What If...

My first thought upon watching the Lost episode in class was “This is Lord of the Flies.”  It did not take me long to tally up a list of comparisons:

·         A bunch of people—children, really—are stranded on an island due to a plane crash.  I say they were all children, because when we are suddenly dropped into an utterly unknown situation, we are children, no matter what our ages.  The men and women in Lost, just like the boys in Lord of the Flies, are lost, scared, far from anything they recognise or know how to use, looking for somebody to help them, to ease their fears, to make everything right.  Essentially, they’re looking for a mother to rub their backs after a nightmare and a father to scare away the monsters under the bed.

·         They are without food, so when a “he-man” such as Lock or Jack suggests hunting the pigs on the island, everybody follows their bloodlust.

·         There is a mysterious “beastie” hiding in the jungle (Golding 35).  In Lost, it is seen only as something huge moving through the jungle, and possibly represented by the mysterious man lurking along the camp’s edges. 

And every time I encounter a story like this, I ask myself, what would I do?  What would I do if I were stranded on an island or taken as a hostage, like Mary Rowlandson?   What would I do if I were accused of adultery or something, like Hester Prynne or Olive (from Easy A)?

I would like to believe that I would comport myself with dignity. I would like to think that I would help find a way out of the bad situation, or at least help calm the others down.  I would like to think that I would refuse to give in to the demands of my captors, that I would have courage in the face of danger.  I would like to think that I would hold my head high, like Hester, in the face of scandal.

But that’s probably not what would happen.  I would probably freak out if I were stranded or kidnapped.  I would probably throw scorn back at the gossipers or burst into tears. Or both.

So if you were Hester, or Mary, or Olive, or the people in Lost or the boys in Lord of the Flies, how do you think you would react? Would you submit to the circumstances? Would you eat a friend? Would you hold your head high or give the gossips something really good to talk about?

I don’t think we can really know.  As Mary said, “I had often before this said that if the Indians should come, I should choose rather to be killed by them than taken alive, but when it came to the trial my mind changed” (Rowlandson 39).  Much as we may try to predict our actions, our minds are mysteries…even from ourselves.