Uncharted Island

We know that their relationship is doomed to be cut tragically short when Nadia is murdered less than a year after she and Sayid find each other again, but I try not to dwell on that.

Sayid and Nadia didn’t have it easy from the beginning. It was his job to torture her when she was captured by the Iraqi Republican Guard, then to execute her. But he couldn’t pull the trigger on her. Instead, he killed his fellow soldiers and shot himself in the leg so that she could escape. She made it to the United States, where she had a brief encounter with John Locke. Sayid was on his way to see her, he believed, when Oceanic Flight 815 changed his plans by crashing on the island.

I loved the scene in “There’s No Place Like Home” where she waited for him outside the press conference. What a kiss! What a homecoming!

And even though Hurley’s parents chose an unfortunate surprise birthday party theme, Sayid and Nadia look so happy together as guests. How much longer do they have, at that time, before she gets run down by the car in Los Angeles? Never mind. I want to remember them happy:

It’s not just a Star Wars quote any more. Not that Karl has ever seen Star Wars before.

Karl was right. Ben was playing them. He sent Alex off to the Temple with the two people who are the biggest thread to his relationship with her - her mother and her boyfriend. He arranged for them to be not-so-tidily disposed of so that Alex has no one left in the world except for him, her lying, murderous surrogate father.

Is this the final nail in the coffin for the hope of a Danielle flashback? Or is she not really dead yet?

We have to wait a few more weeks to find out.

In “The Man Behind the Curtain,” we saw Ben unflinchingly murder his father with a nasty nerve gas, part of a greater plot that exterminated his fellow members of Dharma in the same horrifying manner. The systematic destruction of an entire people - genocide. Haunting echoes of the gas chambers used by the Nazis.

In “Through the Looking Glass,” Ben became even more Hitler-like. He ordered Tom and the Others sent to the beach to kill any of the castaways who got in the way of kidnapping the pregnant women. When he finally got radio contact with Tom after he met up with Jack and the crew, he ordered him to shoot Sayid, Jin, and Bernard. Although it’s a bit confusing, since Ryan told Tom it was on order they had to follow, and Tom muses they should’ve shot the men instead of the sand. Were we not privy to a previous order to shoot in the sand instead, that he was going to bluff Jack? In any case, Ryan was very clear about following Ben’s orders.

Bonnie tried to explain to Mikhail that she and Greta were following Ben’s orders. But Mikhail turns it back on her, confessing that he’s only following Ben’s orders by killing both women. He is a “loyalist” to Ben, he follows Ben’s orders to preserve Ben’s secret. And he follows through by pulling the pin on the grenade to finish off Charlie, since he wasn’t able to shoot him, possibly sacrificing himself in the process.

A lot of people who were not inherently bad people did a lot of terrible things by following orders. A famous psychological study by Stanley Milgram attempted to explain how ordinary Nazi soldiers could’ve senselessly killed so many innocent people based on Hitler’s orders. And what Milgram found was a horrifying glance at human nature; ordinary Americans, instructed by an experimenter in a lab coat, administered what they believed to be a lethal dose of electric shock to a man they believed to have a heart condition - just because they were told to. (I knew my Master’s degree in Psychology would come in handy some day.) People will follow dubious orders from an authority figure. And authority figures with as much charisma as Hitler or the character of Ben can get people to follow far more sinister orders.

The creators of LOST have gone to some lengths to make sure we acknowledge the similarities between Ben and Hitler. I believe that. For one thing, Hitler was not a member of his ideal Aryan race, blond haired and blue eyed. Ben was not a member of the group of Hostiles he came to lead; he was a member of the group he helped to murder.

It’s all very disturbing.

I do wonder if Ben will meet the same fate in the end, if he’ll end up taking his own life. I guess that’s one more argument for Ben being in the coffin in the flash forward in the season three finale; the man in the coffin killed himself.

Apparently the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Jack’s father, Christian Shepard, was a raging alcoholic. Jack, in his post-island future, guzzles liquor and pops stolen pain pills like candy. And let’s not forget that he almost jumped off a bridge - and not even into water, it looked like concrete down below. He was certainly ready to die.

On the island, we know that Jack has made contact with Naomi’s boat. We don’t know who is on that boat, their motivations, what their instructions are… we don’t know what’s going to happen. The crash survivors believe they are going to be rescued. With three seasons to go, we know it can’t be as simple as that. Something bad is going to go down.

