Last October, I wrote a long post and a short follow-up post on homes/homelessness in Star Wars. Now, over at The Jedi Archives, I have a new post about the significance of the Lars homestead in Episodes II, III, IV, and IX.
There is a homecoming at the end of the Skywalker Saga, but although a specific location is involved the homecoming is spiritual rather than geographical.
Yesterday my YouTube feed recommended a newly released music video by a band I’d never heard of, Gable Price and Friends. The song is titled “Think With Your Chest.” If the song had been titled “Think With Your Heart” I wouldn’t have given it a second glance, dismissing it as another variation on the wrong-headed (ha!) “follow your heart” cliché. But the use of the word “chest” intrigued me. Being me, I naturally wondered: Could the song be a response to The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis and its critique of a modern education system producing “men without chests”?
Alas, I don’t think Gable Price and Friends have read The Abolition of Man. If they had, and had been convinced by it, their song wouldn’t have so simplistically opposed the Chest to the Head, as if only one can win and the other must lose. Lewis argues the Head and the Chest must work together. To be sure, he believes the Head should lead, but he also says the Head will be ineffective or go astray without the Chest. And I think the reason that the song is stuck in this zero-sum binary is that it doesn’t consider an idea that has been around for two millennia: the tripartite soul.
In Lewis’s understanding of the human person, which he gets from Plato, there are not two but three parties jostling for control: the Head, the Chest, and the Belly. According to Plato, it’s this third, appetitive part of the soul that craves pleasure, and especially money to secure its pleasures. It’s to regulate the desires of the Belly that the Head and the Chest must work together.
In the song, the Head is associated with “surviving,” “the calculated outcome,” “the status quo,” and “thinking with me income.” Lewis and Plato would say that’s the Belly talking, not the Head. People who think with the Head are seeking to discern and live according to transcendent ideals. Contrary to what the song says, people who are living to make enough money to just get by and maintain their comforts might be using their brains—it takes some strategy to climb the corporate ladder or develop a strong portfolio—but ultimately they’re using their brains to serve their stomachs. The struggle described in the song is not really between the people who think with the Chest and those who think with the Head, but between the people who think with the Chest and Head and those who think with the Belly—and think with the Belly because they haven’t strengthened and harmonized the other two parts of the soul which should be in control.
The song is right that repressing the Chest in the name of a cold rationality is making people “depressed.” But ignoring the Head to follow the Chest is no solution. The song anticipates the objection that “the heart can be misleading,” and even validates that concern: “I can admit [my heart has] made some mistakes.” While I agree “I’d rather live with [the heart] than die so comfortably”—I’m reminded of what Lewis says elsewhere, in The Four Loves, about the necessary risks of loving others—how can a person think with the heart without falling into grave error? The song doesn’t offer a way out of that conundrum.
Yes, we shouldn’t live for comfort, or as if we were computers or disembodied and soulless brains. But instead of living by the whims of unregulated emotions, which is just another way of thinking with the Belly, we need what Lewis calls the “trained emotions” and “stable sentiments” of the Chest. And training and stabilizing our feelings so that they accord with reality is only possible through exercising reason to discern reality.
P.S.: It’s ironic that, in the first few seconds of the music video, you can see a bust of young Anakin Skywalker, in his podracing helmet, sitting on the dashboard of a car. As Timothy Lawrence has convinced me, Star Wars is all about resolving the tension between reason and emotion by rightly ordering the tripartite soul.
I’m having a lot of fun contributing to Tim Lawrence’s Jedi Archives project. Here are links to my first eight posts:
Pieces of Junk: Escapes from desert planets in the first film of each trilogy.
So Uncivilized!: Escapes from desert planets in the third film of each trilogy.
Dangerous Idealists: Similarities and differences between Obi-Wan, Mace Windu, and Count Dooku.
Doing Her Duty: Parallels between Episodes II and VIII.
Bombs Away!: The significance of the Resistance bombers in Episode VIII.
Jabba the Hutt: An Oligarchic Soul: Jabba the Hutt matches Plato’s profile of the oligarch.
