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Lost: “The Brig”
Posted by J. Wood, May 4th, 2007
69 Comments
Filed under: Contributors.
Anthony Cooper had a problem: Why be virtuous when no one is watching?
John Locke had a problem: Anyone who believed something without having sound reason for that belief was more interested in his own desires than he was in truth.
Anthony Cooper and John Locke had a problem: Locke wasn't dead, as Cooper had reason to believe, and Cooper didn't have the moral sense to be as virtuous as Locke wanted to be.
These are some of the subtexts crawling through the jungle undergrowth of the nineteenth episode of season three, "The Brig." This was the first episode of the season to contain only island flashbacks, similar to the second season finale, and the tripartite narrative — Locke's story with the Others, Locke getting Sawyer to kill Cooper, and the happy campers hiding Naomi Dorrit from Jack — each advanced a different perspective on trust and manipulation. With the bevy of referenced philosophers interested in social organization, like Cooper and Locke, and the introduction of a character whose name recalls Charles Dickens' serial satire of mid-19th C. government, we may be reaching a breaking point in the social experiments occurring on the island; the Others have tramped off to who knows where, and the collectivist keepers of the beach flame are starting to turn on each other (or at least their previous leader).
Although the three narrative threads are fairly distinct, the general themes of this episode permeated throughout. Each of the threads opens on the eye-shot, but rather than the single, opening eye we're used to, it's two open eyes, and twice they're Locke's. It's almost as if we're being told his eyes are now open. What are they open to? Locke was once the hapless rube, inadvertently fouling up whatever relationships he was in and never quite attaining the self-awareness to learn from past mistakes. He was the kid who tried too hard to be liked. But something has shifted deep within him. After taking on Charlie, then Walt, and then Boone (and to an extent Mr. Eko) as protégés, Locke has moved on to Sawyer. In the past Locke taught by telling; now he does it by showing, by taking his charge through an experience. In a way, Sawyer's experience is helping him to become more Cooper-like — not Locke's father, but the philosopher taught by the 17th C. Locke. The philosopher John Locke was associated with three different Anthony Coopers, the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Earls of Shaftesbury. In 1666 the philosopher became the secretary and personal physician for the 1st Earl, and once saved his life in an emergency surgery. The elder Cooper was a political high roller and one of the richest men in England; he was affiliated with the colonization of North America, and employed Locke to write the first fundamental constitution of the Carolinas. When Shaftesbury's grandson came along in 1671, Anthony Cooper the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, grandpa Shaftesbury put philosopher Locke in charge of the 3rd Earl's education.
The 3rd Earl became a decent philosopher in his own right, and is noted for being the first English philosopher to identify the "moral sense." As discussed in the post for "The Man From Tallahassee," the 3rd Earl's work suggests he's a kind of mirror-twin to Lost Cooper; in Inquiry concerning Virtue or Merit, the philosopher argued that an individual needed to employ reason in order to bring his competing appetites into balance, while Lost Cooper indulges in his appetites. In Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, the philosopher Cooper defines the moral sense as an innate ability to determine the value of an action. The moral sense extends beyond culture, he argues; if everyone in your neighborhood was stomping on kittens, even though it's socially accepted, your moral sense would still tell you it's wrong. He extends this notion to a near Foucault-like panopticon sense, when he claims if one asks "Why should a man be honest in the dark?," that person already has a problem with virtue. In other words, your moral sense should tell you to act virtuous even when no one's looking. Lost Cooper is morally senseless, or perhaps he has an immoral sense; when Locke removes his gag to help him breathe, Cooper bites the hand that frees him. He doesn't even have a real identity, so in a way, no one is ever really looking at him. Sawyer, however, has slowly been edging his way toward developing that moral sense over the course of a few episodes.
But the elder Shaftesbury, a Protestant and Locke's patron, was a bit of a conniver. He had spent time in prison, and was implicated in a false-flag plot to kill the Catholic King Charles II, known as the Rye House Plot. The idea was to spread word of a plot to kill the king and replace him with his Catholic brother, thereby generating anti-Catholic sentiment to capitalize upon. However, there was no assassination plot; the only plot was a Machiavellian/Rovian con to develop anti-Catholic wrath, which the Protestant elder Shaftesbury used to gain broad political support. Shaftesbury used that support to push a bill excluding the king's Catholic brother from ever taking the throne through the House of Commons (it failed in the House of Lords). Talk about your long cons — this is an Anthony Cooper worthy of Lost Cooper's namesake. The elder Shaftesbury went on the run, left for Holland with Locke in tow, and died shortly thereafter.
So it's rather appropriate that Lost Cooper is shackled in the brig of the Black Rock, a slave ship. Philosopher Locke reasoned in his Second Treatise on Government that when someone intends to violate someone else's right to life, they've instituted a state of war against that person. He also reasoned that the only legitimate form of slavery arose from the state of war; if one acts aggressively towards another with intent to violate the other's right to life, he forfeits his own liberty and can be rightly enslaved. Lost Cooper has definitely acted aggressively toward Lost Locke; he took his kidney and his spine, and tried to take his life. As such, Lost Cooper forfeited his rights, and can legitimately be enslaved by Lost Locke. When we see Lost Locke keeping Lost Cooper in a slave ship's brig, in slave chains no less, we're seeing the philosophy being enacted at about 30 frames per second.
But the connotations extend to Dickens' tale Little Dorrit (of Naomi Dorrit). Little Dorrit was first printed serially in nineteen episodes, and "The Brig" happens to be the nineteenth episode; the writers are developing a Yeats-like fascination for number symbolism. The setting of Little Dorrit is Marshalsea, an English debtor's prison where Dickens own father spent time. The protagonist, Arthur Clennam, spends his later years in the debtor's prison after losing his money to a scam artist named Merdle (and if you know some French, you get the image). In Merdle, we get the sleazy echo of Lost Cooper, whose own scams put Sawyer on a path to prison. Like Cooper, Merdle hides his true identity — no one knows where he comes from, and why be virtuous in the dark? We'll most likely see more Merdle-like figures, however, as Merdle was also a major financier, which recalls shadowy back-figures like Mr. Widmore. But when Sawyer is locked in the brig with the enslaved Cooper, he comes full circle. Sawyer has gained that moral sense, and is learning to act beyond reward or punishment, beyond the Others' attempts at B. F. Skinner-like behavior reinforcement. He doesn't actually need to kill Cooper; at this point letting Cooper live or die wouldn't seem to change anything materially in his own life. But you can argue Sawyer also takes a step beyond good and evil. The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche argued that for an individual to attain full potential, everything evil in that person's life was as important as everything good and moral. The individual has to accept and overcome those opposite (and apposite) forces in order to realize one's full potential. By killing his namesake, he kills the thing that shackled him for thirty-some years, sends the thing to hell, and frees James Ford from Sawyer's chains. (It'll be interesting to see if he keeps the name.)
Lost Locke can't do this; like his namesake, he can't bring himself to act against the natural rights of another being. He may desire it, but he can't reason it, and Locke is now more interested in truth than his own fantasies. However, desire is a funny thing on this island; if you're not careful, you might get what you don't know you want (like a horse in the jungle), and it was seemingly Locke's desire that brought Cooper into the metaphor box (although Cooper had a different story to tell). So Locke does it Ben-like, and by manipulating Sawyer into killing Cooper, with a little bump by Alpert, both Locke and Sawyer get what they need. It was hardly easy for Sawyer, but like Locke told Charlie in season one's "The Moth," struggle is nature's way of strengthening you. In Sawyer, Locke may have found his true protégé, and certainly a soul brother.
And in Locke, Ben may have found his, as well as his enemy — yet another mirror-twin. It's getting harder to tell if Ben is playing Locke, if Locke is playing Ben, and/or if Ben knows Locke realizes Ben is playing Locke, and Ben wants him to think that. Ben even appropriates Locke's line, "Don't tell me what I can't do, John." Locke now appears to be special, like Walt, and like his own crazed mother once told him. When Cindy tells him the Others are excited to see Locke because they've been waiting for him, we hear echoes of Neo and New Zion; Locke is jacked into the island like it's the Matrix.
If you believe Alpert, Ben is losing favor as leader of the Others and set Locke up to fail in front of the Others by not killing Cooper on that very old-looking stone post. But Alpert's namesake, we should remember, is the Harvard psychologist who in the 1960's dropped out to become the spiritual seeker Ram Dass; if there is an echo of the psychologist in the dark-eyed Mittelos representative, this is a man who understands how both the mind and the soul work, and is pushing Locke along a certain path. If Alpert is still aligned with Ben, then his double-talk to Locke suggests that Ben knows Locke knows Ben is playing him, and Ben wants it that way. So when Locke fails to sacrifice Cooper for entrance into the Others, he may — like Abraham with Isaac — have passed a certain test. Locke may have finally forged his self-consciousness into self-awareness.
The only tests now are who to trust and when to show your hand. Locke tells Sawyer he's heading off into the interior, Rousseau-like, on his own, but we see him carrying Cooper's carcass. He may be heading off to join the Others, or he may be off to be his own Ben, but he's not ready to reveal certain information or motives. Neither is Jack and Juliet, who have something to tell Kate regarding Naomi; nor is Rousseau, who continues to turn the jungle into a DMZ and comes and goes like a jungle zephyr. Strangely, Locke doesn't even question why she shows up at the Black Rock looking for dynamite, perhaps because he didn't want an audience, and clearly, neither does Rousseau. And we need to question the convenient tape recorder; was this a plant by Ben? How did Locke get it?
And why did Hanso — or Mittelwerk standing in for Hanso — fake the Oceanic 815 wreckage?
