Patricide and Greek Tragedy (literary influences)

you know how much i love cheery topics! anyway, this is thanks to @jakkusun i hope you are proud

there aren't a lot of patricides in literature i don't think, it's a bit special.

here's one from GoT



here's the scene from gladiator:



i feel that han/kylo carries a similar vibe and it's really interesting to look at them side by side. marcus aurelius is considered an important stoic philospher and to see him reduced like this and being an incompetent father is really a nice twist.

however, i don't know if you have the stomach to watch these things obviously. what struck me about both of them is how intimate they were and i guess the same can be said for the GoT scene.

i think patricide in itself is pretty rare and taboo which is why i'm guessing it raises people's hackles now and which is why for luke to go and murder his father or fight him or whatever is such a huge step and something he's not willing to do. i think that if you do include it in fiction, it very much and inevitably alludes to oedipus rex (which i can't find a good source for online rn) ... where patricide is an accident. and it also discusses fate and destiny and other good stuff, which aren't exactly present in the other movies. i have a feeling that the greek tragedy angle is more important for star wars, seeing also how the patricide depicted, has been suggested by someone else as well it not leading to an increase in powers or whatever. it's not a personal revenge mission as we have with tyrion and commodus, it's dictated from elsewhere and sort of done in good faith?

consider this from http://www.shmoop.com/oedipus-the-king/

Of course, most of us know "Oedipus" to be synonymous with the desire to kill your father and sleep with your mom. We have Sigmund Freud’s theory of the "Oedipus Complex" to thank for that—Freud's Oedipus complex describes a stage of psychological development in which a child sees their father as a competitor for his or her mother’s attention.

But the really tragic thing about poor Oedipus is that he doesn't want to get his incest on—he's fated to. The gods willed it, and poor Oed has no choice. He even tries to outwit the prophecy that decreed that he'd kill his daddy and wed his mommy—he runs away from the people he thinks are his parents.

makes you wonder about leia's role in all this and how much kylo knew in advance this was going to happen?

here's a crappy (and funny) animation of the oedipus rex tragedy.



so, anyway, happy discussing!

@motherofpearl1 maybe you wanna repost here, i opened a thread so we can gather patricide ideas under one umbrella if anyone is game

a super good resource for those (like me) who know very little about athenian tragedy or oedipus rex. john green explaining it for you:



i especially like that apparently setting a tragedy in some mythical past was a way of criticising the present. also, how do we define goodness and all that. in greek tragedy, a lot of the bloodshed actually happens offstage, so i'm thinking, us seeing it in person on the screen also makes a huge difference.

No talk of Greek tragedy is complete without Aeschylus' The Oresteia.

From Wikipedia: The Oresteia (Ancient Greek: Ὀρέστεια) is a trilogy of Greek tragedies written by Aeschylus concerning the murder of Agamemnon by Clytaemnestra, the murder of Clytaemnestra by Orestes, the trial of Orestes, the end of the curse on the House of Atreus and pacification of the Erinyes.

A summary of the first play, Agamemnon:

I don't know if it is relevant with the theme of the topic, but ancient Greeks believed in redemption even after death.
One of the five rivers in Hades (Underworld for the ancient Greeks), was only for the people who had commited patricide or matricide. These were considered some of the most important crimes so the river was burning in flames, but the people who regret it weren't thrown directly to Tartarus, they could beg their victims for forgiveness and if they were forgiven they could get out.

@armadeus but does it feature patricide?

i think a wife murdering her husband is pretty special as well, and worth examining but i was looking more into the particular bloodshed of patricide.

(i had to ad something to particide in the title because it was too short *facepalm* )

I don't know much about Greek tragedy but on the topic of patricide, I feel there is an example in the ABC-Disney series Once Upon a Time that could be comparable to what Kylo Ren did.



Regina the evil Queen is conflicted: she wants to enact the curse that will allow her to keep her powers and get revenge on Snow White. She feels she has already gone too far and given up too much to walk away. But to enact the dark curse: she must kill the one she loves most.... her father.

I see quite a few parallels between this scene and the patricide in TFA. Father and daughter face each other and she clearly does not want to go through with it. He tells her that she can still be happy, they can start a new life elsewhere. Tears are shed, she seems to agree with him and they embrace... then suddenly - a stab in the chest. Followed by immediate regret.