The Empire Strikes Back Against a New Hope: Episodes IV and V form a chiasm.
The Force Awakens from the Revenge of the Sith: Episodes III and VII also form a chiasm.
For the past several years my friend Timothy Lawrence and I—but especially Tim—have been on a “damn fool idealistic crusade” to change the conversation about Star Wars, emphasizing its consistency and continuity across the decades and its moral-philosophical dimensions. The latest result of that endeavor is Tim's The Jedi Archives, launched on Substack today. Each post will be a short, thought-provoking blurb on some element in the films or shows. (For example, the debut post is on the significance of the monsters encountered in the third film of each Skywalker Saga trilogy.) Most of the posts will be Tim's, but I will also be contributing with some frequency. If you like Star Wars at all—or wonder what’s the big deal and would like to see it from a new angle—I highly recommend checking it out and subscribing.
If you are new to Tim’s work on Star Wars, a great place to start is to read the short appendices on “Star Wars Ring Theory” (an idea first popularized by Mike Klimo) and “Tripartite Soul Theory.” If you have an hour or so, another great entry-point is Tim’s talk on Star Wars for Emmaus Classical Academy.
Reading Klimo’s essay and then the explication essays that came out of Tim’s undergraduate thesis changed the way I view Star Wars. In particular, Tim’s focus on the morally-formative intentions of Lucas’s saga rekindled my childhood love for the franchise while also maturing it. My hope is that this blog will do the same for many more once-or-future fans—not just so that more people can appreciate more of Star Wars, but so that Star Wars helps them seek the good life of a balanced soul.
I have a new article, titled “The Dead Speak!: Reading with the Jedi,” that was published today over at the Mere Orthodoxy blog. It combines several of my favorite things: Star Wars, reading and reading ethics, and quoting from C. S. Lewis and Alan Jacobs. I am grateful to Tim Lawrence for his feedback on the early drafts, and to Jake Meador for publishing the article.
In my previous post about homeworlds in Star Wars, I noted how the final episode of The Mandalorian Season 3 ends with Mando and Grogu getting “a homestead” (from what I recall, that is exactly what the show calls it), and with the Mandalorians reclaiming their homeworld of Mandalore. This reminded me of the following passages from Edward S. Casey’s book, Getting Back into Place (Indiana UP, 2nd edition, 2009). I thought of citing Casey then, but the post was already far too long.
“Ends of journeys fall into two extreme exemplars: homesteading and homecoming. In homesteading, I journey to a new place that will become my future home-place. The homesteading place is typically unknown to me . . . . But I am determined to settle down for the long term in this novel place. . . . I commit myself to remaining in the new place for a stretch of time sufficient for building a significant future life there” (290).
“In homecoming, the duration of this alliance is no longer of major importance. What matters most now is the fact of return to the same place. . . . [T]he issue is that of returning not to the identical spot in space but to a place that may itself have changed in the meanwhile. . . . [I]t is . . . everyone’s destiny who has returned home only to discover striking differences” (290).
That last point is one major reason why so few people—both in the Star Wars galaxy and in our own—return to an old home for more than a brief visit.
There are two things about the final episode of the Ahsoka series, released over a week ago on Disney+, that struck me as highly unusual—or at least exceedingly rare—for a Star Wars story. Coming from a franchise that tends to follow nomadic characters from planet to planet to planet as they fight to determine the fate of “the galaxy” in general, both of these things are reminders that people also have attachments to particular places—and if they don’t, probably should.
First, the episode (“The Jedi, the Witch, and the Warlord”) retrospectively clarified just how much the entire eight-episode serial is largely about bringing one character home. Ahsoka is roughly the Star Wars equivalent of The Odyssey. Ezra Bridger is lost in exile in a far-off galaxy, is found, and is sent back to his own galaxy—and, implicitly, back to his homeworld of Lothal.
