What does Darth Vader symbolize to you?

"Vader is a broken and fragile man, kept alive only through the use of his armor. He can't even breath on his own. He personifies religion in service to the state; a dead, useless thing that can only bring misery and death."

http://secretsun.blogspot.com/2011/01/son-of-suns-star-wars-symbol-cycle-part.html


"Doctor Doom"

the triangle, or pyramid on Vader's helmet's mouthpiece.

empire. mystery babylon. medici. pharmakeia.

Vader's armor.?!

Vader is the same character to me as Gollum. So much of a victim to the evil and the corrupt that he became an unwilling instrument of it. Unlike Gollum however, Vader was conscious and aware of what his mask was doing and eventually of him being exploited for the purposes of the pure evil at the core - the Emperor. This awareness, the human core that he himself retained ultimately became the catalyst of his dropping the evil black shell and redeem what was left to be salvaged underneath. Gollum had no redeeming value and was corruption in its purest form. There were no facettes to his character, no layers to be pealed which is why there was neither anything left worth saving nor anything left that could still be more destroyed than it already was.

To me Darth Vader is right about the most interesting character in Star Wars for this reason. He is not a symbol of evil for me but rather a symbol of good. In this sense I find him a better symbol for good than the slick Ben Kenobi or the arrogant Yoda or the unrealistically innocent Luke Skywalker, because Skywalker was bland and simplistic and his masters were way darker than they dared showing. Not so with Vader. Vader is humanity, he is beauty for he is the beauty deep inside and he symbolizes our capacity to reclaim our dignity and our goodness however badly the wicked treated us and however much corruption they rubbed off on us.

In obvious and not so obvious ways, Darth Vader represents the father figure. In the literal sense, he is Luke's father. "Vader" literally translates to "father". This wasn't an accident. In the figurative sense, he is the dominating presence that hovers over us throughout our lives. He represents the father we psychologically desire to escape, destroy, become or replace.

His armor represents authority. The suit represents power. He is a warrior in a very real sense, and his armor is clearly influenced by that of the Samurai. It is an outward expression of mechanical power that hides the humanity inside.

I could go on for days, but I'll leave just these few ideas for now...

Vader is the REAL hero of the story

Good ol' Joe Campbell has some interesting thoughts on what Vader represents in the IP lectures (think it's in the first one?).

Not gonna explain them here

Personally, I like him, as a character-study. He brings humanity and gravitas to 'evil', as compared to Palpatine who I find to be almost a caricature. Vader is the tortured soul that I think we can probably all relate to in some shape or form. When I watched the films as a relatively young child, I didn't guess that he was going to end up redeeming himself - but I still felt pity - empathy even - for someone who seemed to me to be trapped living a life that held no personal meaning or joy. Despite the fact that before the prequels came out you didn't know exactly how he had got into that situation, you could tell he wasn't doing all this stuff for the fun of it.

I really enjoy the debate of - does one reach a point with evil where they cannot possibly make up for the deeds that they have carried out? Is Darth Vader truly 'redeemed' when he kills the Emperor to save Luke? Or is it like "dude...you did a good thing, but you're still going to hell". I'm watching a show at the moment with a similarly epic redemption arc and I ponder this question often...

From an "Original Trilogy" perspective, Vader was pure evil, or as Obi Wan said: "more machine, than man now". He was a one unit wrecking machine. You didn't even get any sense of humanity from him until right at the end of ROTJ. That's what I grew up on - a dark, sinister being who was prime-evil. It wasn't until the prequels came out that we get to see how the man became the machine, and then our perspective changes. Now we see him as an example of the pitfalls of allowing your emotions to cloud your judgement, and how the innocent can be manipulated.

I see so much of what Palpatine did, playing out on the world stage around us, and for me, Vader symbolizes what can happen if we allow evil to go unchecked.

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing." Edmund Burke

Leandros Von wrote: Vader is the REAL hero of the story

A realization that many had to see Episodes I - III to understand.