The show later has a redemption arc for Regina. She doesn't want to be the evil queen anymore, and her redeemer is her adopted son, named after her father. I'm afraid I stopped watching after season two but this is what I remember. This is a family show that aired on a channel owned by Disney and patricide does not make a character irredeemable, there is already a history of that.

The thing I find most interesting these days is how the majority of audience react to the patricidal guys you cited above.

Oedipus : The reaction is understanding all around.

Tyrion and Commodus: are at the completely different sides of the spectre.
Tyrion is loved and cherished by everyone no matter what he had done, and Commodus is just the opposite.
Kylo Ren: now that's interesting. He is somewhere in between. Some fans see him as Commodus, some adore him even more than Tyrion.

Ok, I am going to dump some random thoughts, but is going to be more connected with the Russian literature classics, and I hope it even makes sense

Fo example, Tyrion's act of patricide has a similar theme to Dmitri Karamazov and his father in The Brothers Karamazov by F. Dostoyevsky. While it turns out at the end, that Dmitri wasn't the one who killed his father, the whole thing is really mysterious, because he doesn't remember anything and he may as well have. And it doesn't even matter, who was the killer. Because similar to Tywin, Dmitri's father was a despotic man, Dmitri had serious conflicts already, but the main breaking point was that he was in love with a woman, that his father started to chase as well. Similar as Tywin who pursued Shea, Dmitri's father tried to chase Grushenka. We know that Rey also comes in between Han and Kylo, not in a romantic sense, but more fatherly and maybe that also had an effect. "Now he want's to take that away from me"

There is an essay by Freud, that actually deals with patricide in The Brothers Karamazov. And it is interesting how Freud criticizes Dostoevsky's approach. For Dostoevsky, Dmitri is the tragic hero and the fact that he commits the crime and suffers, makes him the hero, a tragic one, but a hero. But Freud argued that a person isn't noble because of the regret and suffering, but because of the ability to resist committing a crime.
Maybe that was the point where the narrative shifted. Because now all our heroes are the one who resist, the morally pure ones. And the ones who don't and suffers are the anti-heroes. But once they were considered as heroes. Tragic ones though.

The two most prominent Byronic heroes in Russian literature are Eugene Onegin by Pushkin and Grigory Pechorin created by Lermontov. And both of them kill their close friends in a duel. Yes, it is not a patricide, but honestly, the act could be disputable enough. Because they are friends, and the point of the duel wasn't that both of the participators were equal. The opposite, often they were really different - one was more skilled, for another it was the first duel. One was reckless, other was scared. Rules were rules. "Oh but he can't shoot, he will probably die, don't accept his ask to duel" - no it was still accepted and the other person killed. Even though a noble thing would be to shoot in the air. And yet.
Similar Han called Kylo to a duel and Kylo played by the rules. Han knew what he was signing for. And now Kylo, even though conflicted, still finished his task. Rules are rules still. I don't know where I am even going with this.

Lermontov called his novel about Pechorin A Hero of Our time. So he did consider him a hero, but a flawed one. The mirror of the society. Or how he said himself - he collected all the things he hated in himself and in the society and put it into one person. It was a tragedy the society have created. I think there could be arguments why Kylo also is a similar tragedy as we find a lot of problematic aspects of a today's person in him and that is probably why people hate him, he is a walking mirror. Exactly with all the weaknesses, people try to hide or laugh about.

Also about patricide in fiction - a lot of it is explored in Lost:

Spoiler:

@SkyStar

Nothing wrong with Russian classics brought here.
I'll add Raskolnikov to the bunch as well. His crime and his punishment are in the same vein of being seen as sort of heroic. And it fits nicely in the relation of audience's reactions I was talking earlier.

If I remember well (I red Brothers Karamazovs a long time ago) the old Fyodor was killed by his bastard son Smerdyakov who was influenced by the atheism and the ideas of Ivan (the second brother) and accused him at one point as a complicit in the murder, which resulted in Ivan's madness.
I always thought of Ivan Karamazov as a main tragic hero of the story (even if he didn't commit crime himself, his ideas and viewpoints simply triggered Smerdyakov's deed.

