On the final
episode of the first season of
Survivor (AKA
Survivor: Borneo) on
CBS, each member of the jury was allowed to ask a question of the two remaining Survivors to help them in their
decision. The jury was made up of contestants who had already been voted out of the game. Susan Hawk, a 38-year old truck driver who made made it to the final four,
binged on food and made herself ill the day before this episode was taped. On the day of the taping, fueled by
coffee and cigarettes, she discarded her prepared speech thanking her family and
impromptu, said these words:
I have no questions. I have statements. Rich, you're an arrogant, pompous,
human being. But I admire your frankness with it. You have worked hard to get
where you're at and you started working way before you come to the island. So
with my work ethic background, I give credit that to you. But on the other hand,
your inability to admit your failures without going into a whining speech makes
you a loser in life.
Kelly, the raft persona queen. You did get stomped on, on national TV by a city
boy that never swam, let alone been in a woods or jungle or rowed a boat in his
life. You sucked on that game.
I was your friend at the beginning of this, really thinking that you were a true
friend. I was willing to be sitting there and put you next to me. At that time you
were sweeter than me. I'm not a very openly nice person. I'm just frank, forward, and
tell you the way it is. To have you sit next to me, and me lose $900,000 just to
stomp on somebody like this.
As the game wore on and the two tribes merged, you lied to me, which showed
me the true person you are. You're two faced and manipulative to get anywhere you
are at in life. That's why you fail all the time. So at that point in the game, I
decided to go out to my alliance with my family and just hold my dignity and
values in check and hoping that I hadn't lost too many of them and play the game
as long as possible and hang in there as long as possible.
But Kelly. Go back a couple of times when Jeff said to you, 'What goes around,
comes around.' It's here. You will not get my vote. My vote will go to Richard.
And I hope that is the one vote that makes you lose the money. If it's not, so be
it. I'll shake your hand and go on from here.
But if I would ever pass you along in
life and you are laying there dying of thirst, I would not give you a drink of water. I
would let the vultures take you and do whatever they want with you with no ill regrets.
I plead to the jury tonight to think a little bit of the island we have been on . This
island is full of, pretty much, only two things - snakes and rats. And in the end of
Mother Nature, we have Richard The Snake, who knowingly went after prey; and
Kelly, who turned into the rat that ran around like rats do on this island, trying to
run from the snake. I believe we owe it to the island spirits we have come to
know to let it end in the way that Mother Nature intended: For the snake to eat
the rat.
Sources:
Joan Whitely, "Susan Hawk seeks her next adventure in Las Vegas." Las Vegas Review-Journal. 17 July 2001. <http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2001/Jul-17-Tue-2001/living/16485172.html> (14 October 2003)