Finn is a lot of things–a military genius, a conscientious objector, a crack shot, an iconoclast–but
beyond the realm of military and politics he also has mythological
qualities in embodying certain archetypes, and to me the most prominent
is that of the trickster.

Trickster figures are recognizable
by distinguishing traits such as solving problems by wit and
resourcefulness, actions that upset the social order, humor, crossing
boundaries between realms, and physical transformation. Finn’s story
contains all of these and more, with the effect that he plays the
trickster’s role, a bearer of the unexpected and an agent of change.

A
trickster is first and foremost defined by, well, trickery. Some
tricksters are conspicuously lacking in physical force, such as Jacob in
the Old Testament of the Bible in contrast to his stronger brother
Esau. Some are depicted as smaller, weaker animals compared to their
adversaries, such as Reynard the Fox in Western European fables in
comparison to the wolf Isengrim, or Bre’r Rabbit of the Southern United
States in comparison with Bre’r Fox. Other times martial prowess simply
isn’t a big part of their story, such as Coyote of the Crow and Plains
tribes’ mythologies and Prometheus in Greek mythology. Rather than
physical force the trickster often uses some flaw in their opponent,
such as vanity or cruelty, to get out of a tight situation or win the
prize in a situation where they are at a disadvantage.

This is
true of Finn, who made and executed a plan to steal a TIE fighter and rescue a
Resistance pilot from under the First Order’s nose. In doing so he ingeniously
exploited a flaw in the First Order’s organization by claiming it was
Kylo Ren who wanted the prisoner–Ren, who reports directly to Snoke and
is not a part of the strict military hierarchy that Hux so prizes, who
has his own agenda and will act for it rather than his given orders, as
he demonstrated more than once in The Force Awakens.

If
Finn had tried to claim the prisoner transfer order had come from Hux
or Phasma he may well have been required to verify the command, given that
both these figures operate within the standard military system. But
Ren? Who was going to question him and risk his explosive temper, short
of Hux or Snoke himself?

In other words, Finn used the
personal and organizational failings of his oppressors to brilliant
effect in planning and executing his escape, and this planning made it
possible for him and Poe to reach the TIE fighter without a single shot
fired. Once they flew the TIE and hit a (literal) snag shots were fired
indeed, in a sequence I have analyzed at length.
A confrontation was inevitable at some point anyway, but it was due to
Finn’s clever subterfuge that he and Poe were able to get so far without attracting deadly attention. This is itself a
significant achievement that may have saved their lives when they were seriously outnumbered and Poe had endured physical and mental torture.

Finn also
uses a subtle trick on the Resistance but of a different sort, which I
will discuss near the end in the section about the trickster as
communicator.

A
characteristic of tricksters related to their trickery is humor.
Trickster stories are replete with wit and fun, like Bre’r Rabbit
laughing behind his hand as he begs Bre’r Fox not to throw him in the
brier patch, or the Yoruba trickster god Eshu breaking his penis while
using it for a bridge. (All I’m saying is, never, ever question Eshu’s
dedication to infrastructure.) They are not adverse to being the butt of
the joke, either, as when Anansi the spider, a beloved trickster figure
of West Africa and the Caribbean, failed to hoard all the wisdom in the
world and ended up dispersing it instead.

A few trickster
stories are dark and frightening–no, I’m pretty sure the broken penis
doesn’t count–usually when the forces of order and hierarchy catch up
to the trickster and mete out torment as punishment, most notably with
the Norse Loki and the Greek Prometheus. Even then, however, the
trickster has a long and laughter-filled streak before they’re caught.

John
Boyega made it clear in an interview that he explicitly went for humor
when he auditioned for Finn, and the character correspondingly has a
lot of funny moments in The Force Awakens. In fact, some of
Finn’s tensest moments are also his funniest, as when he pleads with
BB-8 to tell him the location of the Resistance base, or when he helps
an injured Chewbacca who is in pain and lashing out violently.

[Image: Chewbacca has gripped Finn by the throat and pulled him close]

The trickster’s humor has a larger basis in his subversion of
social norms, the way he upends the social expectations placed on him.
The trickster’s stories are a surprise because they invert the
prevailing power structure: the weak triumph over the strong with fast
talk and wits, laughing at the high-and-mighty all the while. In this
way the relative weakness, trickery, and humor of the trickster all act
together to turn the tables on the strong and oppressive.