Darth_Awakened wrote:@SkyStar

Nothing wrong with Russian classics brought here.
I'll add Raskolnikov to the bunch as well. His crime and his punishment are in the same vein of being seen as sort of heroic. And it fits nicely in the relation of audience's reactions I was talking earlier.

If I remember well (I red Brothers Karamazovs a long time ago) the old Fyodor was killed by his bastard son Smerdyakov who was influenced by the atheism and the ideas of Ivan (the second brother) and accused him at one point as a complicit in the murder, which resulted in Ivan's madness.
I always thought of Ivan Karamazov as a main tragic hero of the story (even if he didn't commit crime himself, his ideas and viewpoints simply triggered Smerdyakov's deed.

@Darth_Awakened

Yes, Smerdyakov confessed. Funny as in some way they all were responsible - (probably just not Alosha who I somehow hated lol), Smerdyakov just carried the sentence and Dostoevsky even give his illness to him and obviously despised him.  

I started re-reading Devils recently and Nikolai Stavrogin, even as being some kind of anti-hero is quite a very unlikable person and that character was probably an evolution of all these ideas and how monstrous a person becomes. And still, there are gushings how handsome he is, how everybody finds him mysterious. And yet I find Stavrogin awful, awful and completely corrupted person. I saw a post in tumblr like if you like Stavrogin - congratulations, you like the Satan himself. That was funny though.

About Tyrion being loved by people.
I was on GOT tour in Dubrovnik and the lady guide asked who is group's favorite characters and almost everybody replied that it is Tyron. Then the lady gushed how once one guy said he liked Joffrey, she was so shocked. I mean Joffrey is Joffrey, but she considered that it is a crime or something. I just found it funny, how she needed to point that out that people were distancing themselves from the dude that told about Joffrey like he was the devil himself.
I feel like Tyrion is a safe answer you can be proud, but Kylo somehow isn't.

@whatgirl that's a great example! also because a daughter killing her father in a field that seems pretty occupied with m/m violence!

@skystar you study russian lit?

Similar Han called Kylo to a duel and Kylo played by the rules. Han knew what he was signing for. And now Kylo, even though conflicted, still finished his task. Rules are rules still. I don't know where I am even going with this.

well, neither do i but let me hazard a guess.

one of the ways the patricide fascinates me is that it's not a duel. now that seems to be pretty common in itself, actually it's luke vs vader which is sort of a duel or at least combat. and isn't taken to its natural consequence. but with the patricides that i came up with do not follow the rules of combat. they are executions, which you could say also follow certain rules except they don't get observed in these cases. i tink with commodus and tyrion and kylo you get a tremendous sadness but also anger along with everything else. that makes them such tragic situations.

and of course, the karamazovs should figure here! i think the patricide happens offscreen, though, doesn't it. (i loved that much book muchly, so thank you very much for bringing it up)

I feel like Tyrion is a safe answer you can be proud, but Kylo somehow isn't.

i think that will always be the case to be honest. i don't know if you bothered to watch the oedipus rex discussion video, it very much invites you to ponder the questions that oedipus character raises rather than the answers the play gives you. i think kylo was written to fulfill a similar function of raising questions and create ambiguity (after the fashion of greek tragedy) rather than make us feel safe and sound. i hope we are heading for more of that rather than unadulterated hero worship.

the other thing i have cursorily wondered about, is the killing of the father figure, i guess that counts as well??!!

darth vader killing obi-wan falls into that but now i can't think of anyone else.

i was just watching this part of the crash course (it's a great series and it's free and i cannot recommend it highly enough)



and it helped jog my memory on hamlet and his identity issues.

the thing is that the dead king (hamlet's father) is also called hamlet?? and the person he might or might not kill is his uncle but he's of course the new king, therefore causing a lot of political and personal bellyache. i don't know if regicide simply counts mor or different than patricide.

guardienne wrote:@whatgirl that's a great example! also because a daughter killing her father in a field that seems pretty occupied with m/m violence!

@skystar you study russian lit?

