One of the hallmarks of a mythic story is its sense of timelessness -- of being both long over and perpetually happening. When the story is shared in a community, those hearing it are both learning an ancient tale and participating in it. Perhaps the clearest example of this timelessness is the cycle of seasonal celebrations, with their attendant myths -- the death of light and its rekindling at (or near) the winter solstice, the spring rites of renewal, the harvest rites of autumn as the world prepares for winter again. The stories are told in a cycle of narrative, ending only to return to the beginning.
The Star Wars narrative fits the seasonal pattern well, beginning in fulsome summer, descending into fiery autumn and barren winter, and finally emerging again in a delicate and joyous spring. Even the release order suggests a cyclical myth -- beginning in the middle of the story and cycling back around to the beginning.
But what of the question of Star Wars as a myth of morals and self-discovery? It is clearly a morality tale on one level - -a cautionary story about the dangers of greed and rage, and a hopeful tale of the virtues of compassion and forgiveness. It is also certainly a coming of age story and a traditional hero's quest for identity. This essay does not dispute either point. To the mythic mindset, however, it is not an either/or question -- our morality is reflected in the structures of the natural world, and the cycles of nature hold lessons about the nature of mankind. Thus the celebration of Christmas from Christians is simultaneously a celebration of the return of light to the physical world, the celebration of the perceived historical event of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, and a theological reminder of the "dawn of redeeming grace." Likewise, the Jewish celebration of Passover brings in the renewing green herbs of springtime, recalls the defining event of the liberation from bondage in Egypt, and asks celebrants to consider the question of how we are still bound and redeemed each day.
There are of course no rituals or ceremonies to mark the seasons of the Star Wars myth, no designated holidays or traditional foods to be brought out as the seasons come upon us (though of course individual fans may in fact be prone to creating rituals). Divorced from the ritual of practiced religion, the Star Wars text itself becomes the celebration, where, as Joseph Campbell wrote, "The wonderful cycle of the year, with its hardships and periods of joy, is celebrated, and delineated, and represented as continued in the life-round of the human group."1
The Classic trilogy opens in the dead of winter, the height of the Empire. Its colors are harsh blacks and whites, its landscapes -- with the exception of the Rebel Base -- barren. Tatooine may be filled with sunlight, but it is a cruel sun that leaves dried bones on the horizon instead of drawing up life from the soil. The watery, temperate-looking world of Alderaan is seen only as it is destroyed. Drab green is as colorful as things get in the Empire, and in the galaxy it has created in its own image. The galaxy lies dormant under an icy heel. By the beginning of The Empire Strikes Back, even the rebels are snowbound.
And yet, in the tradition of the Solstice, it is in this darkness that we first see a glimmer of hope (as Episode IV was, in fact, re-titled, A New Hope). When we meet Luke he is engaged in moisture farming--trying to bring water and life back to the barren land. The longest night of the year also marks the beginning of the lengthening days, the brightening of the world as it moves toward spring.
In the course of the story, Luke goes to a watery world -- a dark, nighttime version of the swamps which gave (will give?) aid to his mother on Naboo, another cyclical allusion. While he is there, he descends briefly into the underworld and gets a piece of information that changes everything, then returns to the world of the sky (Cloud City), where he learns its meaning -- he has encountered mother and father, water and air. He emerges from the encounter decisively changed, and the galaxy is ready to change with him.
Return of the Jedi marks the return of springtime. Winter still holds sway within the Empire, though even there the scarlet robes of the Emperor's Guard begin to provide a contrast. Most tellingly, the main action of Jedi takes place on the verdant moon of Endor, filmed in a forest of delicate shades of new green. The rebels, in camouflage for much of the movie, reflect this rising theme, while the Empire, powerful though it may be, is visually overwhelmed from the first glimpse of the bunker.
Although the movie again begins on seasonless Tatooine, it is no longer that Tatooine of stoic farmers and malfunctioning vaporators -- it is the Tatooine of Jabba the Hutt, debauched and filthy, but deeply sensual. It is here that Leia brings her love back from the dead, the first of many spring symbols that appear in the movie.2 After this prologue, the action moves to Endor, where we encounter not only the greens of the landscape, but the Ewoks, the first creatures in the saga shown in family groups that include infants and small children. Leia takes her hair down, a freeing of the feminine energy, which has been/will be destroyed in the course of the prequel trilogy's role in the cycle.
Most importantly, Luke repeats the theme of rescue and redemption by going deep into the underworld and redeeming his father, who has been enslaved there, and whose power will return balance to the Force. Significantly, this has traditionally been the role not of the son, but of the queen-consort. Ishtar seeks Tammuz, Isis seeks Osiris, and -- not incidentally -- Leia seeks Han. It is not unreasonable to see Luke in his role in Return of the Jedi as an avatar not of Anakin, but of Padmé, who presides over the "summer" of the saga.
As the Classic trilogy draws to a close, the characters are gathered on the forest moon, celebrating their victory with song, dance and fireworks. The stormtroopers' helmets are played as drums and pilots pantomime the stories of their daring escapes. As this is happening, Luke carries the mechanical shell of his father's body to the edge of the celebration, and burns it on a great pyre. The sparks meld back into the fireworks, and the fireworks into the galactic celebration.
