Good and bad people

Several Characters talk of a "Good Family" or "Good People" in the show:

The Others

• Ethan claims in "Maternity Leave", that "they" are "good family": "We are good people, Claire. Good family."

→He refers to The Others as to "one, big family".

• Claire tells Danielle that "She was not like the others, she was good.", referring to the teenage girl she met in the Medical Station. She believes that it was Alexandra Rousseau.

• Goodwin tries to convince Ana-Lucia to release Nathan. He said: "We should let him go. We're not the savages." Savage can be understood as someone who is not a good person; someone who has no moral rules.

• Goodwin explained that he killed Nathan because "Nathan was not a good person".

• All of The Others seem to be self proclaimed 'good people'

• Henry states that John Locke is "one of the good ones" and that Him/The Others sent him to collect/recruit John.

• In Two for the Road, while strangling Ana-Lucia, he tells her that the Others she killed were "good people who were leaving you alone"

• Henry says in Season 2 Finale Live Together, Die alone something like: "We're the good guys, Michael".

See below for Henry Gale's references.

Future probable parents for Aaron

When Richard Malkin was talking about the ones that were going to raise Aaron, he told Claire: "They're good people ". It is not known, whether this was a coincidence or he already referred to "The Others".

Miscellaneous

• In "Fire+Water" Sawyer tells Charlie "I'm not a good man."
• In Outlaws (1x16), Christian Shephard tells Sawyer about his son Jack: "He's a good man, maybe a great one. Right now, he thinks that I hate him."
• In One of Them (2x14), Sayid says: "I was 23 years old when the Americans came to my country. I was a good man. I was a soldier. And when they left I was something different."
• In ...and Found (2x05), the poor man tells Jin, who is working as a hotel doorman: "Thank you -- you're a good man."

Mr. Eko & Henry Gale

If the Others are like "family", Mr. Eko's plead for forgiveness towards Henry Gale may have been part of a tradition. In some cultures, when a murderer kills someone, he is to ask for forgiveness by the family of the murdered person. This is some kind of penance/punishment.

Henry Gale and the Diary

The writer of the Diary (on the official LOST website) refers to Henry Gale as "my brother".

When Sayid threatens to shoot the man pretending to be Henry Gale, he says "I'm not a bad person ."

The list

In The Other 48 Days, Goodwin tells Ana-Lucia that the Others "took only the good and the strong", implying that there is a list of "good people" among the survivors and that the remaining group are not worthy of being taken. They tried to take Eko but he resisted, killing two. The man who posed as Henry Gale claims he was trying to come for Locke because he was also good.

Perhaps the Others, or the man in charge or some other group, selected a number of people from the outside world and coerced them to come to Australia so they would be on flight 815. They wanted these few good people and don't care about the rest. Or perhaps they assessed the survivors quickly and determined which were good within the first few days. Perhaps they took the children because they can be manipulated into being "good".

Children

• The Others seem to consider all children in this bracket.

Theories

• "Good people" might not be about people's natures but about their genes. Hanso has funded research on juxtapositional eugenics and if The Others are a part of Hanso they might be looking with people with certain genes - good people for the research.