"Not Penny's Boat".
We know him by these three words. Words of warning. Words of caring. Words of sacrifice. He is the heroin addict who mustered the courage to defy his body's demand for the drug. He conquered fear of death to swim thirty metres below the waves, to his destiny, to his greatest and final accomplishment.
Tragic life meets tragic end. He gave warning, but no one listened, and the mercenaries came. Greater love hath no man than this--but what do we make of a heroic death whose final plea goes unheeded? Claire would never again take her soul mate's hand. Liam would never reconcile with his younger brother.
Perhaps we believe Charlie's heroism wasted in alarms disregarded, but if so we have missed the point of his life and death. His greatest accomplishment was not the final notice of a three-word warning, but the final entry on a five-sentence list. But neither Greatest Hit nor greatest sacrifice went unheeded. We know this because Liam was not Charlie's brother. Sayid was Charlie's brother. "Think not of him as slain; nay, he lives," the Quran tells us of Sayid. "He who believes in me will live, even though he dies," the Gospel of John tells us of Charlie. He lives, not only in memory, but on the Island, in eternity. He is not tragic death, but heroic life. Charlie is the soul of the Island.