Similar Han called Kylo to a duel and Kylo played by the rules. Han knew what he was signing for. And now Kylo, even though conflicted, still finished his task. Rules are rules still. I don't know where I am even going with this.

well, neither do i but let me hazard a guess.

one of the ways the patricide fascinates me is that it's not a duel. now that seems to be pretty common in itself, actually it's luke vs vader which is sort of a duel or at least combat. and isn't taken to its natural consequence. but with the patricides that i came up with do not follow the rules of combat. they are executions, which you could say also follow certain rules except they don't get observed in these cases. i tink with commodus and tyrion and kylo you get a tremendous sadness but also anger along with everything else. that makes them such tragic situations.

and of course, the karamazovs should figure here! i think the patricide happens offscreen, though, doesn't it. (i loved that much book muchly, so thank you very much for bringing it up) @darth_awakened it was indeed smerdyakov.

the other thing i have cursorily wondered about, is the killing of the father figure, i guess that counts as well??!!

darth vader killing obi-wan falls into that but now i can't think of anyone else.

i was just watching this part of the crash course (it's a great series and it's free and i cannot recommend it highly enough)



and it helped jog my memory on hamlet and his identity issues.

the thing is that the dead king (hamlet's father) is also called hamlet?? and the person he might or might not kill is his uncle but he's of course the new king, therefore causing a lot of political and personal bellyache. i don't know if regicide simply counts mor or different than patricide.

@guardienne
I just have read a lot to practice my Russian. But that was also some time ago
yes about the duels with pistols, it is not the same, but something about choosing to still kill your friend and even though you can withdraw from the situation or try to end the conflict in a peaceful way just seemed bit similar - also because it is not an active combat
Maybe it is connected with honor?
I just feel like Kylo not killing Han would have felt for him running away from the stuff he has done, similar as his father was running away.
And then maybe Kylo felt that the more honorable way is to finish what he has started.

guardienne wrote:@whatgirl that's a great example! also because a daughter killing her father in a field that seems pretty occupied with m/m violence!

@skystar you study russian lit?

Similar Han called Kylo to a duel and Kylo played by the rules. Han knew what he was signing for. And now Kylo, even though conflicted, still finished his task. Rules are rules still. I don't know where I am even going with this.

well, neither do i but let me hazard a guess.

one of the ways the patricide fascinates me is that it's not a duel. now that seems to be pretty common in itself, actually it's luke vs vader which is sort of a duel or at least combat. and isn't taken to its natural consequence. but with the patricides that i came up with do not follow the rules of combat. they are executions, which you could say also follow certain rules except they don't get observed in these cases. i tink with commodus and tyrion and kylo you get a tremendous sadness but also anger along with everything else. that makes them such tragic situations.

and of course, the karamazovs should figure here! i think the patricide happens offscreen, though, doesn't it. (i loved that much book muchly, so thank you very much for bringing it up)

I feel like Tyrion is a safe answer you can be proud, but Kylo somehow isn't.

i think that will always be the case to be honest. i don't know if you bothered to watch the oedipus rex discussion video, it very much invites you to ponder the questions that oedipus character raises rather than the answers the play gives you. i think kylo was written to fulfill a similar function of raising questions and create ambiguity (after the fashion of greek tragedy) rather than make us feel safe and sound. i hope we are heading for more of that rather than unadulterated hero worship.

the other thing i have cursorily wondered about, is the killing of the father figure, i guess that counts as well??!!

darth vader killing obi-wan falls into that but now i can't think of anyone else.

i was just watching this part of the crash course (it's a great series and it's free and i cannot recommend it highly enough)



and it helped jog my memory on hamlet and his identity issues.

the thing is that the dead king (hamlet's father) is also called hamlet?? and the person he might or might not kill is his uncle but he's of course the new king, therefore causing a lot of political and personal bellyache. i don't know if regicide simply counts mor or different than patricide.

@guardienne

I think killing the father figure counts as well on metaphorical level  definitely.

Few examples (and almost  in the same circumstances):

Jon Snow killing Qhorin in GOT on his command though, also there's Snape and Dumbledore business in HP (I'am not sure if I can call Dumbledore a father figure to Snape, though in some weird way it can be seen as such).

[quote="guardienne"]
.

one of the ways the patricide fascinates me is that it's not a duel.


@guardienne

Actually I think Dr. Freud would strongly disagree on that one. It is a "duel" for the mother's affection according to Freud.

