Thursday, 19 April 2007
The Nine Billion Names of Locke
In the month I've been offline our hero has gone through something of a metamorphosis. There were those, even among the faithful, who had begun to doubt Locke's sanity, rationality and heroic credentials. Not me of course, but there were a significant number who found Locke's behaviour after the explosion of The Flame bizarre, out of character even. Why take explosives with you on your mission to rescue Jack from The Others and not tell the rest of your rescue party about it? Why so carelessly sacrifice your prisoner, a man who could have told you so much about the mysteries of the island – an island you have all but fallen in love with – even after he's revealed that somewhere on that very island there's a submarine that could take you home? Well isn't it obvious? Because you're John Motherfucking Locke, that's why. And when John Locke goes on a dangerous mission with only three companions – a trained soldier/reformed psychopath, an escaped convict caught in the world's least sexy love triangle and a hermetic nutcase who couldn't find her own daughter after sixteen years of living only a few hours walk away from her – you don't come up with some wussy scheme to avoid that danger, you bring more danger with you. What's more, you don't even tell anyone else about it, putting you in danger not just with your enemies, but with your friends. You take danger, you pile more danger upon it, and multiply that danger by DANGER. Really, such people don't have friends, they don't need friends: as far as John's concerned, you're either his loyal disciple, or an irritating inconvenience. Friends are for the weak.
The fact of the matter is for Locke, there is no such thing as "out of character". When you're that charismatic, that intelligent, that prophetic, your personality is in a constant state of flux. Your character is something you make up as you go along in your perennial struggle for glory and transcendence. Everything you do is in character, because everything you do is destiny.
So I for one wasn't at all surprised when Locke, just before the first advert break of episode 13, holding Ben at gunpoint, explained, "I'm not looking for Jack – I'm looking for the submarine", and not just because I'd already seen that clip on youtube weeks ago. I wasn't even surprised, and realised just as quickly as Ben (who is, despite being still a good five years away from achieving the sexy/menacing shaven-headed Locke-look, at times almost as great as Locke himself) that Locke wasn't looking for the submarine so he could go home. He was looking for it because he still needed something else to blow up. Two DHARMA Initiative Stations is not enough (if you count Locke as being ultimately responsible for the implosion of The Swan, which I do because implosions are ace, and if you count implosions as explosions, which I do, because I'm ace) – and they weren't going anywhere anyway. He needed to get rid of something that had the potential to do something truly ridiculous to people: take them home. Everyone knows you can never go home anyway, but as only Locke has realised, you shouldn't even want to.
What's more, I wasn't even surprised when Locke joined the others and has now gone with them, wherever they went in episode fifteen. (Apparently, we aren't even going to see him again until episode nineteen – why it couldn't been for that month I was offline I can only think of one reason: I, unlike Locke, am not a man of destiny. Next to him, as are we all, I am nothing). That said, I was a bit taken aback when Locke's daddy turned up on the island, apparently as a prisoner of the others. This is because Locke is the daddy and therefore cannot logically have a daddy. I still believe what his ginger-haired schizophrenic pseudo-mother told him back in series one: he was immaculately conceived. He is, at the very least and as a fictional character, an immaculate conception.
What next for John? Locke knows.
Locke John Locke Lost 'The Man From Tallahassee' 'Left Behind'
The fact of the matter is for Locke, there is no such thing as "out of character". When you're that charismatic, that intelligent, that prophetic, your personality is in a constant state of flux. Your character is something you make up as you go along in your perennial struggle for glory and transcendence. Everything you do is in character, because everything you do is destiny.
So I for one wasn't at all surprised when Locke, just before the first advert break of episode 13, holding Ben at gunpoint, explained, "I'm not looking for Jack – I'm looking for the submarine", and not just because I'd already seen that clip on youtube weeks ago. I wasn't even surprised, and realised just as quickly as Ben (who is, despite being still a good five years away from achieving the sexy/menacing shaven-headed Locke-look, at times almost as great as Locke himself) that Locke wasn't looking for the submarine so he could go home. He was looking for it because he still needed something else to blow up. Two DHARMA Initiative Stations is not enough (if you count Locke as being ultimately responsible for the implosion of The Swan, which I do because implosions are ace, and if you count implosions as explosions, which I do, because I'm ace) – and they weren't going anywhere anyway. He needed to get rid of something that had the potential to do something truly ridiculous to people: take them home. Everyone knows you can never go home anyway, but as only Locke has realised, you shouldn't even want to.
What's more, I wasn't even surprised when Locke joined the others and has now gone with them, wherever they went in episode fifteen. (Apparently, we aren't even going to see him again until episode nineteen – why it couldn't been for that month I was offline I can only think of one reason: I, unlike Locke, am not a man of destiny. Next to him, as are we all, I am nothing). That said, I was a bit taken aback when Locke's daddy turned up on the island, apparently as a prisoner of the others. This is because Locke is the daddy and therefore cannot logically have a daddy. I still believe what his ginger-haired schizophrenic pseudo-mother told him back in series one: he was immaculately conceived. He is, at the very least and as a fictional character, an immaculate conception.
What next for John? Locke knows.
Locke John Locke Lost 'The Man From Tallahassee' 'Left Behind'
Labels: Ben, daddy issues, explosions, Jack, mystery, The DHARMA Initiative, the hatch, the island, The Others, wisdom
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