The chances are high that no scene in Attack of the Clones shocked people more than Anakin's murdering of the Tusken trribe. While very little of it was seen on screen, it still sparks debate more than two years later. (Then again, it wouldn't be Star Wars if it didn't.) Did Anakin, the moment he decided to take revenge for his mother's death, become Darth Vader in everything but appearance and name? Or was he doing the world of Tatooine a favour by getting rid of such savage creatures? The movie gives us no real answers; we have to think about it for ourselves.
"The scene of the Tusken Raiders is the first scene that ultimately takes him on the road to the dark side,"1 George Lucas, the creator of Star Wars, says about it. Everything about Anakin in this scene and the ones before it are constructed to have Anakin remind us of Darth Vader -- even his shadow on the wall when he bids goodbye to Padmé looks like it's wearing Vader's trademark helmet.
"The scene of the Tusken Raiders" goes like this: After Anakin's mother Shmi dies in his arms, Anakin looks up with fury in his eyes, then we see him coming out of the Tusken tent and start to kill anything in sight. The camera cuts away after just a few deaths are seen onscreen, but we know that it's not likely Anakin will have stopped and walked away after killing just a few. It isn't in his nature. "Young Skywalker is in pain," Yoda says worriedly, as he picks up on Anakin's feelings through the Force. "Terrible pain..."
Not much later, Anakin confesses to Padme the full extent of his crime. "I killed them," he tells her. "Not just the men, but the women and the children too." Anakin's confession is one of the few times in Star Wars where we see a character cry. He hates what he has done, but he cannot let go of his hate towards the Tuskens either. This is understandable, as they murdered his mother for no good reason. Few people could fail to be angry about that. Taking revenge on the children was way over the line, however, and one can't help but wonder if it foreshadows events to come. No one could possibly say that Anakin's actions were good. But it is possible to argue if they were as bad as they seem. After all, if we can't muster up even a single shred of sympathy for him, what would be the point of the next episode?
"They're like animals," Anakin says (well, shouts) about the Tuskens, "and I slaughtered them like animals." So far in the movies, they have been portrayed as little more than savages...they attack Luke in A New Hope and they shoot at podracers, possibly killing a few of them. Their faces are always hidden. "Many monsters remaining from primeval times still lurk in the outlying regions, and through malice or despiration these set themselves against the human community," says Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces.2 This describes the Sandpeople perfectly -- they and the farmers of Tatooine have been in conflict for a long time. There have been deaths on both sides, probably even before Shmi was kidnapped. But after Anakin's killing of the Tusken Raiders, they have become more interesting to the fandom in general, if not more sympathetic. The reason for that is simple: no one likes the idea of children being killed, no matter how vicious the race they belonged to was -- even if they were thought of as animals. This is why the whole scene is very effective as Anakin's first step to the dark side: it's wrong and possibly quite disturbing, but there are more and more questions and layers to the questions the more you think about it.
You could say that the men of the tribe were vile creatures and honestly did deserve the label of "animals." You could say the women did nothing to help the prisoner the men were mistreating, it's possible that they didn't even care...perhaps killing them was justified, as well. And the children would have grown up to be no better than the adults. And Anakin was barely even sane at the time. He'd been temporarily driven mad by grief. They'd murdered one of the people he loved the most, after all. It was pure and simple revenge. Surely many of us would do the same thing in the same situation, or something similar. Maybe we would just kill the men and let the rest live. But what consequences would come of that? Do we all have a bit of Anakin Skywalker in us? And does that, by default, mean we have a bit of Darth Vader in us? It's a hard question to ponder, and probably the main reason why the scene inspires as much debate as it does. We would like to think we'd do the right thing in a situation as bad as the one Anakin was put in, but what was the right thing? Killing the men of the tribe might have stopped them from kidnapping and torturing more innocent people later on. But is killing anybody ever the correct thing to do? And
since Anakin's crime was revenge -- when do two wrongs ever make a right? Star Wars has plenty of depth in its plot, and this is one of the scenes that proves it without a doubt.
When the topic of whether killing the women and children was right or justified is brought up, it is often pointed out that the women's crime of doing nothing was far less than the crime of the men and not really deserving of death, and the children...well, as has been said, when is killing children ever justified? The mere thought of someone commiting an act like that can horrify us like nothing else can. In the very same movie as this act, we see Yoda teaching a class of Jedi younglings. When Anakin talks about the killings, that may well have been the first thing the audience's mind jumped to. Innocent creatures. No matter how much we may feel sorry for Anakin after seeing what has been taken from him, that is the one thing we can't possibly condone.
