Hey, someone in my discord group said this: "Random Star Wars thought: Anakin Skywalker was born a slave, then submitted to the Jedi, then submitted to the Sith. At every stage of his life, he had to answer to a master (or several Masters as a Jedi Knight). He was never truly free until he died saving Luke from Palpatine. And that's sad." Thoughts?
Hi! I think, from Vader’s point of view, that’s something that could work, because the dark side would twist him into believing it, but I’m pretty sure one of the hallmarks of being a slave is that you’re not allowed to leave and Anakin absolutely knew he was able to leave. At any time.
He knows it in Obi-Wan & Anakin:
Not only does Anakin know that he can leave, he plans to. And he even expresses that it’s not like he wouldn’t come back, showing that he doesn’t hold any ill will against them or consider them to be holding him there against his will.
Further, Ahsoka leaves the Jedi Order, Anakin literally watches her do it:
These Jedi are spoken warmly of in Dooku: Jedi Lost by the Jedi, that they are said to go on to live quiet lives or become leaders or just disappear quietly, but there’s no stigma attached to them and we further see it when Padme says that Dooku is the one who took the hit out on her in Attack of the Clones and it’s the Jedi who say, no, he wouldn’t have done that, he was a Jedi!
Which shows: They spoke kindly of people who left, there was every indication in canon that they knew they could leave at any time and they would not be mistreated for it.
Further, what I’ve usually seen as “Anakin was a slave to the Jedi” is that he couldn’t go where he wanted or do whatever he wanted, that he had to follow rules and, like, that’s not slavery. Or the idea that he wasn’t free to think his own thoughts or feel his own feelings--which, yes, he was. He has feelings all over the place and the only time someone gets on his case is usually when, like, he’s about ready to boil over and even then it’s just, “Jeez, calm down, Anakin.” and nobody actually does anything other than talk to him.
Anakin is not their property, if he doesn’t like the rules of their culture (and rules are not the same thing as forcing someone to obey them in terms of being a slave), he knows he can leave.
Anakin has free will in all of the above, as well as we see that he argues back (look at the way he’s constantly bickering with Obi-Wan in Attack of the Clones) or that he goes against the rules (he doesn’t delete the sensitive parts of Artoo’s stored intel) and what happens? He might get a scolding, but he’s never physically punished that we have ever seen, he’s never bound to this life or treated in any of the usual hallmarks of slavery.
The difference between being a Jedi and a Sith, in the scope of Anakin’s life, is that the Jedi made it clear he could go and they wouldn’t hold it against him, he would be spoken well of afterwards, and they supported him (Obi-Wan makes multiple attempts to talk to him about his problems, for example, it’s Anakin who pushes him away every time), whereas Sidious did physically punish him, made him kneel, deliberately humiliated him (like giving him to Tarkin or giving him to Tagge to teach him a lesson, to punish him for the Death Star), deliberately cut him off from emotional support, made it so that Vader felt he couldn’t leave if he wanted to.
Those two things are very much in contrast.
When Anakin chooses to save Luke, the reason it’s so powerful is because, as George Lucas says, “Star Wars is about choice.” When Anakin chooses to let go of all the hate and rage and pain and fear, to embrace a selfless moment, to become a Jedi again (there’s a reason he’s wearing those robes specifically, because he sees himself as a Jedi when he becomes a Force Ghost), he is choosing a better path.
It takes away from the ending of Return of the Jedi--where Luke also throws away his weapon because he is choosing not to give in to the dark side, he is choosing to embrace being a Jedi, he is a Jedi like his father before him, that this is what inspires Anakin to make his final choice as well, to choose the light again--to say that Anakin had no choice, that he was just a slave.
Anakin was a slave as a child and that must have had a profound effect on him and I can believe that he would see himself--once he became Vader--as a slave all his life, because he’s so damaged by his inability to face the things he’s done, he has to find a justification for it (this is backed up in commentary by George Lucas, as well as Charles Soule has said this is a main theme of Darth Vader: Dark Lord of the Sith, that justification/inability to admit to what he’s done so he has to justify it) and that’s what he reaches for, because that’s easier than admitting the truth.
(By the way, this isn’t to downplay the exploration of Anakin’s issues or how genuinely sympathetic they are! But that it’s an objective look at how, no, he was not a slave to the Jedi by any reasonable measure of the word.)
