So one of the things I love about watching Star Wars: A New Hope after having watched all the other Star Wars movies is how⊠well⊠how normal Lukeâs upbringing appears to have been.
Itâs not just that he was loved. Itâs clear that Breha and Bail Organa loved Leia immensely. But she was a princess functionally from birth, and then became a senator atâwhat? eighteen, nineteen, twenty? Something like that. She was much loved and much trusted, obviously, but her upbringing must have beenâŠÂ âunusualâ would be putting it mildly. As a teenager she was learning statecraft and politicsâand deception.
And their mother must have been the same way, queen from such a young age, raised and trained to rule. And their fatherâloved, yes, deeply, and I have no doubt that his mother did her best to protect Anakin from the worst parts of slaveryâbut he was still a slave, as was she, and there was only so much they could do.
But Luke! Luke got the gift of a perfectly normal childhood. All the jokes about Luke, the whining about wanting to go to TOSCHE station to pick up some POWER CONVERTERSâthe snippy teenagery conversation he has with his uncle about waiting âa whole nother year????ââthe shooting womp rats in his T-16 back homeâthe fact that left to his own devices, at the same age that Leia is deciding THE FATE OF HER PLANET, heâs still playing with model spaceshipsâŠ..
âŠtheyâre all signs that he had a normal childhood. That heâs a normal eighteen, nineteen, twenty, whatever year old.Â
I mean, he grew up in a situation where it was completely safe for him to whine to his parent figures. He knew that Lars and Beru wouldnât make him pay for his âbut I wanted to go to TOSCHE STATIONâ or for his âI want to go to the academy THIS yearâ or whatever. Unlike basically every other Skywalker ever he grew up without a ton of extra pressure, without a âoh by the way youâre going to be king of [planet]â stuff, without âalso youâre the Destined Future of the Jedi.â They didnât raise a legacy, or a scionâthey just raised a child. (In point of fact, thatâs why Yoda almost rejects him: heâs too old, and he was raised too normal.) And since Owen and Beru obviously knew perfectly well who and what he was, thatâs actually an astonishing accomplishment. They were delivered an infant who they knew had the approximate destructive power of a nuclear device, and they still raised him as⊠a kid, a child, a boy who they loved with the same mixture of exasperation and devotion as any parent-figures.
He grew up as a kid, with a gruff but loving uncle and a sweet-tempered aunt, he grew up skeet-shooting womp rats and hanging out with his friends in Anchorhead when he had an excuse to go into townâand itâs clear how safe he feels with them because he does whine and moan and have fits without any apparent worry that heâs going to pay for it later. He whines and moans in the way I did at that age: in perfect confidence that while my parents might temporarily snap at me, they would never hurt me, and they would always love me. And that all they really wanted for me was to grow up safe and happy.
tl;dr: Luke Skywalker: the last of the Jedi(?) but also maybe the first of the Jedi to grow up in a normally functional childhood.
(I also really, really want to see the story in which he grieves his aunt and uncle for more than ten seconds. Perhaps I will write it.)
discoholicmusic
yousharknotpass
origamiaround
kaledo-art
janainaart
stormborns
