At the end of ‘Every Man For
Himself’ Ben has a conversation with Sawyer about a con he’s pulled on him.
“The only way to earn a con man’s respect is to con him,” he tells the resident
con. “And you’re good but we’re better.”
The thing is Ben doesn’t need to
prove that to Sawyer or the audience because even by this point (early Season3)
we already know that the one skills the Others have in spades is conning. Ethan
managed to fool the survivors long enough to kidnap Claire and Goodwin did the
same thing to the tail section survivors to grab the majority of them. They
fooled the raft long enough to abduct Walt; they manipulated Michael long
enough to take him prisoner to a village that convinced him that was where they
all lived. We’ve only seen them in ragged clothes and covered in a dirt and
when there at home, their clothes are clean and their hair is combed.
And that’s all before you
consider ‘Henry Gale’ who Rousseau caught in a net and told Sayid that ‘he is
One of Them’. ‘Henry’ claimed that he was from Minnesota and that he’s been
stranded on this island for three weeks. He stuck to this story under torture,
multiple interrogations and even after the real Henry was found in a grave near
the ballon. He managed to manipulate Locke into thinking he was on his side;
then when his story was revealed a fraud, he convinced him that the button he’d
been pushing for weeks did nothing. (Something to be clear he knew very well
was a lie.) The Others then convinced Michael to free him and when he
reappeared he told Michael with great sincerity: “We’re the good guys.” And I’m
not sure even then if he was convinced of that.
So yes the Others were masters of
the con. But they had something else in common with Sawyer: all of them were
also incredibly easy to con themselves. And as we found out, that was just as
true of Ben himself.
A few episodes prior Jack asked
Ben if they could leave why wouldn’t you go? In his fashion Ben turned the
question on Jack: “Why wouldn’t we go?”
He didn’t try to make the same argument that he would with Locke later
on, promising Jack a ride home if he helped him (which was just another con).
Even then, he had a clearer picture of his adversary.
When Locke came to the barracks
ostensibly to rescue Jack but really to blow up the submarine that was the sole
way to get people to and from the island Ben changed his tactics. He explained
to Locke that his people needed ‘the illusion that they could come and go as
they pleased’ and that the sub maintained that illusion. Now he needed Locke to
blow up the sub so that he could maintain his hold on power as leader of the
Others which was already beginning to crumble and he thought Locke was that
tool. What he didn’t know – but clearly suspected – was that Locke was special
and a threat to his power.
Because on an island where no one
got sick Ben had developed a fatal tumor on his spine, one that required him to
kidnap Jack and force him to operate on. He also knew that Locke had been in a
wheelchair for four years before getting on the place and was now walking
around. Locke immediately called him on it, using it to challenge his
authority. Ben asked him: “You’ve been on this island eighty days. I’ve lived
on this island my whole life. What makes you think you know better than me?”
And Locke momentarily checkmated him: “Because you’re in a wheelchair and I’m
not.”
Much of the story of how Ben
managed his rise to power on the island has never entirely been made clear,
though we get a strong sense of it in Season 5. After being shot he was taken
to the Others by Sawyer and asked if he could be healed. Richard said that
there would be consequences among them: “He’ll always be one of us.” What that
meant was never clear though viewers can interpret as they see fit.
What is clear is that this
decision was made against the leadership of the Others at the time, Eloise
Hawking and Charles Widmore. When this was pointed out Richard said
dismissively: “I don’t answer to them.” When Widmore came and was infuriated by
this, Richard dismissed it with: “Jacob wanted it to happen.” There’s no
evidence of this but as we’ve seen just the name of Jacob was enough to silence
Charles’s objections though he clearly had them.
Over the next twenty years or so,
Ben became a trusted member of the Others, orchestrating the Purge that led to
the slaughter of the Dharma Initiative (whom he’d been a member of for years)
challenging Widmore, usurping him as leader and eventually banishing him when
he ‘broke the rules. (In this case, he left the island, had an affair with a
woman who would give birth to Penny, which may explain in part why he was so
cold to her in life.) And for the next decade he seemed to spend time
recruiting people like Juliet to deal with fertility problem, raising Alex who
he’d stolen from Rousseau as an infant, and decided to torture her boyfriend
when he thought she would have sex and possibly get pregnant.
And while he claimed he would
rule benevolently, his interactions with Juliet would seem to speak otherwise
and the way so many of his people spoke of him either dismissively or in fear
show a man who is ruling very much like a religious cult leader. And it seems
very clear that all of that leadership was based on the fact that he spoke for
Jacob, a lie that Richard was aware of but did nothing to contradict while he
was in power. In this sense Ben was the best con man on the island and like
Sawyer, he’d managed to con himself that he was special and important.
This became very clear in ‘The
Man Behind The Curtain’, the first episode to be Ben-centric and one of the
masterpieces of the series. In a classic scene Ben has just told Locke about
Jacob for the first time, saying that he has the answers. Locke wants to be
taken to him and Ben says it’s not that simple. John asks if Richard could take
him and Ben makes it clear (lying) that he is the only person to talks to
Jacob.
In one of the great lines in his
magnificent tenure on Lost Terry O’Quinn says: “You know what I think,
Ben? I think there is no Jacob. I believe your people are idiots if they think
you take orders from someone else. You’re the man behind the curtain, the
Wizard of Oz. And you’re a liar.” Ben managed to persuade him otherwise but
Locke was dead on about that part, because when it came to Jacob Ben was
nothing but a humbug. As we learned in the finale of Season 5 Ben had never met
him, talked to him, or even knew where he really lived.
