starwarsnonsense:

The most moving moment in The Force Awakens is, for me, probably when the dying Han Solo reaches out to caress the face of his son and murderer. That act is one of unconditional love and compassion – when he touches Kylo’s face, Han is reaching out to the little boy he once held in his arms. He is both forgiving him and asking for his forgiveness, and that is made explicit in the junior novelisation of The Force Awakens by Michael Kogge. 

Kogge is, to be frank, a much better writer than Alan Dean Foster, the mind behind the ‘adult’ novelisation of The Force Awakens (if you can read the former over the latter, don’t hesitate). While Kogge’s book is briefer and tailored to a young audience, it has greater impact and moments of genuine power. Some of its strongest passages concern Han and Kylo, and they give a better sense of the tension that drove them apart. In doing this, it makes their eventual reunion in The Force Awakens more powerful and moving.

The most insightful sentence in the whole book is probably this one:

He would’ve given everything for his son to be normal – like him.

While that line is brief and largely without context, it suggests what could be inferred from Han’s character – that he was unsettled by Ben, just as he was unsettled by the Force. 

The implication of this is that Han wasn’t able to cope with or accept his son as he was – he looked at him and wished he had a different child, a child who was ‘normal’ and in his own image (this, incidentally, is probably why he finds Rey so appealing – with her mechanical mind and piloting skills, she is the child he most likely wanted Ben to be). And while that’s an understandable and observable sentiment, it must have been profoundly damaging to Ben’s psyche and sense of self. When you realise that the Force-sensitive Ben Solo was probably always conscious of his father’s discomfort around him – however it manifested – you can better understand why Kylo Ren is so emotionally fragile and resentful. He tells Rey that Han would have disappointed her because that was his experience of Han Solo as a father – he craved his love and acceptance, and felt that he got neither. In warning Rey off from him, he is genuinely thinking of her interests (as he perceives them from his position of deep hurt and bitterness).

With that context, Han’s caress gains far more power than it ever had without it. It’s not just an act of unconditional love – it’s also the contact and comfort that Ben Solo presumably craved as a boy, but never really got. With that gesture, Han shows Ben the compassion and acceptance he had always longed for – the tragedy, of course, is that he can only make the gesture in the moment of his death. The love is there, but it’s not enough to avert disaster and pull Ben back from the abyss.

This, then, is why the junior novelisation’s final insight into Han’s mind is so moving. Han isn’t touching the cheek of an irredeemable murderer: he’s touching the face of the man who is still his son – the child he didn’t quite know how to love until it was too late. And despite everything, he still wants that child’s forgiveness:

Han forgave his son for what he had done. He prayed someday his son would forgive him in turn.