I'm going to let the John Lescroart book The Oath slide a bit. It was briefly seen on Ben's tent shelf, and is a kind of murder-mystery-potboiler that echoes Bad Twin, and Bad Twin was an exercise in seeing how far we the audience could stretch an idea beyond credulity. Lindelof once warned of mistaking colorful rocks for easter eggs, and Bad Twin was certainly colorful, The Oath feels to me like one of those moves.
(I'd like to thank Liz Kelly and Jen Chaney of the WashingtonPost.com for inviting me to write about "The Brig" with them today. The article is here, and they've cordially linked back to the wonderful Powells.com.)
Books mentioned in this post
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Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times
Anthony A. C. Earl Of Shaftesbury -
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Beyond Good and Evil
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The Oath
John Lescroart
I really believe that Ben knows Juliet is going to turn on him, so he 'leaked' the tape so that Locke can give it to Sawyer, to give it to the survivors.
Also, we now know why Juliet told Picket that the plan has ben pushed back. The others were setting up Jack, Kate, & Sawyer from the first episode this season! For Jack to do the surgery and for Kate and Sawyer to reproduce.
You have to hand it to Ben for mastering this, way back when! (The open prison door for Jack to get out of and see the video monitors. The cages for Kate & Sawyer. All of it played out perfectly.)
JWood, I am interested to hear
1. your take on what Sawyer said to Cooper: "Ah, Okay... So We're Dead"
2. Jacks red shirt he has been wearing since he has come back, and now his blue shirt (w/ sleeves)
3. And what of the phone with the map?
Thank you for another wonderful write up. I read your post every week. I have one quick question in regards to Cooper. You mention that Cooper is like Merdle in Little Dorrit. Does that mean that you think Cooper was one of the money men behind the Island? We have seen all the powerful and rich fathers the Losties have. Can we now add Locke's Father to the list? I believe we can but I would like to hear your opinion. Thank you.
One of the names Cooper gives James is "Louis Jackson." The best reference I could come up with is Robert Louis Jackson, a preeminent scholar of Dostoevsky. Locke gave Ben "The Brothers Karamozov" to read while he was imprisoned in the Swan.
I've not read the book (I've heard it's brutal) but it does seem apt. A terrible father of four sons is murdered, possibly by his illegitimate offspring. Cooper is metaphorically a bad father to James, and certainly a worse father to Locke.
I wonder if the end of the book, a trial which finds another brother guilty, will presage a similar encounter for Locke. He certainly set up the deed but did not do it himself. Will he still be convicted? Will that conviction come from The Others, or from another source? Will we find out that Cooper has two other "sons"?
I'd love to hear your analysis of this source.
J.
Always concise....always revelatory, but I must say I'm surprised you didn't find or at least breakdown Sawyer going barefoot. It seems to be of importance to the trek that Sawyer was without shoes....moreso than as an homage to his literary namesake.
Thanks as always for delving into each show.
jobe?
The level of your analysis is truly mind-boggling to an engineering mind like mine. It seems like the decontruction of a major historical or psychological treatise. It has made watching the show so much more enjoyable for me. I glad I found your site.
Is this a typical level of literary analysis? What is your background that you are so fluent in the history of philosophy and pyschiatry - very impressive. The Cooper section illustrates that.
My real question: Is their any evidence that the producers and writers are as sophisticated as your analysis gives them credit for? What else have they created? to buy into these complex theories would imply a TV show orders of magnitude more complex than any others attempted. Or could you view the X-Files similarly if you did the same level of deconstruction?
Thanks so much for spending so much time on this and sharing it with us.
The episode titled "All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues" was all about Jack, but the title is obviously referring to more than just him. Locke and Sawyer, whom I would say are the other "cowboys" on the island (cowboys being the emblem of the American hero), have their Daddy Issues as well. Or do they, now that Cooper's dead?
I like how you pointed out the scenes that open with Locke's eyes. Something I didn't realize until browsing Wikipedia recently was that Pete Townshend had an album titled "All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes," which I'm assuming refers to the fact that in the movies, cowboys always seem to have a sort of squinting look. It's all about perception; our vision is more focused when we squint. But then again, it's also more narrow. Ah, the ambiguity!
What I'm trying to say is though, Locke seems to be the only one of the Losties who's even coming close to being perceptive. Sawyer was totally conned by Locke this week and hardly did anything of his own volition, while Jack seems to be blinded by Juliet.
Consider this: Sawyer is supposed to be the con man, but Locke manipulated him. Jack is supposed to be the doctor, but Locke was healed without him. Saayid is supposed to be the interrogator / information specialist, but Locke is the only one coming close to getting answers.
"I'm on my own journey now." I love that line. It's the antithesis to Jack's "Live together or die alone." It'll be interesting to see which philosophy prevails. ( That is, if either one does. It may be that they each have a "piece" of the truth but not the whole thing.)
I'm not saying Locke's got it all figured out, but for now he appears to be the only one on the right track. Of course, time will tell if that's really true or not.
Interesting comparison to the Matrix - and I'll take it a step further - in the first Matrix film the Oracle tells Neo he's not The One, even though she knows he is; Neo thinking he isn't The One is a necessary element to becoming The One. Perhaps Ben is playing a similiar ploy with Locke - that he must tell Locked he isn't "The One" in order for Locke to become "The One"?
I'm glad the post made it up -- we found out this morning that yes, something happened and the wrong thing went through.
Lain: On Sawyer's comment, I think they were playing with the whole purgatory/hell misdirection. That was one of the funny things about this episode; despite the clear declarations that they're not dead or in purgatory, those theories still persist (and Orson Scott Card published a book of essays on Lost with that notion as a key essay, written by theologian). My sense is they're playing with it, even though they've told us it's not true, because people still believe it.
The same might be true with the red shirt. The redshirt talk didn't really build this season until Paolo wore that reddish shirt in "Exposé," and then we see Jack in one. I don't recall if Jack wore that shirt any time during the first or second season, but that may be the writers having a little fun again. After all, Jack was originally to be killed off in the pilot episode.
As far as the map on the phone, that looked like a general global gps map. Until they can get past the interference, they won't be able to do much with it, but it could show where in the world they are.
LostNBlonde: Merdle is like Cooper in that they're both slick scam artists who hide their backgrounds. But we have no reason to believe that Cooper was the kind of power broker Merdle was; that's when we head to Widmore, Paik and Hanso territory.
What to do with Lou Jackson? I like the Dostoevsky connection, but it might be a stretch; aside from Edward Said, who is a bit of a special case, no literary critics have been referenced, only the authors themselves. (Said did a lot more than literary criticism.) The first thing that struck me was it sounded like a baseball player; sure enough, a Lou Jackson played for the Cubs in the 1960's. But I'm not sure all of Cooper's aliases have that much meaning; Seward didn't, and he spent an episode going under that.
But the line that Ben quotes from "Brothers Karamazov" in the second season is worth noting: "Men reject their prophets and slay them. But they love their martyrs and honor those whom they have slain." Will an island prophet be martyred?
(Lostpedia has a note that 'Anthony Cooper Adam Seward' anagrammatically breaks down to 'Sawyer the con man a poor dad.')
Jobe: I made a note of that scene -- it recalls "...And Found" when Jin and Eko first saw the others. When Locke chided Sawyer about being barefoot, that kind of gave it away. If they just showed it, then we'd have the camera/narrative point of view presenting Sawyer like an other. But when the characters acknowledge it, that narrative point of view loses the same focus.
Actually, now there may be something else going on here: There's the purgatory play, Jack as a redshirt, Sawyer being barefoot, and the Lescroart book, which all fall under the general theme of misdirection. This is also an episode dealing specifically with cons. Perhaps those elements were added as a bit of a con on the audience.
J. Wood -
As always, I'm fascinated by your insite into the show. I read the Celebrity blog from the Washington Post and wanted to comment on your thoughts on Sawyer, his mother's name being Mary and the mention of the "Bad Twin." To continue the mirror-twinning aspect, what if Sawyer is the good son or the special one that the Others are looking for? As in the Bad Twin, everyone assumed that the good twin was the brother (I forget his name) that started the search for Alexander, who initially, everyone thinks is the bad twin. Everyone thinks Sawyer is "bad." But as it turns out in Bad Twin, Alexander is not. The "bad" brother turns out to be the good twin and vice versa. Maybe Bad Twin wasn't so much of a colorful rock if you look at the book in this perspective?
Also I'm surprised, although I realize you could, and have, written for days about this show, that you didn't mention the connection between Deus ex Machina being the 19th episode of Season One and it's twinning of this episode in regards to Naomi (as briefly mentioned in the WP blog).
From Wikipedia - The title, Deus Ex Machina, is taken from a Greek theatre term which literally means "God comes from the machine".
As I noted previously, I believe that Locke has come to the Others as a prophet. He castigates them for living a soft civilized life, and they leave for an "ancient place." The people looking at Locke expectantly implies a prophecy. Alpert tells Locke as much... they're looking forward to Locke leading them in the important things, instead of the piddly ideas that Ben's been having them waste time with. Ben can't overtly challenge Locke in the eyes of his people (he'd lose) so instead is intent on undermining Locke. The Dostoyevski quote about killing the prophet I believe is especially apt, as I believe that Ben is setting himself up as the Grand Inquisitor who will murder the prophet despite knowing full well what he's doing. Power trumps rightness.
And again, we come to a religion centered around sacrifice. This time Locke must not merely allow Boone to die, he is supposed to sacrifice Cooper, "tied to a rock" and completely helpless. Is arranging for Cooper's death good enough to satisfy this little requirement? Alpert implies that it is, but I have my doubts. __ Is the goal of the sacrifice to have Locke free himself from the bonds that Cooper has tied Locke up with, or is the goal to have Locke cut free the bonds of morality? __
Cooper's interpretation of what happened to him I think is a direct reference to the audience's insistance that the Losties are dead. (Do the dead have children??) He has limited knowlege, so he comes to a conclusion and refuses to accept any other answer. In truth, there are several solutions to Cooper's situation:
1) Cooper is dead. They're in hell/purgatory. (despite protests from the writers.) Of course, how do dead people die?
