Why smoke follows you around a fire

[Otherbrother]

I never watched Lost but my understanding is that campfire smoke chasing people around was quite a problem, especially for those that were morally compromised.

The monster is a metaphor for people’s troubled pasts. The more morally questionable actions a person has committed in the past the larger the monster will be for them. When you run from these past events, they will eventually catch up to you. But if you face your problems or the Monster and come to terms with them, they seem less daunting and scary. It is not necessarily the monsters purpose to make you face your past, it simply derives it’s power through these terms.