The Ship of State
In Republic, Plato uses the analogy of a disorderly ship, on which the sailors vie to be captain without knowing anything about sailing, to illustrate how, in a dysfunctional city, foolish people will vie for power by calling themselves wise and sidelining the real philosophers who should be ruling. For Plato, the greatest threat to a city is from within, from civil war, which can sink the ship of state if a wise captain does not maintain control.
It is appropriate, then, that in Revenge of the Sith the decisive battle of the Clone Wars – a civil war over how the Republic should be governed – is a battle of starships that rages above Coruscant, the capitol city planet of the Republic, and that the Separatists’ objective is to kidnap Chancellor Palpatine. The Separatists hope to commandeer the ship of state by removing the captain from the bridge.
But here’s where things get interesting. Plato held that in a functioning republic, just as in an ordered soul, reason should rule the passions, and in Star Wars, the color blue reliably correlates with reason and the color red with the passions. When the Battle of Coruscant is read as a battle between red and blue ships, the Republic’s dysfunction becomes all the clearer.
Counterintuitively, all the Republic’s Star Destroyers and ARC fighters – even the fighter piloted by the cool-headed, blue-lightsaber-wielding Obi-Wan Kenobi – are painted red, and all the Separatist ships – even the Invisible Hand, the flagship carrying the anger-driven, red-lightsaber wielding Count Dooku – are painted blue. The mismatched color-coding confirms Padmé Amidala’s fear, expressed later in the film, that “the Republic has become the very evil we have been fighting to destroy.” Although the Separatist leaders (Dooku; the vicious General Grievous; and the greedy, cowardly Nute Gunray) are evil, they represent constituents with reasonable charges to bring against the Republic. Meanwhile, the Jedi, in giving up their peace-keeping vocation to become generals, represent an effort to smother legitimate dissent with the passions of fear and aggression.
When Obi-Wan and Anakin Skywalker rescue Palpatine, take over the bridge of the Invisible Hand, and crash-land the ship after it breaks in half, it’s a metaphor for the impending collapse of the Republic. Because the Chancellor who should be a wise man is actually a wrathful Sith Lord driven by a passion for revenge, rescuing him to right the ship of state effectively drives it into the ground. Just as the Jedi bring Palpatine onto the bridge of a ship about to split in two, Palpatine is restored to power in a government splitting in two, and he will use fear and aggression, not wisdom, to unify it. Though the Republic wins the Battle of Coruscant and the Clone Wars, it loses its soul because the passions are at the helm.
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Characters: Count Dooku / General Grievous / Nute Gunray / Obi-Wan Kenobi / Palpatine
GO DEEPER INTO THE ARCHIVES…
Concepts: aggression / divisions / fear / government / passion / reason / revenge / wisdom
Influences: Plato
Interpretive Tools: Tripartite Soul Theory
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