2) Cooper is dead. Locke conjured him on the island so that he can resolve the daddy issue.
3) Cooper is alive and got summoned while unconscious.
4) Cooper was drugged just like Juliet was and brought to the island for the purpose of manipulating and showing up Locke as not being the prophet.
The last seems most likely as we're seeing further and further evidence of long-term scheming.
A couple of comments. First, Naomi's appearance is not, strictly speaking, a "deus ex machina" since we were prepared for it by the last minute of season 2, and by Penny's comment that "with enough money and determination, you can find anyone." So this is something the writers had prepared us for last season. Second, some people wonder why Locke directed Rousseau to the dynamite. They must've forgotten that Rousseau originally led the losties to the dynamite at the end of Season 1. She knows perfectly well where it is, and Locke knows that she knows. Locke is simply trying to divert her curiosity from the commotion coming from beyond the barred door to the "brig." (Possibly the Black Rock itself was a brig, but the rigging is too demolished to make it clear how it was rigged.)
Here's another nitpicking point. If the Black Rock were a slaver from the mid-nineteenth century it shouldn't have been carrying dynamite because dynamite came later - at around the end of the American Civil War I think. By the time dynamite was patented and available the Atlantic slave trade had wound down. So, dynamite and slaves on the same vessel seems like an anachronistic stretch.
J. Wood - Just a few comments:
1) I like that you bring up Nietzsche again; his thought about 'claiming' one's dark side has echoes with C.G. Jung's concept of one's 'shadow' and how it relates to the process of 'individuation', i.e., becoming who one really is, realizing one's full potential. Jung reasoned that one had to accept both the good and the bad parts of oneself in order to be whole.
2) And Locke's killing of his father has some relevant echoes of Freud's Oedipus Complex: eliminating one's father in order to feel 'special' by one's mother.
3) We can definitely lay to rest the 'purgatory' theories since Juliet's flashback showed her coming to the island ALIVE, albeit heavily tranquilized.
4) I'm betting that what Jack and Juilet are keeping from Kate is not that they know something about Naomi, but that they know about the beach raid by the Others; and Jack and Juliet are in cahoots and have a plan to thwart the attack.
Best,
Juno
Koralis says:
2) Cooper is dead. Locke conjured him on the island so that he can resolve the daddy issue.
More mirror twinning on this issue as well. Jack's father appeared on the island, although only to Jack. After Jack takes his frustration and anger out on the casket at the caves, does his dad never reappear. But I don't think Jack truly resolves the issue with his father until Sawyer tells the story about his encounter with Christian at the bar.
But as J. Wood says, the whole episode is full of cons. Can we trust anything we saw?
Just a quick note: I worked up an search plugin for Lostpedia that will work on Firefox and Internet Explorer 7. It's available at Mozilla's Mozdev page, and it's built on OpenSearch standards. If you use either of those browsers, you have a little search widget in the upper-right corner. This plugin will add Lostpedia to the drop-down, so you can search that site from the search widget. Might be handy for some.
Perhaps Jack's red shirt means that he is The Flash and the contest he has is not a race but a ping pong match with the S man himself - Sawyer (who is becoming the real hero). That Jack switches to a blue shirt in "The Brig" only emphasizes the conflict within himself not being Superman. And maybe this is some satirical Red State/Blue State comment. Maybe not.
Cheryl says:
>After Jack takes his frustration and
>anger out on the casket at the caves,
>does his dad never reappear.
Jack's dad's voice is heard in the static over the intercom in the hydra station saying "let it go."
J. Wood -
I just wanted to let you know that your citation of the philosopher Cooper made it's way into my own blog, Letters from Le Vrai.
I'm not sure if I need to cite you as the source or anything. If you'd like me to, please let me know.
Part of the reason I love your LOST blog so much is because of the way you incorporate and analyze the philosophical subtexts of the show.
Best,
Juno
What's my background? An overactive memory and a near-unhealthy obsession with solving problems.
Actually, I'm doing my PhD in English right now, and I've focused on theory (philosophy and psychoanalysis), media, and Irish literature. The first thing I published was on James Joyce's "Ulysses" (Scylla and Charybdis), and that just sent me down the wrong path. Reading Joyce is an education in itself, figuring Joyce out is an entirely different enterprise that risks getting one into grad school and studying things that make most healthy people's eyes glaze over.
Whether what's going on here is a typical level of literary analysis or not, that's hard to say. The field is pretty fragmented -- a lot of critics just deal with other critics, some look at history, race, politics, narrative, language, etc. Used to be a lot of that stuff was collected under the rubric of philology, and a scholar had to learn it all (both Nietzsche and J.R.R. Tolkien were philologists). Today, not so much. But one of my things is to attempt to bridge the gap between what we dusty scholars do and what the public is actually interested in. I hope there's more work like Lost in the future.
I can't speak to the writers' backgrounds all that much, but I know Cuse was working in the early 1990's ("Brisco County Jr.") and was playing with conventions and mythologies back then. Lindelof had similar affinities. I know that two of the writers, Adam Horowitz and Eddy Kitsis, went to the same university I did for undergrad when I was there; if they took any of the same kinds of classes, they were introduced to some of the same ideas (go Badgers). Two things I learned, though, are 1.) Cuse and Lindelof brought in a small army of hand-picked writers who know their stuff, and they have more creative control than most TV writers get, and 2.) After studying people like Joyce, Swift, and Flann O'Brien, if you think there's a reference or influence, it'll be picked up on and worked out through the narrative. An echo is just an echo, and reflects the reader's mind; a reference is there for a reason and develops layers of the narrative.
(Here's me trying to catch up with comments)
Does Locke have to be told he's not the one in order to be the one? This calls up a certain Buddhist idea; if you desire something, the desiring is what keeps you from attaining it. In being told he's not the one, Locke's forced to keep struggling, like that moth.
Cheryl: Bad Twin seemed promising up to that one point, when it went from a metaphysical detective novel into an action story and dropped its prior concerns. It introduced themes, but didn't really advance the overall narrative -- which may have been its only purpose. In a weird way, I kind of like that it went sideways at the end, because it created this moment where it tests the overall Lost audience whose reading it, asking them how far they'll ride this train.
Also, yep, the deus ex machina point was brought up in the post for "Catch-22." There's the episode with that name, of course, and there's the nod to Lord of the Flies, where a parachutist landed on the island and was hung up in a tree. Except the LotF parachutist was dead and male.
koralis: On Locke and sacrifice -- after the scene with the chicken in the fridge, I don't think Locke has any faith in Ben, either. Just because Ben's from the island doesn't mean he's of the island. Locke was okay with the sacrifice the island demanded (Boone), but not the one Ben demanded.
I think the Cooper possibilities are dead-on (heh). He may be a bit of a stand-in for the audience that expects there to be answers and takes the easiest conclusion. In the latest official podcast, Darlton talked about having to do a 19-city radio tour, and constantly being asked why they don't reveal answers. ('Because we reveal them all HERE on the podcast!' they said.)
Plutonius: We don't know the dynamite came from the slavers, only that it's in the boat. For all we know, it was put there by Adam and Eve.
Juno: Yeats wrote about the same thing Jung talked about -- called it his theory of masks. But he was actually culling from Nietzsche on the sly (it gets complicated; Yeats claimed he was shown the idea from his "spirit guide" from ancient Rome who came to him in seances, Leo Africanus -- Yeats's own mirror twin. He was actually getting the ideas from Nietzsche, and trying to make them mystical.) Oh -- and no worries about the quote.
in my mind, there's no moral outrage to be had over cooper's death. that s.o.b deserved to die; and
it was a mercy killing. not mercy for cooper--i mean mercy for all those innocent victims he would have continued to prey on.
locke and sawyer have saved unknown future numbers of people from the machinations of anthony cooper, and rightly so, because cooper finally faced the consequences of his conning.
now, if only ben would finally face his consquences.
mr. wood, well worth waiting for , whatever the technical glitches were.
thank you for schooling me/us to the real life historical connections between philosopher john locke and anthony coopers 1,2 and 3. it illuminated so much for me.