How many more of our survivors are going to die before anyone leaves the island? Charlie is the latest casualty, and Jack doesn’t even know about that yet. Although he admitted it was a suicide mission from the beginning. Could survivor’s guilt be enough to push Jack to this bleak future?

Or maybe the rescue that Jack longed for so much turned out to be like Hurley’s lottery winnings. Maybe what he thought was going to be such a good thing only led to negative consequences for the people around him. We don’t know who was in that coffin, but we know that Jack considered himself neither friend nor family. And yet he felt compelled to make an appearance. How many other funerals had he been to recently?

Whatever has happened, Kate doesn’t seem to have been affected by it. Is it because Jack was the leader, and therefore feels responsible for everything that happened? Is it because of the call he made that both Ben and Locke told him not to make? Maybe there’s going to be more blood on his hands than we know.

One thing is for sure, we’re going to have another three intense seasons to find out what happens in between the on-island “now” and the off-island future.

Be sure to check out the newest version of the LOST Character Relationships Chart, now up to date until the end of season three.

I’ve made a number of visual improvements in addition to adding new connections and removing some superfluous ones. The green and blue lines are now closer to primary colors, and hopefully they’re easier to follow that way. I removed the clunky “T” for Tailie, “O” for Other, and “RIP” for dead characters because they just looked a bit ridiculous that way. We only have Bernard left for the Tailies, and the line between who’s an Other and who isn’t keeps becoming less and less clear. Instead of using “RIP” I’ve decided to gray out any character who we know to be dead.

As always, let me know if I’ve missed any significant connections, or if you think there are some that I could remove to make it easier to read.

“God loves you as he loved Jacob.”

That was one of the frames on the screen Karl was forced to watch in Room 23.

Jacob also had a list, and Jack was not on it. There has been much speculation about Jacob since he was first mentioned on LOST. There was speculation about him even before his name was first mentioned… more correctly, speculation about Him.

Did “The Man Behind the Curtain” really give us answers about Jacob?

Some people seem to think that everything witnessed in Jacob’s cabin was more of Ben’s smoke and mirrors, possibly assisted by Richard or someone else, since Ben made a big point of telling everyone where they were going. I’ll admit that I thought Ben was more than a little bit crazy talk to an empty chair for a while. But when Locke heard the voice, I did believe it to be Jacob’s voice. The fans who managed to grab a screencap of Jacob’s profile helped confirm that in my mind. I tried not to blink during the scene, but I certainly never saw Jacob in the chair until I signed on to read the fan forums.

So who - or what - is Jacob?

Some people believe that Jacob is a ghost or a spirit. The dust on the ground that Locke had stopped to check out may have been ash used as a binding circle to keep the ghost inside. I’m not sure I hold with this theory. My first thought was that the dust was powder from the dynamite that Danielle was swiping from the Black Rock. Ben could’ve been taking it as well. But I won’t completely count this out as a possibility. After all, Jacob was invisible to Locke and to us for all but a fraction of a second. Without TiVo, I don’t think any of us would’ve known he was there at all.

But does that hold with the interviews given by Damon and Carlton saying that the show would remain grounded in science and pseudoscience?

Ben’s original bit about how no one else had ever seen or spoken to Jacob did make him sound like his imaginary friend, but it became apparent that Jacob only reveals himself to those he chooses. How does he do this? He appears invisible somehow. Is this because he does not have substantial corporeal form, or because he is able to bend the light around himself so you can’t see him even if you’re looking right at him? He “speaks” to people telepathically. Is this a choice, or does he not have an audible voice? When Locke “heard” Jacob, I was reminded of reading the character of Death in Neil Gaiman’s books, where there aren’t any quotation marks to denote speech. He would’ve said HELP ME to Locke… in capital letters, denoting a voice that comes from everywhere and nowhere.

Whatever he is, it’s possible that Jacob is Ben’s prisoner. Perhaps that ash line really does confine him to the spooky hermit shack. Is that why he said HELP ME to Locke? Or was it, as I’ve seen suggested, an interrupted thought, such as HELP ME GET RID OF THIS ANNOYING LITTLE GNAT?

That line of dust does seem to me like it should have some significance, but it really opposes my own personal concept of Jacob. My first thought, which I admit is hard to shake, is that Jacob is what we’ve been referring to as Smokey. If the dust or ash keeps Jacob confined, then he cannot be Smokey. But I’m going to ignore the dust for now, and explain my line of thinking.