You can see this with Finn throughout The Force Awakens
in the way he defies expectations of his role as a Stormtrooper. I
mean, Stormtroopers don’t care about anyone or anything except the
mission, right?

[Image: Finn bends over a dying Slip]

Stormtroopers follow orders without question.

[Image: Finn lowers his blaster, unable to shoot the prisoners]

They
don’t think and act independently. They don’t go out of their way to
help people. They respect their superiors no matter what. They- well,
you get the idea. Finn takes every idea about Stormtroopers and turns it
on its head. Heck, the guy can even shoot!

This upsetting of the
social order means that tricksters are necessarily agents of change.
They smash the status quo and bring not only laughter and fun but also
insights into life and new ways of being. 

As quite a few fans have rightly pointed out, nothing in The Force Awakens
would have happened without Finn. The awakening of his conscience and
his resulting determination to get away from the First Order, both of
them unexpected and indeed unthinkable developments that threw the First
Order brass into confusion, were the catalysts for all the major events
of the movie–Poe’s escape, Rey and BB-8’s departure from Jakku, and
the destruction of Starkiller Base. He was not the only mover and shaker
in these events but he provided the spark, the first push.

Such
changes are a crossing over from one state of being to another, and
indeed it is a common trait of tricksters to cross boundaries, both in
the external world and sometimes in their own selves by changing gender
and shape.

In the former capacity as a boundary crosser the
trickster brings gifts from another world, such as the celestial or
underground regions, to the earthly realm. This is the case with such
figures as the Rainbow Crow, from the myth of the Lenni Lenape tribe of
the Northeast United States, who flew up to the heavens to bring back
the gift of fire; Coyote of the South Plains in the United States who
released the buffalo from Humpback’s enclosure onto the earth; and
Anansi of the Ashante people of Ghana, who bargained with the god Nyame
to bring stories to the world.

In the latter capacity as a
shapechanger the trickster changes their own shape and identity, again
flitting around and between boundaries except this time within
themselves and their relationship to the world. The aforementioned South
Plains Coyote changes first into a bird and then a dog to release the
buffalo. Loki of Norse myth is another famous example who frequently
changed his race, gender, and species in stories.

Finn is both a
boundary crosser and a shapechanger who went from the servitude with the
First Order to freedom, bringing the Order’s secrets and his inside
knowledge to the cause of fighting it. He also changes his identity and
literal shape in the process, going from a Stormtrooper to a purported
Resistance fighter to a traumatized fugitive to an actual Resistance
fighter, though one who fights alongside the Resistance rather than
giving himself fully to them. We even get a beautiful metaphorical scene
of his transformation in a desert, reminiscent of Moses from the Old
Testament after he himself fled from a genocidal, enslaving regime:

[Image: Finn walks through the desert, pieces of discarded Stormtrooper gear marking his path]

The
ability to cross boundaries also means that the trickster is a
communicator. Whether the boundary in question lies between socially
expected behavior and unexpected/prohibited behavior, between states of
being, between worlds, between identities, or between people, the
trickster navigates these boundaries, shows that they are more porous
than at first sight, brings goods from one side to another, and creates
change through exchange across these divisions.

This communicator
aspect is very explicit in the Yoruba god Eshu (Legba in the Fon tribe),
a god of languages and information, and the Ashante god Anansi, a god
of knowledge and stories. There is a story about Eshu that he walked on
the boundary between the fields of two friends while wearing a hat that
was black on one side and red on another. The friends quarrelled about
what color the man’s hat was, only to to have Eshu intervene to show
them the trick in the hat and tell them off for not putting him first in
their dealings with each other.

I understood this story, besides
being a wonderful example of trickster humor, to be an emphasis on the
importance of communication in relationships. If you don’t try to see
the other person’s point of view and open yourself to the possibility of
transcending your own narrow perspective, you’re inevitably going to
have misunderstandings and fights. Also remember, when the internet has a
collective freakout over the color of a dress or a sneaker, that’s Eshu
totally playing us.

[Image: A statue of Eshu]

Comparing
Finn to a god of language and communication may seem paradoxical, given
that the character is only shown speaking Basic and is not presented as
multilingual, being unable to speak Shyriiwook or Binary in contrast to
Rey who understands these and more. In fact Finn’s lines make a point
to emphasize his lack of knowledge (”You can understand that thing?” “I
don’t speak that.” “What’d he say?”).

