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Daniel Nester
The REAL Lost: “The Man Behind the Curtain”
Posted by J. Wood, May 11th, 2007
107 Comments
Filed under: Contributors.
"Benjamin is a ravenous wolf.
in the morning devouring the prey,
and at evening dividing the spoil"
— Jacob's blessing on Benjamin, Genesis 49:27
The eyes of Horace are closed, and Locke's are open. But despite all we see, this is an episode of questions and lies.
The central question of "The Man Behind the Curtain" is did Locke see Jacob? And did you? Because for a brief moment, just after Ben is flung against the wall, we do see an old man with shoulder-length hair, his face in shadow, sitting in the chair. But the other questions revolve around Ben.
Ben misses his mother Emily, but she's not the only woman Ben loved and killed; although we don't see it, we can presume that Annie, whose name Kate used as a pseudonym in Australia, was also killed in the purge. When Ben brings out the wooden doll Annie carved for his birthday, he is commemorating his original life and his new life at the cost of the lives of the people he loved.
In some ways, Ben was precocious: he was born two months too soon, seemed to be a good learner, and somehow became the leader of the Others. He also didn't talk much at first, but he didn't exactly have a nurturing father. Roger Linus didn't give a damn about his education and never remembered Ben's birthday: "Kind of hard to celebrate the day you killed your mom." Roger was clearly not a good person — he was no Anthony Cooper or Wayne, but he was no hero, and fits right into the Lost pantheon of feckless fathers.
But something changed after Ben's foray out into the jungle, which revealed a few things, perhaps most surprisingly that the seemingly-ageless Richard Alpert was already there on the island. Perhaps there was something special about Ben; he saw his deceased mother Emily twice on the island, which piqued Richard's attention and made him ready to adopt a child of the tribe he was at war with. After this meeting, Ben seems to come out of his silent shell. We next see him years later as an adult, and learn that, like Horace Goodspeed suggested, he's speaking and has found something to say, as Roger mentions how he's usually a "chatty Cathy" in the morning. Like the books on Ben's shelves suggest, he's gained word power.
Has Ben gained any other kind of powers? The nod to the well-known wizard Harry Potter is unmistakable (the other alluded wizard of this episode); he even has the rabbit, recalling "Every Man For Himself" and "White Rabbit," as well as Sawyer's copy of Watership Down and its theme of tribal warfare. When Ben and Locke approach Jacob's shack, they cross a barrier of what looks like black ash (but may be something else, as it smells funny to Locke ). In magical rituals, salt or some other substance is used to make a consecrated circle that contains the thing conjured. Did Ben bring Jacob to the island? Perhaps: the episode focuses on Ben's birthday, December 22; since we have the presence of a ritual circle, and we know numbers are symbolically important, we can look for any symbolic meanings with the numbers of the episode. In numerology, the number 22 is one of three Master Numbers (the others are 11 and 33); there are 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet, 22 paths within the Kabbalistic Tree of Life (the Sephiroth), 22 arcana of the tarot, and 22 can manifest archetypes in reality. Richard saw something in Ben, perhaps some kind of adeptness. Perhaps Ben did bring Jacob to the island, and is he keeping him trapped in that shack (and is that what those sick-looking jars of liquid are for?). If so, that may be why Jacob asks Locke to help him.
Watching that scene closely, we can see Locke was looking right at Ben when Ben was flung against the wall. We can see Jacob for a split second during that shot (if we catch it), but did Locke? Ben didn't hear Jacob, and Locke apparently didn't see him, but given Locke's newfound ability to bend the truth as necessary, Locke may have just told Ben he didn't see him in order to keep some advantage over him. And it may be why Ben shoots him; Ben, being the con man that he is, may recognize Locke's playing him and shoots him to maintain his own advantage — Benjamin is a ravenous wolf. But where did Ben's gun come from? Was that Locke's gun, and if so, how did he get it?
The appearance of Alpert raises another question: Just how long have the "Hostiles" been on the island, and where did they come from? Are they — or some of them — from the Black Rock, or were they there when the slavers ended up in the middle of the island? Did they have something to do with Jacob, and what's with the whispering? It now seems they're continuing some of the work begun by the Dharma Initiative, but we still don't know what their goals or purposes are. They clearly introduced Ben to the secrets of the island, and somehow between the time Ben was Harry Potter and a patricidic janitor with a great education, he also became the leader of the Others. Ben is the checker piece who gets to the other side and is crowned.
Before this, however, Ben was a junior member of the Dharma Initiative, brought in with his father Roger by the man who first met them on the day of Ben's birth (and Emily's death), Horace Goodspeed. The Dharma Initiative had set up Otherville and the sonic fence, and like the Lostaways, did not get along with the Others. Horace was a mathematician, and was probably recruited to work on the Valenzetti Equation. His name is certainly evocative; of the few historically significant Horaces and Goodspeeds, there is the Roman poet Horace, and the early 20th C. biblical scholar and translator Edgar J. Goodspeed, who are in their ways mirror-twins.
