Saving lives aint easy work...

Sometimes, I know I have to save the world but I never know how. I try so hard to stop certain horrible things from happening, but how can I? I'm dying over it. I...I don't want to lose him to darkness. I feel like Anakin Skywalker: Need help saving someone but I do not know where to turn. I feel like Obi-Wan: he was my best friend but despite all I've done I'm losing him to...to darkness, to evil, to what I dare not think of. I feel like Padme: I loved him, I still love him, but he is not himself any more. He has changed, he is dark now, not the person I once loved. He is destroying me, he has broken my heart. I feel like many songs mixed in: There's just too much that time cannot erase. Where did I go wrong, I lost a friend somewhere along in the bitterness. Have you no shame don't you see me?...You don't know how you betrayed me...you're not real and you can't save me. Someone said goodbye, but I don't know why. Many nights we prayed, with no proof anyone could hear...there can be miracles when you believe, tho hope is frail. When I wander thru the desert and I'm longing for my home, all my dreams have gone astray, when I'm stranded in the valley, and I'm tired and all alone, it seems like I've lost my way I go running to Your mountain where Your mercy sets me free...
So many mixed emotions, unable to forget, lost someone dear, not who I thought and nothing wonderful, God can work miracles and save him, Christ is my fortress and comfort. So much mixed in together, it hurts. I can only save this life thru Christ. PLEASE SAVE HIM!!!

The Dark: Commentary

I am aware that this is very allusive, making a point with a comparison. I have added my commentary. The words from the novel are in italic and my commentary is the bolded words. Note that this may not be exactly what Matthew Stover intended, but the meaning as I interpret it.

The dark is generous. Throughout the novel, “dark” and “shadow” tend to allude to Palpatine, also known as Darth Sidious. The dark is generous shows how Palpatine is always there for Anakin, always like the father he never had.
Its first gift is concealment: our true faces lie in the dark beneath our skins, much like Palpatine secretly being Darth Sidious, or Anakin being the secret husband of Padme, his addiction our true hearts remain shadowed deeper still .What is felt and thought by others is hidden in shadow. Stover does go into everyone’s thoughts in the novel, but, of course, only an individual knows their own feelings hidden in the dark. But the greatest concealment lies not in protecting our secret truths, but in hiding from the truths of others. Like with how the Jedi do not know of Palpatine being the Sith Lord, plotting to overthrow the galaxy. The dark protects us from what we dare not know. If this were something the Jedi knew, it would not be unlikely for them to surrender to hate, causing a worse darkness everywhere. They dare not know this truth.
Its second gift is comforting illusion: Like the illusion that Palpatine actually cares about Anakin and wants what is best for him and his wife, when really he just knows Anakin can aid him in galactic domination, so he can rule and Anakin can be his sidekick. The illusion that comforts Anakin, that he can save his wife, when the truth is, his love will protect her heart. Giving into his anger and hate broke her heart, killing her. The comforting illusion took the life of she whom he most loved.  the ease of gentle dreams in night’s embrace, the beauty that imagination brings to what would repel in the day’s harsh light. Much happens when one sleeps. Loved ones depart from life, people become drunk, prostitutes do their business. This would be repelled in daylight.  But the greatest of its comforts is the illusion that dark is temporary: that every night brings a new day. The illusion that the light side of the Force and the dark side are equal, that the dark can go away, when really one has to destroy the other. Because it’s the day that is temporary. The dark is overpowering the light. Does this novel hold any hope? Will the Chosen One live up to the prophecy and destroy the Sith?
Day is the illusion. This illusion, that Anakin will always be a good person, and that Palpatine is good, when really Palpatine is the direct opposite: evil with no chance of being redeemed.
Its third gift is the light itself: as days are defined by the nights that divide them, or as the Force is defined by the “light side” and the “dark side”, when really it is neither good nor evil, it just exists. Light and dark sides only refer to the purpose for which it is used. as stars are defined by the infinite black through which they wheel, the dark embraces the light, and brings it forth from the center of its own self. Probably referring to the possibility of Darth Plageuis being the one who influenced the midi-chlorians to make Anakin, which would be a light brought from the darkness. With each victory of the light, it is the dark that wins. This, for me, is difficult to interpret. It could mean that, every time Anakin succeeded in doing anything for the Jedi, it really only motivated his pride, which led to his fall into darkness.