What interests me, however,
is just how effectively Finn communicated with Chewie and BB-8 despite
his inability to understand their languages. Think about it: He
successfully saved Chewie’s life, reasoning with him despite the
language barrier (a boundary, to put it another way) and faced with a
much larger and stronger being who was getting violent from pain and
fear. Finn also convinced a Resistance droid to reveal the location of their secret base with the same linguistic difficulty–and this, right after revealing to said droid that he was not actually Resistance.

The
levels of empathy and trustworthiness it took for Finn to work with and
talk to these beings under these extraordinary circumstances are simply
phenomenal. These incidents demonstrate that Finn is an extremely
effective communicator even when he is hindered by language. He crosses
the boundaries of interpersonal mistrust and caution on a level that
goes deeper than words.

In their capacity as communicators
tricksters may also use and manipulate language, especially in
situations where they experience a disadvantage in power. Henry Louis
Gates, Jr. called this act Signifyin’ after the Signifying Monkey, which
he treats as an equivalent to the Yoruba god Eshu. The Signifying
Monkey uses the power of figurative language to outwit Lion, his
oppressor, something Gates compared to dismantling the master’s house
using the master’s tools, repurposing the quote of activist and writer
Audre Lorde that “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s
house.”

We watch Finn engage in this careful use of speech when he
talks the Resistance into letting him onto the mission to Starkiller
Base. When Han asks him whether he can disable the shields around the
base, Finn replies:

“I can disable the shields. But I have to be there, on the planet.”

When
Han asks him again later on the base, of course, Finn freely admits he
doesn’t know how to disable the shields; he was just there to get Rey.

Notice,
however, that Finn did not lie outright as he did when he told Poe’s
guards that Ren wanted the prisoner or when he told Rey he was with the
Resistance. Finn’s words can be interpreted as, “I can disable the
shields [by figuring out how when I get there]. But I have to be there,
on the planet [so I can see the situation for myself and make a plan].”
In this sense this statement is not factually incorrect per se, rather
an expression of confidence spoken with the certainty of fact.

Finn knew, however, that saying he definitely can disable the shields in response to Han’s question would be taken as saying yes,
he knew how to disable the shields. He was, if not lying, deliberately
misleading the Resistance here by exploiting a gap between the literal
meaning of his words and the understanding of them in context.

Just
to be 100% clear, I don’t blame Finn for this deception one bit. He did
in fact find a way to disable the shields and it’s not like the
Resistance had any better options, so anyone who wants to hold this
conversation against him can fuck off. He employed this trick not out of
malice but because he was trying to overcome a disadvantage: If he
wasn’t seen as someone who could contribute, he wouldn’t be able to go
on the mission with Han and Chewie, and his strengths in having worked
on the base and his considerable tactical smarts might be dismissed in a
newcomer and stranger. The Resistance may not have been his oppressors
but he had just met them, and it’s not a stretch to say his trust of
authority in general was running low after his experiences with the
First Order.

So what does Finn’s role as a trickster hero mean for
the future of his story? For one thing, I believe he will continue to
bring about profound change to a galaxy far, far away in whatever
capacity he is in–whether as a Jedi, a badass Resistance fighter, a
leader in the renewed Republic, or, my favorite possibility, the leader
of a Stormtrooper uprising.

Another thing we can infer about his
character is that he won’t get complacent. The Republic (Old and New),
the Jedi Order, even the Rebel Alliance at points became set in their
ways and a hindrance to progress and justice. Finn as a trickster can
keep subverting expectations and changing course so that any
organization he leads or influences can keep its actual goals in sight
instead of blundering forward out of sheer inertia.

Finn’s ability
as a communicator, the way he resonates with people on an emotional
level, and his commanding grasp over language and story also open
exciting possibilities for his character. Remember how beautifully he
told his truth to Rey? Imagine his story inspiring thousands. Millions.
Imagine him setting people’s spirits across the galaxy on fire with his
inspiring speeches, as Anansi the Spider did in American Gods, urging them to fight, to reach out and grasp justice in their hands.

We
have in Finn a character who constantly renews himself and the world
around him, who upends power structures, and keeps us laughing all the
while. Life with a trickster is never dull, and if used correctly the
character of Finn will keep us guessing, keep us interested, and keep us
inspired. That’s what being a trickster hero is all about.