#bless u stover i hope u kno some weird nerd thinks you killed it

[intermundia]

one of the most impactful stylistic choices in the revenge of the sith novel is that that stover will sometimes slide into 2nd person. i can't think of any other star wars book that does that, but i also can't think of a book that tries as hard to be a classical tragedy.

the formula for catharsis is a combination of pity and fear, feeling aching sorrow for someone whose choices led to disaster, and feeling the dread of knowing that their choices were relatable. the 2nd person encourages the latter kind of tragic identification.

stover uses it to great effect the last three pages of the book, in a section beginning "this is how it feels to be anakin skywalker, forever" which takes you by the hand and walks you directly into hell:

The first dawn of light in your universe brings pain. The light burns you. It will always burn you. Part of you will always lie upon black glass sand beside a lake of fire while flames chew upon your flesh.

And there is one blazing moment in which you finally understand that there was no dragon. That there was no Vader. That there was only you. Only Anakin Skywalker. That it was all you. Is you. Only you. You did it. You killed her. You killed her because, finally, when you could have saved her, when you could have gone away with her, when you could have been thinking about her, you were thinking about yourself... It is in this blazing moment that you finally understand the trap of the dark side, the final cruelty of the Sith— Because now your self is all you will ever have.

this kind of direct address ("you killed her") encourages the reader to feel complicit in what just happened, directly involved in the horror. the narrator is inviting you to fully inhabit anakin's consciousness as he experiences the horror of self understanding, realizing with him that he's doomed to persist in a life that is unrecognizable in its misery. you're pushed inside his broken body, his broken heart, his broken mind, and you feel how deeply human he is, for all that he's a monster. it's an highly effective emotional gut punch.