This is very reminiscent of springtime rituals. James George Frazer, in The Golden Bough, reports that in parts of Bohemia, "they carry Death to the end of the village, singing... Behind the village they erect a pyre, on which they burn the straw figure, reviling and scoffing at it the while. Then they return, singing:
We have carried away Death
And brought Life back.
He has taken up his quarters in the village
Therefore sing joyous songs."3
Of course, when Luke himself returns to the village after carrying death away, he is welcomed by his joyful friends, and he looks across to see Yoda, Obi-Wan, and Anakin (young again in the DVD-release) looking on from the past, hovering over a green and misty world -- a primeval beginning -- as the joyous songs go on around him. Life has indeed been brought back.
When we rejoin the saga, time has been both pushed forward and rolled back. On the most obvious level, we find ourselves thirty-two years before the events of A New Hope have taken place, but seasonally, we are further along in the year.
The Phantom Menace is drenched in the bright, vibrant colors of summer. When we encounter Naboo, it is fresh and lush, a high and fertile summer with its young girl-queen/demigoddess as its symbol. Unlike Dagobah, the swamps of Naboo have clear water and bright skies. Even dusty, drab Tatooine is shot not as a barren place, but as a land of golden sand and cheerful sunlight. It is here that we meet the slave Anakin, who has great potential and is loved by powerful forces (the Jedi, Padmé). It is also, however, a fragile, temporary galaxy. The days are shortening; a major scene between Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan takes place in the red light of a gaudy Coruscant sunset. Threats are suppressed unnaturally, by a kind of willful blindness that keeps the good people battling phantoms while evil is taking root at the heart of the Republic. The bounty of the galaxy is barely held in check, and evil forces are ignored, in hiding rather than defeated. Like ancient kings trying to avoid the fulfillment of a prophecy -- Acrisius hiding his daughter Danae so she wouldn't bear a son who would kill him, or Laius and Jocasta exposing the infant Oedipus on a mountaintop--they believe that they can preserve the status quo indefinitely. "This is a typical reaction of the old male energy," Victor MacGill writes of Acrisius. "...He thinks he can lock the problem away, but we cannot lock things away for ever in our unconscious world, just as the King could not keep Sleeping Beauty away from the spindle forever. Whatever is unnaturally controlled and suppressed will always find a way to reappear."4
By the time the saga moves on to Attack of the Clones, the color scheme has changed. There is more brown, more rust color. Autumn is in the air, just around the corner. . By Clones, the color scheme has changed -- there is more brown, more rust color... autumn is in the air. Natural dangers are highlighted -- the parasites Zam uses to attack Padmé, the violent storms on Kamino, the beasts in the arena. The romance comes to fullness here, in the waning days of summer, as autumn closes in. Patricia C. Wrede's juvenile novelization of the screenplay brings this into sharp focus with its final sentence, as Anakin kisses Padmé at their secret wedding, and she thinks, "There was only Anakin, and the scent of the dying roses in the garden below."5
Attack of the Clones marks the beginning of the season of death, with the bloody deaths of three women (Cordé the handmaiden, the bounty hunter Zam Wessell, and most prominently, Anakin's mother, Shmi Skywalker) heralding the end of the fertile summer.
As story moves inexorably toward Anakin's fall, another common harvest myth evoked--the dying god, who is killed and dismembered only to rise again with the crops in the spring. Like John Barleycorn of American legend, he is hacked apart a bit at a time. Perhaps the most famous of the dying gods, Tammuz (also known as Dumuzi and Adonis), was the consort of Ishtar (or, in the Greek take on the myth, Aphrodite). Each year, he was killed, and each year, the goddess descended into the underworld to retrieve him. While she was gone, she took the fertility of the Earth with her. While Anakin sojourns in the underworld, trapped in a modernistic version of a live burial, the galaxy again falls into winter, where we began, and the twins will be born of summer as the hope for spring to return.
Notes and Works Cited:
1. Campbell, Joseph. The Hero With A Thousand Faces. (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, USA). Second edtion, 1968. Pg. 384.
2. The imagery of Leia's rescue of Han is strikingly similar to the description of Isis finding her husband Osiris trapped in a casket after seeking him all day as a sparrow hawk. As related by Geraldine McCaughrean, "Her feet felt the beat of a heart through the inlaid lid. Not dead yet, then! Half mad with hope, she pecked furiously. Her beek made a hole. The soul of Osiris struggled like a flame through that hole and singed the fathers of the sparrow hawk!"
McCaughrean, Geraldine. The Crystal Pool. (Margaret K. McElderry Books, New York, 1998). Pg. 52.
3. Frazer, Sir James George. The Golden Bough. (Macmillan, New York, 1922.) First Touchstone edition, 1996. Pg. 360.
4. MacGill, Victor. "Perseus and Andromeda." When the Dragon Stirs
(http://www.vmacgill.net/perseus.htm)
5. Wrede, Patricia C. Star Wars: Episode II: Attack of the Clones. Based on the story by George Lucas and screenplay by George Lucas and Jonathan Hales. (Scholastic, New York, 2002). Pg. 167.