[among other things, it tells me why i couldn't bring myself to commit abortion when the choice was before me. i must have the original and the Lost Locke's ethic keeping me from the act. but enuf about me, on to the discussion:]
both eyes open now:
yes. a clear quantum leap in awareness.
sawyer barefoot: yes, tom sawyer, but also: a sacred journey over holy ground. a tenderfoot, young and new to the test. cooling his feet in the stream: a baptism. a cleansing. an ablution before approaching the temple and entering in. his true name is Ford: a place of crossing over and leaving behind where you came from, made thru flowing water you have to wade or swim across to successfully come out on the other shore. james was the brother of jesus. not the savior, but a disciple and follower of, and learner from.
i didn't understand why Locke threw sawyer into the prison with cooper and barred the door until i read your post today. sawyer, in letting his whole life become consumed by what that bastard did to him, had himself become imprisoned. locke had to make it real and physically true for him for sawyer to understand that the only way he was going to free himself from that prison would be to kill the one he was in there with. when you're face to face with the other, only then can your sense of yourself rise up and make it clear to you that 'that is that, and you are you, and you are NOT THAT." it cleaves apart the vivid differences that define what makes you, you, and not 'that'.
sawyer needed to face it viscerally in order to know who he himself is, that is NOT cooper.
cooper was bound. obviously he couldn't kill sawyer with physical violence. they were locked in together. cooper wasn't gonna walk out. only one man could emerge from that cell, and all that was the 'con, sawyer' had to be left dead n there before locke would open the door and let the man come out.
i like that locke's humanity wouldn't let him do as ben tried to trick him into. that makes Locke superior to ben, regardless of what ben says or does--or thinks he's doing. it will carry locke thru, even when he isn't overtly aware of what ben is up to with affairs. ben is inherently inferior and doomed to lose, regardless.
locke is a 12 stepper, remember. his anger management group. he's still living it. he's not in control of events. trust in a higher power. working his own steps. he feels it's not his job to take another's inventory. being open to being improved. making amends the moment he realizes he's done wrong.
i like the karmic rightness of his knowing it should be sawyer's privelege and necessary passage to face cooper. had locke killed cooper as ben tried to push him to, sawyer would have been robbed of a lifetime resolution to his experience. the honor and ordeal was karmically sawyer's to undergo and discharge from himself.
why be virtuous if no one's watching? because there's always at least one witness: yourself. YOU know what you're doing, always. if you beleive in God or Jesus, then you have two, or three witnesses you can add to the first. but there's always yourself, first, last and always.
a note about names:
when the losties first fell from the sky and climbed out of the chaos on the beach, they were terribly scared, confused, didn't know what to do, and one might say they were like lost sheep. sheep need a shepherd. hence, jack shepherd. of COURSE a shepherd is gonna warn the herd to 'live together or die alone'!
but people don't remain sheep forever. when they don't need the herd, when they can think and see for themselves, they don't need the shepherd anymore. they need neither their father, nor a Shepherd nor a Jacob, to tell them what to do. [and what they Can't do!]
they don't need to ask Science, nor take things on Faith. They know, from a deeper place of self realization, what Is.
Mr Wood,your conseptions correspond clearly and distintcly to this so intensive and upsetting episode.
The blogger's interesting discussion goes on..
I have some questions. The similar questions the people were asking just after watching "Left Behind".
Before John Locke leaves with the Others, he visits captive Kate in the game's room.He tells her, that he defended her in front of the Others, but they told him who she was and what she has done and Locke adds that forgiveness isn't the main quality of the Others. We don't know what did they exactly tell him about Kate's past: was it Wayne's murder or the fact, that Kate was envolved in bank robbery? Or both? It's interesting to know which one the Others don't forgive. Concerning Locke - if he knows about Wayne's murder, logically he knows why Kate did it.Locke could have asked the Others why - obviously the Others know everything about survivors.
I think it's interesting to see Kate's and her stepfather's/biological father's situation in the light of "The Brig" and it's interesting to know did John Locke know exactly before the events in "The Brig" what the Others forgive or not.
Remember the shot of the Others walking barefoot through the forest? Was that in season one or two? I immediately thought of that shot when they did the close-up of Sawyer's walking feet. If I remember correctly, the composition of the shots were almost identical.
J. Wood, you speculate whether Sawyer will keep the name, and I had also wondered about that as well. Will he now become James Ford, leader of the Lost? Both Locke and Kate call him James, apparently because they see him for who he truly is, not the con man facade that he has taken on. Will he drop the con man act, now that he has killed the first Sawyer? And now that Sawyer has killed the source of both his and Locke's issues that they have battled for most of their life, are they still "lost?"
As for Rousseau and Locke's encounter at the Black Rock with the dynamite, I think Locke's response stems from his "I'm on my own journey now" attitude. Rousseau needing dynamite didn't have anything to do with his journey, so he didn't question her. Rousseau herself has always had her own agenda, so she does not question Locke since it does not directly involve her. The last time we saw her, she was with the Losties when they arrived in suburbia. Because rescueing Jack wasn't part of her agenda, she faded off into the jungle to form her own plan, which apparently involves dynamite. J. Wood, did you say somewhere that there is going to be a Rousseau flashback episode?
Anyone notice the woman who looks like Juliet popping up at the ruins when Cooper was tied to the post? I know that this has happened before and Juliet apparently has a double, but that's just weird.
Been drinking Doc Rickett's fav beer (Bohemian) all day so 'scuze me if I ramble:
Totally unrelated to "Lost" (if possible) I read Poe's "The Narrative of A. Gordon Pym" and boy does it resonate-a shipwreck, strange wispy monsters, an "artic bear" on a South Pacific island giving credence to the Hollow Earth theory, and a nexus of humanity that seems to have inspired "2001: A Space Odyssey" (per a Poe website) that might be the goal of Dharma. And like Kubrick, Poe and "Lost" tell their strange tales via popular genres. Speaking of which: "Watchmen" isn't the only comic that resonates - check out the Tintin adventure "Flight 714" esp. concerning a coverup of a plane crash which is solely money based but deals with the intervention of otherworldlies. And, on another note, Locke seems to me increasingly Christ-like. He can't kill Cooper but he can influence a Christian Soldier to do the deed. That would be James - the 1st of the 12 to be martyred and, by the way, the name James is the English form of...wait for it...JACOB. And in Spanish it is Iago but let's not bring the Bard into this.
J. Wood -
I wonder if Darlton, et al, have a similar view of storytelling, as it were, as the creators of The Matrix trilogy of movies, the Wachowski brothers. Here's an excerpt
from a contemporary philosopher's website I found enlightening:
"Larry and Andy Wachowski, the writers and directors of The Matrix trilogy, have been reluctant to share their interpretation of the films from day one, fearing that whatever they said would turn into dogma...The Wachowskis did not want their own original intent to overpower the equally legitimate viewer response, and so they remained thunderously silent about their original intent."
The philosopher whose site I mentioned - Ken Wilbur - has this view:
"Ken suggests that any work of art can be interpreted from at least four or five major perspectives, none of which is privileged, all of which are important. These include: the artist's original intent (what did the artist himself or herself mean by this artwork?); unconscious factors in the artist; the cultural background of the artist; and the viewer response (what does the artwork mean to different viewers of the artwork?)."
I've experienced a similar feeling watching these 3 seasons of LOST. I know Darlton has said that they've always had a definitive ending for the show in mind, but I wonder...
Juno
Excellent thoughts as always, Mr. Wood, but I was shocked this week that you didn't spend any time on "Tom Sawyer" which was name-checked big time! After all, it's about a budding con man who discovers an unspoiled island, decides to live on it as a savage, eventually discovers that the rest of the world has concluded that he is dead, declines to disabuse them of this notion and then spies on his own funeral. Surely this ties into Naomi's story, no?
I just finished Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman. I giggled and snickered all the way through it, and then some. And then I had to go have a lie down somewheere. If this is the key to understanding Lost, I'm not sure I want to understand Lost.
Everything important happens on the 23rd of the month.
The smoke monster is an accretion of black air.
All the mirror-twinning is to facilitate time-travel. Which doesn't exist, of course, as time is an illusion, as is motion. Photographs of my nephew are conclusive proof of this.
Boxes, boxes, boxes. It's boxes all the way down, *and* there's *four* ounces of omnium inside.
I'm glad we haven't seen any bicycles on the Island. They're probably stolen, or trying to escape.
The way people come up with so many theories to explain what's going on (especially Vozzek) reminds me of de Selby. "Le Supreme charme qu'on trouve a lire une page de de Selby est qu'ell vous conduit inexorablement a l'heureuse certitude que des sots vous n'etes pas le plus grand."
The Season 2 finale had lots of off island flashbacks involving Desmond.
Oh wait. There has been a bicycle! Desmond rides it in the Swan. It's a stationary bicycle, it doesn't move. It can't escape. It's stuck. Just like Desmond.
I think some people are falling into the trap of applying the simplistic good versus evil/strong vs weak skins to plotlines in Lost. I have read criticisms of Locke manipulating Sawyer into killing Cooper as evil, and the ongoing suspicion of Juliet. On the last Lostcast podcast they were describing Locke as a stooge and a coward. I guess this depends on your point of view. In Greek Mythology Locke could be compared to Odysseus, who was not the mightiest of heros in terms of strength or fighting ability, but who was a genius at misdirection and getting people to do what he needed them to do. And in a similar sense all he was trying to do is to fight a bad hand of cards dealt against him and find his way home. In other ways Locke is like another hero Hercules, who always acted out of passion and was often duped, and hurt many innocent people along the way, but always felt remorse and tried to atone for his misdeeds. Trying to apply a dualistic black and white morality or modern interpretations of the hero to either of these classical heroes doesn't tell the whole story.
Related to this is the notion of Locke killing/not killing his father is either good or evil, Locke getting Sawyer to kill Cooper is either good or evil. Its like trying to apply a mathematical equation to an emotion. If we perceive time and space as the show asks us to, then Locke killing his father would be like pulling the thread that unravels his life. However Cooper as the toxic inoculation that makes Locke stronger had played his role, and killing him was a cure for Sawyer's time trap of being caught in the past.
As for Ben being the puppet master of Locke, this is likely true, but I think after the test of the push the button, don't push the button conundrum in the swan hatch, Locke is prepared for the Ben conundrum of listen to Ben and be fooled, don't listen to Ben and be fooled. Its all apart of the journey. After all Ben is also playing his role in Locke's the island's greater destiny whether he knows it or not.
Given the biblical overtones, it'll be interesting to see what comes of "James Ford." I like the implications (but won't say anything more without a bit more to go on).
Perhaps Kate's done something more that we don't yet know about. I don't see her necessarily as a "bad" person; she even tried to help the Aussie who turned her in. The stuff she did had some understandable motivations. But Locke's comment about the Others not being forgiving people also brings us back to some Old/New Testament dichotomies; the OT is more about the law, whereas the NT is more about working against misplaced law (the Romans) to attain justice.
guy: That barefoot shot was from the second season, the episode called "...And Found."
job: Yep, there's going to be a Rousseau flashback. I'm not sure when, but word is not only will there be one, but we'll find out how Montand lost his arm (what if Montand is Dr. Candle?). Also, Juliet's not the only one with a look-alike; the Others have a Michael clone, too.
