Lost Is About What It Means to Lead and To Follow
(Excerpt From an Upcoming Book)
Warning: Spoilers for Pretty Much the Entire Series Below
The more I have watched and rewatched Lost over the years, the more I think I know what it’s really about. All of the larger themes, all of the characters, all of the stories come down to two basic concepts: do you lead or do you follow?
The title itself suggests as much. Lindelof and Cuse told us while the series was still on the air that all of the characters were not just physically lost but emotionally so. And in either case once you realize that you have two choice. You can either wait for someone to tell you what you’re next steps are — in other words, you can follow — or you can take it upon yourself to figure out how to find a way through — or lead.
Once we understand that the conflicts at the center of the major stories on the series make more sense. This is true of every character and I’ll briefly touch on it here but its always been true of Jack and Locke. One of the many ironies of these two men who were at loggerheads on everything over the series was how alike they were and that’s true of a fundamental concept: neither of them were suited for leadership but neither could follow.
Recall their first major conversation in White Rabbit where Jack is following what he thinks is the ghost of his father into the jungle (we now know what that is) Jack is convinced that he’s being led by something impossible and Locke famously tells him: “What if it is?” When Jack says it isn’t, Locke replies: “Even if it is, let’s say that it’s not.”
Locke is urging Jack the only way he can become a leader is if he follows this path to its end. The irony isn’t that Jack nearly died doing so but he had gotten lost in the first place. Once Jack finds his father’s coffin in the caves he smashes it, perhaps thinking that symbolically it will rid him of his baggage. (It didn’t, obviously.) After that Jack made his famous speech which ended: “live together, die alone.” This made him the official leader of the group for the rest of the time he was on the island.
But while Jack acted as the leader, he lacked the skills he needed to survive in the wild. Every time he went on a trip into the jungle, he was supposedly the leader but he was always relying on someone else to guide him: Locke, then Kate when they chased Ethan, Rousseau when they went to the Black Rock and then to the radio tower, Michael when they went to save Walt, the sat phones when they went into the jungle. Jack was always in charge but he was always at the mercy of someone else to find where he was going and you get the feeling that was at the heart of so much of his belligerence. Even when he was leading, he was following.
The irony of Locke being the one to tell Jack to lead is because he never followed him. Even in the early seasons when they were more in tune, Locke knew he had the advantage of being a hunter and Jack never liked that. Even the fact that he believed in destiny is somewhat ironic when we consider his catchphrase: “Don’t tell me what I can’t do!” Locke believed he was on a path, that everything was happening for a reason. But his personality was such that as much as he believed in following a path, he personally rejected the idea of not being able to make his own way. Locke wasn’t suited to lead others because he was following the island but because he couldn’t understand why he was doing it; he was constantly angry at having to make these choices.
Though much of the series was centered on these two styles of leadership, there have been constant examples of other characters who might have been better suited to it. Sayid was able to take steps towards leadership even before Jack was, and there’s an argument his history in the military would have provided him with a better set of skills to survive then a doctor with no supplies. Sawyer famously told Jack about their contrasting styles of leadership: Sawyer thought things through and Jack reacted. It’s just as true for Sayid: he was always more pragmatic and clear-headed than Jack during their time on the island, never letting emotion cloud his judgment, always compartmentalizing the irrational to get them through the present crisis. But because of the prejudices that still existed on the island as much as the real world, people chose to follow Jack. Sayid’s training as a soldier made him more suited to be the ideal follower.
Kate
, like Locke, had many of the same abilities to survive in the wild and was probably as qualified to lead. But just as racism caused people to pick Jack over Sayid, sexism caused everyone to pick any of the men over Kate. That suited Kate just fine, I should mention, and she was a good follower — literally. When it came to following orders, particularly from Jack, she never listened and ended up following him into the jungle. This ended up costing the survivors and Jack more then we could count. That sexism, I should add, was also an external issue. When Kate started challenging the leaders in the 1970s — such as when she decided to save a thirteen year old Ben after Sayid had shot him and told Jack that his plan to drop an atomic bomb in a pocket of electromagnetism was crazy — the fanbase of Lost got angry because she wasn’t following these men and letting them do these horrible things.
