It was recently stated by commenters on one of my husband's many Star Wars-related Facebook posts that when Finn takes up Luke Skywalker's lightsabre towards the end of The Force Awakens, and starts swinging, this sort of demeans the Force because Finn had not shown any natural abilities usually present in Jedi Knights-to-be. The temporarily fallen comrade he was defending during this scene, Rey, had been the one to show the traditional promise but suddenly it seems any Tom, Dick or Harry may wield the weapon of a hero.
I would argue, however, that Finn's apparent lack of natural ability is the key to the whole trilogy. He is being underplayed in this film whilst the feminist figure of Rey is established as the first female lead Jedi. She is a new concept and ladies come first, I suppose, even in a Galaxy far, far away. Plus, all the other potential twists are exhausted long before this point in the film. We know the villain is basically a moody and unstable kid, and actually the son Han Solo, by about the first half. Even when Ren kills Han, it's sad and a shock but you could almost see it coming anyway. But here's the thing: I think Finn and Ren's lightsabre fight is a hidden twist.
There are many theories that Rey is blood-related to Luke Skywalker, and therefore also to Leia, Kylo Ren and Darth Vader. Who was Darth Vader but the Chosen One prophesied to bring balance to the Force? What did Darth Vader do but knacker all that promise up by giving in to his anger, fear of loss and ultimately, the Dark Side? If Rey is his descendent she could be the real Chosen One. But not on her own.
This is where I think Finn comes in. He and Rey are the key to the balancing of the Dark Side with the Light. The Force may well awaken in her very early on but her ability being a force for good very much depends on whether or not Luke can train her before someone evil can come along and corrupt her as the Emperor did Luke's father. Natural ability is not necessarily enough to resist the Dark Side. Finn, for all his lack of natural Force-manipulating-talents, has other gifts.
He was ripped from the bosom of his family as a small boy and forced into slave labour for the evil First Order as a stormtrooper. When we see him he is about to engage in the bloody act of not war, but genocide in miniature as he and his comrades are commanded to slaughter an entire village. And yet suddenly, intervention: for all the cruelty he had been previously conditioned to inflict, Finn is suddenly overcome by the horror of his life. It has probably been building for a long time. Finn is an adult dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder.
Most obviously this is portrayed as being due to his participation in the First Order's wars, and PTSD was famously first characterised in the modern era as shell-shock, the debilitating condition Great War soldiers came home with in their droves. But the brutal separating of little Finn from his parents was step one of his traumatic path, and the 'conditioning' alluded to by his commanding officer in the first few scenes before he escapes the First Order hints at the kind of life this young man has lived up until now. On Jakku he has the first of several panic attacks, which eventually lead him to flee the only life he has ever known.
And what does this have to do with anything?
In March 2012 the New York Times ran an article entitled Post Traumatic Stress's Surprisingly Positive Flipside, in which a US army sergeant diagnosed with PTSD describes how his life has changed for the better since diagnosis and treatment. It then goes on to summarise a study by psychologists at the University of North Carolina, which followed survivors of a wide variety of traumas over several decades. They found that whilst PTSD can be everything from very difficult to downright horrific to go through, for those who do survive it, it morphs into what researchers dubbed "post-traumatic growth."
This growth is depicted in terms of a new resilience and a renewed sense of the preciousness of life. Sergeant Beltran apparently re-formed a close relationship with his estranged parents and is voraciously taking adult learning courses in a bid to milk everything he can out of existence. But more interestingly, and more pertinently in the case of Finn, some felt that the trauma, whilst paralysing them with fear and making them think life wasn't worth living at their lowest ebb, made them a heck of a lot stronger in the long run. They have stronger religious convictions, stronger resilience, more self-control and eventually become much braver than the average person. Some soldiers who had been prisoners of war were re-interviewed after twenty-five years and 'remained convinced that the captivity had changed them for the better.' Lead researcher Richard Tedeschi found that 'Only a seismic event - not just an upsetting experience - can lead to this kind of growth...an event that shakes you to your core and causes you to question your fundamental assumptions about the world.' The journalist goes on to remark that this is something that the average man or woman is able to go through life without ever having to confront.
Anakin Skywalker was spiritually a natural Jedi but he struggled to cope with loss and the fear of it, and turned to the Dark Side because his life had been upsetting and difficult but not seismically traumatic and when tested in adulthood, he failed. Finn has everything that previous Jedi have not displayed. He hasn't any detectable natural ability or affinity with the Force, he grew up working for the Dark Side and he's frightened to death of his own shadow for much of the first film. If he has PTSD, it will never leave him, because the younger a person is when the first trauma happens, the less likely they are to ever be cured. Anakin had natural ability but none of the resilience of Finn. And what Finn lacks in Anakin and Rey's natural spiritual ability one PTSD symptom, hypersensitivity or as Mind characterise it, 'extreme alertness', could more than make up for that.
If Finn and Rey had a child the combination of their two very different skill sets and backgrounds could mean that their child is the one who brings balance to the Force, with their mother's natural ability made perfect with their father's iron-will and immunity to the temptations of the Dark Side. Alternatively, it might be their dual power as spiritually partnered Jedi that makes the Force the metaphorical/ spiritual child as it is rebirthed by them in its new, balanced form.
When Finn takes up Luke's lightsabre he is finally coming to terms with his past and making the decision to stop running from his trauma. His first panic attack at the start of the movie induces the flight response, but when Rey is fallen and Ren still stands, Finn finally fights. And then the Force Awakens.
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