Moral Injury, Tragedy, and Kylo Ren
I was a little trepidatious about covering the topic since itâs sensitive. I am not being flippant by connecting this to Star Wars. Â I promise. Â Bear with me. Â Works referenced sprinkled throughout.
In January of 2013, Timothy Kudo, a Marine and veteran of the War in Afghanistan wrote an article âI killed people in Afghanistan. Â Was I right or wrong?â In February of 2013, twenty-two service men and women killed themselves per day. Â Timothy Kudo eventually took his own life.
I didnât return from Afghanistan as the same person. My personality is the same, or at least close enough, but Iâm no longer the âgoodâ person I once thought I was. Thereâs nothing that can change that; itâs impossible to forget what happened, and the only people who can forgive me are dead.
From The Theater of War by Bryan Dorries:
Standing before a crowd of war-weary infantry soldiers after a reading of Sophoclesâs Ajax on a U.S. Army installation in southwestern Germany, I posed the following question, one that I have asked tens of thousands of service members and veterans on military bases all over the world: âWhy do you think Sophocles wrote this play?â
Ajax tells the story of a formidable Greek warrior who loses his friend Achilles in the ninth year of the Trojan War, falls into a depression, is passed over for the honor of inheriting Achillesâs armor, and attempts to kill his commanding officers. Feeling betrayed and overcome with blind rage, Ajax slaughters a herd of cattle, mistaking them for his so-called enemies.
When he finally realizes what he has doneâ covered in blood and consumed with shameâ he takes his own life by hurling his body upon a sword. The play was written nearly twenty-five hundred years ago by a Greek general and was performed in the center of Athens for thousands of citizen-soldiers during a century in which the Athenians saw nearly eighty years of war.
And yet the story is as contemporary as this morningâs news. According to a 2012 Veterans Affairs study, an average of twenty-two U.S. veterans take their own lives each day. Thatâs almost one suicide per hour.
A junior enlisted soldier, seated in the third row, raised his hand and matter-of-factly replied, âHe wrote it to boost morale.â I stepped closer to him and asked,
âWhat is morale-boosting about watching a decorated warrior descend into madness and take his own life?â
âItâs the truth,â he repliedâ subsumed in a sea of green uniformsââ and weâre all here watching it together.â
Moral Injury is related to, but distinct from, PTSD. Â A morally injurious event is a transgression which âhatters moral and ethical expectations that are rooted in religious or spiritual beliefs, or culture-based, organizational, and group-based rules about fairness, the value of life, and so forth.â (x). Â They are perceived by the actors as gross moral violations. Â Not every soldier who kills in war (or participates in killing or other acts many would find transgressive) will experience moral injury. Â But a significant portion will.
This is extremely taboo to say. Â An article in a prominent political journal rebutted Kudo was titled âA Morally Confused Marine.â Â I will not link to or quote it here.
Timothy Kudoâs experience challenges a couple of very dearly held and nigh-taboo-to-question modern beliefs. Â First, that if we kill in the context of a moral war (if there is such a thing) it will protect us from feeling violated by killing. Â And second, that we have absolute free will. Â That is, regardless of the situation, there is a right choice. Â There is a best choice. Â And that we will always have the resources to make it.
The Ancient Greek Conception of Evil and Choice
This is not what the Greeks believed. Â The Greeks had a blended idea of free will and fate. Â Plato explained it as an arrow. Â We have the ability to aim the arrow. Â We can make the choice when to fire it, how to aim it. Â But once it is in the air, it is not in our control. Â They believed we had a nature. Â An acorn does not become an elephant, it becomes an oak tree. Â We develop into our own fullness, but along a course. Â And over time, our actions mold us (which is where we get the word character, from the Greek for engraving).
We have swung very far in the direction of free will, and of a free will idea of sin. Â The Greeks believed evil was a thing you could do, but it was also a thing that could contaminate you and prevent you from being what you were meant to be. Â Moral injury, as it is perceived, is more like that. Â It is more like a disease. Â It feels like being tainted.
