An orphan, a princess, a spy for the Rebel Alliance - Leia Organa was a woman of many roles. Her cinnamon bun hairstyle and slave costume have become icons in popular culture, but she is often overlooked for her heroic roles in the Star Wars Saga.
She is the Call to Action for Luke, in her iconic message “help me Obi-Wan, you’re my only hope,” and also for Han, as the rich princess who needs saving, an enticing way to be free of his debts.
She is a primary reason why these two men chose to truly begin their own personal journeys.
As Alyssa Rosenberg at the Washington post put it, “Han and Luke, influenced by Leia's passion, take their places as full participants in the Rebellion.”
Joseph Campbell, the author of The Hero with a Thousand Faces, wrote his book to help explain the hero’s journey, but I think he made one fatal flaw in his composition. Campbell often assumes the hero is a man considering he always uses male pronouns to refer to the heroes in his book, and some of the obstacles to overcome include “woman as temptress.” I find this to be discounting the idea that women can also be heroes.
Female heroes are often underrated but exceptionally important, and the Star Wars Saga is no different. While Luke is technically the main character, Princess Leia is the driving force of the last three Star Wars films due to her tenacity.
In the Initiation stage of her own hero’s journey, mostly in The Return of the Jedi, she is responsible for saving Han Solo, both physically from being frozen in carbonite, and spiritually saving him from his old smuggler life and debts by killing Jabba the Hut. Once Han Solo is able to let go of his old life he becomes the leader Leia and Luke need him to be. Leia ultimately attains a balance between the material and spiritual when she accepts her new identity as Luke’s sister, the symbol of the spiritual realm, and her role as Han’s lover, the symbol of the physical realm.
In order to begin a journey, there must be a reason to shift the status quo from the normal to the new.
Joseph Campbell said “This first stage of the mythological journey - which we have designated the ‘call to adventure’ - signifies that destiny has summoned the hero and transferred his spiritual center of gravity within the pale of his society to a zone unknown”(Campbell 58).
Leia’s call to adventure is keeping the plans for the Death Star safe inside of R2D2 so that the Rebels can have a chance to destroy it. Her life, her planet and her cause she is fighting for depend on her keeping these plans safe. She records a message that she hopes Obi-Wan Kenobi finds, and then is captured by Darth Vader; thus her journey from her home of Alderaan, to the unknown quest begins.
Another part of Departure is called "The Belly of the Whale," which is, “a sphere of rebirth symbolized in the worldwide womb image of the belly of the whale” (Campbell 90). Leia experiences this transformation from princess to warrior inside the Death Star’s torture chambers; her old self dies and she emerges anew. Her final death and resurrection is complete when Alderaan is blown up by Darth Vader and his crew, literally demolishing her old life and catapulting her with full force into her hero’s journey.
Her ferocity is revealed because “while she grieves when her home planet, Alderaan, is destroyed by the Death Star, Leia's not paralyzed: when her unexpected rescuers show up, she's ready to go, and to gripe about their operational sloppiness” (Rosenberg).
Not once does Leia refuse the call to adventure, but instead dives head first into what needs to be done. Campbell explains that “for those who have not refused the call, the first encounter of the hero-journey is with a protective figure … who provides the adventurer with amulets against the dragon forces he is about to pass” (Campbell 69).
Leia’s supernatural aid are Luke and Han who physically rescue her, but it was only made possible by Obi-Wan and his sacrifice, the true supernatural aid. Han and Luke actually end up giving Leia a blaster as they are attempting to flee and this is a symbol of a protective device to aid in her journey.
The final step of our hero’s Departure is called "The Crossing of the First Threshold" which is, “a passage beyond the veil of the known into the unknown; the powers that watch at the boundary are dangerous; to deal with them is risky; yet for anyone with competence and courage the danger fades” (Campbell 82). This final crossing of a threshold happens for Leia when she enters the Millennium Falcon, and flees her captors who are “the powers that watch the boundary,” leaving her past life and destroyed planet behind her, she enters into the unknown.
The second phase of any hero’s journey after Departure is called Initiation, which begins with the Road of Trials “full of miraculous tests and ordeals...a favorite phase of the myth-adventure” (Campbell 97). The beginning of Leia’s trials could arguably include watching nervously as Luke and Han work together to blow up the Death Star with the use of the plans she’d kept safe, or leading the evacuation of Hoth during an Imperial attack, and hiding out in a space slug with Han to avoid TIE fighters.
I want to focus on The Empire Strikes Back when Lando Calrissian betrays Han and Leia to Darth Vader, and Return of the Jedi when she frees him from carbonite and kills Jabba the Hutt. Her admission of love for Han as he is frozen into carbonite and prepared to be handed over to Jabba the Hut is the beginning of her wrestling with the physical realm - or as Campbell puts it “woman as temptress” (Campbell 120). Han is the embodiment of her “pushing, self-protective, malodorous, carnivorous, lecherous fever which is the very nature of the organic cell” (Campbell 121). The biggest indicator of Han’s selfish attitude is in The Empire Strikes Back while talking to Luke right before he leads an attack on the Death Star and Luke is trying to convince him to stay: Han says “What good is a reward if you ain't around to use it? Besides, attacking that battle station is not my idea of courage. It's more like, suicide.” and Luke’s response is “Okay. Take care of yourself Han. I guess that's what you're best at isn't it?”(“Quotes for Han Solo (Character)”).
