As a child, Jack steps into a fight when his best friend is getting beat up on the playground. Christian, Jack’s father, later comments that Jack wasn’t being hurt in the struggle, so he never should have tried to save his friend. It’s not always possible to win the fight, according to Christian Shephard, so it’s ultimately best just to be able to wash one’s hands of any blame at the end of the day. Jack apparently takes this lesson to heart, because he repeats many of his father’s sentiments on the island as an adult.
Jack’s first instinct has always been to help others, into the water to save a drowning woman the same way he jumped up on the playground. But when Jack steps back and considers the situation, he just gets too scared of the consequences of being a leader. The drowning woman ends up dying in the water when Jack decides to save Boone first, so Jack just shuts down altogether. When the water in the camp begins to run out, Jack refuses to make a decision about what should be done.
Locke tells Jack later in the episode that a leader can’t lead until he knows where he’s going. Jack clearly doesn’t know where he’s going yet, as he spends most of the episode stumbling through the jungle looking for his dead father. Jack is literally lost. It's not until Jack finds out his purpose on the island--as one of Jacob's candidates--that he becomes a truly effective leader.
Jack’s attempt to save a drowning woman and the search for water are the two primary plotlines in the episode, continuing the heavy use of water as a symbol for renewal in the series. Jack is the one who finds the water at the end of the episode, allowing the rest of the survivors to drink of it and also experience change on the island. He does not leave the camp looking for water, but stumbles onto it by accident. Similarly, he stumbles into his position of leadership on the island accidentally, but his commitment will be tested many more times throughout the series.
The water is a sign of change (or stagnation) among other characters, as well. Michael tells Walt not to drink ocean water at the beginning of the episode. He hopes that Walt will not be on the island long enough for it to make a lasting imprint on his son; the desire to give Walt a life free of the island’s grip will define most of Michael’s decisions until he and Walt leave it.
Jin tells Sun that she looks dehydrated, but Sun responds that she does not need water, unwilling to change on the island and come clean to her husband. She eventually thanks Jin for providing her with water, to which he comments that this is a husband’s duty. It is only with Jin’s help that Sun is ever able to achieve meaningful change in her life, even though she constantly seeks independence from him.
Charlie’s encounters with the water also say a great deal about his character. Charlie seems like a coward to many, but is a brave and selfless individual when it comes to protecting those to whom he is the closest. The bond he forms with Claire in the first few episodes is enough to convince him that she is worth protecting, and he goes to great lengths in this episode to provide Claire with water. Even though Claire acknowledges that she is a time bomb of responsibility and risk, Charlie already cares about her.
He is afraid to take a plunge into the water to help a nameless survivor in the beginning of the episode, instead seeking Jack's help. The only times he eventually swims in the series are in attempts to save Claire. In “Flashes Before Your Eyes,” Desmond saves Claire because Charlie would have attempted to do so himself, at great personal risk. Eventually, he agrees to dive into the water and give his own life in “Through the Looking Glass,” also in the hope of providing rescue for Claire. Charlie is a character who feels intense attachment to those he cares about, and Claire is the first character for whom this attachment is evident.
Running concurrently to this search for water is Jack’s search for his father in the jungle, which we now know is a manifestation of the smoke monster. The smoke monster appears to be able to take the form of anyone who has died, whether or not their body is located on the island. When it manifests itself as John Locke, it does not inhabit Locke's body physically, only taking his form as a separate entity. For this reason, it can be assumed that Christian’s body is still somewhere; it was probably flung from the coffin as the plane crashed, explaining the white tennis hanging from a tree in "Pilot."
In “The Last Recruit,” the Lockeness Monster tells Jack that he appeared as Christian so that he could guide Jack to water. He is trying to gain Jack’s trust, but this simply is not true. The Man in Black, as Christian, leads Jack to fall down a hill in the jungle and eventually almost off of a cliff. Even though the smoke monster is not able to kill Jacob’s candidates directly, this is his first attempt to do so indirectly. Rather than scan Jack and try to use him as a pawn in the struggle for the island, the Man in Black instead attempts to cause Jack’s death. Unlike Locke, who is blinded by his faith in the island, Jack is unable to be so easily manipulated. How fitting that Jack is eventually the one who kills the smoke monster by throwing him off a cliff.
The episode culminates in Jack’s famous “live together, die alone” speech, an awe-inspiring moment in which he puts a lot of survivors at ease. This guy is pretty cool.
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