Anakin Skywalker and the Fear of Death

Leanna Prince, H02

Darth Vader is, arguably, the most iconic villain in cinematic history. But what is it about him that makes him so popular? Is it the wonderful voice of James Earl Jones? His awesome sci-fi samurai armor? His propensity for force choking dissenters? Or is it something else? Perhaps Anakin Skywalker’s descent to the dark side resonates so powerfully because it represents something we all face – an all-consuming fear of death. Through Vader, Star Wars explores two different philosophical responses to death. By exploring these competing ideologies, we can better understand how Anakin Skywalker came to be the Dark Lord of the Sith.

What will ultimately turn Anakin Skywalker into Darth Vader is fear—specifically, the fear of death. In his 1973 book The Denial of Death, cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker argued that almost everything we do is a way of managing the fear of our own demise and the demise of those around us. This anxiety, known as death denial, is especially present in Darth Vader, and is rooted as far back as his childhood. When we first meet Anakin Skywalker, he’s an implausibly wise and articulate nine-year-old boy genius with superhuman piloting skills. He’s the product of a virgin birth, he’s smarter than any of the adults around him, and there’s a prophecy that suggests he just might be the messiah.

But even young Jedi Jesus isn’t immune to being terrified of death. Anakin’s distress over his mother’s mortality will haunt him. And as he gets older, this fear will become a fixation. Yoda figures out this fear is going to be a problem pretty early on, which could actually explain why the Jedi are so hesitant to train Anakin on account of his age. See, when kids are youngest, it’s easier to indoctrinate them to not fear death. Children, according to psychologist James A. Graham, begin to understand death as permanent between the ages of 5-9, but only as something that happens to lame old people. It’s only later, around the age of 10, that kids realize the permanence of death comes for us all. Anakin is 9 – able to understand his mother’s mortality, and likely on the cusp of understanding his own.

The Jedi council ultimately allows Obi-Wan to train Anakin anyway, but it comes at a terrible cost. According to Becker, human violence is a natural response to death denial. As he writes: “only scapegoats can relieve one of his own stark death fear.” Doling out death gives people a sense of control over it, whether that happens on the battlefield or as regular ol’ homicide. For Anakin, that means a one-way ticket to the Dark Side.

When Anakin finds that his mother has been mortally wounded by Tusken Raiders, he slaughters the entire village. This kind of revenge makes sense according to Becker, who argues that killing other people gives us the illusion that we can control death, assuaging the fear that the Jedi Council warned him about. The more Anakin kills, the more death feels like something he owns.

After Anakin’s mother dies, he starts having anxiety dreams again—this time that Padmé will die in childbirth. He’s ready to blame himself for both deaths; his mother died after he left her, and he believes his wife will die because he got her pregnant. It’s at this point that Anakin is given a choice on how to deal with death – the Sith way or the Jedi way. Anakin goes to Yoda with his concerns. Yoda’s answer comes straight out of Buddhism—not surprising, considering that its said Lucas specifically based Yoda on the Tibetan Buddhist lama Tsenzhab Serkong Rinpoche. According to the Buddhist text “The Pali canon”, jaramarana—the desire to escape old age and death—is a dangerously seductive human impulse. Nonattachment – or letting go of your desires – is the only way to defeat it. And Yoda practices what he preaches: when he meets his own death in Return of the Jedi, he’s so chill about it.

Becker would call Yoda a “knight of faith,” a term he borrowed from the Danish existentialist Soren Kierkegaard. According to Becker, having real, authentic faith in something more powerful than death is a great way to manage our terror. For Kierkegaard, this meant faith in God. For Yoda, his nonattachment to jaramarana is grounded in his faith in the light side of the Force. Either way, it’s not something you can choose. This kind of faith is, in Becker’s words, “a matter of grace and not of human effort.” Anakin doesn’t have Yoda’s faith, so he goes to Palpatine for an answer. The Sith approach is to embrace your desires — in this case the desire to prevent Padme’s death – aka: death denial. In telling him an old Sith legend about Darth Plagueis the Wise, Palpatine lets it slip that the dark side of the force may enable you to defeat death.

Anakin takes sides and becomes a Sith Lord—on one condition. Anakin sacrifices his name, his loyalty to the Jedi, and even his conscience to learn how to protect Padmé from death. In refusing to accept death, Anakin is set down a dark path: he kills children, his wife, and even tries to kill his mentor. He has completely sacrificed his personality and values and become little more than a zombie trapped in a machine. This is the terminal point of death denial, according to Becker. He writes: “the person seeks to avoid death, but he does it by killing off so much of himself and so large a spectrum of his action-world that he is actually isolating and diminishing himself and becomes as though dead.” Left with nobody to protect from death, Darth Vader has become an instrument of power and little else.

We can also see this discrepancy between death denial and death acceptance in how Anakin and Luke confront death. Anakin’s most telling confrontation with death was when he indiscriminately killed the Tusken Raider’s to avenge his mother. Ultimately, Anakin even killed Padmé in his rage. Or she just died from bad writing, it isn’t really clear which. Meanwhile, Luke is willing to give up his own life to avoid turning in the thing he hates. When asked to kill Vader by Darth Sidious, he refuses. This willingness to accept death is what truly separate a Jedi from the Sith. It is only when Anakin takes a cue from his son and learns to renounce his own life that he embraces the reality of death and conquers jaramarana.

The story of Anakin Skywalker is the story all of us have to live through. Jaramarana can rot out our personalities, strip us of our values, and drive us to do terrible things. According to Becker, denial of death is responsible for our drive to inflict violence on each other, to conquer, and to control our surroundings. But no matter how much of ourselves we’ve invested in our denial, accepting the reality of death can give us dignity, build our courage, and expand our compassion. It’s never too late for Darth Vader, and it’s never too late for us.

Questions:

1. What do Buddhists call the fear of death?

2. Who wrote the 1973 book The Denial of Death?

3. Around what age do children realize that they, too, can die, not just old people?

Discussion Questions:

1. Are you afraid of death?

2. Do you sympathize with Anakin? Would you have a similar (though presumably less intense) reaction in his situation?