STOP TRYING

There is no failure except in no longer trying. There is no defeat except from within, no insurmountable barrier except our own inherent weakness of purpose. — Elbert Hubbard

Despite all of his hope and desire, O6 John Locke gave up. In the hotel room in LA, he decided to end his existence because he could not convince any of his fellow survivors to return to the island. He was a failure. There was nothing left for him to do.

Ghost Christian a/k/a MIB/Smokey told John when he was about to turn the FDW that he had to bring all the people back in order to save the island. The island was more precious to Locke than his friends. He felt a connection with it. He knew of its magic. He wanted to protect it. When he asked how he could do it, MIB replied that Locke would have to die.

The island put into Locke's head the solution: death. Death would solve Locke's problems. 

When Locke was at his wit's end in the hotel room, he had lost everything. Helen, his former girlfriend was dead. Abaddon, his driver-advisor, was gunned down in the street. Locke was once again a wheelchair bound loser. He had no purpose going forward if he could not complete his mission.

The irony is that Ben saved his life. Ben interrupted John's suicide. He comforted John and told him that he would help him. Everything would be alright. Locke believed him. And when discussing the next step, Locke told Ben he should go see Eloise because she would know what to do next. At that moment, jealous rage boiled up in Ben. Ben strangled Locke because the name of Eloise was his trigger flash point.

It makes sense that Ben was jealous of Locke if Eloise now trusted him. If Ben and Locke wanted to get back to the island to be its true leader, Ben would not want to be a second banana. No, suddenly pathetic Locke became a major obstacle in Ben's path back to the top. 

As another ironic plot twist, Ben's killing of Locke actually made Locke's mission a success. Locke's death suddenly moved Jack to drastically change his behavior. He took Locke's mission to bring everyone back. It drove him mad. And just as Jack was nearing the end of his rope, Ben intervened to manipulate everyone at the marina into just hearing out Eloise at the church. As a result, most of the O6 people met Eloise for the first time. But Ben was still brooding, because now Jack had taken Locke's place as a potential rival.

On the island, Ben only found some peace when he stop trying to be a leader. Even after he was found to be Jacob's killer, he was forgiven by one of Jacob's followers, Ilana.

Ilana, being the only remaining member of Jacob's followers, then led a new group composed of  Sun, Ben and Frank.  The newly-formed group decided that they should trek to the Temple but before they left they decided to bury the body of Locke. Later, they rescused Miles from the massacre. Ben was separated and attacked by the Smoke Monster. They rejoined at the beach with Jack, Richard and Hurley.  When Ilana found out that it was Ben who killed Jacob, she ordered him to dig his own grave. While he was doing so, MIB appeared to Ben and tried to get him to join his group. Ben ran into the jungle to escape Ilana, resulting in a standoff in which Ben apologized for killing Jacob, stating that he will go with "Locke" because no one else will have him. Ilana then accepted Ben into the group, thereby letting him leave. At this point, Ben became a follower. The burdens of leadership faded away.



That night, the group discussed their next move around a beach campfire. Ilana told them that Jacob had told her that Richard would know what to do. Richard denied this, and angrily walked into the jungle. After following him, Hurley helped him communicate with the ghost of his dead wife telling him that if the Man in Black leaves the Island, they will all go to hell.

If this was true, then Locke's purpose in dying was correct. They key for any island group to get to heaven, i.e. avoid hell, was to keep MIB on the island. It was a test. A test of wills. A test of friendship. A test of trust. A test of team work. A test of spirit. In Locke's own death, he gave others  the will power to carry on his mission to save the island (defeating MIB). It sounds like a simplistic video game final level conquest, but if dead souls true mission was to defeat the devil to release their sins (and the chains of being themselves trapped in the sideways purgatory) to move on to heaven.

Death was the solution for Jack as well. When he closed his eyes after defeating MIB, he had them opening in the sideways world.  His destiny of moving on in the after life was the same destiny of John Locke, except they did not know it until the very end.