Looking at it as a question of right and wrong or of simple human behaviour, it seems that killing the men was justified, (especially considering that they killed the farmers who went out to look for Shmi), that killing the women was possibly justified but we don't know enough about the whole thing to really be able to say (did they even know there was a prisoner? The movie doesn't show us), but that killing the children was a terrible thing for Anakin to have done.
A story similar to this one is the story of Kut-o-yis, or Blood Clot Boy. "He exterminated a tribe of cruel bears, with the exception of one female who was about to become a mother. She pleaded so pitifully for her life, that he spared her. If he had not done this, there would be no bears in the world."3 The same thing happened when he killed a tribe of snakes. We don't know if, during Anakin's extermination of a cruel tribe, anyone pleaded for her life, but it seems unlikely that if anyone did he would have spared her. After all, Anakin didn't just kill them because they were cruel -- he killed them because they took someone away from him. In some stories, slaying the creatures tormenting the townspeople is always a good and noble deed, but in this story it is more complicated, because it was for revenge. It is also complicated because we know what will become of Anakin...he will one day be as bad as them. This often happens in stories -- the person seeking revenge goes much too far and becomes evil themselves, such as in the play Medea, where a woman seeks revenge on her husband. "You can see the evils of revenge because Medea was right in condemning Jason, but becuse of how she dealt with this injustice, she is forever seen as evil and unjust herself. She could have come out of that mess looking like a saint, but she chose a bad path. She had the power for revenge and she used it and now she has to suffer the consequences," explains Frederick John Kluth.4 Anakin too will later be seen as evil and unjust, although this will be for the crimes he commits as Darth Vader. If, however, in Episode III the Council discovers what Anakin did on Tatooine, this may well have dire consequences.
No matter if everyone on the planet considered the Tuskens animals, there had to be some good in some of them...how can they be animals if they are humanoid and considered to be "men, women and children"? Furthermore, they are capable of making tents and setting up camps, and keeping weapons. We don't know why they thought it was alright to kidnap and kill an innocent woman, but then again we don't know if other Tuskens from different camps or different parts of the planet would or would not have done the same thing. Anakin doesn't seem to think they really are animals either...otherwise, surely he wouldn't be so conflicted about it. "I'm a Jedi," he tells Padmé tearfully. "I know I'm better than this." Not the words of someone heartless, but certainly the words of someone who will be heartless later, as anyone even remotely acquainted with Star Wars knows. At the moment, though, he's nothing but a young man who's both had a terrible crime committed against him and committed one himself. He understands this, but he's still conflicted about it, as many people would be. Being a Jedi doesn't cancel all his human emotions. And, being Anakin, he's not brilliant at controlling them.
Joseph Campbell once told a story: A samurai had the duty to avenge the murder of his overlord, but the murderer, on seeing him, spat in his face. The samurai then sheathed his
sword and walked away, because he had been made angry, and if he had killed that man in anger it would have been a personal act, instead of an impersonal act of vengence.5 This is exactly the opposite of what Anakin does. The story of the samurai (who the Jedi are partly based on) would be what a Jedi would be expected to do...walk away and not give in. But Anakin did not. The Jedi Council would not be happy, if they did find out.
Anakin's conflict and anger are the keys to this scene. He knows what he did was very wrong, he is able to get through his hate and realise that, but the real problem is that he won't learn from it at all. He won't become a better person because of his temporary descent into darkness...instead he'll become a far worse one. He'll kill in cold blood, like the Tusken Raider men did...and he'll wear a mask like they do, as well. Generally it's agreed that these killings were Anakin's first real experience of the dark side of the Force, but even so, at the moment he can still tell right from wrong. He can still know how close he came to complete darkness, how close he came to having rage and loss blind him completely. After the fall, he won't even have that.
Works Cited
1 George Lucas, Star Wars: Episode II, Attack of the Clones DVD, commentary.
2 Joseph Campbell. Hero With A Thousand Faces (The Hero As Warrior). Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968, p. 312.
3 Campbell, p. 312.
4 Medea and Witchcraft in Ancient Greek Art, Questions and Answers; http://www.fjkluth.com/medea.html
5 Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers. The Power of Myth. New York: Anchor Books, 1988, p. 95.