@darth_awakened

i think the idea of a duel is that participants are equally armed and observe the rules. so, none of the examples count as duels in my mind. because there was one person effectively submitting to their offspring. and the mother never even took place. i mean, i understand the freudian implication and in hamlet's case it actually sort of almost works but in the other stories i think the mother is completely absent. (i don't know about GoT).

i still think processing the shadow of the father figure, as in luke's case, is a mythological necessity in some way. i think especially in kylo's case, kiling his father has a lot of symbolical content that i can't quite unlock. i mean, on a metatextual level he also kills off the swagger of the old generation. and it's final.

i don't know. if anyone has input, go ahead.

@skystar

just feel like Kylo not killing Han would have felt for him running away from the stuff he has done, similar as his father was running away.
And then maybe Kylo felt that the more honorable way is to finish what he has started.

totally! he has to honour his own (shaky) word. i think all of the scene is him being reluctant but feeling that there is duty to be done and he sort of does it half-assedly but it's still done. i feel like this is really important wrt his character, that he feels duty-bound by a code we don't know much about. and i also assume he knew this was supposed to happen much earlier than TFA, that snoke always informed him this would be his test.

good for you being able to read dostoyevsky in russian! it's very impressive.

i think when you contrast obi-wan/vader, which is a duel of sorts, at least obi-wan's death feels as between equals in combat. i love how han's death reinterprets the scene what with 'i was a learner, now i am the master' and contrasts it with a son, a successor, who didn't succeed. and the thing is, he doesn't kill han to take his 'throne' in the MF. or maybe he will. i'm all conflicted.

@jakkusun

The modern reiterations of the ancient myths by Western media can tell us more about the values/fears of Western civilisation than about the myths or the Ancient Greeks themselves.

Look at which gods are typically cast as 'villains' nowadays: Ares, god of war; and Hades, god of the underworld (representative of death).

So, according to modern Western civilisation: war and death are evil or undesirable

To the Ancient Greeks, on the other hand: war and death are inevitable and things with which we have to come to terms.

It's all very fascinating

EDIT: Hades is the god of the underworld, not death (my mistake ), although some modern depictions like to call him the 'god of the dead'.

"You know, I don't think that patricide is all that it's cracked up to be"
- Adam Driver, Vanity Fair June edition, 2017

guardienne wrote:@darth_awakened

i think the idea of a duel is that participants are equally armed and observe the rules. so, none of the examples count as duels in my mind. because there was one person effectively submitting to their offspring. and the mother never even took place. i mean, i understand the freudian implication and in hamlet's case it actually sort of almost works but in the other stories i think the mother is completely absent. (i don't know about GoT).

i still think processing the shadow of the father figure, as in luke's case, is a mythological necessity in some way. i think especially in kylo's case, kiling his father has a lot of symbolical content that i can't quite unlock. i mean, on a metatextual level he also kills off the swagger of the old generation. and it's final.

i don't know. if anyone has input, go ahead.

@skystar

just feel like Kylo not killing Han would have felt for him running away from the stuff he has done, similar as his father was running away.
And then maybe Kylo felt that the more honorable way is to finish what he has started.

totally! he has to honour his own (shaky) word. i think all of the scene is him being reluctant but feeling that there is duty to be done and he sort of does it half-assedly but it's still done. i feel like this is really important wrt his character, that he feels duty-bound by a code we don't know much about. and i also assume he knew this was supposed to happen much earlier than TFA, that snoke always informed him this would be his test.

good for you being able to read dostoyevsky in russian! it's very impressive.

i think when you contrast obi-wan/vader, which is a duel of sorts, at least obi-wan's death feels as between equals in combat. i love how han's death reinterprets the scene what with 'i was a learner, now i am the master' and contrasts it with a son, a successor, who didn't succeed. and the thing is, he doesn't kill han to take his 'throne' in the MF. or maybe he will. i'm all conflicted.

@guardienne

Probably wasn't clear enough. I was talking in general and strictly about the Freudian metaphorical aspect in all of this.

As for mother in Tyrion's case - it's more than important in the whole story around this two - Tywin who adored his wife was constantly accusing Tyrion of killing her during his birth. So, that was Tyrion's "first crime" in Tywin's case.

So I did read one analysis about the patricide in The Brothers Karamazov (it is in Russian, so I will just give the main thoughts that were relevant). The author basically confirms, that you can consider, that Dmitri, Ivan, and Smerdyakov killed Fyodor Karamazov.  Dmitri with his passion, Ivan with the logic, and both of it fueled Smerdyakov to do it.

