He also uses violence when it suits him. Remember when he laid the smackdown on Charlie for stealing the baby, or the way he beat Mikhail into a pulp just to make the point that he was not to be trifled with? Combine that with his blind faith in the Island and his own destiny, and you have him throwing a knife into the back of a young woman. To be fair, she was gonna basically FSU on the Island, but we were never blessed with Locke's certainty about her.
Another thing about John: How many of the people who followed him into the barracks made it out alive? Hurley, Sawyer, Aaron, and, maybe, Claire. That's it.
His stubborn head nearly got everyone killed when his faith in the Button was shaken. He knocked Sayid out just as he was about to get a fix on the radio tower. He blew up the submarine. The submarine, man. Blew it up.
Why do I like him more than I like the "hero," Jack? I'll take John's side anytime. John is intuitive, well-intentioned, and ready to be open to things outside his worldview. He is usually trying to protect people, even if his methods are a mystery. Jack, by contrast, is small-minded and totally unwilling to believe he is wrong, blind to everything outside his rigidly rational paradigm. He pushes himself on Kate, he demands intimacy from her. People are objects to be fixed or saved. In short, and I don't use this word much, Jack Shepherd is an asshole. You wanna know why? This very conflict between John and Jack illustrates the depth of Jack's assholery. John believes that 815 landed on the Island for a reason, that the Island is an entity, with whom he communes from time to time. He believes that somehow he has been appointed to be the Island's protector and savior. In John's view, everyone who survived the crash was brought there for a reason. Jack, on the other hand, has seen and been through some crazy shit, but he refuses to believe in all the signs, all the magic, and instead pursues singlemindedly an escape, back to the world so he can keep on fixing people, maybe fix himself a new wife. (Kate) Their 100 day dance around the issue ends in a greenhouse. John begs Jack to accept his destiny, to stay and fulfill his purpose. He says to Jack, "You're not supposed to do this," a note of pleading in his voice. Jack basically tells John to piss off, thank you very much, that's the news and I am outta here.
But here's the rub: When the Oceanic 6 are on the raft, just before Penny's boat picks them up, (how lucky was that?), Jack all of a sudden tells them they need to lie, to concoct a cover story that will not only hide the island, but confirm dead all 325 passengers of Flight 815, save the six of them. The cover story assures that there will be no rescue party to pick up the survivors still on the island. Everyone left behind is stranded. I don't really ascribe any malice to Jack's motive here, just cowardice: He lied to keep the survivors on the Island because he knows they are exactly where they are supposed to be. Only he's not there. He had to leave. He put a gun to John's head and pulled the trigger in the name of getting off the Island, and his lie to the world is proof that he doesn't even believe his own bullshit. That's why Jack Shepherd is an asshole.
Also the time he forced Bai Ling to give him a tattoo. But that's another story and shall be told another time.
1 comment:
Man you ain't even got to write a bunch of paragraphs explaining your preference of John to Jack. Jack sucks so hard you just wanted those Chinese kids to kill him. The Jack of this season is sort of a perfectly caricatured version of the Jack we've always known: talking to Kate when she doesn't want him around, just braying at her "WE HAS TO GO BACK! LEAVIN UR DOIN IT RONG! WE HAD TO GO BACK! AUAUUAUAUGHGHG!" He's one of the most self-assured and simultaneously small-minded people anyone could ever meet, which is why Julie Bowen wanted to sleep with Christian instead (there's a hoopy frood who really knows where his towel is).
Locke, on the other hand, while similarly frustratingly self-confident, also appreciates working with people (though only to accomplish his own goals) and can also be distracted for a time by mindless tasks (think about how much people got done while Locke was holed up in the hatch typing those numbers in). He's also superheroically badass, and slept with Leela. No contest.
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