roane72:

soyeahso:

I need to talk about Han Solo.  Specifically Han Solo as a father. 

This is something that has bothered me since the first time I saw The Force Awakens, but it’s also something I’ve felt reluctant to talk about because we’re all in mourning for one of our childhood heroes.

But I do want to talk about it because it hits on a fairly personal issue for me and I suspect for a lot of people. 

When Han says that they did everything they could, that there was too much Vader in his son, this was a man rejecting responsibility for the role he may have played in how his child turned out. This was a man saying that that child had a fundamental flaw that had nothing to do with him.  

Think about who Darth Vader is to Han Solo.  He’s the man who had him frozen in carbonite.  He tortured Leia and had a direct hand in the destruction of her home.  He severed Luke’s hand.

He was responsible for the deaths of millions. I have a feeling that Han put about as much stock in the depth of Vader’s end of life redemption as Kylo Ren does.  

Does anyone think for one second that Ben Solo was not fully aware of what his father thought of him?  Children hear and understand so much more than we give them credit for. Even if young Ben never heard anyone refer to him this way, he is a powerful telepath (and possibly, despite how he tries to kill it, an empath like his mother.)

Headcanon time. My feeling is that Ben Solo was a sensitive, serious child, and that he and Han were never truly able to relate to each other. Ben may have acted out early on, whether because of Snoke’s influence or because of his own inner turmoil.  (Make no mistake, even if his home was loving there is no way it was stable. He was born at the end of a war, to a family in the vanguard, and wars never tie up neatly.)

So did his parents  make the same mistake so many others do when their children go astray? Instead of looking for a flaw in the child’s nurturing, looking at it as a flaw in the child’s nature?  We know from the novelization that Leia was aware of Snoke’s influence but didn’t tell Han. If Han had known, would he have looked at his son differently, or would it have made the situation seem even more hopeless?

I think the reason it struck me as hard as it did is because it only took one time for me to overhear my mother telling someone how much like my deadbeat, addict father I was, for it to have a huge effect on my sense of self and personal agency.   

But, hey, maybe Han didn’t think about his son this way at all when Ben was growing up. Maybe “there was too much Vader in him” is the thing he said to himself afterward, so he wouldn’t go crazy wondering what he could have done differently. 

All of this. For me, so much of the power in TFA comes from the depressing realization that my childhood heroes were, in the end, overwhelmingly human. When Kylo Ren tells Rey, “He only would have disappointed you,” that sounds so much like someone speaking from experience. 

I love Han Solo, I do, he’s one of my childhood heroes, like I said, but ultimately, I think as a human being, he was possibly the worst possible father a kid like Ben Solo could have had. Not out of lack of love or concern–it’s obvious that he loved his son–but just because of a lack of understanding. (I get that. I was an sensitive, shy kid and I grew up feeling like the cuckoo in the nest.) I’m sure Leia tried to help bridge the gap (of the original trio, she comes out the best, honestly), but I don’t think it was enough. 

We don’t know what Luke’s relationship was to Ben. It’s one of the things I am DYING to find out, what that dynamic was. Did he try to act as a surrogate father, and if so, did Ben resent him for it? And I want a damn good explanation for why he packed up and ran away from all of his responsibilities beyond some sort of half-assed spiritual quest, because I am VERY disappointed in him.

Ultimately, that’s another reason I want a redemption arc for Kylo Ren–not just for his own sake, but as a chance for the adults in his life to fix what they helped break, and for Han, Leia, and Luke to redeem themselves too.