Jeffrey: I've been dipping into Arthur Gordan Pym lately, and will be writing on Kubrick (for my dissertation work). (I also wrote about TinTin in my book -- "Flight 714" is yet another reference at play.)
Doesn't James mean "son of Jacob"?
I'm sure the writers are reluctant to talk about intention -- that's the case with a number of difficult writers (for instance Beckett), in part because if you state your intention, you cut off interpretive possibilities and limit what they work can actually be. And you make yourself a target for those who may know more about the ideas that you do. The Wachowski's were playing that line as well, although I'm not sure if the Lost writers are as pretentious as the Wachowski's. I've taught The Matrix before, and digging up interviews and other material for my students, the majority of their responses sounds like philosophy grad students ranting about how badly people misinterpret Heidegger. It gets tedious (as did the two sequels, to my mind).
One of the things I've appreciated about the Lost writers is a solid sense of humor tempering any "grand ideas," which I think actually helps "grand ideas" to grow and take root. Just listen to the podcast sometime, and try to figure out which one isn't wearing pants. (If you want a good example of someone with a lot on his mind and the ability to not lose touch with the ground, catch a lecture by the Dali Lama; he's done quite a bit with the University of Wisconsin, and I got to see him speak. He was always looking for the ironic, goofy angle on something in his talks.)
Wilbur's dead-on about unconscious factors. But it takes a hell of a lot of work to become skilled enough for unconscious factors to come out through the form. I once interviewed Joe Sacco, the journalist/graphic novelist, and asked him about three chapters in Palestine that go over his losing contact with his translator. The splash pages of those three chapters have narrative boxes stacked up on each other over the page, forming big question marks. I asked him about that; he said he didn't mean it, but he'd take credit for it.
Add to this ka's comment: To state your intentions would be to give some of these moral questions definite contours, and one of the main points of the narrative so far is to be forced to deal with changing moral landscapes.
Matt Bird: Don't be shocked that I didn't talk about Tom Sawyer; I've talked about that in the past, and in my book. I also didn't talk about Joseph Campbell when Brother Campbell appeared (I went with George Campbell). This is for a few reasons: A.) I'm trying to keep my posts as coherent and integrated as possible, and don't want to add something that's not necessarily directly related to the post at hand, B.) When I wrote the book, I found the Tom Sawyer connections pretty much ended with the con idea, and are played with on occasion, but not much. (Twain did have some choice words for Jane Austen, though -- something like any library is a good library that doesn't have anything by Austen, even if it had no other books.) C.) There's always a few things that I'm going to leave open for discussion in here. In previous posts I've left things out, waited to see if anyone comments on them, and then may bring them out in the comments.
Which means YOU can bring up the Tom Sawyer idea and link it up with Naomi.
what about jacob = jacob boehume
I was thinking HIM = Jacob but now on 2nd thought Locke can be HIM and hopefully we will meet Jacob Wed
J Wood,
I used to be really into learning what various names mean. If my memory serves me correctly, James and Jacob are actually variants of the same name and they both essentially mean "deceiver." (More literally, it's "he grasps at the heel," referring to how in the OT, Jacob came out of the womb grasping his twin brother Esau's heel, attempting to get out first.)
I think "Jacob" is the result of translating the Hebrew name into English, while James is the result of the Greek-to-English translation. This would be yet another OT/NT dichotomy.
Thanks, Born of Fire. I found the origin of Jacob/James in a book of saints and failed to mention it was from the Hebrew. Good point about OT/NT.
I had a number of thoughts this week, so I am breaking this post into a couple of posts for organizational purposes. Each post addresses a different topic.
While the producers clearly have said that the characters are not in purgatory or dead, I think it's important to remember that such statements do not invalidate critical thought that compare the island to purgatory (or hell). The rich background of Biblical subtext clearly is part of the writing of Lost, from character names and qualities to storylines. Just because a character is named Mikhail Bakunin does not mean the writers are saying that this guy is actually Mikhail Bakunin; its an allusion. The island may not be purgatory or hell, but it shares many of the same qualities.
Personally, I have no clue whether or not hell or purgatory exist. Darlton may be playing with new ideas of life and the afterlife, combining them with quantum mechanics and philosophy. We have (potentially) seen people come back to life on Lost; why not suggest that the Island is a revolving doorway between the afterlife and the real world? It would explain why it is so well hidden from the rest of the world and how miraculous and mysterious things occur. It reminds me greatly of how hard it is for mortals in Greek mythology to discover entrances to the Underworld. It would also make sense that the security system is named Cerberus, if the island is in one sense or another a portal to the afterlife/another dimension/another reality/etc. Given that Greek mythology is just one thread in the show, just like Juedo-Christian mythology is another thread, we can see how Lost is a truly a fantastic pop culture melting pot for mythology, philosophy and literature that are drawn from many eras and continents.
And Hell or the Underworld does make an awful lot of sense here, even if it's not Hell or the Underworld in the traditional sense. With a very worried look on his face, Mr. Friendly quickly shuts the door on Locke's father before he can tell Locke that they are in Hell. Cooper calling the Island Hell also harkens back to No Exit by Sartre, the idea that Hell is Other people. It's quite a clever play on words the writers of Lost have with this one. Without the double entendre, it makes enough sense that just the Lostaways on their own make each other's lives a living hell at times. But with the entendre it makes even more sense: for the Lostaways, Hell (the Island) is the Others (Other people). It's an interesting subtext, but by no means definitive. As you guys have been talking about, it's open for interpretation and reinterpretation, and it is also only one of many allusions. It's not an ultimate answer, but it is a relevant subtext.
New topic: Ben and his books. It may be my memory fooling with me, but displayed prominently among Ben's personal library I noticed for a second time a ragged brown hardcover with gold inlaid lettering with the title: Word Power. Talk to anyone who believes in magick, or well, just about anything, and you will be told how potent the power of words is. Simply knowing which words to use can provide an individual with complete control over other people. And knowing secret words grants another kind of power. Forcing certain words onto people, and keeping other words hidden from people, grants a person a massive amount of influence. We know Ben is a master manipulator, and now that I have seen this book more than once prominently displayed in yet another one of his creepy little lairs, it further enforces exactly how he manipulates people so well; he uses certain words while withholding other ones.
One such example is telling Locke about the "magic box" while all the while hiding the actual secret name for what this "box" really is. In doing so he does not allow Locke access to the power that comes from knowing the secret name, the true name, of the "magic box." This is how Ben (and the Others) holds the upper hand on Locke and the Lostaways for the time being. He knows the secret words, the words of power: the knowlege. If the Lostaways had access to the power innate in the hidden terms, they would pose a great threat to the Others, and the Others could be rendered impotent. Why is it so important for Mr. Friendly to not allow Locke to hear his father say the word "Hell" in describing the Island? Because it would give Locke the power of that word, a coded secret word, and in a sense, new abilities and governance over not only his self but also those around him. (This is also why Jack does not allow Juliet to say whatever she was going to say to Kate.)
The examples are rampant. For example, Ben says, "Wake up, John, it's time." Time for what? John does not know. John is at the mercy of Ben's word power. Even afterward, does John understand exactly what happened when Ben humiliated Locke in front of the camp? No, at least not entirely. He can only guess. Also, think of the words Ben uses when he publicly shames Locke. It was through very carefully chosen words: "He's not who we thought he was." Ben reveals just enough to Locke in this statement to reveal to him that the Others had considered him "special" by using this very specific phrase.
"This is only the beginning, John," he says at another point. "I can't wait to show you what this island can do." Beginning of what? What is the island? How can the island "do" anything? These are questions John and we the viewers ask ourselves. If Ben spoke the secret words, we would know. Instead, Ben dances around them, trying to bend Locke's will into following him. And in this episode, he manipulates Locke into literally following him into the wilderness on a journey to parts unknown. This is another Old Testament allusion. I wonder if the Others' journey will last for forty days.
Ben starts or ends most of his sentences with John's name. This is a common method of wielding power over an individual. By knowing and using that person's name, the speaker becomes dominant. Locke is not too shabby at wordplay either. He, however, is not privy to several key words that hold the power of this island, and Ben is therefore able to lord these secret terms over his head. However, we do get to see Locke's mastery over "word power" during the episode. When Sawyer asks for a "heads-up" as to why Locke wants Sawyer to kill Ben, Locke says "it's not really my place to tell you." He keeps several words secret. He keeps the real name of the prisoner secret from Sawyer, as well as the action that will occur and either's relationship with the prisoner. When Sawyer says he made a mistake in Sydney, Locke asks: "Well, who'd you mean to kill?" Locke secretly knows whom. The name "Sawyer" holds a massive amount of power here, and Locke uses it to his advantage by keeping it a secret word.
Locke, like Ben, uses the trick of speaking a person's name as a means of control. He constantly says the name "James" whenever he talks to Sawyer. "Whatever you say, James," he says right before he locks Sawyer in the brig. This is Locke asserting power over Sawyer by controlling him through the power of using Sawyers "true" name as opposed to his false, self-given name. James has been hiding behind the name "Sawyer" since they crashed on the Island, and in doing so he has given himself a certain amount of mystery and power over others. But Locke strips him of the psychological protection by drilling him over and over with his true name: James, James, James. He completely breaks Sawyer down over a short period of time, and it's through the power of that secret word, that word that Sawyer has so carefully hidden from the rest of the Lostaways, that Locke brings down every single defense Sawyer has. (Think of The Wizard of Earthsea; the power of one's name is the focus of Ursula K. Le Guin's book.)