The way Ben first described Him when he was a prisoner in the Swan hatch made Him sound like a great and terrible man. Unforgiving. Harsh. The Others certainly seemed intimidated by Jacob even though they’d never met him. And what do we know about Smokey? We don’t know what Smokey physically is, but great and terrible certainly seems to fit the bill. It seems to have a consciousness. It came face to face with Locke, killed Mr. Eko, threatened Kate and Juliet… among many other incidents. I hate to take a comic book approach, but maybe Jacob was a man who came to draw too much of the island’s mysterious power, and now he can take on the form of this shape-shifting smoke creature. Or - and this could accommodate for the binding circle that keeps Jacob in - Smokey answers to Jacob, like a familiar, and serves as Jacob’s scout and servant while he is imprisoned.

Much more discussion is sure to come, as more fans come together to brainstorm, and more secrets are revealed.

After seeing the carnage of the orchestrated gas attack, it’s hard to see how Ben can possibly think that his group is really made up of the “good guys” he claims they are. The castaways versus Others fatality tally really doesn’t matter anymore. We know now that the Others brutally murdered a whole town full of hippies. Would the term genocide apply in this case? I’m not quite sure.

Ben was exposed as a liar from the moment we first met him. He had claimed to be Henry Gale; he had an elaborate backstory that was entirely believable until Sayid and company dug up the grave containing the body of the real Henry Gale. Now we know the extent and depth of his lies. Everyone he’s recruited believes he was born on the island. Why is that so important to him for them to believe that? What would happen if they knew the truth? And more importantly, why hasn’t Richard come out and exposed him for the fraud he is? He gave Locke a means to take Ben down, but he has some damning information of his own. Does he keep Ben’s secret because it would also expose him as a murderer?

I get that Ben was screwed up by his drunk father’s bitterness over his mother’s death and being pigeonholed as a janitor when he thought he was going to be doing something more glamorous on the island. But even that doesn’t explain why he became the monster he is now. Sawyer’s daddy issues are far worse, but he only wanted to kill one man because of it, not a whole village full of people. I wonder if the grown-up Annie had left the island at the time of the Purge, or if Ben allowed her to become a mere casualty.

I was right about one thing, Ben does believe, in some way, that he was reborn after the Purge. He told Locke that that’s where he came from. I guess it’s the truth… from a certain, rather twisted point of view.

And what about Ben’s connection with Jacob? Who or what Jacob is will be the subject of another entry. But Ben certainly looked like a raving lunatic talking to an invisible Jacob, from Locke’s perspective. But then Locke heard Jacob, too. And that’s when Ben lost it. Ben had told Locke that no one else has ever seen Jacob. Apparently that’s because Jacob had never wanted to show himself to anyone else. Ben jealously guarded that honor. I think he shot Locke because he couldn’t stand that Jacob had chosen to reveal himself to someone else. After Locke told him what Jacob had said, it looked as if Ben wondered if shooting Locke had been a mistake, but maybe it just confirmed his need to eliminate the competition.

I want to know why Richard and the other “Hostiles,” the island natives, allowed Ben to step into the role of leader. They had obviously been there for quite some time. It had to be more than just his help in the systematic extermination of Dharma from their island. Was it because of Jacob? I guess it’s with that question that I leave this Ben-centered piece to start working on some Jacob speculation.

Here’s my first attempt at a LOST word search… It’s supposed to be in the shape of an airplane.  I hope the formatting holds up. Have fun!

      ADR
     OLDET         L
     PUEPT         ED
     OKBOE         BNB
     CEDOKW        AOIUK
     WIXCCA        SMLAC
    AYLNXIL       LISTAAR
   SAHRXDP       MOTENDJIN
   SCJASAY      IOGED
     AHFNC    TCADOI
     ICTIO   KHLSLV
     LGPEL CHARADA
     EYCLLSKELVINK
     MMOLEHLITNRE
     AILEENWSAIE
     DEKVNXONKW
     ARSHANNOND     BUS
     ROROAEWSBOXAICULANAREX
     JIOYRIAAAOTJULIWNDIUTEE
    HYURLEASLJRGLIBBYELRUHHLJ
   TEILUJENBEDRANREBOMLRAAA
  IKKINARICHARDWXRZJITZRAN
 LCLKOJP        NUS
NORAALI         JK
LCEPRR
XBTSL
OKE

Word List: