Disclaimer: Written for The Lost Book Club.
So, John Locke.
Even ignoring the show’s obvious efforts to keep Locke
ambiguous—scar, spooky music, etc.—you have to admit that the guy is sort of…dichotomous.
The man wakes up in a worst case scenario and experiences a miracle. What does that do to him? What would it be like to be handed redemption
and damnation in one package?
Forgive the cliché, but this is all
very Pandora’s Box. A plane falls out of
the sky. People are dead and dying. They’re out of food. They’re burning bodies in a fuselage. There is a bona fide MONSTER uprooting trees
and killing people in the jungle. And no
one is coming to get them.
All aboard the handbasket.
But in the midst of this, one man
wakes up and wiggles his toes…
A man who has suffered
humiliation, manipulation, and loss.
A victim who wishes to be
different so badly that he pretends it until he seems to actually confuse his fantasy for truth. (“Helen,” for one; Walkabout, for another.)
A man who has been denied what he
considers his destiny.
What would redemption mean to a
man like John Locke?
Because the island has given John
more than just the ability to stand; it’s given him the thing he craves most: capability.
“Don’t tell me what I can’t do…” He says it more than once in this episode, and
he will continue to say it throughout the series. (In fact, it will come back to haunt him in
the mouths of others before the end.)
And now, he’s got this miracle—a miracle that allows him to be
the Great White Hunter who throws knives, whittles dog whistles for desperate
fathers, and tracks boar.
The island allows Locke to be
CAPABLE. Makes him an asset to others. Gives him credibility.
What does a miracle do to a man
like John Locke?
It makes him a convert. A believer. Even a zealot.
He said it himself in the next
episode. “I'm an ordinary man, Jack, meat and potatoes, I live in the real
world. I'm not a big believer in magic. But this place is different. It's
special. The others don't want to talk about it because it scares them. But we
all know it. We all feel it. Is your white rabbit a hallucination? Probably.
But what if everything that happened here, happened for a reason?”
(If this show is really all a big audition
process for Jacob’s island-tending replacement, I would be willing to suggest
that John’s candidacy ought to have been a lock (ha, a pun) from the get-go. Thoughts?)
The island made Locke capable. And in the name of defending his connection to
the island, Locke will prove capable of a great many things….
Yeah. Interesting guy.
