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sophthebof · 3 years ago

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I Am Once Again Emo About Jack Shephard - A Character Study

I love Jack Shephard. I didn’t used to. Now I do. Jack Shephard in my mind is...a fantastic, subversive and fascinating protagonist. I was thinking about his character and arc yet again today and I came to the conclusion that a large reason why people tend to dislike him is because the expectations they have of his character are very different from the reality.

To put it simply: Jack Shephard is is not a big strong, sure, leader man. He is an emotional, broken, mess of a man pretending to be a big strong leader man, until the very end of the story.

I used to say that Jack was only the main character of Lost by convenience - because they needed someone to fit the role, and why not him? But that’s not the case. Jack Shephard is the main character because it takes him all of the events of all six seasons to truly heal and become “whole” in a way that it doesn’t for anybody else.

I was thinking about this and I wanted to list every emotional trial and struggle that Jack goes through over the course of the show, in order.

So, to start off, pre-island:

1. You can’t mention Jack without mentioning his Daddy Issues courtesy of Christian Shephard - so number one, his shitty father. I could mention this over and over again throughout the list, but I’m only going to once. So straightforwardly - Jack’s emotionally abusive, alcoholic father, and Jack’s tumultuous relationship with him, put a massive strain on his emotional wellbeing and self-confidence from the very beginning to very end of the show. So much of what Jack does, consciously and unconsciously, is in an attempt to prove to himself that his father was wrong about Jack and how he treated him. The tragic thing is, he never can or will be able to.

2. Related to (1), as a lot of this is - Jack’s compulsive need to “fix” things. (I could write a whole post just on this, but...) This is stated explicitly in the show, and for good reason. A part of Jack believes that everything that is wrong can be made better - and if he doesn’t personally make it better, than that is a personal failure. This is related to the emotional abuse from Christian, but I honestly think a part of it is just innate to Jack’s personality. I’m sure some people headcanon this as a symptom of a mental illness, which is completely valid, but for the purposes of this I’ll just leave it at: this is a very significant mental loop that Jack spends his life trying to fulfill but that he - again - will never be able to. This innate drive is a large part of why he takes on the Leader mantle on the Island.

3. A direct cause of (2) is that Jack cannot deal with failure. When he fails, or when something close to him fails, the external causes do not register, because he could have prevented it. He could have done differently, and it’s his fault that things went wrong since he didn’t. This is demonstrated in his marriage with Sarah. When the marriage starts falling apart, Jack resorts to his feedback loop of thinking he can “fix” it on his own - and when he can’t, he blames himself entirely. We see examples of this on the island over and over again.

4. His father’s death. Was gonna leave this as part of (1) but I had too much to say. Jack’s complicated relationship with Christian only complicates his reaction to his death. Jack desperately seeks closure over this and feels like he has personally failed his father (see (2) and (3) !!!).

Additionally, there’s a relevant line from Bojack Horseman that I think of here: “Suddenly, you realize you'll never have the good relationship [with your parent] you wanted, and as long as they were alive, even though you'd never admit it, part of you - the stupidest goddamn part of you - was still holding on to that chance. And you didn't even realize it until that chance went away.”

So this is all of the baggage and unhealthy patterns that describe Jack at the time that he crash lands on the Island. And in my mind, the majority of seasons 1-3 from Jack’s point of view is him struggling to come to terms with (1) and (4) and being put in situations that force him to break the patterns of (2) and (3). And for the most part this goes well. We see a lot of character growth from Jack over the first half of the show. He takes up the leader mantle largely because his flawed mental patterns naturally guide him to, but he turns out to be good at it. He begins to accept that not everything is in his control. He learns (partly explicitly, partly not) that his father was wrong in how he treated him. This culminates in him giving everything he has in order to get his new found family off the Island. And he (and the audience!) thinks he’s succeeded -

Until the last scene of season 3.

