Charlie Pace, Great Man

A while back, I read a piece on a Lost website that attempted to categorize the various male characters on the show as either "good" men or "great" men. The criteria was somewhat vague, and I don't really remember how the writer placed most of the characters, but what he said about Charlie has stuck with me all this time. He said that Charlie was a "good" man because he always strove for a comfortable life where he was loving to those close to him, always loyal and caring, but never extraordinary. This stuck with me because I think Charlie Pace was indeed a great man. He was never ordinary. In fact, whenever he tried to be, he failed. For some people, the "good" life is perfectly fine, even noble. But Charlie couldn't just live quietly with Claire and Aaron. He was always meant to be something more, even if it cost him happiness and, ultimately, his life.

Greatness is a hard concept to nail down. What separates the great from the good? Like porn, you know it when you see it. I know Springsteen's Born to Run is great. Michael Jordan, great. My dad's smoked pork, great. Dick Jauron, not great. Harry Reid, not great. Nickelback, definitely not great. But great things share a common thread - they go above and beyond what is expected, an unavoidable ambition that you can't help but admire. They take risks. They accept the possibility of failure or worse.

Although "Fire+Water" might not be the best episode of the series (it's the one time in the whole show that I despise John Locke. He can't be punching Charlie! He's not a violent guy! Let's just pretend that never happened and move on...), the dream sequence at the beginning where Charlie gets the piano for Christmas as a young boy shows that he always had tremendous pressure on him to lift his family out of poverty with his music. While Liam might have been the charismatic front man, Charlie was a gifted musician. The Paces were depending on him to save them. This was the path Charlie needed to travel, and it was put in front of him from the beginning. He wouldn't be following in his father's foodsteps as a butcher. Sure, that's a perfectly respectable career, but there's nothing extraordinary about it. Charlie had bigger plans.

The Charlie Pace story is loaded with instances of heroism. In "The Moth", Charlie risks his life to save Jack after he was trapped in the caves. "Greatest Hits" showed him chasing off a mugger attacking Nadia in a London ally. When Aaron was kidnapped by Rousseau in "Exodus", Charlie did not hesitate to run into the jungle after them. He even let Sayid light his face on fire instead of turning back! Hardcore, man.

Those examples don't even include Charlie's finest hour - sacrificing himself in the Looking Glass station so his friends could get off the island. Despite Desmond's best efforts, Charlie was doomed to die, and he knew it. He had to courage to accept his inevitable death for the benefit of everyone else. Jack couldn't talk him out of it. Des couldn't talk him out of it. This was his burden, and he would bear it. So he swam down to the hatch, into the room with the blinking yellow light. He flipped the switch. The light turned off. He drowned. This moment, more than the drugs or DriveShaft, defined Charlie Pace.

Nothing ordinary about that.