Why was the Force "asleep"?

It's called The Force Awakens.  That suggests (1) that it was asleep, and (2) that it is sentient, as only sentient things awaken.

Why was it asleep?

Could the light side have gone dormant when Ben turned to the dark side and Luke went into seclusion?

It awakened in Rey as in she finally realized it was there and was able to consciously use it. I think the Force has always been with her, and she may have been using it in subtle ways without knowing it all her life. The Force itself probably doesn't ever sleep since it's basically energy, whether it's sentient or not is debatable though I personally think it does have a will of its own.

In my opinion, during the Imperial time the Force was caught in a big mess with the declining of Force Sensitive people and the insanely increase of the Dark Side. But it's all end when Vader killed Palpatine for his son thus allowing the Force to slowly recover, I think it would be a slow process since the Force is nothing magical but natural so it would need times to heal and return to balance. And those healing process started at the end of the Imperial to TFA, in which the Force is mostly recover and by fate Rey, Ren, Finn,Leia, Han, Luke and everyone is set into motive because while the Force itself is somewhat calm and under control but still not balances, yet. So TFA, episode VIII and ep IX will be the story of how Kylo and Rey bring a new balance to the Force

I'm trying to remember at what point the "there's been an awakening in the Force" Snoke scene happens. If I recall, it's earlier in the movie than I'm always expecting.

ISeeAnIsland wrote:I'm trying to remember at what point the "there's been an awakening in the Force" Snoke scene happens. If I recall, it's earlier in the movie than I'm always expecting.

@ISeeAnIsland

Snoke and Ren have that conversation right after Han et all escape the Glaswegian death gang. Tabling the issue of whether or not Finn breaking his mental conditioning and escaping the FO/rescuing Poe is part of the Awakening, the conversation happens after Rey's done at least two feats of Jedi strength,  single handedly outfly/out maneuver Hux's troops during the escape from Jakku and rescuing Finn from the Vagina dentata  monsters (credit to somebody on here for that line, which I <3),



and the original ESB scene it's a callback too, where the Emperor mentions Luke (as in "I know your kid is alive") right after "there is a great disturbance in the Force"

I've said it a zillion times before, but I'd be curious if any of the people involved with the production have read/are fans of Susanna Clark's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. Which was optioned by New Line Cinema as a potential LotR 3 part trilogy blockbuster (fortunately that never happened and the BBC did it as a miniseries). She pulls from the same narrative inspirations of the Bible (she's a minister's daughter), Fairy Tales, and Folklore.

In that book, it's how "English Magic" had disappeared for several hundred years, nobody was able to practice it, but has suddenly returned. The return results in an upturn of the social order and the emergence of an ancient, powerful, and scary as Hell from the shadows character (the Gentleman with the Thistledown Hair) who's an awful lot like Snoke. The main two characters, start out as Student-Teacher, become Antagonists on a Light/Dark side divide for magic (Modern/Respectable versus Ancient/Dangerous), and then have to ally against the Snoke like figure to restore Magic and order to England. The phrase used is "English Magic" and Clark uses that to explore both the question of British cultural identity as well as it being a source that springs from the environment:

Crocked Timbers Seminar (PDF)

Englishness is, in any case, a set of contradictions. It always has been and I tried to mirror that in JS&MN. Strange, the perfect English magician, is half Scottish and was born a mile or two from Wales. Wellington, the perfect English general, was born in Ireland. (Not that he was the least bit grateful to the land of his birth. “Just because a man is born in a stable, that does not make him a horse.”) Even John Uskglass, the Raven King, who in many ways stands for a lost Englishness and England, claimed to be Norman (Chapter 45, JS&MN), which made his ancestry ultimately Viking by way of France.

So if the revolution of JS&MN is not social or political, what is it? It is, unsurprisingly, magical. English magic now belongs to Englishmen and women and no longer to any particular class or gender. Henry Farrell finds that JS&MN is about what it means to be English. I just want to give that statement a little nudge and say it’s about what England means—the hills and the trees, the rain and the stones. By the end of the book I wanted to give the landscape a voice, rather than the underdogs of society. This is a poetical, romantic idea—not one that lends itself to a great deal of analysis. I’ll try to explain it a little by talking about two ideas I have of what fantasy can do. (Obviously fantasy can do a million things—these are just two.)

Firstly fantasy can be about giving power, strength, importance to the small and weak. Thus the smallest, weakest person—Frodo Baggins to take an example entirely at random—goes off to fulfil the Most Important Task. And turns out to be the only person who could have done it. Ditto Stephen Black.

Secondly Fantasy (and SF) can be the opposite of this. Instead of Giving Importance to People, it can Humble People. It can be about turning our view, however briefly, away from ourselves; it can be about glimpsing that human beings are not always, forever, and irrevocably, the centre of the universe.

@snufkin

I tried reading that book and couldn't get into it for some reason.  

@slade, it's 50-50 with that book. I'm in the totally loved it, got into camp but I know plenty of people who couldn't get into it or thought it was too long, especially with the footnotes. But it's the same scenario, Magic has disappeared and then reappears in conjunction with the appearance of an intuitively talented magician who's able to do things w/out much study.

I think it could mean Rey is the first Force Sensitive person since Ben, or what if Snoke was talking about the Ligthsaber?

It just struck me that the Lightsaber which was calling to Rey might be what the movie title is actually referring to.