FRIENDSHIP

“ The only way to have a friend is to be one. ”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson 

Maybe it is simple as simple as forcing carbon into iron to forge steel, in that the LOST characters needed to be pressured into forging new friendships in order to survive their ordeals on the island.

But then again, why should it matter whether the characters created new bonds of friendship? Just because one shares a harrowing event, that does not make one friends forever.  Human nature is more complex.

"Our Mutual Friend" was a LOST episode and it also the last completed novel written by Charles Dickens.   The book is largely believed to be the most challenging that Dickens produced and is known for the seemingly rushed ending, which is ironic since many critics have the same feeling about the LOST ending.

The novel is about the son of a tycoon who must marry a specific woman to inherit his father's fortune. He shuns this, leaves, and is presumed drowned, which is untrue. He returns under a new identity, gets hired at a company related to his father, marries the same woman on his own merit, not on his father's riches, and only afterwards, assumes his original identity and inherits his fortune.

In the series, Dickens book was the last anchor in Desmond's life. He used the book as his own personal mental life raft when things would get to the point of despair.  He carried with him a hardback "The Penguin English Library" edition of Our Mutual Friend that was held closed with rubber bands (which contradicts the assertion that he did not read it before). Desmond intended to open it as the last book he would ever read.  Presumably knowing the significance of the book to him, Penny placed a love letter in the book, intending Desmond to read it in his deepest moments of despair while incarcerated in military prison. However, he never found the letter there, as he had checked the book into prison storage with the rest of his personal inventory, and it was therefore not returned until his release. In the Hatch, when he was at a suicidal level,  he finally found and read Penny's letter. It gave him hope. It gave him drive for rescue.

We do not see any other character having such a moment of turning a relationship into a deep, devoted friendship with another character. At most times, the main characters merely tolerated the presence of their group members. No one ever said to another "when we get off this island, we should go do XYZ together."  Even the couples who were stranded on the island came to it with elements of being estranged by their life's circumstances. Rose was dying of cancer, something that made Bernard mad. Sun was trying to escape her marriage to Jin. Even siblings Boone and Shannon had a rocky relationship prior to landing on the island.

In trying to reconcile The End, it is still hard to fathom why just those people were in the church.  Put it another way by example: in the sideways dream world, Sawyer was best friends with Miles. But in the end, Miles was not included in the church. Was it solely because Miles was not Jack's friend?

If so, one can debate whether everyone in the church was Jack's "friend."  Locke was more a leadership rival than a friend (even though in his bearded Jack depressed state Jack admitted Locke was correct). Sawyer and Jack never really got along. It was more of a truce. Jack had the least amount of contact with Desmond, so you can't call Dez a mentor. Jack found Boone to be an annoyance when he said he was doing CPR wrong and sent him off to find a pen. Shannon never truly interacted with Jack on any of his goals because she was a self-centered island of her own. Jack had a mutual respect for Sayid and his skills. But they were never on the same page when it came to dealing with opponents (generally: Sayid was torture-death; Jack was for truce-diplomacy). Even Hurley was more a patient than a good friend.

The situation is that all these lonely characters came to the island with deep personal flaws. They had a horrific, shared experience on the island. Did it teach the people to learn to trust other people? Not really. There was more betrayal, back stabbing and self-preservation tacts throughout the story lines. Did it teach the characters to work together to achieve a mutual goal? Yes and no. Yes, in the basic sense of gathering food and shelter to survive. No, as in the core concept of rescue since only a handful of the survivors actually "made it" home. In the post-island life time of the survivors, did any of them stay together? The series ended without a clue about what happened next after Flocke was allegedly killed by Jack and Kate. But it seems doubtful that the final survivors stayed together as friends post-island since they wound up with people who did not make it off the island.

Friendship is the emotions, connections, shared experiences and conduct (treatment) between friends; it is a relationship of mutual trust and support between people. Did many of the introverted characters try to be friends with their fellow doomed passengers? Yes, Hurley was more gregarious on the island than at home. Locke was more forceful and take charge than in his measly office life. But many of the main characters never changed their behavior: Kate was still manipulative and trusted only her urge to run; Sawyer was still a con artist only looking for his own well being. And Rose and Bernard's friendly personalities changed by being around the main characters so much so that they became a reclusive hermits. They did not trust Jack or Locke or support the group dynamic.

So was friendship the key to unlocking the plot of LOST? Probably, in a very diluted sense that it is the weak foundation to support the forced "happy ending" to the series in the church.