1. Anakin and the Self-Fulfilling
Prophecy
By Alex DeRienzo

2. • A self-fulfilling prophecy occurs when a person
believes something strongly enough that it actually
causes itself to become true, whether or not they
want it to. Even if it may have been false to start out
with, the strength of the belief in the outcome and
the consequent effort to avoid said outcome will
make it come true, due to behavior stemming from
that belief.
• “A man often meets his
destiny on the very road
he took to avoid it.” –
Chinese proverb

3. In the Media

4. • The concept has been around since the Greeks. In
the story of Oedipus, his father, Laius, is foretold that
his son will one day kill him. In an attempt to avoid
this prophecy, he abandons his son, who is found
and raised by others. Oedipus in turn is foretold he
will kill his father and marry his mother, and so he
leaves home and travels to Greece to avoid this,
believing his foster parents to be his real parents.
There he unknowingly gets into a fight with a
stranger who is actually his father, and then marries
his father’s widow, or Oedipus’ mother.

5. • Another famous example is found in Shakespeare’s Macbeth.
The three witches foretell that he would become king, but
that afterwards his friend Macduff’s son will take the throne
instead of his own offspring. Note that the prophecy does not
have to be unsuccessfully avoided to be a self-fulfilling
prophecy, and so Macbeth’s becoming king fills the first part
of the prophecy. He does however try to avoid the second
part coming true, and has Macduff’s family killed. Out of
revenge, Macduff kills Macbeth and his son becomes
king, fulfilling the prophecy that might have been avoided had
Macbeth not caused his friend to seek revenge by attempting
to murder his family.

6. Another well-
known example….

7. • The Pygmalion effect is a kind of self-fulfilling
prophecy, or as Dr. Jacobson would call it, the
stereotype threat. This is when a person or
group of people expects a certain behavior or
characteristic of a person, and it ends up being
true. As a friend once said in a Facebook post:
“Treat someone as they are and they will
remain so, treat them as they can and should
be and they will become as they can and
should be.”

9. Revenge of the Sith
• In Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith, Anakin
has a premonition while he is asleep where he
envisions his wife Padme crying in pain during
childbirth and then presumably dying soon
afterwards.

10. • He tells Padme about the dream, and that the
same thing happened to him right before his
mother passed away and that he doesn’t want
the same thing to happen to her. Despite her
reassurance that it was just a dream, he is
determined to make sure that the vision he
saw in his dream never comes true.
Throughout the movie he goes to great
lengths to avoid this fate.

11. • In doing so, he joins the….
• DARK SIDE OF THE FORCE

12. • Consumed by the dark side and his growing
power, he gets into a fight with Padme and
commits spousal abuse. As a result, she is
injured and her will to live fades as she sees
what Anakin has become. She gives birth to
Luke and Leia and then passes away, fulfilling
the prophecy Anakin tried desperately to
avoid.

13. Sources
• www.google.com
• www.wikipedia.com
• www.tvtropes.org