George Lucas is very literal when it comes to the phrase
“disarming” an opponent.
Hands and arms are sliced off left and right in Star Wars.
It’s so common there’s even a name for it:
cho mai is cutting off someone’s weapon hand,
and cho sun is cutting off their weapon arm.
So what’s up with all of the lost limbs?
What’s the deeper symbolism here?
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Star Wars is very indebted to the films of Akira Kurosawa,
and the severed arm trope comes from the famous Japanese director as well.
The cantina scene where we witness the first dismemberment
is based on Kurosawa’s Yojimbo.
And another inspiration may have been Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey.
One of the stops on the Hero’s Journey is the “ordeal” --
an obstacle the character has to overcome that fundamentally changes him.
Interestingly, one example that Campbell gives for what the ordeal
could be is dismemberment.
These older inspirations remind us that there’s something about
having a body part cut off that’s always resonated for audiences.
It’s just inherently disturbing and frightening to us.
Hands and arms represent
our active identity out in the world, our agency.
That’s where the expressions “Right-Hand Man”
and “Hand of the Queen” or “Hand of the King” come from --
this is the person in Game of Thrones who executes the monarch’s will
(Hello, Tyrion Lannister).
And we talk about taking up arms.
So losing your hand symbolizes losing your power to enact your will.
For a warrior, the loss of a hand or an arm is even more dire --
it’s their means of making a living, protecting themselves
and doing what they’re best at.
We get plenty of warrior characters outside of Star Wars
who lose a hand or an arm or fear that they might.
And losing that body part for them triggers an existential crisis.
After the fictional character loses a limb, their identity is transformed by the loss,
and it’s partially reformed by the new replacement limb.
Peter Pan’s nemesis is called Captain Hook -
so this hook has become the defining part of his identity,
suggesting Hook is obsessed with the absence of what he once had.
The moment Luke Skywalker loses his hand coincides with
the moment he loses his innocence—
because it’s when learns who his real father is.
“I am your father.”
“No!”
And Luke’s new mechanical hand shows us
that he’s going to go on to fight again—
but something in him has fundamentally changed.
That new hand and the new green lightsaber are self-created additions to his body,
so they represent a more mature Luke who’s chosen his own path.
“I see you have constructed a new light saber.
Your skills are complete.”
Anakin loses 5 limbs total
(two arms, two legs, and one mechanical arm),
and after that he remakes himself, but too much so.
Along with his new limbs he’s got a new ideology,
a new identity and a new name.
So he loses Anakin with all of those limbs and becomes Darth Vader.
Counterintuitively, it’s actually a defensive technique
to cut off someone’s hand or arm.
“A Jedi uses the force for knowledge and defense.
Never for attack.”
Thus, cutting off a hand is a quick, non-lethal way to end a fight.
If it’s done with a lightsaber, which is usually the case,
the wound is cauterized immediately.
That’s why there’s little to no blood (except in the earlier Star Wars films).
The lack of gore is in line with the idea of the lightsaber as
“an elegant weapon for a more civilized age.”
Losing a hand or arm isn’t the worst thing
that can happen to you in Star Wars.
You can always get a robotic limb to replace it.
So cho mai or cho sun is actually humane.
There are two Sith Lords who cut off an opponent’s fighting limb in the films
-
but both are actually former Jedi.
And in both cases they don’t want to kill the person they’re fighting—
either because it pains them or because they have plans
for that opponent and want them alive.
Cutting off an opponent’s hand in Star Wars is a symbolic castration.
In a world where male power is linked to fighting,
to take away a man’s weapon hand or arm is to rob him of power.
When Vader cuts off Luke’s hand,
he’s symbolically castrating his son and shaming him,
treating him like a little boy who doesn’t know what he’s doing.
He’s attempting to remove Luke’s manhood.
And all of this makes us think of Freud’s Oedipus complex:
the theory essentially that little boys (and even girls, according to Freud)
go through a stage of desiring their mothers and feeling competitive
with their fathers for their mom’s affection.
Freud said that the Oedipus complex in boys manifests as an anxiety
that they’ll be castrated by their fathers.
Luke is motherless, but his sister Leia could be
a stand-in for the maternal figure.
Before Luke finds out she’s his sister he is attracted to her.
And Vader’s threat to convert Leia to the dark side
“If you will not turn to the Dark Side, then perhaps she will.”
“Never!”
is what drives Luke to cut off Vader’s hand in Return of the Jedi.
So he symbolically castrates his father to protect his sister,
making him the new patriarch and defender of the family.
Luke and Vader’s reconciliation happens once they’ve both
cut off each other’s hands, eliminating each other’s threat.
They no longer have to compete over who’s stronger,
and can finally bond in a real way.
“I’ll not leaving you here, I’ve got to save you.”
“You already have.”
Thus cho mai and cho sun are great equalizers—
the Star Wars version of “an eye for an eye.”
If you do it to someone, there’s a good chance
you’ll be at the other end of that sword later on.
So don’t do cho mai unto others if you’re not ready
to part with a limb at some point in the future.
Cutting off someone’s hand or arm is also a line in the sand in Star Wars—
it’s as far as people can go without becoming evil.
When you’ve cut off someone’s hand you’ve disarmed the person,
so if you choose to kill them when they’re defenseless,
that’s a ticket to the Dark Side.
Think of how Anakin and Dooku’s fight scene in Revenge of the Sith
parallels Luke’s and Vader’s fight scene in Return of the Jedi.
In both cases, the characters are getting egged on by Palpatine.
Anakin and Luke both cut off their opponent’s hand.
After that, Anakin gives in to hate and anger and kills Dooku.
“But he was an unarmed prisoner.
I shouldn’t have done that.
It’s not the Jedi way.”
But Luke stops himself.
He looks at his own mechanical hand and his father’s,
and he realizes that if he goes further, he’ll become like his dad,
more automaton than human being.
“He’s more machine now than man.”
The Sith and the Jedi have cho mai and cho sun in common—
like their lightsabers and their connection to the Force.
What differs is how the Jedi or the Sith chooses to use these fighting techniques—
as a defensive way of shutting down a fight
or as a gateway to all-out evil.
Ultimately, the symbolism of cutting off hands and arms
brings us back to a lot of the key themes explored in the movies:
the choice between the Dark and Light sides,
the destruction and recreation of identities,
and the bond and battle between fathers and sons.
“It is only natural.
He cut off your arm, and you wanted revenge.
It wasn’t the first time, Anakin.”
I’m Debra, I’m Susannah, and we’re the creators of ScreenPrism.
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