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star wars - Was Yoda fully sane on Dagobah?


Our (and Luke's) original impression of Yoda is by no means flattering. He looks like a crazy hungry green thing that unfortunately has the ability to speak. Yoda digs through Luke's stuff, eats Luke's food, and, obsessed with that awesome little flashlight, ends up stealing it. (He even goes so far as to fight with Artoo over it.)


So was Yoda slowly losing it during all those years as a hermit?


Perhaps going from fighting battles and conversing with others on a daily basis to living in total isolation with no one to speak with would play a part in that? Or could Yoda have been faking his apparent insanity for some reason? (If so, what is mentioned reason?)



Answer




He was:




  1. Pretending to be the nutty old harmless thing so Luke would not know who he was.
    See Obfuscating Stupidity.
    The reasons were:




    • He didn't want to teach Luke (being wary of another Skywalker Reversal) due to Luke having similar problems to Anakin (started too late, wrong personality traits, Skywalker Curse, and excessive Midichloran count meaning that the downside of Luke falling to Dark Side was that much higher).





    • He didn't know if he could risk the info that he was Yoda the Jedi Master to fall into Luke's hands yet.




    • Luke not knowing who he was helped him test Luke by observing Luke in "natural" state (e.g. NOT the state of Luke talking to great Jedi Master).






  2. In addition, that behavior was testing Luke (e.g. would he react with violence to stealing of flashlight or food? How would he react to having his patience tested by seeing this nutcase when he's in a rush to find Jedi Master?).



    This is not just a logical speculation, but is confirmed in C-Canon:



    Yoda had also given Luke a hard time at that encounter. It had been a test of Luke's patience and of his treatment of strangers. And Luke had flunked it. Rather miserably. (Dark Force Rising, Timothy Zahn)





Also, as far as behaving in weird manner, it's a standard archetype/trope for a Quirky Weird Wise Wizard Mentor. Somewhat covered by Old Master but I'm too afraid for tvtropes to go dig for more specific trope names.


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