#the team as the pack... safety in numbers... hmmmmm

[poemtoken]

Travis fares well in the wilderness despite being one of only three and then two male figures after Javi’s death (we know this because he is the only one to make it out) by resigning himself to passivity. He and Ben exist as their own subgroup of outsiders to the team by way of the fact that they are outnumbered, but they also exists as foils of each other in their chosen methods of survival. Travis survives by assimilating into the wilderness and becoming passive in the face of violence. Ben chooses opposition and the maintenance of his own humanity over conformity.

The nature of the wilderness provides only one of two answers to the question of isolation: conformity or death, dealers choice! To conform is to survive but to lose touch with humanity and morality in the spiral of starvation because staying alive matters more than doing what is morally sound. To find a vocal justification for the unjustifiable as the steaks increase, and to be swallowed whole and enmeshed in the world and belief system of the wilderness. To isolate or deviate or disobey is to face its consequences. Jackie refuses to conform post doomcoming, mocking the gift of the bear. She then freezes. Javi leaves and upon return extends humanity to Nat in the gift of a place to hide only to drown leading her to safety and away from the impending inhumanity of the hunt.

Ben’s refusal to conform is so interesting to me for the contrast it creates in him. Conformity and cowardice, feel however you please about his proclivity for these traits, are hallmarks of his characterization made much more interesting by the fact that his defaulting to them is far from baseless. His cowardice, like Travis’s passivity is a mechanism for survival but more importantly, this is not exclusive to his time in the wilderness. Cowardice has always kept him alive. His rejection of conformity is different. For a brief period it is his saving grace, but ultimately it leads to his death in a culture of join vs. die.

His whole life pre-crash is spent making the safe decision in cycles of deprivation and self-retreat. An ever present default to palatability and inconspicuousness, not to perpetually worry or weigh the cost of social ostricization and all the ways it could ruin him. He is not himself, but he is safe. His separation from the group is the first time in his life when conformity is no longer synonymous with survival.

He knows that being their coach will not save him, and ponders his value to the group after being pushed out of his role as their authority figure which is deeply intertwined with his own loss of ability. He grapples with the notion that if he cannot be useful to them in the way that is expected of everyone else, he may not be useful at all. (I was scared, that I—maybe was next. That you guys didn’t need me anymore…) that could very well cost him his life. His trial is about many things, one of which being that he helped himself by leaving when he couldn’t help the team.

Return in a death sentence. He remains unchanged and frozen in time at the very moment he saw the pile of clothes and butchered remains of the youngest of the group. It’s the whole reason he kidnapped Mari (You guys killed and ate Javi, you really telling me I wouldn’t be next?)

Even more so, his refusal to conform is ultimately also a death sentence. He knows and has seen too much without giving into It’s urge and the team knows this. Shauna said it best: He’s not one of us and he hates that. It terrifies him. We are here, and alive because we fought to be here, and we fought to stay alive. His status as an outsider, the only outsider, makes him an enemy regardless of the fact that he is fighting to stay alive, too. His survival looks different than everyone else’s. To the group, it’s more-so about that fact that he isn’t part of the in-group. He is an outsider; becoming the carcass of the bear himself as the team becomes the pack of wolves he once warned them of in their cruel and inhumane treatment of him.

Cowardice was and remained, for him, a mechanism of survival. Fleeing and hiding had always come naturally in a world that expected it of him. Going against the status-quo in contrast to his usual method of survival and straying from passivity, taking action, only made danger and death more imminent in the end. It wasn’t the right choice, but it felt like the safe choice. The irony of it all is that the same as he thought he was making the safe choice in boarding the plane rather than confronting the realities of how authenticity would change his life, he believes he will once again find safety in his departure, only for his isolation to be the final nail in the coffin. Safe is never really safe.