The author also argues how important were that they were from different mothers. Dmitri's mother came from a wealthy aristocratic family and Fyodor wasn't a match for her, but she married him out of rebellion, as she was wild nature. She left her son and just ran away. And I also found it interesting how Dmitri hates the parts of the father in himself. In nature, I think Kylo has similarities with Dmitri in this case. But I also find it interesting how it is pinpointed that Dmitri does not directly kill his father "because probably mother was praying for him at that point". And yet we know that in Kylo's case that didn't work. His mother's fate, I mean.  

But then I also think, that the reason why Kylo did kill his father, was because of the similarities with Ivan (whose mother was more of a calm person). Because they say that Ivan is the most like his father, but also he is driven by the thought and logic. Or rather I remember reading and thinking Ivan was kind of heartless. Or here you have an example that idea could kill. The tragedy of Ivan was the irony similar to Oedipus, that he believed Dmitry was the one who did it, when in fact it turned out that he was the one who did it by giving the idea to Smerdyakov (as @Darth_Awakened pointed out)

And that is how Kylo, being both mix from these two elements, carries the sentence by himself? Or so I would think. I don't know.
But it is fascinating, because at first Kylo almost gives in his emotions, but then he decides by logic and thought that he still needs to kill his father. Is that "idea man" in him the brainwashed one, or not? Can and how he can combine these two and did it lead to him actually doing the kill, instead of being just on the one side of the coin.
And is the one who actually delivered the mortal kill a Smerdyakov in him? And the one people hate.

I don't know if I can compare it, but it is sure fun to do so.

SkyStar wrote:So I did read one analysis about the patricide in The Brothers Karamazov (it is in Russian, so I will just give the main thoughts that were relevant). The author basically confirms, that you can consider, that Dmitri, Ivan, and Smerdyakov killed Fyodor Karamazov.  Dmitri with his passion, Ivan with the logic, and both of it fueled Smerdyakov to do it.

The author also argues how important were that they were from different mothers. Dmitri's mother came from a wealthy aristocratic family and Fyodor wasn't a match for her, but she married him out of rebellion, as she was wild nature. She left her son and just ran away. And I also found it interesting how Dmitri hates the parts of the father in himself. In nature, I think Kylo has similarities with Dmitri in this case. But I also find it interesting how it is pinpointed that Dmitri does not directly kill his father "because probably mother was praying for him at that point". And yet we know that in Kylo's case that didn't work. His mother's fate, I mean.  

But then I also think, that the reason why Kylo did kill his father, was because of the similarities with Ivan (whose mother was more of a calm person). Because they say that Ivan is the most like his father, but also he is driven by the thought and logic. Or rather I remember reading and thinking Ivan was kind of heartless. Or here you have an example that idea could kill. The tragedy of Ivan was the irony similar to Oedipus, that he believed Dmitry was the one who did it, when in fact it turned out that he was the one who did it by giving the idea to Smerdyakov (as @Darth_Awakened pointed out)

And that is how Kylo, being both mix from these two elements, carries the sentence by himself? Or so I would think. I don't know.
But it is fascinating, because at first Kylo almost gives in his emotions, but then he decides by logic and thought that he still needs to kill his father. Is that "idea man" in him the brainwashed one, or not? Can and how he can combine these two and did it lead to him actually doing the kill, instead of being just on the one side of the coin.
And is the one who actually delivered the mortal kill a Smerdyakov in him? And the one people hate.

I don't know if I can compare it, but it is sure fun to do so.

@SkyStar

Yeah, I agree If you want to make some parallels it's Ivan who's really the closest to Kylo. Especially with the madness when Ivan becomes aware that was actually his idea that killed the father.

"this idea of the sun rising up to supplant the father causing a war in heaven is pretty common in a number of creation stories."

go to min 5:42



zeus murders his father cronos (saturn?). cronos is a bit of a handful. he keeps eating his own children which i'll put under spoilers because... gruesomeness (it's el greco's dark period and he meant that)

Spoiler:

the thing is that cronos also castrated his own father so naturally he begrudged his own children that pleasure.



apparently odin and his brothers murdering their forefathers in battle in norse myth. i remember reading this. the body of the dead giant makes up the known world of midgard and then they shape asgard and hel.

@skystar thanks for the rundown. i think dostoyevsky is so relevant to the morality of their relationship.

i remember fyodor not being very popular with any of his sons but i can't remember why. wasn't he an alcoholic (not that this isn't particularly common in russia but still)? i think he didn't care about his sons very much.

i think kylo is pretty similar in temperament to dmitri. dmitri is the one so driven by passion and love as well, i enjoyed him immensely.

here's an interesting interpretation of what the oedipus complex is https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/one-among-many/201404/patricide

My interpretation of the Oedipus-Laios story is that, coming to the bridge, King Laios knows (unconsciously) that the moment of death has come. He will be (and wants to be) killed by his son. This is a great and tragic vision. Laios departs as a warrior, knowing that he is being replaced by his own offspring, a man who has proven his worth by killing the greatest warrior, his father. If the timing is right, this is a greater death than being killed by a despised enemy, one’s wife (think Agamemnon) or by hideous disease. Indeed, Laios has a greater death than Oedipus or Freud. The secret of power is knowing when to let it go.

Carl Gustav Jung put the Laios dilemma thus: To be fruitful provokes one's downfall, at the rise of the next generation, the previous one has exceeded its peak. Our descendants become our most dangerous enemies for whom we are unprepared. They will survive and take power from our enfeebled hands.

Fyodor was of kind of despot figure as far as I can remember.

this is a discussion of real life cases of patricide (and matricide) and it's very interesting, i would never have thought it happening on the radio with so much detail? in case, you know, you wanted to brush up on abuse and stuff like that. the hosts kinda chuckle over some of it, which i find weird, to say the least.

the thing i took away from it, is that it's extreme but that it's also not applicable to the star wars situation. strangely, both luke and ben are ordered by other people to do it, it doesn't come from their own history and desire for revenge. basically luke's situation nicely subverts either the usurpation or the revenge trope because it is the father who offers more power and it's the son who refuses revenge.

i think han offering for ben to go home is sort of an offer to have him submit again (have him be domesticated) which isn't going to fly (obviously) although probably well-intended. but he's not getting revenge on some abuse situation (i think that anyway).

i think vader duelling obi-wan kinda fits more into the mythological patricides because there is a duel and some kind of defeat. they are equals. i guess for those reasons luke and vader also falls into that category. so, ben/han really makes more sense in a tragic context, as we've seen from gladiator and GoT.

@guardienne
yeah, you are right, Fyodor didn't care for his sons, as their mothers died quite early, his sons basically were brought up by other people.

He was described as being a buffoon, and there is one word that Dostoevsky uses I cannot find a direct word to translate, not stupid, but kind of worthless? He knew how to accumulate wealth, for example, but he genuinely didn't have any point in his life between living in a filthy pleasure and ridiculing people, even if he himself was a joke. He was dissolute, liked to drink, and he liked women, and it was said that it became even more repulsive with old age, more vulgar in that way. People despised him. A despot but not even in a cool way I guess.

The surname actually comes from Kara (black in Turkish) and Mazov (smear in Russian). And it is supposed to be something sticky and icky like some kind of substance that you smear on somewhere. There also comes the karamazovshina, which is used as a swear word. The words that influenced Smerdyakov and what Ivan said was basically  "Пусть один гад убьет другую гадину". And that is basically "let one scum kill another." Smerydakov was basically the manifestation of the worst in Fyodor. And that wasn't even his way of living but whole worthless persona if you can say so.

I found interesting the quote from the analysis that Dmitri hated his father because he hated everything dissolute in himself (yet he lived in a similar lifestyle). He felt the influence of his father like some kind of a bug living inside of him. He wanted to squish the bag with his boot and in that moment also destroy himself.
And yet for the Dostoevsky Dmitri wasn't even the most similar to his father. I guess his death finally set Dmitri free and he was reborn, but then the tragedy of Ivan started.

Maybe it was Ben who is more similar to Dmitri, and Kylo is more similar with Ivan? Because now that he realises the patricide is not what he thought it will be, it will start his tragedy. Dunno. It is always strange to think, is that the same person or they can be somehow separated? Even in the commentary, JJ said Ben and Kylo, Ben and Kylo. Not that they are separatable, but there is something there in that division.