After seeing all of them, especially in in-universe chronological order, you see that this is actually, in essence, the biography of Anakin Skywalker. This is also a popular format in heroic stories. We see the humble beginnings, watch him rise through the ranks of a noble order, watch as he is tempted by evil and his eventual fall from grace, his evil and misguided reign, and finally his redemption.

Vader himself, as we know him from the original trilogy, is also a warning to those who would be tempted to the Dark Side. He may have command of a grand army and fierce power, but at what cost? He succumbed to the evil in exchange for his humanity. "He is more machine than man," is not just the obvious statement, but also a statement of his being. He still has a heart beating in there somewhere, but he is cold and coarse and unforgiving like (in the context of the fiction concerning Obi-Wan's personal past) a battle droid with no soul, only doing what it is told (programmed) to do without remorse or compassion.

Rick D wrote: From an "Original Trilogy" perspective, Vader was pure evil, or as Obi Wan said: "more machine, than man now".........Now we see him as an example of the pitfalls of allowing your emotions to cloud your judgement, and how the innocent can be manipulated.
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing." Edmund Burke

people can also become mechanized in their belief systems. their status quo belief systems, religions, or service to state or any other mainstream system becomes their Vader suit. the feeling, thinking human being inside them becomes weaker and weaker until their Life is " a dead, useless thing that can only bring misery and death." all that is left to support them is the established state of being, and anything that challenges their mainstream belief system is seen as a dangerous threat. if their Vader suit fails they are afraid that Their life will fail. Fortunately, in the real world, not everyone will croak or kick the bucket if they remove their Vader suit.

I was going to comment here earlier, then got caught up in other things ...

To my mind, Vader is all of us ... he is indeed the 'authoritarian Father' (ex. : Chronos, the 'projected' Wizard in the Wizard of Oz, Prince Escalus in Roméo & Juliette) of the Jungian archetype of mechanical, objective/control-driven, bureaucratic 'authority'. The man who has completely given himself over to the executive of a 'system' role. It is 'evil' - and people DO indeed suffer from it - but it is the Adolph Eichmann sort of 'evil', that which is done out of obedience to a "System" which usurps any human feeling one would naturally have about one's fellow Man.

The "one good act" can indeed be the redemption, Vicky ... Heaven and Hell are both IN US, not somewhere else where the punishment goes on through 'Time'. Heaven and Hell are Eternal -- that is, they are 'outside' of temporality. Saving Luke was incidental, as Luke didn't really need 'saved' in that way ; what 'saved' Vader was throwing the Emperor down the whatever that was. Vader was released from Hell - in his case 'living as a mechanised servant of the machine'. That most of his body was a machine was merely symbolic. Furthermore, that is what the iconic "Darth Vader breath" was : it was not to show that he was on a respirator, but that this was indeed a "living being" and not a "robot". Breath is the essence of Life - and insomuch as the breathing was mechanical, it was also a portent of the virtue of being 'alive'.

Rick ... we saw MANY instances of humanity in Vader all throughout the original trilogy. In the famous scene where he says that blowing up planets is pretty lame and chokes the shit out of General Motte for ridiculing his reverence of the Force -- that is 'humanity' (pretty well disguised, but still). When, aboard the Executor, telling the bounty hunters "I want them alive ; NO disintegrations", that also was humanity. When in the the carbon-freezing chamber in Cloud City and Chewbacca started throwing stormtroopers, Vader pushed away Boba Fett's blaster to keep them from getting shot -- humanity again. In short, he really didn't want them getting hurt .... but he was still very much a slave to the "establishment".

Take Campbell's reference to Sinclair Lewis' Babbitt : "I've never done anything I wanted to do in my whole life." And there we have the hopelessly sad soul inside every Vader we've ever met. Perhaps the Vader we are ...

Darth Vader symbolizes the Darkness in all of us to me the man who chose a life of Darkness and damnation. Over that of the light. However you can not have light without darkness and you cant have darkness without the light in a sense Vader and Luke were the balance of all of life constantly battling for dominance or so that is what I think any way. In this they represented the yin and yang of life. Of course this is just my opinion but you have to admit the symbolic symbolism is within the story.