SS6: Number 10: Jacob

At first, Jacob was an unseen entity that the Others feared, followed or both. His words and commands held great weight with the leaders of the Others, who refused to question his authority. Since we did not see him, viewers did not know whether Jacob was a man, a god-like entity, a priest, or spiritual religious icon.

We find out that Jacob's name causes the Others to react. The Others follow him, but he is not a leader in their midst. He lives in the base of the Tawaret statue, weaving mixed civilization tapestries.

It is apparent that Jacob can summon people to the island, as with the case of the Black Rock. It was an open question of whether or not he brought Oceanic 815 to the island or whether it was Desmond's failure to put in the Numbers into the Swan computer that led to an electromagnetic energy release.

The beach conversation between Jacob and the Man in Black was supposed to be the Big Clue as to the nature of the Island and the long, dynamic conflict of those trapped on it:

JACOB: I take it you're here because of the ship.
ENEMY: I am. How did they find the Island?
JACOB: You'll have to ask them when they get here.
ENEMY: I don't have to ask. You brought them here. Still trying to prove me wrong, aren't you?
JACOB: You are wrong.
ENEMY: Am I? They come. They fight. They destroy. They corrupt. It always ends the same.
JACOB: It only ends once. Anything that happens before that is just progress.
ENEMY: Do you have any idea how badly I want to kill you?
JACOB: Yes.
ENEMY: One of these days, sooner or later... I'm going to find a loophole, my friend.
JACOB: Well, when you do, I'll be right here.

And here is the set-up: Locke's backgammon analogy in practice. One white player (Jacob) against one black player (MIB).

In Season 6, "Across the Sea," we learn that Jacob and his brother, MIB, have been on the Island for more than 2000 years. They are somehow "immortal" beings, caused by the psychotic criminality of the Island's protector, Crazy Mother, who killed Claudia, their real Roman mother shortly after childbirth. Crazy Mother made the rule that the brothers could not harm each other. From a mythos, this relationship is a truce among equal Greek or Roman gods. A governor on some special powers that the Island gives its protectors.

In their childhood, MIB finds an Egyptian game, Senet, on the beach. MIB explains that it is a game and that he "just knows" how to play. He agrees to play with Jacob, but only if Jacob doesn't tell their mother because he believes she will take the game away from them.

Mother tells MIB that he is "special." She says that it was she that left the game for him. MIB says that he thought it may have come from a place not on the island, but "across the sea." She tells him that there is nowhere else, that the island is all there is.

MIB asks where they came from, to which Mother replies that the brothers came from her and she came from her mother, who is dead. The boy asks what "dead" means. His mother says that it is something that he will never have to worry about.

Later, MIB and Jacob find hunters on the island. They asked their Mother who these people are, and she replies that they are not supposed to interact with the Others. But later, Jacob makes a choice to stay with Mother while MIB disobeys goes off to the Others to determine if there is a world beyond the Island.

And this break within the family makes Jacob inherit the Island protector role from Crazy Mother. MIB stays with the Others, but tells Jacob that they are greedy, manipulative, untrustworthy and selfish. He explains he stays with them as a means to an end, that is, to leave. He has found knowledge of the Island's light source, and is constructing a wheel in a well in order to leave the Island. But it was always Mother's rule that they could never leave the Island.

It would seem that after Jacob's brother killed Crazy Mother, and Jacob found a "loophole" that killed his brother (throwing him into the light cave), Jacob was filled with remorse and pain. Whatever family he had was gone, and he was left alone on the Island with the Smoke Monster, the evil spirit of his brother.

As a strange means of penance, Jacob brings people from "across the sea" to the Island for the benefit of his dead brother's spirit, who can never leave the Island. It must be because his brother lived with the shipwreck survivors that Jacob thought that bringing other people to island would somehow comfort MIB. It did not. In fact, some would infer that the bringing of other people to the island was the physical manifestation of the boys game of Senet, but with human beings as game pieces.

Jacob, himself, has left the Island in search of suitable "candidates" for Island service, including the Temple priest, Dogen, and the Oceanic 815 survivors he visits in his flashbacks, along with other characters:

Kate and Sawyer are touched by Jacob as children.
Jack, Locke, Jin, and Sun are all touched several years before Flight 815.
Hurley and Sayid are both touched by Jacob after having left the Island.
Ben is touched after stabbing Jacob himself.

Though being an "immortal," Jacob fell upon the tiresome role of Island protector just as his Crazy Mother did in her final days. He needed to escape the physical bond of the Island. He allowed MIB to trick Ben into the statue. He allowed Ben to stab him. The result was that Jacob was transformed into a fully spiritual being like MIB (Hurley would think of him as a ghost). This was Jacob's end game from the beginning: to find a way his brother could kill him so they both could move on, away from the metaphysics of the Island realm, possibly to join their real mother in death.

So what was Jacob's true role in the tale of Flight 815?
It is still unclear. Was he necessary in order to bring the characters of Flight 815 together? His "touch" of the 815ers were made at various times, including after some left the island. So it was not a requirement that Jacob touch them before they could arrive. Did his "touch" actually significantly change a person's character or life choices? No. Was Jacob the Wizard behind the Curtain, manipulating all the characters actions? No, the concept of free will and choice were too strong.

So by the show's conclusion, we did find out about the character Jacob. We learned about his back story with his brother who transformed into MIB. We found out some generalizations about his role, but not about his true powers. Or why he was chosen over his "special" brother to be the island's sole protector of the light source. Or why the Others worshipped him while the Dharma leaders tried to kill him or confine him. And we did not find out the correlation between the imagine/ghost of Christian in the cabin and Jacob himself. Was it MIB manifesting himself or was it Jacob manipulating his candidates?

Who was Jacob? The Island protector.
What was Jacob? An immortal being.
When did Jacob arrive on the Island? More than 2000 years ago.
Where did Jacob come from? A shipwrecked Roman mother, Claudia, who was killed on the Island.
Why was Jacob important to the LOST story?

The last question is really a dead end alley. For if the Jacob-MIB story line did not exist, there were alternative "conflicts" that the 815 survivors would have had to deal with in order for their characters to develop and grow together.