Thursday, August 02, 2007

Who's Right About Jack -- Jack or
Juliet and Sawyer?














In Whatever the Case May Be, Jack wants the case from
Sawyer. In order to get it, he makes this threat:

[Cephalexin is] the antibiotic I've been giving you for the knife
wound in your arm. You're right in the middle of the treatment
cycle now. If I keep giving you the pills you're going to be right
as rain. But I'm going to stop giving you the pills and for two days
you're going to think you're all good, then it's going to start
to itch. The day after that the fever's going to come and you're
going to start seeing red lines running up and down your arm.
A day or two after that... you'll beg me to take the case...
just to cut off your arm.

Sawyer replies he doesn't think Jack could do it. Similarly in
Not in Portland Juliet is certain Jack won't allow Ben to die.
In both cases, Jack insists they're wrong, that he could indeed
"do harm."

So what do you think? Could Jack have cut off Sawyer's meds?
Could he have let Ben die? Who knows Jack better, those around
him or Jack himself?

5 comments:

pgtbeauregard said...

I don't believe Jack would ever let a patient die. He has a strong moral ethic, and too much compassion to commit murder.

He was really angry with Ben when he thought he shot the three on the beach in TTLG, and that could be the one time I could see him really wanting to do it.

Of course, in my book, Jack can do no wrong, so it's a slightly biased point of view.

Capcom said...

I'm not so sure about Jack anymore. He really shocked me when he cut the infamous kidney sac! Whatever he did, it made the monitors go wild on Ben's vitals, so it really looked as if something could have gone wrong if the time was allowed to run out on Ben's cut open self.

It seems as if Jack is more inclined to help and save, than to harm though. I think that he also gets some satisfaction in using his medical knowledge, and his rival's lack thereof, to freak people into doing the right thing. :-)

memphish said...

Maybe what's happened is that S1 Jack who made the threat which Sawyer didn't call could not have gone through with it; after all Jack was calling off the torture he'd initially condoned before Sayid could get the info. But put in a fish tank and allowed to watch Skex S3 Jack has changed and could have gone through with his threat against Ben even after Juliet called his bluff. Ben wasn't willing to call it though. The final step for Jack was letting Ben "kill" Sayid, Jin and Bernard in order for the rest of them to leave the Island.

So I guess the answer to my own question is Jack wouldn't have cut Sawyer off and he would have let Ben die.

TheOtherLisa said...

Hmmmmm...... excellent question! Philosophically speaking, I think we each have a limited, sometimes skewed, knowledge of ourselves on a day to day basis. However, extreme circumstances call off all bets, even in the most "set" habits and patterns ....annnnnddddd we see a very messed up future jack (implying, imho, some poor potenially selfish choices) sooooo hmmmmm..... no answer, just a great question.

Ptbeauregard- i replied to you re; Cassidy/Kate on the previous board- thanks for the exchange!

Capcom said...

One thing that bothers me about future-Jack though, is his decline into addiction.

He feels that he has a mission, correct? I think by the mess of the maps, etc. on his apartment floor, that we can assume that he's very serious about it. Soooooo, why is he a boozing doper? Why is he not keeping himself and his life in the best shape possible to attain his mission, the way that Desmond tried to get himself in "the best shape of his life" for his sailing race?

Sure Jack, you just keep drinking and doping yourself up, that will get you to the island to fix whatever was done really fast. :-)