Sawyer was the odd man out on the island for much of the run of the series, never following Jack, always being unpleasant. There’s an argument much of it was a front: when the chips were down Sawyer was willing to follow in order to save other people’s lives or do what he could to help people. When the island started blooping through time, Sawyer took charge in a way he never had before and became a genuine leader in the Dharma Initiative. But by the time the Oceanics came back, he was basically using his leadership in order to follow the Dharma dream even though it ended in a pit of bodies.
There’s an argument from the start that Hurley always had the skills to be the leader he is as we approach the end: while he might not have been the smartest when it came to education, he had a good head on his shoulders and he always wanted to help people. Even though he was scared most of the time, he was always willing to follow Jack and his friends through the dangerous jungle because he wanted to help them and he thought if he was funny, they wouldn’t be scared. In short because Hurley was always a good follower — always putting everyone else’s wellbeing ahead of his own — he was the best suited for leadership, which is where he finally is.
The rest of the survivors who made it this far have never been so much group leaders but following for their loved ones. Claire followed everyone for the first three seasons because she was pregnant and because she was a mother. Once she lost Aaron, she lost her way and has not had anyone to follow all this time. Sun and Jin have always needed each other, more so since they came on the island. Jin once said: “Where Sun goes, I go” and that’s been true throughout the series. Sun has gotten on a plane and risked not seeing her daughter because she wants to find Jin. Jin has been following Sawyer, then Jack because he wants to find his wife.
This conflict has applied in a sense to Ben Linus as well. He has been a leader on the island for years but he was just as much a follower. Like everyone else on the island before the crash Ben has been leading in Jacob’s name but he has been following a man he never saw. Everyone we’ve met seems to have been following Jacob for years — and in Richard’s case that’s a very long time — but they never knew what his plan was and most never even saw him. Ben was manipulated by the Man in Black to killing Jacob but his genuine frustration at having to follow him for thirty years without ever meeting him was the most real thing about him to that point.
Ben has been Widmore’s nemesis for nearly thirty years and Widmore has been a leader for nearly as long. Widmore, like Locke, was not a good leader because he was never a good follower. Based on what the writers told us Widmore spent decades on the island and he was never a good follower from the time he was a young man to the point he was forced into exile by Ben. It would seem that he has amassed all his money so he would have the power that people would follow him willingly and in Season 3 he got a freighter to go to the island with the sole purpose of getting Ben off the island so he could have it again. Because he was a bad leader he gave everyone who got on the freighter conflicting information, it was never clear who was in charge and perhaps its not a huge shock that as a result almost everyone on it ended up dead. Now Widmore’s led another group of people to the island and while he seems to have realized he had to come himself this time to give the orders, his followers are ju6t as incompetent and idiotic as before. This doesn’t say much for Widmore’s leadership skills.
Which brings us to Jacob and the Man in Black. We learn about Jacob entirely through flashbacks and in Ab Aeterno it’s clear that while he may be the god of the island his leadership style has been that of the Old Testament type. Jacob commands absolute loyalty but its clear that its basically for a larger purpose. He convinced Richard that he had a plan, a plan which he would explain at a certain time but he never did. Ilana, who was his most loyal follower, came to the island based on her loyalty to Jacob who told her Richard would know what to do and Jacob hadn’t told him anything. As Richard made clear: “Jacob never tells us what to do!” And that must be extremely frustrating for all the people who have spent all this time following him.
The Man In Black, in Locke’s form, told the Others at the start of Season 6: “I’m very disappointed. In all of you.” It’s possible, given his contempt for Jacob, that he’s upset that they have followed a man blindly for so long without question. Throughout Season 6, he’s been taking on the marker of leadership to all those left behind, offering all of these lost souls — including those who are still around the crash — a chance to leave the island. In a way he’s offering them a chance to be found. None of the people who are following him trust him but based on what they have since learned — that Jacob has been guiding them all their lives, forcing them to follow him without them knowing it, and leading them to the island — they are reluctantly following him. Many of them have wanted someone to tell them what to do and, ironically using the form of a man who didn’t want to be told what he couldn’t do, they are now altogether again.
The hymn Amazing Grace contains the line: “I once was lost but now am found.” The conflict on Lost might be summed up thusly. Will the characters find themselves through their own free will? Or were they only found when they were led to the island in the first place?