The Tragic Hero

Sith Eyes



"Many a hero has given in to the desire to use his powers to make things right in the world - and has ended up a tyrant."

-Mary Henderson. Star Wars: The Magic of Myth

For Valentine's Day, Andy gave me a great book called Star Wars: The Magic of Myth by Mary Henderson. It has tons of breathtaking pictures and artwork from the SW movies, as well as famous artists, depicting scenes from ancient myths and folklore. The book takes an in-depth look at Star Wars and how it relates to and assimilates certain aspects of ancient myths. It quotes Joseph Campbell often who is an expert on mythology and wrote the widely known book The Hero with a Thousand Faces from which George Lucas relied on to build his own timeless myth.

"Throughout the inhabited world, in all times and under every circumstance, the myths of man have flourished; and they have been the living inspiration of whatever else may have appeared out of the activities of the human body and mind.""It has always been the prime function of mythology...to supply the symbols that carry the human spirit forward, in counteraction to those other constant human fantasies that tend to tie it back."

-Joseph Campbell. The Hero with a Thousand Faces

And then Henderson goes on to say:

"A myth shows us what we're up against; it identifies the "bad guys" - who often turn out to be within us, the part of ourselves that would hold us back - and it helps us find a way to defeat them. And that, finally, is part of the myth's magic too: it offers hope."

And I say, "Anakin! Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo!"

-Britten