Don't Weep for Anakin, Pity the Jedi for it is they who Failed

We all know the story: boy with supreme talents gets trained to use those talents for good. Boy becomes man, but man wants more, at a faster rate. Man turns to evil because evil promises to quench man's insatiable lust for power.

While this is the traditional framework for analyzing the demise of Anakin Skywalker, I propose an alternative question, to frame the debate in a slightly different way. Who is more a tragic figure: the prodigy (in this case Anakin) or the instructor (the Jedi Order)? I would vehemently argue that it is not Anakin who failed, but order who failed him.

The Jedi order lost Anakin for at least three reasons. First, they didn't know how to teach a prodigy; they weren't able to speak his language. Second, they weren't transparent with their intentions for Anakin. He felt like he was being held back and with the order's secrecy, there was no way to disabuse him of this notion. Finally, the order lost Anakin because they were afraid of his powers and they also wanted to protect their bloated, yet fragile egos.

Anakin had a trait that is common through all of us; he wanted to maximize his potential and be the best he could be at his job. The Jedi order tried to teach him restraint, discipline, and patience, but Anakin repudiated the order's teachings. He didn't reject doctrine because it was wrong, rather he rejected it because the order didn't present it to him correctly. No one ever bothered to sit Anakin down and tell him that he was the chosen one. No one ever told him that he had ability, everyone could see it, but there was a specific plan in place to get him where he needed to go. He didn't know what lay ahead of him and he didn't know how valued he was, so he jettisoned.

To put this in perspective with a modern day analogy, Anakin was classically "underemployed." Not in the sense that he was the PhD who flipped burgers at Wendy's but more along the lines of forcing a math genius to memorize countless multiplication tables before he can move on to division. Everybody else does it, why shouldn't he?

Critics of this entire line of thinking point to Anakin's immaturity. He wasn't ready for large responsibility and he couldn't handle the truth. But while this paternalistic attitude has its place in some locations, a prodigy only learns by doing it himself. People gain from meaningful experiences - which the Jedi were reluctant to offer to our prodigy.

In the end it is clear, the Jedi order failed Anakin and should bear the brunt of his tragic turn to the dark side. We should all grow from it, so that we know how to groom talent and we can learn to embrace the light emanating from it.