One of the most important scenes in The Force Awakens does not appear anywhere on the Web – not as a film clip or a screen shot or even a publicity still. I know why, I think. Its power rests largely in its unexpected, heartbreaking, surprise. You know what it is: that desperate, grieving embrace between General Leia Organa and the pilot-scavenger Rey.
Since time began, women have mourned the loss of loved ones in battle. Since time began we’ve stayed at home waiting, worrying: Penelope, Catelyn Stark, Mrs. Miniver, Sisera‘s mother, the women of WWI
Through the window she looked forth, and wailed,
The mother of Sisera, through the lattice:
“Why is his chariot so long in coming?
Why are the hoofbeats of his chariots so delayed?” — The song of Deborah, Judges 5: 24-31 s
“[I] wondered if he was looking up at that same moon, far away, and thinking of me as I was thinking of him.”— Vera Brittain (Chronicle of Youth: The War Diary, 1913-1917)
But these two brave warriors, forced into battles that would steal their loved ones — their grief is different. It is the grief of fellow soldiers, not docile ladies-in-waiting. It is also a passing of the torch – literally and figuratively – between two powerful, wise women: one a grand figure from the last generation, the other an emerging power in the present one.
The loss of Han Solo, lover of one, father figure to the other, at the hands of Kylo Ren, his (and Leia’s) own son, and the near death of Ren himself in his battle with Rey, brought a grief shared by two warriors at opposite ends of the war against the Dark Side. Despite the pain of loss – and near loss – Leia comforts – and seeks the comfort of — of a younger version of herself. The battle between Rey and Kylo Ren in no way inhibits the joining of their pain and loss. It’s similar to the reality male soldiers have described so often: the loss of a beloved buddy in battle.
For women though, that loss has usually been at a distance, learned of and mourned far after the death itself. Now, just after the United States military has granted women soldiers access to the same combat duties and responsibilities as their brothers, and even as it portrays the generational legacy, the Star Wars tale depicts the same parity. These preservers of The Force fully share it all as, now, do our own soldiers – and equally know loss as battlefield comrades. Consider this, too:
I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its stupidity. — Dwight David Eisenhower, 1946