After decades of constant war (in which most adult males participated), the Greeks had a clear understanding of what war did to the people in it, and they had a medicine for it: Â the spring Festival, the central ritual of which was a tragedy. Â The most prominent tragic playwright was Sophocles, a general, and he wrote for his men. Â To give you a sense of scale:
You were not considered an adult man unless you had attended this festival. A third of the population went to each performance.
This was not just entertainment. Â This was designed for mass mourning. Â This was meant to portray what happens, without judgment, without sugar-coating. Â Without trying to enforce âthis should not happenâ onto anything. Â This was a reflection of what does and did happen.
Viewing a tragedy with a third of your city in this mass spectacle meant you saw your experience reflected on stage, and you mourned for it, and you did that with everyone you knew. Â You experienced catharsis. Â That word has changed to something else, but in the Greek, it was feeling your emotions in a safe setting, feel connected with others, and they would lose their negative hold on you.
Nobody had to tell you you were not alone.
You were not alone. Â That was and is important. Â That is what drama can do and be in peopleâs lives.
Moral Injury Outside of War
I personally believe moral injury applies outside of the context of war. Â Suffice to say, I know this applies outside of soldiers from personal experience. Â
I believe this idea applies to victims of abuse, neglect, mental illness, and oppression. Â Anyone who has been put in a situation with no right answers, who must survive, may have done things they are not proud of.
Thereâs a lot of shame around that.  We cannot talk about it, because admitting to it is like admitting being tainted.  It feels like it invites blame from people who want to believe bad things happen to bad people. What one has to do to survive is beyond taboo to talk about.
I do not mean to take the spotlight away from soldiers.  I want to emphasize if youâve felt this, your experience is more common than you might think.
The only place the taboo is, almost, lifted is in art. Â Art, especially theater, lets us have a communal experience. Â Lets us portray without judging. Â Lets us feel compassion and pity without excusing. Â It lets groups of people who feel immensely isolated and unable to express their experience feel like they are not alone.
Kylo Ren as Tragic Protagonist
Maybe the mythology Americans are best versed in is Star Wars.  We donât have any media a third of everyone holds in common.  But Star Wars is pretty close.
There are elements of Greek tragedy in the OT, especially in Vaderâs final scenes. Â But you know who is a textbook Greek tragic figure?
Kylo goddamn Ren. Â I am not minimizing Rey or Finnâs role; they remain the protagonist and deuteragonist of the movie respectively. Â But his arc is still classic Greek tragedy in structure.
How do I know? Â Letâs break out motherfucking Aristotleâs Poetics (or a summary of it, heâs a dense read):
The plot must be âa whole,â with a beginning, middle, and end. The beginning, called by modern critics the incentive moment, must start the cause-and-effect chain but not be dependent on anything outside the compass of the play (i.e., its causes are downplayed but its effects are stressed). The middle, or climax, must be caused by earlier incidents and itself cause the incidents that follow it (i.e., its causes and effects are stressed). The end, or resolution, must be caused by the preceding events but not lead to other incidents outside the compass of the play (i.e., its causes are stressed but its effects downplayed); the end should therefore solve or resolve the problem created during the incentive moment. Aristotle calls the cause-and-effect chain leading from the incentive moment to the climax the âtying upâ (desis), in modern terminology the complication. He therefore terms the more rapid cause-and-effect chain from the climax to the resolution the âunravellingâ (lusis), in modern terminology the dĂ©nouement
The incentive moment is the discussion with Vaderâs helmet. Â
His driving conflict is that he is not yet committed to the darkness. Â Because his is a complex tragedy (more on that in a minute), he has two climaxes, the bridge scene and being defeated by Rey.
Aristotle stresses that Tragedies should not be episodic at their best. Â However, I believe TFAâs plot stands on its own sufficiently to still qualify. Â He has a complete arc within the film.
Complex plots have both âreversal of intentionâ (peripeteia) and ârecognitionâ (anagnorisis) connected with the catastrophe. Both peripeteia and anagnorisis turn upon surprise. Aristotle explains that a peripeteia occurs when a character produces an effect opposite to that which he intended to produce, while an anagnorisis âis a change from ignorance to knowledge, producing love or hate between the persons destined for good or bad fortune.â He argues that the best plots combine these two as part of their cause-and-effect chain (i.e., the peripeteia leads directly to the anagnorisis); this in turns creates the catastrophe, leading to the final âscene of sufferingâ
The catastrophe is his defeat and his final scene of suffering is being abandoned in the snow to die.
2. He arouses both pity and fear. Â The pity is widely covered and causes much fanboy and girl gnashing of teeth. Â Seriously, you canât throw a rock without hitting an article trying to solve this as a tragedy by getting rid of pity as an element. Â Heâs not really also pitiful. Â Or weâre supposed to laugh at the pitiful parts. Â Or weâre supposed to think of him as a school shooter or something.
Make no mistake: this is people trying to worm their way out of feelings, or out of having to contemplate limited free will. Â Actual fucking Greek tragedies challenge the taboo against challenging absolute free will we discussed above.
Anyway, but one of the turns of his character arc, the peripeteia, is an act of moral injury. Â From the script:
Kylo Ren is explicitly a knight, a soldier.  He is coded as mentally ill (his room in production was called âthe padded roomâ).  Based on a vivid description of Snokeâs interaction with Ren in the novel, he is coded as groomed and abused.  As discussed above, I believe those populations are susceptible to moral injury. And that is exactly who seeing a person like Kylo Ren portrayed can serve.  Maybe not everyone in that group, or everyone who has experienced moral injury.  But I think a lot of people.
Kylo Ren serves a function. Â I can only speak for myself, as someone who has experienced moral injury: Â It is amazing to see someone like Kylo Ren and know so many people have also seen it and felt what I feel.
Kylo Ren has helped me find a community. Â Kylo Ren has helped me say, publicly, âthere but for the fucking grace of God go I.â Â I watch Kylo Ren fuck up, and it is cathartic. Â I watch Kylo Ren and know someone fucking gets it. Â I watch Kylo Ren and hope someone like me has the vocabulary to both avoid his fate and have compassion for him. Â By having compassion for him, I have compassion for myself. Â He is not excused. Â What he does is not portrayed as a good thing. Â Not even remotely. Â
But it is portrayed. Â It is not solved, it is not made pretty, itâs not made black or white.
Itâs the truth, and weâre all watching it together.
Does Driver know about this?
Driver not only knows about this, he narrated a book about it, the dude who wrote the book is on the board of the charity Driver founded with his wife, and the Charity is about community for soldiers through theater.  In case you were not convinced this is a big deal to Driver.
If dude doesnât know how this applies to Star Wars it is a hell of a fuckinâ coincidence.  By the way, donate to his charity.
Driver gets this. Â Not only that, but he knows exactly what this could mean to some people. Â Isnât that neat?
Kylo Renâs story as tragedy is not only good writing and acting, it is transcendent writing. Â It is important. Â It is worthwhile. Â It is supported by the actual text of the movie and by the stated intentions of the actor with the character. Â It is consistent with his known interests outside of it.
And itâs good. Â Itâs very very good. Â And given how hard some people try to worm out of it, itâs needed.
I see a lot of the Sophocles tragedy Philoctetes in Luke Skywalker.  Philoctetes is left on an island to rot after a grave injury.  He survives nine years until an Oracle tells the Greeks only he can save them.  But he is so heartbroken (beyond heartbroken) by being abandoned to suffer with a festering wound he cannot return except by divine intervention.
Read this post by @oldadastra too.
@loveyournightmare, you want meta? Â You got meta.
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