Rooting for the Bad Guys
Here’s a bit that I enjoyed from season one, and though I’m sure some linguistics major could give me numbers to prove that I’m pointing to a statistically probable occurrence I’ll mention it anyway:
Whenever the castaways talked about themselves with one another they referred to themselves as “The Others” the name which became synonymous with the threatening unknown on the island.
What will we tell the others? Are you going to tell the others? What happens when the others find out?
A rhetoric undergrad would say the usage of the phrase was purposeful: They’ve met the others, those evil murderers on the island, and sure enough it’s our heroes. For the most part it is anyway. Call it human nature: If you assume you’re being threatened with violence you’ll act in turn.
Sun shoots Cole. Sayid tortures Ben. Ana-Lucia kills Goodwin.
Too bad for Ana-Lucia since Goodwin was her golden ticket according to Ben who knew better.
“You’re the killer, Ana-Lucia.”
Assuming Ben’s people are not murders then what to make of Goodwin’s kill, Ethan Rom’s threats, and Alex telling Claire that she’d be killed for her baby? Goodwin and Ethan paid the piper. Perhaps Ethan’s threat of one death per night was a hollow one. On the larger of the two islands people get eaten on a regular basis it seems. (Or is it craphole islands now?)
Alex is merely 16. Perhaps hers is the ramblings of an overactive imagination ala her mother?
Ben says he’s lived on the island all his life. I’d assume that means he considers the island sovereign and its residents have every right to defend themselves. Isn’t that how most literary utopias insure their survival?
Assuming murder and violence are the ways of the survivors of flight 815 then we’re quickly moving from a “misunderstanding” into “something else.”
