Force Lightning

This is a journal entry for school that I just finished. It took forever and is the longest composition I have written since my book report on Island of the Blue Dolphins (sad, good, and terrible book).

Force Lightning

I have recently become interested with force lightning. I found out about it while watching Star Wars VI: Return of the Jedi. When Corsicapeace (had to take out her name for this post) and I started writing Star wars plays we knew we wanted to include it. Unfortunately, a couple of months ago we had written ten plays with some containing force lightning. I was researching force lightning and found out that we had a problem. Our plays that we had worked on half the summer were inaccurate! I did some revising of the ones that we hadn't acted out and everything is okay now. I am not writing this to tell you about how I had to revise plays but to teach you about force lightning.

Force lightning is a force ability. It is also known as sith lightning as it was most often used by members of the sith. It sends electricity through someone's body using your hand or fingertips. The more skilled you were with it, the more the bolts would branch out. The more it branched out, the more people you could target. You are unable to dodge force lightning, but powerful Jedi could block it with their lightsabers. Yoda was able to absorb and redirect force lightning using his hands. One short bolt could result in unconsciousness for the victim or death. There are short and long term effects to the user and victim. It deforms the victim and can lead to brain damage, blindness, or being crippled for life. Humans will usually have small seizures all over their body due to a drop in blood minerals. You could avoid some long term effects with complete bed rest and proper treatment. As for the user, it could drain their energy, deform them, and possibly burn holes in their hand. People on the light side could learn to use force lightning if they wanted to. Most Jedi Councils didn't allow it however. There are many different variations of force lightning.

There are a couple of things that you might not have understood if you have seen Star Wars VI. First of all, if force lightning can kill quickly then how come Luke Skywalker didn't die after a short amount of time of being hit with it by Emperor Palpatine? The reason was that Luke was the last of the Jedi and the emperor decided to slowly kill him to watch the last of the Jedi suffer (there is something wrong with the emperor). Also, how come Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker dies? When Anakin (this act made him become his old self again) was throwing the emperor down the reactor chasm some of the force lightning hit him. Because of that his breathing circuit was messed up and he died.

I hope you enjoyed learning about force lightning.