You guys have pretty well covered the subject of Cooper and Biblical sacrifice. I did want to mention that the shots of Cooper tied to the mysterious broken column surrounded by the tents of the Others is reminiscent of Exodus. Cooper is the like the Ba'al idol worshipped by wayward Israelites during their Exodus into the wilderness before they receive the commandments. Before John Locke, an outsider, can move forward, he must strike down this Ba'al-like false idol in order to live in-step with the Others (the Israelites). The real Sawyer represents Ba'al because of his amoral lifestyle. The Island, like Yahweh, demands its inhabitants to live by a strict moral code. Hence the sacrifice.
Will James Ford be cursed like Sun and Charlie for this murder? If the concept of the Island as Yahweh holds true, James Sawyer may be blessed instead of cursed for his actions. According to the Island's standards, he may be a "good" person. James may be forgiven for his previous "bad" acts, just as he is free of his tortured past.
I had not picked up on the James/Jacob name connection, as Jeffrey mentioned. The more the series continues, the more I see the parallels I mentioned in previous posts holding up and continuing to stay pretty true. I wonder if this will continue; while it would be interesting, I could see the writers switching gears just to keep viewers on their toes. All the Biblical talk makes me think of Naomi's description of when she finds the Island in the middle of nowhere: "All of a sudden the clouds parted, and I saw land." If the images of clouds parting and of a miraculous land appearing aren't Judeo-Christian, then I don't know what is.
Reflecting on the earlier episodes from this season, I am reminded of the enslaved Israelites in Egypt forced to do harsh manual labor before their exodus; we saw many of the Others, the Tailies, and Kate and Sawyer slaving away at grueling manual labor. They were mining some sort of rock. And like the Jews were forced to work under the threat of lashing, Kate and Sawyer were forced under the threat of stun gun. Now that I think about it there is also a reasonable comparison to be made between the first-born children of the Egyptians being killed by Yahweh as punishment and how the Island's power kills the children of the Others. Interestingly enough, Yahweh simultaneously demands that the Israelites consecrate their own first-born to him for freeing them out of Egypt; this could be analogous to the Island allowing Aaron's birth (whose namesake plays such an important role in Exodus). Perhaps all of this is leading to the Island allowing for its female inhabitants to give birth to their first-born children once they have made the appropriate sacrifices; this could explain Aaron's emergence and the almost reverent disappearance of the Others on their journey into the wilderness.
I noticed something very curious that may relate to J. Wood's ideas concerning time travel. After killing Anthony Cooper, Sawyer asks Locke: "Is it true? that you were thrown out of a window? that you were a cripple?" Locke replies: "Not anymore." This line may be harmless or it may be ominous. Perhaps by killing Anthony Cooper here on the Island, the real world events in which John Locke was initially crippled never happened! Perhaps Woods' analysis that events on the Island are changing events back in the real world is true. John is not crippled on the Island because through means of time-manipulation, Cooper's actions have somehow been erased from Locke's personal timeline. This would explain what Ben meant when he said that Locke needed to kill Cooper in order to get rid of his crippled past; the events that plagued John's former life are erased from history. Through some sort of time travel or quantum rippling, John Locke back in the real world was never crippled in the first place. If this is true, then maybe Locke was not healed by the Island. Instead he never got injured in the first place. If Juliet performed an ultrasound on him, she may find both of his kidneys perfectly intact. The idea that the Island has magical healing powers could very well be another red herring to throw viewers off the trail of the real truth.
James Ford may be similarly ameliorated from his scarred past life with the death of Cooper. His parents may never have actually died, and now James can become Jacob; maybe that's what Ben meant when he said that Locke was not who they thought he was. Instead, it was James who did the killing, and so freed up his past so that he can transform into something greater through Cooper's erasure? I am reminded of Desmond's response to Jack when asked if they've met before: "Not in this life." I believe that line is repeated a few other times as well during the series.
I'm stepping out on a branch with this next bit. I found it very interesting (and disturbing) that Locke broke the fourth wall in this episode. He looks right into the camera, if only for a split second, and we know how important shots of eyes are on this show. After manipulating Sawyer to follow him to where Cooper is imprisoned, we get one of those sly "ha ha, I just manipulated the hell out of you and I am quite smug and satisfied with myself" looks from Locke as he walks out of frame right. Just before Locke exits the frame, he darts his eyes directly into camera as if to say to the audience, "I know you're watching this; how is that for some master manipulation?" Well, it's actually quite unsettling, John! While we have had the Lost Experience, and as J. Wood has pointed out that we the audience are very much participating in the reality of the story of the show, John Locke the character breaking the fourth wall to directly communicate something to the audience is very disconcerting, and that's to say the least, especially if these events are occurring on the doorstep of a metaphorical Hell. That look alone makes me question all manner of things. Has Locke known all along that we have been watching him? Has his behavior on the show been a conscious choice made in part to manipulate not just the people on the Island but us as well? Just how much has Locke been manipulating us? And who does this exactly make us? Are we still us at this point? Who are we? What have we been doing to these poor bastards?! That handful of frames where he looks dead-on into camera is giving me a collective identity crisis!
And before any of you naysayers ruin my fun on this, you should know that that one shot almost definitely had several takes, dozens or more, both for camera and for acting. That's just industry standard for most shows like this. So, if it was a mistake that O'Quinn looked into camera, there were plenty of other takes that the editor could have chosen, and these are not sloppy editors. More likely, there were other takes in which he looked directly into camera too obviously and several more takes had to be rolled to get the precise timing right for such subtle acting: O'Quinn giving us his "I'm serious, James" look, then his "I just fooled James" look, and then (the masterpiece) his "I'm watching you, Audience" look. That all in the matter of a few seconds; O'Quinn is truly gifted.
Now, I can admit that this may just be the producers of the show having fun with us, bringing us the audience in on Locke's gag, and overall just trying to get our goat (J. Wood pointed out how much of this episode is about playing a con on the audience), but this still could have far-reaching implications in that we are now placed collectively in a different position than we were before that one look. We are acknowledged as voyeurs now, watching these people's lives unfold, and at least Locke knows this. If you put quantum physics into the equation, and since Lost has many quantum mechanics references already potentially in use, then you must observe the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle: the viewer changes the outcome of the experiment, put simply. In other words, the outcome of events is ultimately changed because there are spectators observing the experiment, and Lost is indeed an experiment.
This principle of quantum physics was already touched on the other week by Desmond when he told his "camping buddy" that he didn't tell the others about the impending Naomi-related events in his vision because he didn't want things to change. The overarching implication we receive from Locke's fourth wall breaking look is this: "Not only do I know that you are watching, but because you are watching, you are changing the outcome of what happens here on this Island. You are changing the story merely by having eyes, a brain, and a TV tuned in to ABC at 10:00 p.m."
Even more unnerving about this implication is that it works both ways: is John Locke watching us? If so, then his observation of our lives is being changed/manipulated by the nature of time and space. John Locke, a meta-fictional character, could quite realistically be screwing around with our lives not only while we sit on our couches, but in further reaches and in more details than we would like to imagine.
Okay, I know it's a stretch. On a different level, one can simply view "the look" as an implication that our lives are affected by watching this show; we think about things we might not otherwise ponder; we actively come to blogs to discuss interesting topics; and our perception of reality is reworked by external forces that are outside of our control.
J. Wood: What do you think about the announcement that Lost will run through 2010, with three more seasons of 16 episodes each? It's going to be a bit of pain for fans getting such a trickle of shows over three seasons rather than the originally desired two. I suppose this will allow for the producers to more carefully structure the show, which is an advantage, but is it going to compromise the show's integrity or viewership? At least Lindelof ought to have the time to finish that Ultimate Hulk Vs. Wolverine series!
The first time I ever encountered the phrase "red-herring" was in the first adult book I read "And Then There Were None". That tale of past misdeeds and retribution has been remade many times in pop fiction and just on a surface level "Lost" certainly applies. In it, people with dark pasts are manipulated by a God-like figure. There must be a whole sub-category of Island Fiction from "The Tempest" to "The Magus" to "The Beach" and now "Lost". This show is a godsend to English majors (the machoest guy is a bookworm - I've often wondered if Sawyer ever found the answer to the Island in all those books he reads - is he being prepared for something - or is he just bored) and this website is the most literate I've found. Great stuff!
yeah, the name Magnus Hanso made me think of Magus
Dharma Bum - You blow my mind.
Well, J. Wood and everyone else on here blow my mind! Until I came across this blog I had no idea that such intelligent and stimulating television programming and blogging existed.
dharma bum,
I somewhat like the concept of breaking the 4th wall. If this is indeed part of Lost, could this lead to some-type of 'Live' episode before it's all said and done. I mean they have used fake commercials and have used press conferences and even had that one dude as a guest on Kimmel.
Dear All,
This was a doozy of an episode and the entries this week from J Wood through dharma bum are incredibly absorbing to take in. Thanks!
I am hoping there is another way to understand the James-murdering-Sawyer event. It felt inevitable from the beginning of this episode that this would be the outcome (I just knew Cooper would be in the Brig rather than Ben), and the explanations that people have put out there leave me thinking that it is all too tidy/simple/ deterministic/fatalistic and I felt rather manipulated as a viewer by the slaying of the beast we witnessed.