Everyone loves the “we have to go back” cliffhanger for good reason, but I also think it’s brilliant in how it relates to Jack’s character arc. Jack’s decisions and growth that led him to get the Oceanic 6 off the Island, instead of resulting in a victory, resulted in what is - at least from his perspective - arguably the greatest failure of Jack’s life. And nobody else views it this way! The other people who got off the Island try to move on with their lives! Nobody blames Jack for anything! But we all know how Jack handles failure. He blames himself. So even though he tries to ignore it, he tries to move on, he cannot. Which leads us to:

5. Alcoholism. Funny enough, it wasn’t until writing this that I realized that Jack’s father also being an alcoholic adds another layer to Jack’s eventual descent into addiction. And while obviously addiction does not excuse in any way how Christian treated Jack, I think it may have eventually helped Jack understand a bit more what his father was going through in his last days, and eventually forgive himself and his father and move on. But he’s not there yet. At this point, Jack can only drown away the pain of his failures in alcohol and drive away

6. Kate. Jack ruins his relationship with Kate in a similar fashion to how his and Sarah’s fell apart, even if the context is very different - because he cannot let go of his need to fix things. He starts talking about going back to the Island, because that’s the only way out he can see. He drinks more. He loses further touch with reality. Kate leaves him.

At this point, Jack is at what I consider his lowest point of the show. His rock bottom. He has regressed back to (and even lower than) where he was before the Island. And this is fine to show! Progress is not linear!

He stops drowning in drink and self-pity when Ben starts helping him get back to the Island. He sees this as a way to fix some of his mistakes, but I think he also associates the Island with him getting better. He wants to be (partially) whole again like he was over the course of his months there with the Losties.

So he goes back. Season 5 happens. I love season 5. So much of it has nothing to do with Jack, and that’s fine. Until of course, the last few episodes.

Jack is back on the Island. Things are undoubtedly going better than they were at home, but inside Jack is still fundamentally broken. His baggage and his issues have not healed. So when he hears about the hydrogen bomb - blow it up and it’ll be like none of this ever happened - of course Jack’s going to do it. How could he not?? This is the ultimate way for him to fix everything, both for himself and everyone. Of course this is flawed logic, but mental patterns don’t care about that. In Jack’s mind this is the only thing that makes any sense.

So he blows up the bomb. His actions indirectly and inadvertently get Juliet killed. Everyone wakes up on the Island in present day. Nothing is fixed. Everything is worse. Jack has caused the very thing he was trying so hard to stop. And it’s this - this!! - that I think finally and fundamentally breaks through some of Jack’s walls and flawed patterns. He finally begins to understand, in the words of Daniel Faraday and others, “whatever happened, happened”.

I will admit upfront it’s been a long time since I’ve watched season 6, so forgive me if I get the details wrong. But after this Incident (heh) Jack stops trying to fix in the sense of changing things, and starts trying to apologize and to listen. He apologizes to Sawyer for his actions in season 5. He accepts that he was fundamentally wrong about many things. He tells Hurley “I came back here because I was broken...and I was stupid enough to think that this place could fix me”. He realizes that it is not the Island that will make him better, but himself and his relationships with others. When his friends die, he does not self destruct, but keeps fighting. He mends his flawed relationship with Kate. They confess that despite their flaws, they both love each other.

Elsewhere in the flash sideways, he has a relationship with the son he never had. This, combined with his experiences in the living world, culminate to show him that even though what his father did wasn’t okay, that he can move on from it. That he made big mistakes but they don’t have to be Jack’s own.

And finally, he takes on the mantle of leader of the Island. He does this not out of a flawed obligation to his failures, but because a deep part of him believes it is “what he is supposed to do”. He realizes he is going to die, and willingly does so, not because he is self destructive and does not want to be alive, but from an obligation to the Island and his friends family.

And this, finally concludes both Jack’s struggles and the story. I don’t think I can say it any better than how the writers themselves put it in the script:

"Jack Shephard has done what he came to this place to do. He has found his purpose. He has found love, and been loved. He has finally found a way to love himself. The bamboo sways across the blue sky, and Jack Shephard's eye closes one final time. He is gone. The end."

The end indeed.

#hope you guys enjoy #this is longer than i thought it would be wow #and now im about to cry #lost #lost meta #Jack Shephard #ABC Lost #talker32332post #lost season 5 #christian shephard #lost the end

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