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The Holy Mother

© Paul F. McDonald

It is perhaps not at all surprising that one of the first images of mythology should be that of the mother. After all, the mother provides the very first experience of life that anyone has, and out of all of nature, human beings have the longest state of dependency on her for protection and nourishment. As a result of this, one of the primal mythic archetypes were indeed Venus-like figurines carved out of stone at some point duing the paleolithic era.

Certainly Star Wars is millenia removed from those figurines, both in time as well as technology - yet as the French say, the more things change, the more they remain the same.

As it turns out, the mother of Anakin Skywalker is predictably playing a large role in terms of the young Darth Vader's life. When she is introduced in The Phantom Menace, Shmi Skywalker is shown to be a woman who is soft-spoken but also strong-willed, and who is loving and compassionate without being overbearing. With very little support from anyone, she has cared for her son not only on the harsh, largely lawless world of Tatooine, but has had to do so as a slave. Once the property of one of the galactic gangsters known as the Hutts, by the time the prequels begin she and her little son Annie live in a spartan home owned by Watto, a Toydarian junk dealer of a usually cranky temperament.

When Anakin brings home a group of stranded off-worlders to have dinner, Shmi's life forever changes, as does her son's. Yet her life is not without dramatic and unprecedented events even before this. As she timidly relates to Qui-Gon Jinn, her son was born not of a human father but apparently by the mysterious flow of the Force. Anakin comes into being virtue of nothing but the inexplicable energy of the cosmos itself.

There is an ancient, half-forgotten Jedi prophecy concerning such an event, stating that the one brought forth in such a manner will be the fabled Chosen One who will bring the galaxy back into balance. The story is an old one, and as Joseph Campbell points out in "The Hero With a Thousand Faces," it is well known: "In an inconspicuous village the maid is born who will maintain herself undefiled of the fashionable errors of her generation: a miniature in the midst of men of the cosmic woman who was the bride of the wind. Her womb, remaining fallow as the primordial abyss, summons to itself by its very readiness the original power that fertilized the void."

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