The Original Trilogy was made for its own time, and people like me who were born years after they were made are perhaps robbed of a great part of their meaning. It’s up to us to try and understand what made it special, so here goes.
I’ve heard it said that the message of Star Wars was very much a thesis against the straight laced, moralistic attitudes of people’s parents in the 70’s. Han solo represents the hot-rod rebellious youth of decades past, very much valuing strength and displaying casual sexism, and while Luke recognizes this he finds his own way through a distinctly hippie mix of new-age spiritualism and youthful idealism.
In Empire the youthful rebel must grow up, and he is brought before Yoda who explains that a Jedi must have ‘the deepest commitment, the most serious mind’. This runs counter to the idea of Star Wars that one should just go with the flow, and is a recognition that all idealism must give way to hard realism. Luke is torn between following his rebel friends and completing a serious spiritual transformation, and fails in both tasks when it is made clear that his destiny is to follow in his father’s footsteps and become part of the ‘machine’. To become serious in the pursuit of any aim is to abandon the value of ‘just go with it’ that guided his previous existence.
By the Return of the Jedi, Luke has begun his journey to the Dark Side, capable of using the abilities of his father’s generation in order to rescue his friends from the folly of their simplistic ideology. He stands apart from them, and there is tragedy in this. To gain power in this world can mean forsaking your friends, and Luke struggles with his choice. In the end, he cannot fully accept the mantle of the machine which his father represents. He is forever touched by it, as represented by his metal hand, but now he understands why he can never be so rigid in his black and white morality, accepting that he will never be so blindly nationalistic or puritanical. His story ends as a master of two worlds, and yet never fully belonging in either.
So where does Rey fit into all of this?
She is like Luke in that she is stuck in an unfortunate situation, desperate to leave yet yearning for a belonging that was denied her as she grew up. Even Luke, who was raised by his Aunt and Uncle, still had a home and a family of sorts. Perhaps Rey’s childhood was intended to speak to children of divorced or separated parents as incidence of divorce rose during the 80’s. The generation raised by the original Star Wars generation of the Baby Boomers inherited the shifting moral landscape which was mirrored by the subtext of the Original Trilogy. Similarly, she doesn’t work on a farm, as fewer and fewer people can identify with such an occupation. Rather, she scavenges from the hulks of the previous generation’s machines, gleaning whatever of value she can find from a culture so deconstructed that it appears post-apocalyptic. Whereas Luke desired to get into the academy against the wishes of his hardworking uncle, Rey has been able to educate herself with the glut of Imperial data tapes left behind in the wreckage. The tragedy is that nobody recognizes this education, and although she is overqualified for many jobs, she nevertheless makes barely enough to survive.
Han has shown the weaknesses of his laid-back philosophy, as he recognizes that he lacked the parenting skills necessary to raise Kylo Ren. Rey is taken with Han, but as Kylo says, ‘he would have disappointed you’. After all, he just watched Rey get captured, and resigned her to her fate. Han is a man wasting time, never applying himself fully to the task at hand and eventually dying because of it. His love, in the end, was not enough to save his own son. Speaking of the son, Kylo is the result of a man who knows just how bad his actions are, but like a college student following Objectivist philosophy, he bends his better judgement to the task because there is still great personal power to be gained in making the world a darker place. Rey, in seeing both of these extremes in Han (and Maz) contrasted against Kylo, is desperate for a sense of belonging. She is being pulled in every direction at once, she is angry, she is conflicted, she is alone. In the end, she finally finds the man who had gone there before her, who mastered the two worlds yet who never felt at home in them.
So what is Rey’s story going forward? If history is our guide, she will find some of her answers with Luke but will need to travel much further to truly achieve a sense of belonging.