lavender_sage

Kylo Ren, Phasma, and Hux are all high profile members of the First Order and are committed to its principles, but only Hux was born into it, being the son of one of the founding members.  Phasma is from Parnassos and made the choice to sacrifice or murder every person she knew from her home planet to join the First Order.  Kylo Ren is the son of the Original Trilogy’s heroes and has, so far, rejected two offers to return and be reconciled. Snoke’s abuse and manipulations are, obviously, an immensely important influence on Kylo, but they are hardly the only influence.  Hux, however, is the product of First Order ideology and his abusive father. In the Phasma nove, Vi Morandi tells us, “Armitage Hux hasn’t left as much of a data trail as the other First Order leaders because he’s had no life outside of this war machine.” What opportunity for choice has he had?

While both Kylo and Phasma were once members of family groups who cared about them, Hux has, as far as we know, only ever had Brendol.  Cardinal reveals that there is “something cruel and savage in [Armitage], something forged by Brendol himself.” Vi Morani goes even further, commenting that “The greasy ginger weasel birthed a greasy ginger weasel.” Of course, Brendol didn’t give birth to Armitage, who is the bastard son of a kitchen worker.  But he may as well have for all the influence anyone else has on him .  It is not until he meets Rae Sloane that anyone protects him from Brendol’s physical and psychological abuse, and by that point the damage has been done.

I have not read Aftermath: Empire’s End in which Sloane is introduced, but I’m very curious to see if Hux’s situation is treated with the moral complexity it seems to merit.  I can say that it poses some difficulties to the, at times, rather hamfisted moralizing of the Phasma novel.  After spending much of the novel teasing the reader with suggestions of Phasma’s moral ambivalence, Delilah Dawson presents us with a story from her past that seems designed to convince us that she was simply a bad apple from the start.  The earliest story Vi tells reveals that Phasma disabled her brother and sacrificed the rest of her family to survive, and even that is not presented as the result of her circumstances.  Her brother, Keldo, has the same experience and retains his capacity for shame and compassion.  This seems to render all the trauma she underwent later unimportant.

That’s a difficult thing to do with child abuse.  It’s hard to argue that that is a coincidence when it has clearly made Armitage Hux who he is.  Does that make him sympathetic? Of course it does.  Does it make him redeemable? Hardly. If he ever had any redeeming qualities to start with, Brendol beat them out of him. He’s surpassed even his father in cruelty.  Vi tells us that Armitage “has gone even further” with the stormtrooper training program he inherited from his father: “The children lose all sense of individuality, of self.  They’re never allowed to play, discouraged from laughter or frivolity or creativity, outside of how those emotions or urges can be used to win war games.” He’s grown up to be a child abuser in his own right, every bit as despicable as Brendol.  Except that we have no idea what forces shaped Brendol from birth. Armitage can’t be saved from what he has become, but he can’t be blamed for it either

This is, of course, too messy for either of the films to handle.  It’s understandable to an extent, since Brendol is dead before they begin and Hux is not a major character.  But it’s also disappointing.  Being a child abuse survivor makes Hux so much more troubling and interesting, especially in light of the abuse he suffers at the hands of Snoke and Kylo. There are very interesting parallels to be drawn between Hux and Kylo.  So much has been made of the fact that Kylo killed his abuser, which seems to be a step towards the light.  At least, that’s how Rey reads it.  But not only does he not take that step, one of his first actions he kills Snoke is to start abusing Snoke’s other victim: Hux.  Who also killed his abuser, via Phasma and her Parnassos beetle, and took over his position.  At this point, Kylo is taking exactly the same path as Hux, with the important difference that he was offered an alternative and refused to take it.