Welcome back ...

When Anakin confronts Shaak Ti at the door, he starts to say, "I'll do - ", and then cuts short. He was going to finish that sentence with "whatever I want" ... but he is already beginning to scheme, and realizes that that sentence will bring more suspicion on him. He knows he's doing wrong, and does it anyway.

"How could they think they counted for anything, compared with him? How could they think they still mattered?" Here Anakin is referring to the traffic that is in his way as he attempts to ride to the Chancellor's "rescue". This thought just drips with egotism.

"Take him - it is your destiny.' Mace was right ... just about 21 years and untold lives too early.

"That power that only my master truly achieved .... " Let's translate that, shall we? "I totally outright lied to sucker you in, ha ha ha ha." And Anakin just doesn't care. He completely ignores that. He's losing sympathy points at an alarming rate by this time in the story.

/rant on ... Anakin Skywalker, the so-called "Hero of the Republic", was weak-minded and susceptible enough to fall to the dark side, but a young boy - 10 years old, the age where even the most obedient children question everything - is not, and goes down fighting. I don't care how much pity one feels for Anakin, at this point you realize that really, he's being a cold-hearted, self centered smeghead. /rant off

"Have faith, my love." Does anyone else find it ironic that this is what Anakin tells Padme?

Obi-Wan is the greatest example of the principle of letting go. He grieves for the lost ones ... and then lets it go and focuses on the present. You can have emotion and still be a Jedi. It's never been about being emotionless - it's always been about being able to control those emotions.

"Seeing will only cause you pain"
"Then it is pain I have earned." Obi-Wan can accept it. Anakin could not.

When Padme's ship lands on Mustafar, Vader refers to Anakin as a separate being. This shows again that the love is gone, obliterated by his hatred and malice.

Boy, he sure was quick to believe she was a traitor and toss her aside. So much for that eternal love, eh?

"You will not take her from me!" ... after she's already unconscious. I don't know if this crossed your mind, dear Ani, but she's not likely to come running into your arms after you choked her out. He's like a kid who breaks a toy so another kid can't play with it.

The duel came down to "just the two of them, and the damage they had done to each other."

**See my Obi-Wan blog entry ... **

Palpatine "laid his hand across the cracked and blackened mess that had once been [Anakin's] brow" ... and in that simple, humane gesture bound Anakin to him forever.

"Love is the answer to the darkness."

"Obi-Wan looked down at the simple, child-like symbols carved into [the jappor snippet], and felt from it in the Force soaring echoes of transcendent love," ... this was young Anakin in my mind, when he loved her unconditionally ... "and the bleak, black despair of unendurable heartbreak." This was Padme at the end. Even in "Across the Stars", there is foreshadowing of the dark times ahead for these two lovers.

And Vader finally understands:
"There is one blazing moment in which you finally understand that there was no dragon. That there was no Vader. That there was only you. Only Anakin Skywalker. It is in this blazing moment that you finally understand the trap of the dark side, the final cruelty of the Sith -
Because now your self is all you will ever have."
"The power you can touch is only a memory."
"Within your furnace heart, you burn in your own flame.
This is how it feels to be Anakin Skywalker.
Forever."

For all the times I've wanted to smack Anakin upside the head with a brick and ask him just what he thought he was doing ... I still pity him. I pity him for being so miserably alone that he desperately clings to any relationship he has. I pity him for being so paranoid that he eventually drives all of those relationships into the ground, except for the one that was the worst for him. I pity him for taking all of his good traits, and ending up perverting them. I pity him for seeming incapable of true, pure, unadulterated love.

"The dark is generous, and it is patient, and it always wins - but in the heart of its strength lies weakness: one lone candle is enough to hold it back.
Love is more than a candle.
Love can ignite the stars."