As I blahblahed on and on today about the power of redemption in literature, and a hero's quest and journey, I kept thinking about Benjamin Linus and last week's mind-blowing episode of Lost. I was on the edge of my computer chair seat with my face practically pushed up to the screen for this entire episode. And the result? I felt a human connection to Ben.
Maybe it's that I have recently Mothered, but something about Ben's weakness for the mother-child connection got me. It reminded me of all the literarily orphaned characters I love: Harry Potter, Pip, Anne of Green Gables, Peter Pan, Jane Eyre, Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer, Pippi Longstocking, Annie... And I started to think about the significance of Ben's own motherless journey through adolescence. His mom died in childbirth and not only did he never know her, but his father was a total jerk to him because of her death. So he has to have an elaborate fantasy about what his life would have become had she survived, and in this fantasy, surely she is a bright and wonderful mother who makes him egg salad sandwiches and never lets his father raise his voice or a finger toward Ben. And this fantasy is surely projected onto every mother he meets, which exlpains his obsession with the Island's Dying Baby Syndrome and Juliet, who became a mother-figure to him when she took care of him in the 1970s Dharma Initiative. Hence they all said, "She looks just like her..."
Oh Ben, let the cycle of redemption begin again.
Maybe it's that I have recently Mothered, but something about Ben's weakness for the mother-child connection got me. It reminded me of all the literarily orphaned characters I love: Harry Potter, Pip, Anne of Green Gables, Peter Pan, Jane Eyre, Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer, Pippi Longstocking, Annie... And I started to think about the significance of Ben's own motherless journey through adolescence. His mom died in childbirth and not only did he never know her, but his father was a total jerk to him because of her death. So he has to have an elaborate fantasy about what his life would have become had she survived, and in this fantasy, surely she is a bright and wonderful mother who makes him egg salad sandwiches and never lets his father raise his voice or a finger toward Ben. And this fantasy is surely projected onto every mother he meets, which exlpains his obsession with the Island's Dying Baby Syndrome and Juliet, who became a mother-figure to him when she took care of him in the 1970s Dharma Initiative. Hence they all said, "She looks just like her..."
Oh Ben, let the cycle of redemption begin again.
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