[Rausch]

Originally Posted by Red Brooklyn

I was thinking the pool is what healed a person. And because the water was dirty, the pool had lost it's power. Sayid wasn't healed. He died. And the darkness claimed him and brought him back to life.

With Ben, I imagined that the water in the pool was clear. It worked. He was healed, and therefore not claimed. The choices he made were all his own and independent of the healing pool. It was his father's neglect, his guilt about his mother, and his need to belong that lead him to become the power hungry manipulator we've seen. The healing pool took away his innocence only by revealing the power of the island to him at a very young age; before he was ready to understand or handle it.

I think the idea that it is the pool itself - independent of the clarity of the water - that "claims" someone is a really interesting idea. And I hadn't looked at it that way before.

Catalyst.