I keep thinking that the divergent/varying worldviews/philosophies we get to wrestle with along with the characters call for a bigger reveal in this case than we've seen this far. The ends can never justify the means (though people throughout history have tried to delude themselves or others that they could), and even if we can completely empathize with James' anger/hatred of Sawyer-Cooper, I am disappointed that James was apparently successfully conned in the way that he was by Locke and didn't reflect on other possibilities--there had to be another way to purge himself of the past besides killing the original Sawyer-Cooper; despicable though the guy was until the bitter end, it's all just too black & white for me. Cooper is one of the few characters we've seen quite a bit of not to have been roundly developed--there is apparently nothing about him to like/sympathize with. I think James is going to experience release and regret about what he did in the brig, and I don't believe it was necessary or inevitable that James had to kill Cooper.
dharma bum: I'm currently (and somewhat frantically) drafting a new prospectus for my dissertation, which is dealing with precisely the kind of thing you just described with Locke (Lost is my final chapter). I'm looking for that scene; is that when he first gets Sawyer to follow him, "Please don't tell anyone I was here," and Sawyer tells him to wait up? If so, I see what you're seeing. It's just a flash, a quick glimpse as he's leaving the frame, but he looks right at the camera. And there's just that hint of smile, kind of like when he blew the sub. That's a very promising grab, and it would have been easy enough to edit the glimpse out, so it seems like it's there on purpose. If more such scenes occur, that wil be a key one.
Bravo.
As for the three more seasons of sixteen episodes, I think it'll be hell on us, but we're going to have some fantastic episodes ahead of us. It gives ABC what they want -- to keep milking their cash-cow -- and it gives the writers and actors a few things: An end point, so they have something to shoot for; Shorter seasons, so there'll be less room for filler material; and longer breaks just to work on structuring each episode and letting the actors recuperate. Seems like a decent enough negotiation (although I'm willing to bet the writers wanted one or two more years, and ABC wanted four or five).
I nabbed a screenshot of Locke looking to the camera/audience/us. It's a bit blurry -- it was right at the edge of the scene, and again, could have easily been edited out, but the fact that it's there suggests otherwise. The screenshot's on my Vox blog.
I'm glad you found it and could blow it up for everyone to see. I also frantically jumped between my MacBook Pro and my iPod trying to grab those frames for my own satisfaction (don't have HDTV yet), and got exactly the same blurred frames that you got. That's why I cannot wait to see it in 1080p: clean frames without that blurring.
Did you also notice that immediately after that direct look into camera that O'Quinn throws yet another layer of emotion into that shot by shutting his eyes and turning his head away from camera? It's even shorter than the fourth wall breaking glance, but in retrospect a good emotional bookend to that unnerving look right at us the audience.
hjortron flicka - I found that scene and the whole concept of Cooper's capital punishment to be very upsetting myself. It seemed rather "unenlightened." If we get into history, however... well, you get the bloody beheaded drift on that line of thinking. Also on that note of vengeance, the action does fall in line with the Old Testament interpretation of right and wrong. I do not mean that what you or I see is Right or Wrong, but rather what Yahweh (i.e. the Island), this omniscient "narrator" (if you will) of the O.T. judges to be Right or Wrong. That YHWH god had quite an erratic method of doling out executive decisions; textually, these judgments sometimes contradict themselves. Perhaps the Island does as well.
What I am driving at is this. I think the death of Cooper is very controversial, and by being such an event, it creates a whole new topic for Lost viewers to debate. That is the point of his murder. It's extremely complex, and there is no one way to look at it. Some people see it as black and white: "That S.O.B. deserved it!" Others feel queasy. What compelling modern works of fiction do is raise important questions relevant to the audience without supplying an easy answer.
One of the great things about Lost is how we don't get easy answers. Ninety percent of modern television dramas pander to their audience's demographic. The viewers of, say, a Law and Order type show would probably hands-down say: "The bastard deserved it," and they would never look back on the issue. After the show, they'd sleep soundly. A "Boston Legal" demographic, on the other hand, could get a tidy answer in a similar case in which the criminal is punished not capitally but is given a second chance. At the end of either program, the loose ends are tied up, and the audience goes to sleep emotionally and morally sated.
For most shows, TPTB know ahead of time how to please their demographic, and in the end, much more often than not, the final subtext can be translated into this: "Go back to bed, America. Your government has figured out how it all transpired" (Bill Hicks). For these shows, the end justifies the means because that's exactly what the audience wants: a reaffirmation of what they already think, a no-brainer.
The producers of Lost do not allow such simplicity to occur. Cooper's death by the hands of Locke and Sawyer is complicated, strange, and will remain controversial, much like many of the decisions made by key characters in previous episodes. The murder is designed to upset your stomach and not to provide a panacea by the time the credits roll, unless, of course, you are one of those black or white type of viewers.
To look at this in the larger picture, to bring it full circle, the producers of Lost provide us with many different philosophies, religious dispositions/dogmas, and psychological profiles. In doing such, the audience views the show through multiple prisms and gets the chance to learn (as opposed to escape) through their own personal suffering and judgments. There are many perspectives provided with which one can analyze the events on the show, and no single one (at least up through the current episodes) is right or wrong. The repercussions from The Brig, I suspect, will resound throughout the next several episodes as Locke and James evolve.
[I do need to mention in brief that I only used the other TV shows (Law & Order and Boston Legal) as PURELY hypothetical examples; I've never watched an entire episode of Law & Order. I have no idea how well the program is written, if it has a bias or an agenda, etc. I was simply drawing two names out of the hypo-hat. I randomly chose that particular show as an example because I am familiar with what I perceive the structure of the show to be: There is a crime, a case, a trial, and a final verdict: roll credits. I could be wrong, and if so, my apologies.
Boston Legal, on the other hand, I have watched, and while I withold any analysis of the program (beyond it using a similar formula of crime, case, trial, and verdict), I suppose it came to mind because of how the show blatantly breaks the "fourth wall" in most of the episodes I have seen. For instance, in tonight's episode after a cold open a character hums/sings the intro theme song for the show exactly at the moment the intro theme song plays during the opening credits. Hilarious and inexplicable.
Dharma Bum sums up the killing of Cooper very well. I didn't think of this until reading Hjortron Flicka's comment but the killing might be necessary as per "The Golden Bough" and the old king making way for the new ala Col. Kurtz's demise in "Apocalyspe Now". That Capt. Willard chooses not to become the new king of the jungle (literally the vegetable king) gives hope for Sawyer (now James). Perhaps with this killing James is able to make the next step up the evolutionary ladder. In Tom Robbins' "Jitterbug Perfume" man starts out as lizard-based, becomes mammalian (our present state), then finally achieves a vegetable being. Robbins writes that Christ was one of these new men. Perhaps in James we are witnessing another. He certainly has grown (sometimes with Hurley's help) as no other character has. Thanks to this blog I now see James as the key to this mystery and not Locke.
It would be excellent if that look toward the viewer was indeed intentional because right now the closest person to us as the viewer is Ben. The "Law of Ben" so far is that if the viewer knows a fact on the show in almost all cases so does Ben. I guess this ties into the power of the word and why Jack and Juliet have not said anything to us. As the viewer we are not good at keeping secrets.
I agree that Cooper's sudden and violent end will reverberate through the rest of the show. Killing someone like Cooper may rid the source but not the damage of a lifetime of hatred for Sawyer.
I'm still taken aback at how *honest* Cooper is on the Island. He doesn't hide anything about himself. He admits to his professional lifetime of cons, he openly displays his contempt for everyone around him, and he doesn't feign remorse for the lives he's shattered. He discloses information freely, from his car accident to his knowledge of flight 815, from stealing a kidney to making off with $38,000 out of Jasper, Alabama. He doesn't even hide his belief that he's in Hell, nor his lack of surprise at being there. Even his confusion, such as it is, is apparent.
What a paragon of virtue, this Cooper is! He was the most honest man on the Island.
It's almost like Cooper was an animal. He didn't or couldn't hide anything, he snarled, he bit hard enough to draw blood. He's also obviously dangerous. What do you do with a deranged and dangerous animal? You put it down.
Cooper wasn't murdered. He was euthanized. Unlike his experience with the Marshal, James Ford gets it right this time.
I really like this site and the information that it adds to the experience of Lost (especially all of the literary references). This is my first comment. I do like hearing many theories but having too many theories (that often conflict) leads to confusion. I don't like where Dharma Bum is going with the idea that because Sawyer killed Cooper, none of the things that Cooper did to Locke actually happened (like taking his kidney or paralyzing him, etc.) so this is why he was cured. The evidence from the episodes of Lost just doesn't support this.
Locke's paralysis was healed by the island, we saw that because immediately after the plane landed he started moving his legs. The island also has cured other people's illnesses (Jin's low sperm count, Rose's cancer). An event that occurred weeks later (Sawyer killing Cooper) did not cure him physically, he was already walking. I like to think in good writing we can use what the writers give us and our perception to try to discern what is really happening and I think that Lost is by and large very well written.
As far as timelines go (and my expertise is from watching a lot of Star Trek episodes) I think that until we see other alternate timelines from the producers of Lost we have to go with the timeline presented to us in the episodes. Apart from Desmond influencing things as far as saving Charlie and the one "flashback" episode from Desmond where he appeared to relive his life and was unable to really change it, the rest of the Losties haven't been that involved in time manipulation. There have been a lot of wild goings on (many still unexplained), but not a lot of time manipulation.
I guess what I am trying to say here is that if there is a theory there has to be some evidence to back it up. The writers are purposely putting in literary allusions and encourage us (meaning J Wood) to look into them via their character names. They named these characters Locke, Hume, Cooper and this is the evidence that they are referencing these philosophers. That is why the literary analysis works so well here.
Picking up on the idea that we just don't get easy answers in the Lost narrative, I'd add that the straight-out killing of someone who seemed to be a straight-out bad dude introduces a different kind of complication for the audience. So far everyone who seemed bad or good is a lot more. We've been conditioned, more or less, to search for multiple moral perspectives in each character.
This time we don't. Just when we get comfortable with our moral compass being complex, this straight-out killing complicates our comfort. It forces you to confront outright sinister madness, with no escape valves. Flannery O'Connor couldn't save that guy.
