Looking at it as a Metaphor

Rating: 8/10 (11 February 2012)

Everything has been said on IMDb and everywhere else about Return of the Jedi once, twice, a million times, okay maybe not a million times, but I want to bring up something that's only been maybe brought up, say, a few hundred times.
Where Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi lead is to a great metaphor on life. My grandfather promised my Uncle, when my Uncle was 15 years old, that he could take the car out to a school dance if my Uncle cleaned the car, cleaned it really good and so my Uncle worked on the car all day, cleaned it perfectly as I'm told from my sources.
My grandfather decided it didn't look good enough and told my Uncle he couldn't go,(unfortunately this way of being is my Grandfather's M.O.), so my Uncle took the car anyway and went to the school dance, when he got back, my grandfather kicked him out of the house, and my Uncle has lived on his own since he was 15 years of age. That's who my Grandfather is, in so many ways or words my grandfather is the Emperor, and my Uncle as a metaphor is Luke, and all of us make a choice in life on whether we become Vader or not.
You can imagine the hate my Uncle had for my Grandfather, and he doesn't talk to my grandfather to this day, which I don't blame him, I wouldn't either, but my Uncle let that hate go, and even though his life hasn't been perfect, he's lived his life, a good life, and he's been married for almost 50 years now, and I'm proud of him. It wasn't easy for my Uncle though, he could have easily chosen the dark path, a path of drugs, murder, prison, just a path of hatred towards everyone and resentment towards my grandfather for his whole life(believe me, my Uncle has had resentment towards my grandfather over the years, but he let it go eventually, and I don't blame him for having that resentment either).
The same goes for Luke, he makes a choice, and it's all about choice, Happiness is a choice, everything is a choice no matter where you been.
Some things in life are more messed up than others, and in the end, it's how you deal with them. It's okay to be human and feel anger and sadness, and whatever, but it's how you recover that defines you. I once heard someone say that 'It isn't the easy times in life that define one's manhood, it's the tough times that do.'
Luke almost kills his father and becomes evil, going past the point of no return which leads to a bad heart, a victim mentality, and never being able to finally forgive and move on and live his life.
Luke is angry, but he ends up doing the right thing, and he forgives his father in the end. Perhaps it might not have been so easy for Luke to forgive Vader if Vader, Luke's father, would have lived, but that's the 'what if' and the 'who knows' which one can't or should probably not dwell on too often. The 'what ifs' and the 'who knows' are out of our control anyway.
Luke didn't go to the dark side as he could have easily gone to, but Luke is a good-strong person, he was tested, just like we're all tested in life(I say "tested" in the meaning of we're all going to go through the ebb and flows of life sometimes, again some greater than others), just like my Uncle, and that metaphor, on top of so many other great things the Star Wars Trilogy offers, is priceless. Again, as so many have said, thank you George Lucas.