The dark is generous, and it is patient. Again, this probably means Palpatine. He has waited since he first met Anakin 13 years before to turn him to the dark side any way he can.
It is the dark that seeds cruelty into justice, like how Palpatine convinced Anakin that murdering the whole tribe of sand people to take vengeance for his mother was perfectly alright that drips contempt into compassion, like how, to Anakin, the Sith are evil but he is convinced that they are the good ones and, “from [his] point of view the Jedi are evil”, after he falls to the dark side. that poisons love with grains of doubt. As Anakin says in the beginning, he felt someone coming between him and Padme, but, in stead of searching his feelings further to feel that it was in a good way—her pregnancy—he assumes she has been attracted to someone else when he was away. And at the end, when she can’t follow his path because he has turned so dark that she can’t stand it, he believes she no longer loves him, and chokes her, which broke her heart and caused her death, the very thing he turned to the dark side to prevent.
The dark can be patient, because the slightest drop of rain will cause those seeds to sprout. Like when Mace Windu tells Anakin to stay behind when the Jedi are going to arrest Palpatine, a seed sprouted, because Palpatine has been encouraging Anakin to believe the Jedi are evil and that he is more powerful than all the other Jedi. And Anakin believes the Jedi are turning against the republic.
The rain will come, and the seeds will sprout, for the dark is the soil in which they grow,  the aforementioned seed grows when Palpatine speaks to Anakin, when he is with the darkness and it is the clouds above them, as it is revealed in the novel, Palpatine seems to know everything about what Anakin does. and it waits behind the star that gives them light. Obi-Wan, the light that keeps Anakin from falling dark. Very often it is seen that Palpatine is trying to destroy Obi-Wan.
The dark’s patience is infinite. Palpatine only trained Dooku in the ways of the Sith to wait for Anakin to fall.
Eventually, even stars burn out. Anakin, the star, the good person, can eventually go dark, like a star burning out.


The dark is generous, and it is patient, and it always wins. Like after Dooku is killed, we see Sidious telling Grievous that his death was necessary, which, although this was a victory for the light, he tells them he shall soon have a new apprentice, “one younger and far more powerful.” Thus, the dark won.
It always wins because it is everywhere. The threat, to avenge his mother’s death, to give in to hate, will always linger.
It is in the wood that burns in your hearth, and in the kettle on the fire; it is under your chair and under your table and under the sheets on your bed. Like when troubling dreams of death come to Anakin, that is the dark being everywhere, even in the sheets on his bed. Walk in the midday sun, and the dark is with you, attached to the soles of your feet. Like when he walks in Tatooine, with the suns shining, there is still anger.
The brightest light casts the darkest shadow. Anakin, the Chosen One, would be a bright light, but becoming Darth Vader made him a dark shadow.

 The dark is generous and it is patient and it always wins – but in the heart of its strength lies weakness: Anakin’s weakness, of course, is his love for Padme, and his mother. This part, as it is at the end of the book, reflects what will happen in the end. When he is given the chance to kill Luke, he doesn’t. He saves Luke’s life, which turned his weakness for love into his redeeming strength: sacrifice. one lone candle is enough to hold it back. Luke is the candle that held back darkness.
Love is more than a candle. Memories of Padme, knowledge that he can save Luke, loving Luke, Luke becomes the hero. Way beyond a candle.
Love can ignite the stars. Which, of course, Luke did. Luke and Leia became his love that redeemed him, ignited stars.