jack's need to find the answer vs. juliet's need to look over the edge
lost's tragic, (probably) autistic doctors, part three
alright gang, let's put some analysis weight behind the word "tragic" in this series title :')
in part one, we discussed several similarities between jack and juliet through the lens of some autistic traits, and in part two we discussed how gender presentation/societal expectations could cause other autistic traits to show up differently in the two characters.
i don't have much more autism-specific analysis to add here, but will reiterate two points i brought up in parts one and two as they'll also be useful for understanding how these characters reach their respective tragic ends:
the metaphor of viewing jack and juliet's relationship like two mirrors facing each other
jack and juliet's shared desire/struggle to find belonging
so, first off: titles. the title of this installment, the title of this series. the title of "doctor." this is an essential title for both jack and juliet, and i do mean "essential" quite literally. this title drives not only their careers, but their personalities, their strengths and weaknesses, their problem-solving approaches, and so on.
their very essence is encapsulated in this title, but in the end, that doesn't tell us much about them on its own. we use the term "doctor" to refer to all manner of career pathways and advanced degrees. in her infinite wisdom, juliet makes this point clear when she counters being referred to as a doctor by saying "[she's] really more of a researcher."
so what's the difference, between a (medical) doctor and a researcher? despite all the possible implications of referring to someone with the title of doctor, i'd imagine most people would think of a medical doctor when i use that word. so let's look to the dictionary to understand the former.
while the definition of "doctor" sounds a bit nefarious...
(verb) change the content or appearance of (a document or picture) in order to deceive; falsify.
...we can apply a more neutral connotation to understand this profession as one of diagnosing, and ultimately fixing. making right.
sound like anyone we know?
meanwhile, research takes a different mindset. every null hypothesis you prove false leads to several new alternative hypotheses. you're never really done, because there isn't "one answer" in research. it takes keen observation, and intellectual stamina/humility, and a willingness to try. a willingness to ask "why," rather than to solely insist on understanding "how."
in part two, i discussed juliet's pattern of impulsive behavior (such as chugging the juice richard gives her at the airport) in the context of autistic meltdowns. i also think this tendency is what makes her such a good researcher. while on the surface juliet might seem like an obvious "woman of science," she is clearly willing and able to take things on faith. this also differentiates her from jack as a character; despite their many similarities, juliet does not possess jack's need to understand or identify the answer.
in fact, in the flashback scene we get of juliet as a child in the season five finale, she makes the opposite claim very explicitly:
"i don't want to understand!"
as two of my favorite juliet understanders (hehe) (@lost-inanotherlife and @ginawankenobi) have pointed out, there is also a gendered/self-deprecating element to the way juliet's career is introduced to us. being a surgeon isn't "superior" to being a researcher; both are necessary roles in the medical sciences and come with their own difficulties. but more societal reverence is generally ascribed to the practice of surgery, and it's a role people might be more likely to associate with traits like leadership and strength, at least as compared to the slower, quieter, messier practice of research.
"i'm not a leader, mr. alpert; i'm a mess."
we left off part two with juliet just having displayed some excellent leadership skills... notably, while performing surgery on jack. by the end of season four, we'll see jack finally getting rescued (with only five of his people with him), and juliet missing out on yet another chance to escape the island. we see jack failing to live up to the promise he made her, and we already know that this failure (among other things) is going to drive him into a deep depression within a few years.
meanwhile, juliet gets a new life on the island, making good on the bad hand she got dealt. she has friends, a job free from the baggage of her traumatic experiences with ed and ben, and, as i mentioned in part two, it seems likely that as sawyer ascends to a position of leadership within the dharma initiative, juliet would operate as his advisor and confidant (like many women do with their male, leader partners in societies where women cannot occupy leadership positions themselves, which seems to be the case for dharma). she has experience living in the barracks and an insider's understanding of the "hostiles," both of which would constitute valuable insight for dharma's head of security.
as discussed in part one, jack's projection of his desire to belong onto juliet is ultimately what enables his (woefully brief) "golden age" as the crash survivors' leader at the end of season three. however, juliet's ability to find belonging and esteem within dharma is not reliant on jack or any projection of her own issues onto him. AND, jack is absolutely Going Through It back in the real world, once more projecting his desire to return to the island ONTO juliet as a sort of remix of his need to save her (which of course, is really jack's need to save himself). but this time, juliet doesn't need or want saving. our two mirrors are out of balance. when they reunite, that imbalance presents as tension that has nowhere to climb but up.
as soon as the gang returns, juliet clocks where things are going. this is shown largely to us through the scene in which she's watching jack and kate out the window and sawyer asks her "what's on TV?"
i won't spend too much time discussing the significance of this scene overall, but would be remiss not to reference this incredible series for those who yearn to sink their teeth into it as much as i do.
for the purposes of this post, what's most crucial in understanding this scene is putting it in context of our mirror metaphor. if our two mirrors are out of balance, maybe all the "meat" of the light and energy that was previously bouncing back and forth between them is starting to coalesce within jack, giving juliet an opportunity to become a spectator to a dynamic in which she used to be a more active participant. (also, what is a television but a "black mirror?")
before long, this tension crashes in the form of our first jack/juliet collision, when she confronts him after he refuses to help save ben and calls out the hypocrisy and projection in his stated reasons for returning to the island.
