Character Analysis of Grand Admiral Thrawn by Alex
Alex did a magnificent job breaking down the newest supervillain in the Star Wars universe, Grand Admiral Thrawn. I wanted to show him and my other students that you can learn many literary skills by analyzing the comics that occupy popular culture from Marvel to Star Wars. For those who were unfortunate to miss his presentation, here it is in its full glory:
What makes a great commander? A leader acts decisively, deduces logically, and behaves flexibly. It’s common to have a military leader who displays one or two of these aspects, but it is rare to encounter someone with all attributes. Looking back in history, few commanders have all of these traits. Even in fictional universes, most combatant officers lack these traits. Take Star Wars. Anakin Skywalker is sharp and flexible, but he is not logical. He is adept at reacting to new dangers in battle and has gotten his master Obi-wan out of many tight spots. However, Anakin has been bested by commanders like Dooku who outplayed him on the battlefield. His master, Obi-wan, is a methodical person; in most scenes, Obi-wan would plan out his moves and act according to the plan. Yet he lacks the ability to react resolutely to an unexpected situation. That’s why he needs Anakin to get him out of trouble.
When Lucasfilms introduced Thrawn into the canon via Star Wars Rebels Season 3 in 2016, the showrunners introduced a new archetypal character into the Star Wars universe— the genius. Thrawn is a rare character because he has all the traits needed for a great commander in spades. More importantly, Thrawn can achieve lofty goals without Force powers. These traits make Thrawn relatable to the audience.
As the story progresses, the reader cheers Thrawn on his series of successful missions that greatly benefited the Empire. He handled the pressure and carefully evaluated the situation to come up with the most logical, cunning plan. You will see why the typical reader will do so.
At the start of the audiobook, Imperial troops captured Thrawn and brought him to Palpatine. Palpatine recognized Thrawn from past battles; their conversations recollecting the Clone Wars led the two to strike an agreement. Thrawn, a Chiss himself and representing the interests of his species, formed a partnership with the Empire. As part of the deal, Thrawn would offer his services and knowledge to the Empire. He joined the officer corps to provide much-needed strategic and tactical insight that most of the officer corps lacked. Palpatine knew this. Perhaps, he wanted to use Thrawn’s presence within the higher echelons of the Imperial Navy to stir the rest of the leaders to improve.
While he was at the academy, Thrawn and his future friend, Eli Vanto met Orbar and his friends. They were all cadets at the academy. Orbar was a cocky bully because his relative was high up in the Empire’s hierarchy. Orbar tried to assert his dominance at the academy by ambushing Thrawn and Vanto. They were able to fight off Orbar’s group. Word of the attack reached the commandant’s ears. He asked Thrawn and Vanto for their suggestions on how to handle the incident. Thrawn suggested the commandant assign Orbar and his friends to the Starfighter Pilot Training instead of outright expulsion. Thrawn thought that Orbar would excel as a starfighter. At the same time, he and his group would learn the lesson from being ostracized by the other pilots in training. It would be a shame to waste such talent in his eyes.
Most people could not make a broad-minded decision in the same circumstance. Even at this early point in the plot, we can see Thrawn’s ability to make big picture decisions under pressure. It can be inferred that Thrawn had developed a belief system in which he always kept his mind on the big picture. We later find out that Thrawn was a planted agent working for the Chiss Ascendancy. Agents are trained to keep their emotions in check. Also, all Chiss are taught to control their emotions in general.
Thrawn then broke down the situation to the commandant. If Thrawn had sided with expulsion, his main interest may have been jeopardized. Also, Orbar would never forgive Thrawn for getting him expelled. Orbar’s Uncle was the Senator of Coruscant. There would be much political fighting due to Orbar’s Uncle’s high political rank. Instead, Thrawn can preserve the talent that would benefit the Empire while administering an effective punishment. Thrawn is able to keep his mind on the big picture while controlling his emotions. Thrawn said: “All three show the aptitude and aura necessary for fighter-craft pilots. It was obvious from their method of attack. The way they moved-- it was the mark of instinctive combat pilots.” Orbar and his friends would excel as starfighters and the punishment would still be administered.
This one aspect of emotional intelligence would be an asset for many military commanders, but Thrawn is no ordinary commander; he possesses other emotional intelligence skills that work in tandem. Thrawn can read other people’s emotions and see their motivations. Thus, he is able to accurately predict emotional and physical responses from others.
