ISLAND AS MACHINE

In combing the LOST cemetery like cobwebs on a tombstone, I find this interesting quote:

"The thing that's cool about the Island is that the Island can sort of conjure up these images of great importance from your life. Then the characters on the show have to sort of deal with the consequences. Those visions often provide tests, and those tests are right along the axis of what is most important for the character." -- Carlton Cuse, "The Main Behind the Curtain" commentary.

"The Man Behind the Curtain" is the twentieth episode of Season 3 and the sixty-ninth produced hour of the series as a whole.  After bringing Anthony Cooper's body to Ben,  Locke demands to see Jacob. Locke, having killed his father to gain the group's respect,  demands to know everything about the Island. He tells Ben to start from the beginning. Inside his tent, Ben pours a drink for himself and Locke as they discuss the Others in a little more detail. Ben admits that, although Locke may think Ben is in charge, it is actually Jacob who is in charge of their group. Ben comments that we all answer to someone. Ben says that only he is allowed to see Jacob. Locke is skeptical, but Ben defends himself by saying that the reason Jacob only talks to Ben is that Ben is the only one remaining that was born on the Island. Ben insists that Jacob only tells him what to do and only trusts him. Locke accuses Ben of being the "the man behind the curtain, the Wizard of Oz" and says Ben is a liar. Ben asks Locke what he bases that assumption on and Locke says that if Ben were telling the truth, his hand wouldn't be shaking. Ben looks down at his shaking hand. 

Ben takes Locke to a small cabin in the middle of the night. Ben tells Locke to turn off his flashlight because Jacob hates technology as much as Locke does. As Ben lights the oil lamp that is hanging outside the wooden hut, he warns that after opening the door, there is no turning back. Locke remains determined. Inside, Ben introduces Locke to Jacob and gestures towards an empty chair. There appears to be nobody else in the room but Ben and Locke. The contents of the room are very old; there are jars on a windowsill containing red liquid. Ben proceeds to chat to "Jacob" and argue, while Locke stands in complete disbelief. Locke accuses Ben of "putting on a show," but Ben insists that there is someone sitting in the chair and that Locke is too limited to see him. Locke tells Ben that he is pathetic and turns to leave. As he does, he hears a deep, sepulchral voice saying, "Help me."
Locke asks Ben to repeat himself but Ben says that he didn't say anything. Ben seems shocked that Locke had heard a voice. Locke shines his flashlight onto Ben's face, and as he does so the room starts to shake. Ropes and chains shake on the wall; chairs rock and windows smash. Ben's lantern falls to the floor and catches fire; the fire is quickly extinguished, as if by magic. Ben also appears to shake someone in the chair, telling him to stop and that he has had his fun; immediately after which he is thrown hard against a wall by an unseen force. Locke sees a man sitting in the chair for a brief moment. He stumbles outside in fear and confusion. The chaos stops as quickly as it began. Ben, ashen faced, follows him and hangs up the (now intact) oil lamp outside the house. Locke asks what on earth was in there. Ben simply replies that it was Jacob.

The next morning Ben and Locke walk through the jungle. Ben asks Locke what Jacob said. Locke responds by telling Ben that there is no Jacob, that everything that happened at the cabin was a trick and that he is going to expose Ben as a fraud. Locke also notices that Ben is leading them back by a different path. Ben tells Locke that there's something he wants Locke to see first. Locke says he has seen enough, but they keep moving. On the way, Ben admits that some of the things he has said on the Island were "not the truth." He admits to not having been born on the Island like he said. They finally reach what Ben wanted to show Locke. Locke gazes down into an unfilled  mass grave full of DHARMA skeletons.  Ben explains that the skeletons are the remains of "his people." Ben says they came here seeking harmony, however, they could not even coexist with the original inhabitants of the Island. 

He explains that when it became clear to Ben that one side had to go,  he did what he had to do. He says he was smart enough not to end up in a ditch like the DHARMA Initiative. Ben states that this also makes him smarter than Locke. As Locke spins around and pulls his knife, Ben shoots him in the left abdomen, in the kidney area. Locke falls backwards into the pit of DHARMA corpses. Ben calmly asks what Jacob had said to John. As he lies amongst the corpses, John asks Ben why he did this. Ben says he did it because John "heard him." John manages to say "help me" but Ben doesn't realize that John is repeating Jacob's words. Ben points the gun at an already severely injured Locke and demands to know what Jacob said to him. John raises his hand and says, "He said, 'help me.'" Ben, visibly shaken by these words, replies to Locke that he had better hope that Jacob will help him now. Ben leaves, and Locke is left gasping for breath. 

Meanwhile,  Sawyer returns to camp, already in an uproar over Naomi's comments that the plane was already found with no survivors,  with the tape recorder he got from Locke on Juliet's spying on the camp, causing everyone to finally confront Jack and Juliet. about her intentions.  

The episode did show the dark evil back story of Ben. This episode showed Ben's purge of the Dharma camp, including killing his father on Ben's birthday. It puts forth the theme who can you trust on the island.

Here is how TPTB help explain the darkness of this episode:

1. The island can project images of great importance from character's lives.
2. Then the characters must deal with the consequences of the island's projections.
3. The island's visions provide tests to the characters.
4. The tests are what are most important for the characters.

What I gather from this is that the Island can be considered a machine. It is taking personal information, recreating those personal experiences into projected images in order to test the characters' (will, feelings, emotions, intelligence, spirit, intentions, beliefs or reactions). It could be considered a diagnostic tool, a torture device, a means of punishment, a cruel game or judgment on one's soul. But it seems to be programmed to pull out the best and worst character traits of the people brought to the island. 

It is like some person creating a movie biography of your life, but then put you into a holographic 3D version of it to see how you would react. Then add layers of other people's bio projections to determine whether you can filter out you own "most important" aspects of your life while experiencing the tests of the other people around you.

In that respect, it seems more like a collective dream psychosis experiment. The variables are the subjects personal backgrounds. The island is the stage to test behavioral aspects of people with deep emotional scares, criminal behavior tendencies and mental illnesses. 

But to what end does the Island machine serve? It could be a cosmic sorting machine like one of those old room size IBM computers that spits out punch cards. It could be a real world computer game simulation like Westworld but using people's own memories against them. It could be what the Dharma Initative was all about in the very beginning: testing the end of humanity (the Valenzetti Equation, a large doomsday-predicting formula) but in a small scale, contained experiment on the island.