Second, there is a fascinating exchange between Grand Admiral Thrawn, the once-and-future big-bad of the Star Wars universe outside the films, and his second-in-command, the witch Morgan Elsbeth. Concluding their last conversation, Thrawn says, “For the Empire.” Behind his back and under her breath, Morgan counters, “For Dathomir.” That is, whereas Thrawn is fighting to reinstate a galaxy-wide regime, Morgan’s objective is local and personal: to restore the fortunes of her homeworld. Morgan is still one of the villains, but this revelation of her loyalty to a particular place makes her more sympathetic, and her choice to collude with a man who only exploits that loyalty more tragic.
However, to test my hypothesis that it is unusual or rare to find homeworld-centric characters or storylines in Star Wars, I searched through my memory for other examples and noticed a pattern. It isn’t so unusual or rare after all, depending on where you look. Ezra’s love for Lothal and Morgan’s love for Dathomir only have a few analogues in the films (by which I mean the nine-episode Skywalker Saga, Rogue One, and Solo), but the longing for a homeworld—whether to return to one, to protect or liberate one, or to find and settle down on one—keeps cropping up in the shows (namely, in Filoni’s Clone Wars, Rebels, Bad Batch, and Ahsoka; in Favreau’s Mandalorian and Book of Boba Fett; and in Gilroy’s Andor).
It’s not that there aren’t characters in the films that identify themselves with particular planets. Padme Amidala fights to save Naboo from a Trade Federation takeover in The Phantom Menace, and she expresses the desire to return to Naboo to raise her child in Revenge of the Sith. Her daughter, Leia Organa, is frequently associated with the planet of Alderaan. The scoundrel Lando Calrissian reforms his ways, settles down on Bespin, and though he fails to protect Cloud City from an imperial takeover in The Empire Strikes Back, he certainly tried.
But these characters are the exception. The protagonist of the Original Trilogy is Luke Skywalker, who leaves Tatooine behind and only returns briefly to settle unfinished business. The same is true of his father, Anakin Skywalker, the protagonist of the Prequel Trilogy. Both are very vocal about their lack of love for Tatooine. The protagonist of the Sequel Trilogy, Rey, also grows up on a desert planet, but her repeated insistence in The Force Awakens that she needs to return to Jakku is only in the vain hope that her parents will come back to find her there. In Solo, Han only plans to return to Corellia to save his girlfriend. (Speaking of Han Solo, the closest thing to home in most of the films is the Millennium Falcon. Home is where the Falcon is.) In Rogue One, rebels go into battle crying “For Jedha!”—but that’s different from Morgan’s “For Dathomir!” It’s not because Jedha is their homeworld, but because of what the Empire did to that planet. It’s their version of “Remember the Alamo!”
In the films, to live a long, peaceful life on a homeworld seems an impossibility. It’s something Padme, Leia, or Lando would want, but can’t have. (In Leia’s case, the Empire destroys Alderaan.) Perhaps because it’s so hard to realize with all the devastating star wars going on, it seems most of the characters have given up on the ideal, if they ever aspired to it in the first place. Just look at what happens—or rather, what doesn’t—when a war is over. The Original and Sequel Trilogies both end with the rebels celebrating victory together, but where do they go afterward? Unlike the hobbits in The Lord of the Rings, they have no Shire to fight for and then return to.
The Prequels seem to offer a subtle critique of this lack of localized loyalties. To compare the franchise to The Lord of the Rings again, the Jedi Temple is the closest analogue to Rivendell—but what a contrast! Rivendell is warm and earthy. The Jedi Temple is cold and cerebral. The Jedi Code’s ascetic ban on attachments must extend to places. The Jedi are taken away from their homeworlds in early childhood, never to return, and as much as they may consider the Temple their home, they aren’t bothering to make it cozy. It’s probably also significant that the Temple is on Coruscant, the most cosmopolitan planet in the galaxy. But what is most telling in the Prequels is that Palpatine, like Padme, is from Naboo—and he uses their homeworld as a pawn in a political power play, subjecting his people and their culture to death and destruction while he watches from aloof, anonymous Coruscant. The Jedi may think attachment is a liability, but Palpatine’s lack of attachments is part of what makes him so dangerous. Conversely, a love of home turns out to be part of what saves the day. Just as how, in The Return of the Jedi, Palpatine did not count on Luke and Vader’s attachment to each other, in The Phantom Menace, the one thing he did not count on was Padme’s attachment to their homeworld.