The poet Horace was known for his Satires and Epodes; the Satires rejected public life, ambition, extremes, and embraced wisdom through serenity and balance — very Dharma-ish. The Epodes sound a little more like satire than the Satires, and mocked social abuses and conventions, mainly through their form; they seem to be praise, but the meter they were written in was used for personal attacks and ridicule. We may find it difficult to find the hidden mockery and satire in some of these works, but we're in an age of Colbert, not Maecenus. A writer of social satire, though, also recalls the Dickens of Little Dorrit.
But the second name, Goodspeed, may be from a relatively famous biblical scholar at the University of Chicago named Edgar J. Goodspeed. He translated a widely-used 1923 edition of the New Testament that did away with floral, formal, poetic speech; very un-Horace-like. In his preface, Goodspeed notes that the dialect the original texts were written in were "the common language of everyday life," and that "the most appropriate English form for the New Testament is the simple, straightforward English of every-day expression." In the name Horace Goodspeed, we get a mirror-twin of two literary heavyweights with very different formal concerns, one of royalty and one of the common people. This also seems to reflect some of the social concerns of the island: will people organize themselves under cults of personality, or democratically?
Another mirror-twinned scene is when Locke whips Bakunin. Locke's namesake recalls the enlightenment philosopher of the social contract, and indeed Lost Locke has only used violence selectively and for a clear purpose (like when he beat Charlie). Bakunin's namesake recalls the 19th C. philosopher of anarchy who embraced streetfighting in the revolution of 1848. When Lost Bakunin rushes back to the camp with news of Naomi (and explains that the sonic fence didn't kill him because it wasn't set at a lethal level), he's offended that Ben would answer to Locke, who wants to go see Jacob. Without a second thought, Locke beats Bakunin senseless to maintain Ben's attention, and we see the man of social balance acting in an extreme way against a man of extremes who is questioning social imbalance. But as we've seen, these names are used more or less to introduce themes and ideas, and shouldn't be directly mapped onto specific characters; the social contract and anarchy are to be worked out amongst social groups, not individuals. We'll see that played out before long; just as the Dharma Initiative couldn't live with the Others, neither can the Lostaways. And the look Bakunin flashed Locke said "this isn't over."
That is, if Locke gets out of the mass grave alive. When Ben finally comes clean about not being born on the island, he puts a bullet into Locke's ribs, seemingly because Jacob said something to Locke that Ben couldn't hear. Jacob's call for help suggests Locke has a connection with Jacob that Ben doesn't. When Ben brought Locke to the Dharma Initiative mass grave, he's also bringing him to the remains of the Tribe of Benjamin. The Book of Judges describes how the Tribe of Benjamin was, in effect, purged by the other tribes of Israel after a certain offense (as recounted earlier in this blog by dharma bum). Since we know Ben Linus's tribe was the Dharma Initiative, the purge makes more sense now. But the biblical purge gives us a bit more to work with, since it was based on a con.
The entire biblical purge — the story of which seems inflated — resulted from one unnamed Levite and a gang from Gibeah. The story is all about hospitality and the lack of it: the Gibeah gang knew the Levite was housing a traveler, and wanted to have their way with the guest. Instead, the Levite tossed his concubine (not a full legal wife) out to the gang to be raped. In the morning, the Levite finds the woman laying unresponsive on the threshold of his door; she may be exhausted from pain, or she may be already dead. At any rate, the Levite cuts her up into twelve pieces and sends the pieces out to the twelve tribes of Israel, claiming the Gibeah gang had cut her up and something needed to be done. And with that, the Levite saved his own skin, killed (or at least desecrated) his wife, blamed it on some others, and brought down some righteous wrath upon the Tribe of Benjamin. Nearly all of the tribe were killed/purged, including the Benjamite women and children. The Israelites then stole women from Shiloh to replace the ones they killed so the Tribe of Benjamin could continue.
It's a crazy story that has some resonance with what's happening on the island, but there are two points from the Book of Judges that are worth noting: The Benjamite warriors fought left-handed, and a Shekinah resided in the Benjamite land. Ben Linus isn't left-handed (he shot right-handed), but the term is used as a metonym for keeping an opponent off-balance — and we've already seen how the Others deal with the Lostaways, constantly keeping them off-balance ("We're the good guys, Jack"). A Shekinah is basically a dwelling for god. We know that Jacob seems to have god-like powers; according to Ben, Jacob's the cancer-healer, and even helped Rachel. Jacob's shack may be a kind of debased Shekinah for a god-like figure — a shackinah. But if so, this is a haunted holy house, a mirror-twin of what it should be. The horror of Jacob is that if he is somehow god-like, this god is imprisoned by a ravenous wolf and needs help.