Before Thrawn was sent on the mission to stop a rebellion on Batonn he argued with his rival admiral about the best tactic that should be used to defeat the rebels. The other admiral thought that he could easily brute force his way through their defenses. Thrawn said he needed to gather some information before he could make an accurate analysis of the situation. He was able to read that the rival admiral was cocky. He knew that the brute force tactic would fail. That allowed him to send his forces to stop a rebellion on the planet he was reassigned to handle. This gave him time to gather intel.
When it was Thrawn’s turn to try to stop the rebellion on Batonn, he came up with a plan to lure out the rebels and defeat them. He turned the engines off on their cruisers. To the amazement of the crew of the cruisers, the rebel starfighters moved past them without attacking. Thus, they were easily surrounded and defeated. Thrawn expected Nightswan to order his fighters to ignore the defenseless cruisers and go after the smaller craft. From their first meeting, Thrawn deduced that Nightswan highly valued honor. Nightswan didn’t want to be like the soldiers of the Empire, Imperials. Attacking would have gone against his morals.
Now, if this is not impressive by itself, he has other abilities: Thrawn can analyze things efficiently with and without pressure. This combination that Thrawn has mastered is rare in the real world. For example, a commander making a decision from the safety of his headquarters would not do well if he switched spots with a commander making decisions in the middle of a battlefield, and vice versa.
His ability to worm his way out as a hostage from a hijacked ship demonstrated his ability to think clearly under pressure. Thrawn quickly formed a plan because he was already aware of the pirates’ traps. He explained to Vanto that he could read the “crewmate’s” expression to tell that he was lying and formulated a plan. He could also hide his emotions so the pirates didn’t know that he suspected them. Thrawn then executed his plan, saved everyone, and re-captured the ship.
This shows Thrawn’s ability to do his job in a pressured environment. As stated above, Thrawn is also able to work in a calm environment.
Thrawn’s artwork analysis and body language reading skills allowed him to uncover a planned rebellion stemming from a quarrel between a group of humans and the natives of a planet. The Imperial Navy sent him to investigate some suspicious activity on another planet. There, he was able to learn about a whole civilization’s culture through a piece of artwork. Due to his analysis skill, he was able to discover that Nightswan was harvesting and selling illegal spices. In one mission, he shut down an illegal operation, unearthed a rising rebellion, and solved the issue between the humans and the natives of the planet he was sent to.
Yet even a person as gifted as Thrawn has certain weaknesses.
Thrawn argues with his rival admirals on the best way to put down the rebellion on Batonn. Though the idea was shut down at first, it turned out to be the most efficient method to stop the rebellion. Seeing as Thrawn argued with many of the admirals and needed more time to solve the problem, he was reassigned to the planet Sammun. Even though Thrawn was victorious when he got his turn to stop the rebellion, this event showed his greatest weakness, politics. He wasn’t willing to follow the orders of a higher-ranking officer. He also disagreed with other officers. Under different circumstances, his punishments may have been severe.
After this series of successful victories, Thrawn was promoted once again. During the promotion, Thrawn was able to teach Eli Vanto about emotion reading. Yet this leads to a question. If Thrawn is so good at reading emotions, how can he be viewed as inexperienced when it comes to politics?
In the early stages of the audiobook, Thrawn made some enemies within the Empire. Yet, he had gained a few allies. Without his allies, he would not have been able to rise the ranks due to political issues. High-ranking people in the Empire would try to slow Thrawn's progress. Many other commanders do not like to see Thrawn succeed so many times. If a low-ranking commander could do the jobs by themselves without the help of higher-ranking commanders would the other commanders still be needed? Making these decisions give a false impression that Thrawn’s weakness is in politics. With his other actions, we see while he commands his forces we can tell that he dislikes politics.
Even with these setbacks. Thrawn is able to stand out in the Star Wars universe.
Star Wars has made the shift to focus on non-force users. Thrawn is a great example of a Star Wars character that we can relate to. He shows us that we don’t need to be born with superpowers to achieve our goals. Thrawn is a character that all people can learn from and aim to be like. If you can implement the way Thrawn traits into your life, you will excel in the real world.