What we’ve learned long before
this is that just the mention of Jacob has been enough to get all of his
underlings to go on what amounts to suicide missions. In the leadup to the
Season 3 finale, he convinced his team to move up their assault on the beach to
abduct the pregnant women a day early ‘because Jacob wanted it.” In the season
finale we learn that he has been lying about the Looking Glass station being
flooded all this time and that he has sent two people there to operate it,
lying and saying they were on assignment in Canada. He convinced them to do so
based on the order. When asked why they never questioned Ben, one of them says:
“The moment I start doing that, everything falls apart.” And if that doesn’t
tell you how much the rank-and-file have been hanging on Ben’s vision nothing
will – as well as the fact that Ben has just persuaded Mikhail to ‘clean up the
mess he made’ based solely on the idea of Jacob. Mikhail does it “saying he is
following orders” and he is willing to pay for it with his life.
There’s a part of me that’s
always wonder what the sales pitch has been to be an Other. “Give up your
family, your friends to come to an island in the Pacific. You’ll have to kill
your own food, sleep on the ground and you can never see anyone you know and
love ever again. You do this in the name of a magnificent man who has a higher
purpose for this island and everything. You can never see him, but you must
trust that you are doing his work.” Much of the debate of Lost is about
science versus faith and its clear not only that the Others come down hard on
the side of faith, to the point of being religious fanatics. That Juliet, the
last recruit, never bought this dream shows that it has a limited appeal.
The question is therefore what
does it take to be the leader of the Others? And based on the series, the
answer isn’t flattering: you have to be
a sucker.
During ‘The Incident’ Ben is
having a conversation with ‘Locke’ who’s just asked him to kill Jacob for him.
Ben asks why ‘Locke’ wants him to do it. “Because this island gave you cancer.
And then you saw your daughter killed in front of you. And in reward for your
lifetime of service, you were banished. And you did all of this in the name of
a man you never even met.” Ben has spent
his time on the island manipulating people by telling them what they want to
hear. The tables are turned when he is told what his entire life on the island
has led to.
And by this point, mostly during
Season 5, we’ve come to realize everyone who’s led the Others has basically
done variations on the same thing, over and over. Charles Widmore is hardly a
sympathetic figure but his reward for nearly four decades of loyalty to the
island he’s already lost his son, his
daughter has forsaken him and he’s never met his own grandson, all of which
came after forced exile from the island. His predecessor, Eloise Hawking (who
he had an affair with) served the island for at least twenty three years, left
to give birth to her son who she knew that she was going to have spend all of
his life pushing him in the direct of the island so that he could meet his
destiny – which was going to be at her hands. And it’s pretty clear that John
Locke was headed down this same road in the four and a half seasons he was on Lost.
He knew better than anyone what a miraculous place the island, pledged his
service to it at the cost of all friendship, killed two people, was indirectly
responsible for countless more and by the time the Oceanic 6 left had isolated
everyone on the island. Near the end of Lost, it’s cynically said: “He
was stupid enough to think he was brought it for a reason…and pursued until it
got him killed.” There’s a certain truth in that, particularly considering that
he died alone in a filthy hotel room and the last words to go through his head
were “I don’t understand.’
Some Others have a similar
devotion. Dogen was met by Jacob not long after an accident left his son in a
coma. Jacob said he would save his life but he had to go to the island to guard
the Temple and could never see him again. (Critically, we never know if Jacob
actually saved Dogen’s son.) Jacob shows up at Ilana’s bedside and tells her
“he needs her to do something.” He gives her the name of the six remaining
candidates and to protect them but doesn’t tell them what all of them look like
– including Locke. Despite that she remains certain that Jacob knows what he
was doing when he told her what to do next and believes it despite the evidence
of her eyes. The moment she does her job, as Ben says almost dully, “the island
was done with her.”
I once argued that Locke was the
greatest example of blind faith, and it’s clear now that the Others all showed
that similar level of blind devotion. In the penultimate episode of Lost ‘Locke’
addresses the Others and tells them that they’ve all been serving Jacob but for
some reason none of them have met him. By making the argument in front of
Richard, he does something that clearly no one on the island has ever done and
it unsettles Richard immensely. At one point ‘Locke’ says bluntly ‘I’m
beginning to think you just make up these rules’ and you honestly wonder about
that.
Because in the final season we
learn that Richard, for all his years of service to Jacob, has been as much in
the dark as everybody. He has no idea about who the Candidates are and when he
learns of Jacob’s death he becomes suicidal. When Jack asks him why: “I’ve devoted my life – longer than you
can possibly imagine – to a man who told me a plan, a plan that I was to play
in a role in and that would one day be revealed. And now that man is dead. So
why do I want to die? Because I just found out my life had no purpose.” Jacob
seemed willing to go to his grave – and even beyond – without telling anyone
what the grand plan of the island was. It’s kind of hard to believe that no one
wanted to kill him before.
By the final season it becomes
very clear that everything that has happened to this point is essentially moves
in a great game. The Oceanics are pieces in the game but they spend basically
the entire series never knowing the rules or even why they were chosen to play.
The Others seem to have some understanding of the rules – or at least how the
game works – but they’re not allowed to play the game and don’t seem to know
who the playing pieces are. They seem to have immense trust that their roles
are important, but in a way they don’t know what they are any more than the
survivors of Oceanic 815. They’ve conned the Oceanics as to who they are, but
they’ve done a far better job conning themselves about their own roles.
This will be made clear in the
next piece in which I commemorate the 15th anniversary of Ab
Aeterno, the episode that told us the story of Richard Alpert – and really
everything else we needed to know about the island.
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