The fourth wall discussion reminds me very much of an article I remember reading back during the first or second season ... I think the link is http://www.cityofsound.com/blog/2006/03/why_lost_is_gen.html . The whole idea was that what was truly revolutionary about Lost as television was that the writers and producers were listening in, and then responding, to all of the analysis of the show on blogs and in other media. At least that's my recollection ... I've been too busy to go back and check the article. J ... good luck on that prospectus!
My apologies to you, Sean, if you did not like my conjecture about time flux. For the most part on this blog I have offered analysis of this show from a textual perspective, particularly in respect to Old Testament literature, mythology, and linguistics.
In that particular post I simply explored an avenue based on quantum mechanics, which is not my specialty. I felt it was worth pursuing (in two brief paragraphs) in that it opens up a line of thought that works outside of the box. That gives us potential as readers to question some of our pre-conceived notions.
For instance: simply because Locke can miraculously walk once he arrives on the Island is meaningless. It has no context. We are searching for that context. We have no explanation. To simply say that "it was the island" means nothing. Eventually we might discover substantial reasons why healing can (and also in some instances cannot) occur on the Island. It may be the result of spirituality, physics, or the Easter Bunny.
Here we are exploring the possibilities of Lost's mysteries, and the relatively new branch of quantum mechanics is one of them.
I mostly stick to the aforementioned areas of critical analysis, but sometimes when watching a complex show, it is worth following potentially dead-end avenues. If they are dead ends, they will not be followed or discussed. If quantum mechanics has nothing to do with the intent of the writers, then I am sure no one bother to continue with that line of thought.
Until we have satisfactory answers, relevant topics introduced in the show (and quantum physics is quite present), are worth being explored, even if a handful of them end up being "zombie" theories. The wheat will be separated from the chaff in the end.
J. Wood: I hadn't thought about that straight-out bad/good aspect in such terms. Glad you brought Flannery O'Connor into it! We are put into a new position. We no longer relate directly with the characters' motives; it's alienating. The question becomes, to me at least, would I kill this man?
Cooper is as dangerous as a kitten since his emergence on the island. He managed to nibble on someone's hand. Death was not necessary. That's where I find the moral ambiguity to be. If I were an "extra" character as a Lostaway, I would find it easier to imprison the man than stangulate him. Of course, neither James nor Locke are in such an objective position. It makes us, the audience, uncomfortable with our favorite characters.
But this moves us into next week's episode. I won't go into it aside from saying that Ben has "daddy issues" himself. It maaaaaay have played a part in the Locke/Ben/Sawyer daddy issue complex.
Wow! Okay, I can’t wait until the new post comes. “The Man Behind the Curtain†episode really clinches the Biblical allusions in a direct way, and it also grounds them. The power of words mentioned in last week’s post, particular inre: magick also comes to fruition. The Biblical nature of the character names and storylines on Lost not only are intrinsically meaningful, but the concept of the higher power of/on the Island as representing Yahweh (an “old godâ€) and the Smoke Monster acting as the Right Hand of God seem to fit very well too. Ben acts as a new sort of “latter Latter Days Saint,†finding a new interpretation of a formerly known higher power and getting other people to buy into him as the prophet (or mouthpiece) though the creation of a new (reinterprative) doctrine.
So much more depth to be plunged and other areas to hit. I will save that for next week’s post. (Jeffrey: I can’t wait until Tom Robbins and Terrance McKenna come into the mythos now that the hippies have arrived.)
PTINDY: I saw that bit on Jimmy Kimmel on youtube recently. I have no idea if they will or not. Since ABC defined a definitive structure, it could be unlikely... On the other hand, how is Darlton going to sate us during those 36 weeks a year without new episodes of Lost throughout 2010? I sincerely hope that an even more inventive version of the Lost Experience, enveloping the concepts you mentioned, will be put into production.
dharma bum: I really liked your comment in response to my last one about the killing of Cooper, and your in depth look at the Old Testament and YHWH in numerous posts has been very interesting; I'd just like to add that the prophets of the OT (Isaiah, Amos, Jeremiah, Hosea, Micah) seem to emphasize that God is not about fear, but about liberation, the righteousness of justice vis-a-vis the poor, and the spirit of the law being more important than the letter of the law. The beautiful passage from Micah sums it up best; you'll know the one about doing justice, loving mercy and walking humbly with God.
I am no Biblical scholar, but it seems to me that many Christians do read the OT God as being mostly about vengence, wrath and fear (so that Jesus and the NT God can be understood as new/different/more evolved, even "better" God), but the Jewish tradition (which, of course, doesn't call that part of the Bible the OT, which is why I think your analysis is being offered through some kind of Christian lens) and many Christians don't attribute to God all of the anthropomorphic "base" characteristics you see the island itself presenting as a YHWH. I think I remember J Wood explaining that one of the principal writers/creators of Lost is a Roman Catholic (or someone raised in that church?), so it may be that your insights, dharma bum, are in line with what the Lost writers are saying, but I just wanted to suggest that there are lots of ways to look at the OT (of course you know this...), and who knows how our understanding of the island will evolve as the show does?
I found J Wood's comment about even Flannery O'Conner not being able to redeem Conner pretty hard-hitting; and, J Wood you are absolutely right to challenge my desire to always find a way for the "good" to triumph. (Not that I always look for "good" or happy outcomes--and I know doing good can be extremely complex and difficult. Still, I think all human beings, Cooper included (as far as we can tell, he is a person and not a monster, right?) are by definition morally complex, and just because the Lost writers haven't shown us more sides to Cooper's character/provided us with context for his behavior, doesn't mean that Cooper is the incarnation of "evil" itself. I'm sticking with my assertion that Cooper didn't have to be killed, though it is a moot point now perhaps, since James we did indeed see James (with Locke's critical role in bringing it about) do the deed.
J. Wood-- You're killing me with this long wait for this week's post. (I know, I know you have a prospectus to work on and all).
Speaking of killing, I think we need to examine the manner in which Cooper is killed. It's not as if Sawyer, as soon as he finds out who Cooper is, kills him. No, he wants Cooper to read his letter. He wants closure. He wants to end that chapter of his life, whether he realizes it or not. And what does Cooper do? He rips up Sawyer's little letter and flings it in his face. He doesn't care. He doesn't show regret. He taunts Sawyer, cuts him to the bone emotionally. THAT's when Sawyer kills him.
So, I guess what I'm trying to get at with this rambling is that you have to take this killing in context. Perhaps, dharma bum, Cooper would be as dangerous as a kitten to you, because you don't have any history with him. He would have nothing to taunt you with, no letters of closure to rip up. I hate to sound cold-hearted (especially since I don't often sound like this), but as Locke said of Cooper, he had it coming. He showed no regret or remorse for his actions, and that's what Sawyer was looking for. Contrastively, Cooper's death does seem to disturb Sawyer.
And now, since Sawyer has had closure with his past, will he be off the island--like Locke...? (oops, spilling over to next week, hehe)
Rest assured, the post for "Man Behind the Curtain" (and my prospectus) is in the bag.
Carlton Cuse has stated in the past that he's a practicing Catholic, and Lindelof is a secular Jew. So in those two, we've got the entire bible covered.
I doubt that we're completely done with Cooper; he'll be back in flashbacks, and we'll find out just what kind of sociopath he is. A sociopath has no sense of feeling for other people; the only trait Cooper lacks on the DSM-IV scale is the steady-state of depression, which makes him seem even less human. Who's to say people can't be monsters? (And I'm from the land of Ed Gein and Jeffrey Dahmer.)
Here's a bit of a scoop Darlton let out in their 19-city radio tour; a person's ability to be healed quickly on the island is related to what kind of person they are. That might be why Ben is having trouble recovering, while Locke healed right quick. After playing puppet-master to get Sawyer to top Cooper, I'm wondering if Locke will heal from Ben's bullet as quickly as he did from the busted legs.
(Thanks for the City of Sound article -- I'm saving that one.)
hjortron flicka: When I started blogging here I debated and interchangeably used the terms Old Testament and Torah. I finally settled on O.T. because it is generally how most people are familiar with the writings in Anglo-Saxon countries. My approach is generally a textual approach, taking into account how the writings were selected, edited over time, translated, and what sort of sociological and historical context in which the events/stories occurred. I sometimes like to use more specific tools: deconstruction, feminism, narrative or ideological criticism... etc. It all kind of mixes together after a while until I catch myself. My academic background is grounded in the "O.T.," having both studied and taught the subject in a limited manner while at college. I am very interested in hearing people's intrepretations of the "N.T." and Catholic connections made in Lost's narrative.
But I find your comment interesting because I do come from a Presbyterian background, even though I no longer associate myself with that organization. (Going into current personal religious/spiritual beliefs, etc. seems inappropriate in this type of forum.) I do have to wonder at times if early age inculcation still influences my perspective on and interpretation of YHWH's portrayal...
job: I find your comments in repsonse about Cooper's killing very intersting; everyone on this blog has provided a unique reaction to his murder, with a unique interpretation. That's what I love about his death. No one seems to feel exactly the same way about it, and I think it has the potential to remain a point of confliction for a number of episodes (even if only subtextually).
Great analysis, all you guys.
I agree with job on why sawyer decided to kill cooper. He acknowledged all his crimes no regrets. And when he remembers what he did to sawyer's parents, but not her mother's name, sawyer replies "her name was Mary" (wonder is this have further implications) he upsets when cooper tears the letter and he is visible (and physically) affected after murdering him. I believe the intention of having him going to the black rock without shoes is full of meaning. It'll be interesting to see him going by James Ford from now on. This episode is like the beggining of the end for Sawyer and how his character will develop and become more and more significative. Just loved the episode, really one of my favs.