-Wan would probably have spent many sleepless nights grappling with what he was about to make Luke do.

Even with the PT to help us put images to Obi-Wan's memory in this photo, it's almost better for us to just "remember" the PT without specific references - the way we sometimes remember our past. Flashes of images & emotions, dialogue lost, facial features becoming fuzzy & blurred, but our hearts remember the important stuff. Obi-Wan failed to kill Darth Vader when he should have. He chose to allow Anakin to burn on Mustafar, hoping that the wounds would kill him instead of taking the responsibility himself. And now, he again is passing the buck when it comes to killing Vader. He loves his friend too much to bring the final blow himself. And still, at the moment of this photograph, he still loves "Anakin" too much to do this alone.

We know that by the end of the movie Obi-Wan will be killed by the very man he spared, perhaps Obi-Wan knows this too. "Your destiny lies along a different path from mine." Does Obi-Wan know that he will die at the hand of Vader? Even if he does, I do not believe that he is afraid of this outcome. He faces Vader full on, actually searching for him on the Death Star instead of running from him. "You cannot escape your destiny." Words spoken to Luke but fitting for everyone who has to either make amends or face a situation they'd rather avoid.

In the end, this photo makes me think of all these things in Obi-Wan's past. The regret & the love he had for Anakin. But mostly, Obi-Wan is witnessing the very last moment Luke is a "boy" - this is the final moment of innocence for Luke. From here on out he is a man facing very grown up situations. We hardly recognize Luke at the end of ROTJ as the same boy who left Tatooine at the beginning of ANH.

We don't always get to pinpoint the moment we lose our innocence, we blink & our children have grown, our lives change & morph with us hardly noticing. But Obi-Wan has had a lot of time to watch his life carefully, and watch Luke, and here he is, at the end of his life witnessing the final moment of boyhood for Luke. Now THAT is a very heavy burden to bear.