okay, now let's move on to the bomb :')
the period between the scene of juliet's confrontation of jack and the moment when she decides she's going to help him detonate the hydrogen bomb is difficult to analyze, since like most people i really didn't appreciate the return of a love triangle with kate. three years have passed, and these are grown adults. it's just really difficult for me to buy as a viewer, and the lost writers themselves have admitted it wasn't their best moment. but i'm going to give the canon events as much credence as i can within the analytical framework we've established in this series.
juliet is insecure, and prone to self-destruction when things are getting out of hand. we know this. we also know that she can see the beginning of the end of the life she and sawyer have built in dharma. rather than her next "meltdown" coming about specifically due to her jealousy of kate, i think it's more likely a result of losing so much control and agency so quickly. i think she's also engaging in a fair bit of projection/externalization of that loss of control onto sawyer, sort of like her own version of what jack did when he externalized his fear of the appendectomy onto kate in season four.
daniel is the physicist in the group, but his reasoning for detonating the bomb really has nothing to do with science at all. instead, his "variable" theory is wound up entirely in his grief over losing charlotte. but i imagine in part based on the credibility of his expertise, jack is able to latch onto the idea of the bomb as a "scientific" solution to all his problems. hit the reset button, and try again. simple enough! for juliet though, i don't think precise reasoning and rational defense of the bomb as a solution is a necessary part of her decision equation. it's another moment of her self-destructive impulsivity colliding with the island's forces and will, just like when she chugged the juice.
once juliet changes her mind about the bomb, our mirrors appear to be back in sync. however, the tension is still there, and still plenty dangerous--even explosive. *especially* when you enter a hydrogen bomb into the equation (even just the core). at least one of them is going to have to die in the process; there's just way too much potential energy and it's resonating between them too rapidly.
two things are particularly interesting to me about how the incident itself plays out: for one, juliet is DRAGGED over the edge of the swan abyss, but in the end she DECIDES to let go of sawyer's hand and let herself fall. and then when she wakes up underground later, she DECIDES to detonate the bomb herself.
for those first few dragging moments, all her morbid curiosity comes back to haunt her, and i'm sure she saw every juice-chugging-adjacent moment of her life flashed before her eyes. but she still accepts her fate, and still uses the last remnants of her physical strength to see through their mission to the bitter end.
secondly, jack ends up having to take the bomb detonation on faith. he drops it down the chasm, but everything that happens after that is out of his hands. he had no idea whether it had detonated on impact, and would have had no idea that their fate was left up to juliet if she hadn't lived long enough to tell sawyer what happened.
jack begins the experiment with the bomb, but juliet becomes the catalyst necessary to finish it. in doing so, she also becomes the catalyst of jack's transformation from a man of science into a man of faith, since he HAS to let go of her. he failed to save her multiple times, and then he got her killed. that's that. there's nothing he can do to change it. and at the same time, he's lost his second mirror. he can't project onto juliet, he can't project onto kate, he can't project onto anyone. he has to embody all the energy that once had been shared--however unevenly--and i'd argue that this is a key element in jack learning that he does, indeed, have what it takes. that's a lot to hold, maybe more than he's ever tried to hold before.
(one thing about juliet, she had what it took. imo, you don't smash a hydrogen bomb with a fucking rock if you don't have what it takes.)
jack doesn't die during the incident, but in a way he's been dead ever since he got up on that bridge. in part, the bomb was another manifestation of his suicidality. the cataclysm of juliet's demise gives jack a reason to stay alive, at least long enough to accept the role as the island's protector, kill the man in black (with a crucial assist from kate), and halt the island's destruction. he ends up underground just like juliet, doomed just like juliet, but his experience of that doom couldn't be more different. he's laughing, bathed in incandescent light, and learning something new about himself.
and the parallel differences don't end there: juliet dies in sawyer's arms, comforted by the belonging she craved for so long and finally found, even if only for a short while. meanwhile, jack dies alone (well, almost... thank god for vincent <3). both of them go out looking content, but their contentedness is sad to us for disparate reasons.
so, we could call all of season six a last gasp gifted to jack by juliet, but within that series of events there's another, subtler last gasp for which he has her to thank.
to close this series out, let's talk about our beloved appendectomy, one more time.
all things considered, jack's a pretty lucky duck. he gets a life-saving 2-for-1 on this surgery. REALLY not a bad deal, for a procedure performed on the beach by torchlight, by someone who's "really more of a researcher."
not only does juliet save jack's life by performing the surgery itself in season four, but the absence of jack's appendix is what allows him to survive long enough after being stabbed by the man in black to save the island (and, therefore, the world). otherwise, he would've bled out too quickly, and everything would've fallen into ruin.
that pesky little vestigial organ almost killed our hero twice, and both close calls are staved off by the surgical skills of a woman who doesn't even totally consider herself a doctor, let alone a leader! i mean, talk about misplaced insecurity! when they meet up in that church i very much hope that jack took the opportunity to tell juliet how much of a hero she was in her own right, and how little he could've accomplished without her expertise and determination. and in case he didn't, I'M gonna do a little projecting of my own and beam that message into the universe for juliet to pick up on!!!
thank you so so much for reading along everyone! :) i hope you enjoyed this extended look into the minds and lives of two very fucked-up people who are very destined to be divorced from one another <33
(speaking of, let me tag in what i consider the spiritual successor to this series, or @obsessivedaydreamer's jack/juliet flash-sideways fic, "Across Our Great Divide." a true masterpiece, and very necessary reading to understand our repo divorcees!!!!)
