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explaining to the people of his hypothetical Republic why they’ve been divided into social classes of craftspeople, guardians, and leaders. To convince them, he invents a fantastic tale of their having been formed, educated, and nurtured within the earth along with their weapons and tools, and that precious metals have been mixed into them—metals that equip each man for one specific task in life. Socrates himself acknowledges that this is a falsehood, and seems reluctant to have told it:

GLAUCON: It isn’t for nothing that you were so shy about telling your falsehood.

SOCRATES: Appropriately so.

Nevertheless, he feels, as Obi-Wan did, that it was a lie necessary for the greater good of his students. If reality fell short of Obi-Wan’s hopes, it’s as much the fault of the impatient student as of the teacher’s lie.

“Trust Your Feelings”

Truth can also mean a spiritual understanding and awareness that’s not provable by cold, hard facts. In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Harrison Ford’s Dr. Jones draws a sharp line between the two when he tells a classful of adoring students that archeology is “the search for facts. Not truth.” He then directs any students who are after truth to a philosophy class down the hall. Obi-Wan’s “certain point of view” comment may sound like a bald-faced attempt to cover his former lie; Luke certainly seems to think so. It is, however, an important reminder not to cling too blindly to a literal, mechanistic truth.

According to Joseph Campbell, a mythologist who influenced Lucas, one of the central conflicts in Star Wars is that of man versus machine.161 The Empire, with its bland uniforms, faceless white-armored stormtroopers, a Sith Lord who’s half-robot, and of course the “technological terror” of the Death Star, represents a loss of humanity and with it the ability to see truth from any perspective other than their own—a cold, mechanistic, power-driven perspective that sees no truth beyond bare facts.162 Machines can’t see shades of meaning and are incapable of intuitive understanding; everything is black or white, right or wrong. Furthermore, by refusing to acknowledge the viewpoints of anyone but themselves, the Empire renders outsiders less than human, mere things to be exploited and conquered.

This is why the Sith are no better for their honesty. Not only is their version of truth a narrow, limited one, but they speak it only to serve their own purposes. Truth-telling for the Sith has nothing to do with increasing wisdom and understanding; it’s just another tool to help them gain power or hurt their opponents. Ironically, in speaking more literal, factual truths, they lose the higher spirit of truth—that integrity that comes when honesty is practiced for the sake of illuminating the human soul. The Jedi try to hold this integrity. When they fail, valuing power above honor, they fall from grace and are nearly eradicated. Yoda tells Luke, “A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense, never for attack,” and the same could be said about truth. Even if the intention toward a higher truth sometimes fails (as it did in the case of Obi-Wan and even more so in the Old Republic Jedi), it still serves a different and more noble end. Vader’s truth brings Luke nothing but darkness; the same truth, from Yoda and Obi-Wan, brings understanding and compassion.

Luke is finally the one who must sort out these layers of truth and deceit. In Return of the Jedi, he rejects both versions of who and what his father is, and constructs his own truth—one that is at once stronger and more compassionate than either Vader’s or Obi-Wan’s truth.

The symbol of the lightsaber helps illuminate this idea. Lightsabers are one of the most striking and memorable images to come out of the Star Wars films. Obi-Wan describes them as “the weapon of a Jedi Knight,” “not as clumsy or as random as a blaster,” and “an elegant weapon for a more civilized age.” They’re futuristic high-tech swords, and the sword has long been a symbol of truth—the weapon of knights and samurai, in many cases a physical manifestation