Analysis of the Season Five Finale: Installment Two

Here's the next installment of the Season Five analysis (you can find the first installment here).  It's a bit  shorter than the first one, mainly because I've been wrestling with how to properly express a few of this week's concepts.  I'll have the next installment ready for you in a few days.  

5.16 and 5.17: "The Incident" 

Installment Two

FLASHBACK: Young James Ford sits at his parents' funeral, struggling to write a letter with a pen that is running out of ink; In a seemingly well-intentioned gesture, Jacob gives James a new pen On the surface, acts of liberal interventionism can seem well-intentioned	Because of Jacob's intervention into James's family affairs, James acts against his uncle's wishes and finishes the letter Sometimes, by interfering in the domestic affairs of other nations, liberal interventionists undermine the wishes of those nations' leaders	Having used Jacob's pen to preserve on paper his desire for revenge, James endures years of emotional conflict, kills an innocent man, and ends up on the ill-fated flight that crashes on the island (events which, if part of his larger plan, Jacob probably regards as unfortunate but necessary steps toward "progress") Liberal interventionism's interference in other nations' domestic affairs can end up prolonging internal conflicts, causing innocent people to die, and creating even bigger crises (all of which, if part of their larger plan, liberal interventionists might regard as unfortunate but necessary acts of "creative destruction")	1977: Juliet, believing there have already been too many unnecessary deaths, chooses to go back and oppose Jack's plan of detonating the US Army bomb Some conservatives, believing the war in Iraq had already caused too many unnecessary deaths, chose to oppose President Bush's plan of sending a surge of additional US Army troops
Sawyer follows Juliet's lead The Republican Party followed conservatives' lead	In the cavern, Richard says that Locke "never seemed particularly special" to him Vice President Richard Cheney was never a fan of Secretary of State Colin Powell	Jack tells Richard he knows Locke, and says,"If I were you, I wouldn't give up on him" After the Iraq Invasion spiralled out of control, President Bush realized that he (as well as Vice President Cheney) shouldn't have been so quick to reject Secretary of State Powell's concerns	2007: Ben reveals that he is still troubled by the visit from his dead daughter, Alex; he says that she threatened to destroy him if he didn't follow Locke (who, unbeknownst to Ben, is now the embodiment of Jacob's rival) Neoconservatives had believed themselves to have the support of America-friendly Middle Easterners; however, after the death and destruction of the Iraq Invasion, these America-friendly Middle Easterners pushed back against the neoconservatives' agenda, threatening to turn against America if it didn't pursue a less interventionist foreign policy
				Photo
Locke (now the embodiment of Jacob's rival) says, "I'm not going to kill Jacob, Ben -- you are" Foreign policy realists (who, by nature, oppose interventionism) hoped that, by overreaching in Iraq, Neoconservatives were on the way to bringing about the demise of liberal interventionism (see links here and here)	FLASHBACK: Sayid and Nadia seem to be a normal happily-married couple, then Jacob distracts Sayid, causing Nadia to be hit by a car; as a result of his marriage's tragic end, Sayid returns to a life of violence, eventually ending up on the flight back to the Island (which appears to have been Jacob's plan all along) Liberal interventionists sometimes deliberately cause stable societies to become destabilized, in the hopes that the resultant violence will further their larger liberal interventionist agenda

***

So there you go.  I reckon most of that works pretty well. 

Having said that, I'd be willing to accept criticism that, in these two installments, I've been quite negative in my appraisals of Jacob and his real-world counterpart, liberal interventionism.  You see, in order to get inside the mind of Jacob's rival,  I've been saturating myself in the writings of Andrew Bacevich, who is a persuasive critic of liberal interventionism and American overreach. (For a great example of how a foreign policy realist like Bacevich might view Jacob's interference in the castaways' early lives, take a gander at his aptly-titled essay "Illusions of Managing History.")  As a result of my reading, I've ended up absorbing some of Bacevich's anti-interventionist/anti-Jacob mindset, and have wound up on the side of Jacob's rival.  Whether I stay on that side remains to be seen  -- much of it depends on what Lost does with Anti-Jacob next season -- but I do recognize that, for now at least, I'm being pretty one-sided when it comes to Jacob and the philosophy of liberal interventionism.  (Funnily enough, from what I've seen on the web, it seems the rest of the viewing audience is also being pretty one-sided when it comes to Jacob -- but unlike me, most of them have decided he's some kind of messiah, and his rival is the baddie!) 

Okay, that's it for today, I reckon.  I'll be back in a few days with the third installment, which should be a bit longer.  In the meantime, feel free to offer questions or suggestions in the comments section below.

Take care, folks!

Comments

[Holly]

I've found that for the most part, the ideas that I don't agree with are paired with the characters that I do like, and the philosophies that I do agree with are represented by characters that I don't like.
And I think that it was done that way on purpose-to force us to give the other way an open, honest look.
So....I'm just going to guess that I won't like the Anti-Jacob character very much either.

[Alastair]

I've been thinking about AJ and what Jacob said to Hurley in the car. It was something along the lines of 'you're lucky that you get to speak to your dead friends'; could it be that the man we see speaking to Jacob, at the beginning of the finale, is not the 'man himself' but an apparition of him (similar to Charlie appearing to Hurley, or Walt appearing to Locke)? When Hurley is confronted by his 'dead friends' (along with Michael being confronted by Libby and Eko being confronted by Yemi) they seem to urge him on to do things - put simply, in all the cases they are alluding to responsibilities (whether it be regarding what needs to be done, or what has been done - perhaps wrongly - in the past).

We're aware that many people see the 'monster' as some kind of judge - perhaps AJ died as a result of something Jacob did (wrongly). If we are to claim that the former represented anti-interventionism then could we argue that such a practice 'died' through the actions of the interventionists, but continued to haunt them (basically, that they could never quite be certain that they did the 'right' thing, perhaps because neither approach would have been 'right' or 'wrong' in the first place, but merely a means of addressing a situation)?

[Alastair]

Also, it might explain why AJ couldn't kill Jacob. He couldn't do it because he wasn't really there. He needed to convince someone to do it for him. What does this say about Ben (the neo-cons) doing it for him - i.e. the neo-cons acting on behalf of anti-interventionist?