Now, back to the shows.
Of course, Ezra’s close identification with his homeworld in Ahsoka is nothing new for his characterization. Across the four seasons of Rebels, Ezra frequently returned to Lothal, and the final season was about his fight to liberate it from imperial occupation. Indeed, it was the sacrifice he made to achieve that liberation that led to his exile in that show’s finale. In the latter seasons of The Clone Wars, there is a real sense of loss when Ahsoka not only leaves behind the Jedi, but also leaves behind the Temple, which in turn leaves her adrift in the galaxy, looking for someplace to belong. In the second season of The Bad Batch, the Batch find an island paradise and begin to seriously consider staying put instead of being mercenaries. Likewise, The Mandalorian Season 3 ends with Mando and Grogu getting their own homestead, and with the Mandalorians finally retaking their homeworld. (The Mandalorians are strongly reminiscent of the Israelites returning to the Promised Land from Egyptian slavery or Babylonian exile.) The first season of Andor begins and ends on the planet that Andor and his adoptive parents call home, and the writers show an anthropological interest in the customs of different planetary cultures to a degree rarely seen anywhere else in the franchise. Finally, and in the weirdest development of all, The Book of Boba Fett contends that even the most famously dispassionate bounty hunter needs a home: first he is adopted by Tusken Raiders, and then he becomes Tatooine’s new daimyo.
The strangeness of that last example only serves to underscore what seems to be a significant concern in the shows, acting perhaps as a corrective to how the films largely tended to make the planets mere backgrounds. The shows recognize that people can’t really love or be at home in a vast, impersonal galaxy, but they can love and be at home on a planet of their own.
P.S. October 17: Tim Lawrence makes the fair point that “Padmé’s attachment to her homeworld is part of what makes Palpatine's manipulation work. It’s what gets her to vote him into power. So attachment to a homeworld is ambiguous – just like Luke’s family attachments in [Return of the Jedi], it can be manipulated by/lead to evil (Luke nearly kills Vader because of his attachment to Leia) and can also frustrate/prevent evil (Luke refuses to kill Vader because of his attachment). This double sided quality is probably why the Jedi forbid it in both cases (home and family).”
On further reflection, I would add that this same ambivalence about place is seen with the two other characters from the films that I cited as positive examples of an attachment to place: Leia and Lando. In A New Hope, Tarkin and Vader threaten to destroy Leia’s homeworld to get her to betray the rebels. (She (comp)lies, but they destroy Alderaan anyway.) And in The Empire Strikes Back, Vader threatens Lando with putting Cloud City under Imperial control to get him to betray Han (and then keeps altering the deal).
Read from top to bottom, this is the plot of The Empire Strikes Back. But if you read it in reverse, it’s the plot of A New Hope.
Han and Luke are given distinguished roles in the Rebellion.
Han tries to leave because of Jabba but stays to save Luke.
The Empire attacks the Rebel base.
The heroes flee the Empire in the Millennium Falcon.
There is a duel with Vader. The person who wins also loses.
The heroes escape the collapsing cave of a ravenous worm.
The heroes hide in/with the Empire’s trash.
The Millennium Falcon is drawn by necessity toward a hostile planet.
During a training exercise, Luke is taught not to trust what he sees.
A spy leads the Empire to the heroes.
A bounty hunter endeavors to collect Jabba’s price on Han’s head.
There is a debate, between a scoundrel and a Force-sensitive, over the terms of an agreement.
Someone loses a limb.
Luke learns of a connection between his father and Darth Vader.
Luke is rescued while at least partially unconscious.
R2-D2 insists on having knowledge that C-3PO dismisses.
Leia dispatches an envoy from her frigate.
The Empire strikes back by reversing the gains of the Rebellion.