Hux, Finn, and First Order Privilege

[lavender_sage]

 Every time I see meta comparing Hux and Finn’s backstories, I’m reminded that I STILL haven’t written the meta I’ve planned for the past five months or so.  I’ve been waiting for “free time,” but this may be the closest I get to that.

My issues with this meta are that it is reductive–Finn is able to leave the FO because he is good and Hux remains because he is bad–and that it takes certain details from Hux’s backstory at face value when they merit more careful reading.

Both of these characters have tragic pasts, but their tragedies are different.  Finn’s is that he was taken from his parents and trained into a killing machine.  Hux’s is that he was kept close to his father and trained into a killing machine. That difference alone is pretty interesting.  One the surface, Hux appears to have certain privileges in comparison with Finn, and from a FO perspective, they certainly are advantageous.  He’s an officer’s son; he’s put in charge of a group of killer orphans who are all bigger and stronger than he is.  But these privileges are dubious to say the least.

Finn, on the other hand, starts off as a simple stormtrooper, no different than any other.  He is able to distinguish himself through his talents later, but by that time he has been able to form some degree of attachment to his peers.  One of the things that triggers his leaving the FO at the beginning of TFA is seeing one of his friends killed.  Now, I know that the FO discourages any kind of attachment among stormtroopers, but here’s the thing.  It obviously didn’t work! It couldn’t work in every case because stormtroopers are humans and humans are social creatures.  

Isolating an individual child, though, that can work very well.  And in the case of Armitage Hux, it certainly did. Being put in charge of the assassination orphan squad makes him special, but in so doing it also strips him of any commonality with the other children.  They obey him because Counselor Rax told them to and they have been trained to be obedient; it has nothing to do with Armitage personally.  Even with this authority, his dealings with the other children are quite vicious from the beginning because he doesn’t want to look like an easy target.  It’s little surprise that he grows into a man who has no close bonds with anyone, who sees other officers, the closest thing he has to peers, solely as allies or rivals.

Being Brendol Hux’s son also made him “special,” but why? Mostly because everyone knew that he was; his father certainly didn’t treat him better than other children.  It’s not a matter of avoiding favoritism; Brendol makes it abundantly clear to Armitage that Cardinal is his favorite. Lavishing affection on one child while withholding it from your own is … wait for it … abuse.  That thing some readers assume Rae Sloane put a stop to just because she told Brendol to cut it out.

 I see the idea that Brendol physically and psychologically abused Armitage presented as a canonical certainty all the time, but the only reference to this abuse in the books is notable for its uncertainty.  Sloane says, “I don’t know if [you are mistreating him] physically or psychologically, and I don’t care.” I hardly think Sloane’s uncertainty is lost on Brendol.  Maybe he physically abused Armitage as well, and that stopped when she threatened him, but maybe it was only ever psychological, and that plainly did not stop.  It seems clear to me than any benefit Armitage gained from her promise to protect him–which she couldn’t and didn’t keep–is outmatched by the harm done by keeping him with his father.

Almost all of the “privileges” in Armitage Hux’s past amount to abuse and abuse enabling. It’s actually quite beneficial to Finn that he lacked these advantages; if he had them, he probably never would have left the FO either.