Leia helps Han see that there is more to life than his self-preservation, and vice versa, he is the embodiment of the physical world for her because despite his smuggling, debts, and rough edges, she still falls for him. While the first rescue in the saga was Luke and Han saving Leia in the Death Star, it is now her turn to save Han from Jabba the Hutt.
Leia’s quest to save Han is similar to “one of the best known and most charming examples of the ‘difficult tasks’ motif...Psyche’s quest for her lost lover, Cupid” (Campbell 97). Leia infiltrates Jabba's palace on Tatooine, disguised as a bounty hunter with Chewbacca as her prisoner. Lando, disguised as a guard, assists her as well. Leia releases Han from the carbonite, but she is captured and enslaved. Her enslavement is a second symbol of her internal psychological fight with the physical world; as long as Jabba is alive both Leia and Han are enslaved by the physical realm.
Leia kills Jabba the Hutt by strangling him with the chains of her enslavement - physically freeing everyone, but also spiritually freeing Han Solo. Jabba the Hutt represents Han Solos past: his ego, his greed and deception. The only way Han can become the hero he needs to be, and believe in the force, is if Jabba the Hut and all his old debts are gone. She saves him from certain death, but killing Jabba the Hutt also redeems Han’s soul from his past and cancels his debt. Han originally thought she would free him from his debts with prize money, but Leia frees him completely from his old reality to have a new and honorable life.
After Jabba is killed, Han becomes a trailblazer in the rebellion - he leads a strike team to destroy the shield generator on the forest moon of Endor. In a later stage of Initiation, the Atonement with the Father, “the hero must confront and be initiated by whatever holds the ultimate power in his or her life. In many myths and stories this is the father, or a father figure who has life and death power. This is the center point of the journey. All the previous steps have been moving into this place, all that follow will move out from it” (“Hero’s Journey”).
Leia’s atonement with the father is not necessarily a physical face-to-face reconciliation but comes in two parts. First, Luke tells her who her father is and reveals that he is her brother. Leia is then released from a romantic possibility with Luke, and discovers her father is the leader of the opposing side she has been fighting all along. Darth Vader has held the ultimate power over her from the beginning. Second, her true atonement with the father comes when Darth Vader dies saving Luke. Vader was the life and death power that has been conquered, the fighting ends, and resolution begins.
During the Initiation stage, Campbell also talks about the thing “the hero seeks ...the power of [the gods] sustaining substance,” also known as The Ultimate Boon, “this miraculous energy-substance and this alone is the Imperishable.” (Campbell 175). On Endor, Leia reveals to Han that Luke is her brother, and Han and Leia finally kiss - the ultimate boon is received in the form of Love. The Ultimate Boon is pure love that restores balance, something that embodies the immortal, which overcomes the temptations of the transient, lustful, physical world.
Once a hero has gone through their journey away from their world and received the ultimate boon, they must “Return” and try and create a new life. “The two worlds, the divine and the human, can be pictured only as distinct from each other - different as life and death, as day and night. The hero adventures out of the land we know into the darkness; there he accomplishes his adventure, or again is simply lost to us, imprisoned, or in danger; and his return is described as a coming back out of that yonder zone” (Campbell 217).
Leia’s original human world was Alderaan, and her journey through the divine has been in outer space as she battles the Empire. After Darth Vader and the Empire with him are vanquished, she gets to return and build a life for herself. This rebuilding begins when Luke and Leia return to Endor, her new representation of the physical realm, and cremate their father's body on a funeral pyre.
One of the stages of Return is when the hero becomes the master of two worlds, this is the “freedom to pass back and forth across the world division” (Campbell 229). Leia becomes the master of the two worlds when she is Luke’s sister and Han’s lover. Han is the grounding beacon of the physical world, while Luke, a Jedi master and twin brother is the symbol of the spiritual realm.
After the miraculous passage and return, the hero has the freedom to live “as a person casts off worn-out clothes and puts on others that are new, so the embodied Self casts off worn-out bodies and enters into others that are new”(Campbell 238). Leia’s freedom to live is realized through marrying Han and becoming a General in the seventh film; she casts off her old titles of princess and orphan and enters a new family and position of power.
Maybe the reason that Princes Leia is so iconic is not just for her beauty, but for her strength; she is the catalyst that inspires Luke and Han to join together and defeat the Empire, bringing the physical and spiritual representations into balance. She is never portrayed as weak, but commands respect in how she handles every high pressure situation from the original escape from Death Star to killing Jabba the Hut. She handles it all with a cool, calm, authoritative attitude befitting a strong female hero.
Work Cited
Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990. Print.
"Hero's Journey." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia., 5 Sept. 2016. Web. 18 Sept. 2016.
"Quotes for Han Solo (Character)." IMDb. IMDb.com, n.d. Web. 18 Sept. 2016.
Rosenberg, Alyssa. "Princess Leia, political icon." The Washington Post 2015: Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 14 Sept. 2016.
