Did Charlie Pace Win the Race?

It is better to conquer oneself than to win a thousand battles.

-- The Dhammapada


Fulfill something you are able to fulfill, rather than run after what you will never achieve. We can modestly strive to fulfill ourselves and to be as complete a human being as possible, and that will give us trouble enough.

-- C.G. Jung (Tavistock Lectures)

The race to which I refer in the title of this post is the race we all must run: the race to live up to one's full potential before the end of one's life. It's not really a race against others, but a race against oneself - and time, of course. It is a quest fraught with obstacles, both internal and external - the internal ones sometimes being the most difficult to overcome. It's not the thrilling, quasi-glamorous quest of Frodo of the Shire or Luke Skywalker. It is oftentimes filled with the mundane, the banal, the gritty - and sometimes interminable torpor.

It has been called at various times and in various cultures "the hero's journey"; and it involves some type of 'calling', followed by a gauntlet of trials after which the hero achieves the 'boon', or the prize, and often uses this prize to help the wider world - the world outside his own ego, his own personal interests.

The calling can be an external event or person, or it can be an internal yearning or desire. Typically, the awareness of this call - whether or not the hero recognizes it as such - is met with some trepidation, some reluctance to embark on the journey. Leaving one's comfort zone, being drawn out of a comfortable, habitual routine, or being extracted from a life-consuming addiction, can feel almost impossible to do.

But once one commits oneself to the call, one sets out on the perilous path of unknown trials. Typically, however, one receives aid from an older figure: Frodo had Gandalf, Luke had Obi-Wan Kenobi. This figure has an accumulated wisdom, unending patience - and presumably has already undergone his own hero's journey, thus possessing a large measure of empathy. The modus operandi of this guide is not to perform the tasks for the hero, but to teach the hero to do the tasks for himself, to commit his whole being to the process of achieving the goal - only then will the prize be legitimately won.

The story of Charlie Pace in the world of L O S T mirrors just such a hero's journey. Clearly, Charlie's drug addiction has been the biggest obstacle in his life. And it's hard to discern whether or not his self-doubt and apparent cowardice are a result of his addiction, or whether they are personality traits that contributed to his addiction. Tom Clark of The Center for Naturalism and a former research associate for a health and addictions research company in Boston writes:

Poor choices (taking that first, second or third hit of cocaine) certainly figure in the onset of addiction, and choices aren't ordinarily considered part of a disease process. Moreover, poor choices can indeed result from what might be called "personal weaknesses," for instance a genetic susceptibility to addiction related to a particular type of dopamine receptor, or a penchant for risk-taking, whether learned, inherited, or both.

But regardless of the cause or causes of Charlie's addiction, the fact remains that this is the biggest barrier to Charlie realizing his full potential. But the crash on the island provided Charlie with a fresh start, and we could consider this to be Charlie's "hero's call". Of course, at this point, Charlie has no idea what is about to happen to him, and neither do we. And the impetus that begins to draw Charlie out of his drug-induced torpor comes from John Locke.

Locke is Charlie's Gandalf, his Obi-Wan, his guru, his guide. But Charlie is, of course, reluctant to accept the call. One could argue that one might never free oneself from one's holding patterns of life unless knocked out of the trajectory by an external force. Locke is just such a force for Charlie.

Charlie's first challenge is to overcome his addiction, but by his own efforts, his own willpower. After considerable internal struggle, his feelings for Claire and Aaron, and some shady Machiavellian machinations involving Sawyer, Charlie is finally able to move beyond the near-total control his addiction exerted over his life.

Charlie's second main challenge is to overcome what could be perceived as his deficiencies in character: his inferiority complex and the resultant cowardice, or his failure to 'step up to the plate', so to speak.

The philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre had this view of cowardice:

But the existentialist, when he portrays a coward, shows him as responsible for his cowardice. He is not like that on account of a cowardly heart or lungs or cerebrum, he has not become like that through his physiological organism; he is like that because he has made himself into a coward by actions...for what produces cowardice is the act of giving up or giving way; and a temperament is not an action. A coward is defined by the deed that he has done.

If this view is true, then Charlie apparently made great strides in overcoming his cowardice first by killing the Other, Ethan:



Clearly the impetus this time wasn't so much Locke as it was Charlie's feelings for Claire, and his newfound need for redemption - so much so that his killing of Ethan temporarily hurt the larger community of which Charlie is a part. But the hero's journey isn't a straight line of victories; it is an oftentimes circuitous route of alternating successes and failures; but each round of trials eventually serves to 'ratchet up' the overall level of success of the hero's journey and pushes the hero further along toward his goal.

Charlie's second, and final, challenge is to overcome his cowardice while at the same time benefiting the larger group. Unfortunately for Desmond, Charlie's final act of courage begins by preventing Desmond from taking his place in diving down to the Looking Glass station to secure rescue for the survivors.



The end of Charlie's race, his hero's journey, ends of course with his death. That's not what we typically think of as an appropriate ending to a hero story: Frodo destroys the Ring yet returns to his beloved Shire; Luke defeats his near-omnipotent father, not only saving the galaxy, but apparently redeeming his father in the process.

But Charlie can still be viewed as being successful. He has redeemed himself; he has succeeded in doing what Jungian analyst Robert A. Johnson has termed "accomplishing one's death": the idea that one has earned the right to die, one has lived up to one's full potential. If death is viewed as the end of the race, then Charlie earned that victory. Not only that, but Charlie can be viewed as a true hero (as defined by the hero's journey) because he did sacrifice himself for the rest of the group, and he did legitimately earn the prize of turning off the jamming signal in the Looking Glass station, which was a necessary step in securing rescue for the survivors.

Of course, we don't yet know if what Charlie helped to secure was in fact rescue, or a mixed blessing that secured rescue, but may also in fact have caused great harm to come to others. The prize may have come at a great cost; it may have come at a cost greater than it was worth.

But we don't know that yet. We can say at this point that Charlie has overcome himself, he has transcended himself and has truly earned and accomplished his death. Charlie Pace did indeed win the race.













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