Jackson Wright

Dr. Holt

English 12: Senior Seminar

5 December 2022

A Star Wars’ Dream

William Shakespeare wrote a notable play called A Midsummer Night’s Dream about a

set of athenian youths that fight, lose, and win the love each other mostly due to what could be

considered brainwashing. The play has been performed repeatedly ever since it was written even

continuing today making its success and fame a bard text. However, A Midsummer Night’s

Dream truly solidifies itself as a bard text by how it influences modern culture with common

tropes, even appearing in cinema pieces like Star Wars, in the form of contentious love affairs,

moral chaos, and mysterious forces. This shows how great the play is as a bard text since isn’t it

said that one knows they are successful when others begin to copy them.

The most obvious example of influence comes from the plays main trope which makes up

the majority of the story, the trope of a contentious love affair. This trope is seen throughout the

first two episodes of the orginal trilogy of Star Wars between mainly Leia and Han. With much

of Han and Leia’s early interactions it can be easily said that they don’t like each other.

Especially, when much of their interactions are them yelling at each other and unabashedly

voicing their dislike for the other, with Leia calling Han a “stuck-up, half-witted,

scruffy-looking, nerf herder” (The Empire Strikes Back 00:17:37-00:17:42). Nevertheless, Han

tries to seduce Leia throughout the first two movies but Leia is interested in Luke instead of Han

even giving him a kiss. However, with persistence and and an eventual change of heart Leia ends

up falling for Han in the iconic “I know” scene. This story of continuous love affair appears to be
almost directly drawn from A Midsummer Night’s Dream but with different genders. In the play

we see Helena chase after Demetrius who is in love with Hermia and the ending is the same, as

Demetrius like Leia is forced to change back to who they should be with. This direct

comparision shows how impactful A Midsummer Night’s Dream has been in Star Wars by

shaping a love story that affects much of the story of the epic saga.

Another example of a trope taken from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, is that of moral

chaos. In Star Wars, while the struggle of morality is not always apparent it clearly comes

through in the story of Darth Vader. When first introduced to Darth Vader we see him mercilessly

charge march through dead bodies and choke a man to death (A New Hope). This continues for

much of the orginal trilogy until the end of the third movie where Darth Vader begins to struggle

with morality as we see him silently debate between killing or sparing his son, Luke. After

thinking, Darth Vader decides to go against his master, Emperor Palptine, killing him, saving his

son, and returning to the light side of the force thereby bringing a happy conclusion to the end of

this story. While not as severe as Darth Vader story, Thesues is still very similar. In the

beginning, Theseus threatens death upon Hermia if she does not take Demetrius hand in marriage

and near the end of the book Thesues also changes to the light side as he allows the pairs of

lovers to end up with who they want, overuling Egues. This once again shows the importance of

A Midsummer Night’s Dream as an influential bard text as Star Wars uses and implements a

trope that will become the key factor in the majority of its plot in both the original series and

many others.

The final example of a trope from A Midsummer Night’s Dream being used, is that of

mysterious forces. When one thinks of mysterious forces within Star Wars the answer is obvious.

It is the force. While watching Star Wars one constantly hears about the force and its power and
how one must harness it to become a jedi. However, many forget about the other aspects of the

force such as how it is said that “It's an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us

and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.” From this one can see that the force has a great

deal of control in Star Wars as it literally holds the universe together and keeps everything alive

and well. One might ask how something so unique can this can possibly be trope taken from A

Midsummer Night’s Dream but it is actually quite obvious. The force is very similar to that of

the fairies as both work within the relative background of their respective stories, changing the

outcome from it original destination. In Star Wars one can see at the beginning of the story that

Luke is pretty weak can really do much. However, after training, meditating, and tapping into the

force he becomes powerful enough to rival his father. The force can also be seen influencing the

outcome of Star Wars as many characters are said to be pulled to the respective light and dark

sides within the movies which is why at the very end, as previously mentioned, Darth Vader is

pulled to the light side of the force. This is also seen in A Midsummer Night’s Dream as the

fairies are in the background of the play constantly changing the story. First they make the

athenian men fall for the wrong women but in the end they eventually correct it making the story

right with all the athenian being with who they should be. It could also be said that Thesues’

change in heart is also due to the fairies as he “magically” just changes his mind from wanting to

kill Hermia for disobidience a few day earlier to going against Egues by allowing the youths ot

marry who they want. The copying of the mysterious trope shows just how strong a hold A

Midsummer Night’s Dream has within modern culture. It can be seen through how Star Wars

mimics the idea of something supernatural and makes it the basis for something that is said to

connect the entire universe together similar to how th fairies hold the plays story together.
Jackson Wright

Dr. Holt

English 12: Senior Seminar

5 December 2022

Cover Letter

My first thesis statement that I came up with as well as the original revised were both not

that good because they were both very broad like you said. Also, I wasn’t really to invested in

them because they seemed kind of boring. However, this thesis statement and paper on Star Wars

or at least the similarities in trops between Star Wars and A Midsummer Night’s Dream has been

pretty fun to write so far.

It’s been was cool to think about how similar the two differen pieces of media are. It

almost got to the point where I was thinking about it in a conspiracy theory way because of how

closely they matched up together. It has also been fun to go through some of the old movie

scenes that I haven’t seen in a while, because I had already watched them so many times. The

“nerf herder” scene has been my favorite by far and I think when I am doen with the paper I

might go through and watch the movies in their entirety.

I definitely have some more work that I still need to do on the paper such as getting rid of

any contraction, mispellings, cleaning up wording, and just rearranging or shortening weird

sentences. It will definitely be good to have someone else look at my paper like Max or Hayden.

Other than just tiding up the paper the only thing I need to do it citations.