46 pages • 1 hour read
Darth Plagueis
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Symbols & Motifs
Content Warning: This section of the guide contains depictions of graphic violence, physical and emotional abuse, illness, and death.
Masks and Hidden Identities
The motif of masks and hidden identities is central to the novel. The Siths’ adoption of an alternative Sith name is symbolic of the alteration in their identity when they turn to the dark side. Their previous identity becomes a form of mask in the wider world, enabling them to carry out their schemes in plain sight. Plagueis’s false identity, Damask, references this directly by containing the word “mask.”
When Plagueis is permanently injured by assassins, he wears a transpirator mask to preserve his life. The transpirator mask appears once earlier in the novel, in Chapter 1, when Plagueis and Tenebrous visit the mine. The masks are worn to protect them from the atmosphere and enables Plagueis to cause and control the death of Tenebrous. When Plagueis adopts the mask, it simultaneously becomes a form of life extension, and a mark of his increasing vulnerability, symbolizing the dramatic irony of his self-destructive pursuit of immortality and his destiny to share the fate of his master.
Midi-chlorians
The midi-chlorians are a powerful symbol of Darth Plagueis’s ultimate ambition and his fatal hubris in seeking to control the Force. These microscopic, Force-communicating organelles represent the tangible, biological component of the mystical power of life.