It may all depend on if Locke can crawl out of that grave and heal like before. But the fact that he played such a manipulative role in Cooper's death may have altered Locke's "good" character, and his ability to be healed so quickly. We're not in Kansas anymore.
Books mentioned in this post
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The Eye of Horus is closed?
Great post as usual J.
In analyzing the dynamic between Jacob and Ben, it seems to me that there might be a parallel with the story of Moses. Jacob, as some sort of removed deity figure, has designed Ben as his deputy in leading the Others. It also seems, at least in the past, that Jacob communicated directly with Ben. But it now appears that Jacob and Ben may have had a falling out, that Jacob no longer communicates directly with Ben, and that Ben may be leading the Others falsely in Jacob’s name.
I wonder if at some point in the past, as punishment for some sort of transgression, Ben fell out of Jacob’s good graces. Instead of relinquishing power, however, Ben actively defied Jacob and now continues to rule in Jacob’s name without the Others being aware of this feud.
While this is speculation, it harkens back to the story of Moses. Moses acted as God’s deputy in leading the People Israel from Egypt to the Promised Land. God communicated directly with Moses (for example, the burning bush). But at the end of their journey, Moses was not allowed to enter the Promised Land. God punished Moses for an earlier transgression, and as such the People Israel entered the Promised Land without Moses.
Imagine if Moses had acted defiantly when God pronounced his punishment. God wasn’t communicating directly with the People Israel, so they wouldn’t have been aware of the intended punishment. Moses would have entered the Promised Land, against God’s will, and continued to lead the People Israel without their knowing of his falling out with God. Perhaps this carries a similarity to Ben’s relationship with Jacob.
Great blog! Stay L O S T.
This was quite an episode! having seen the stills of Jacob, I am going between the thought that Jacob is possibly Locke or Christian Shepherd....Could Jacob be Locke in the future? Locke hears Jacob speak, "Help me" is really hearing his own words in the future?
Also remembering that Cooper said "he Didn't raise no dummies" ( plural) Is Jacob John's "Bad Twin"
Also I am finding that Lost has alot of similarities to the complete books of OZ by Frank Baum....
Just to name a few,,,
Horse and cat who go to Oz with dorothy//Kate's vision of a horse and Sayid seeing a cat
Underground travel//underground hatches
Wooden Doll and giant rabbit//Annie gave Ben a wooden doll as a BD gift, Ben used a rabbit to test the boundries as a kid, and he used one for Sawyer..
Creation of Monster by mombi to guard prisoners//Monster on Island
and the list goes on...
One more note, actually 2...J. Wood, thank you so much for this blog, it is wonderful to read and everyone's input is amazing!! Also Locke will survive! resurrection is important to this story line.
Thank you for allowing me to speak my thoughts! First time for me!
I'm not sure if it was intended, but that last shot of Locke lying in the pit of skeletons made me think of Ezekiel's vision of the Valley of the Dry Bones.
In the 37th chapter of the book of Ezekiel, God gives the prophet Ezekiel a vision of a valley full of dry bones, and he tells Ezekiel to command the bones to live. As he does, tendons and flesh appear on the bones, and then the breath of life comes into them and they live and become a vast army. God explains that the vision symbolizes that God will restore the Israelites lost hopes and bring them back to settle in their own land, which has been taken over by Babylon.
The passage directly following this one has some interesting implications for Lost as well. By the time of Ezekiel, Israel (who are the sons of Jacob) had split into two warring Kingdoms: the southern Kingdom was orignally just the tribe of Judah; it was later joined by the Tribe of Benjamin. The other ten tribes sided with Ephraim's descendants and formed the Northern Kingdom.
After the vision of the Valley of the Dry Bones, God instructs Ezekiel to take two sticks, and write on one "Ephraim" and the other "Judah." Then God tells him to join the sticks together in one hand, so that they become one stick. This is to show that when he brings his people back to their land, there will never again be two kingdoms. They will be one people, under one god and one king.
Who knows, maybe Locke will raise up a whole army of dead Dharma Initiatives. And perhaps he'll also be responsible for reconciling the Lostaways with the Others. That is, of course, those like Juliet, who aren't really with Ben but are being manipulated into doing his bidding.
All speculation of course. I just find the parallels interesting.
J,
One thing in particular is bugging me about this episode. Why do we assume that Ben didn't also hear Jacob's 'help me'? Given that Ben has a history of communication with Jacob, and also given that Ben is in a perpetual chess match with everyone, the thought occurred to me that Ben was testing Locke to see if Locke was gifted in such a way that he could also communicate directly with Jacob. When Locke answered that he did in fact hear Jacob, Ben shot him, now having affirmation that Locke was special also, and therefore a true threat to Ben's alpha male position among the Others. Maybe I'm wrong but I guess the writers have led me down the path of never feeling secure in reading Ben straightforwardly.
I am new to your blog (do Liz and Jen at Celebritology earn commission?) but am eating it up.
Heh. I threw the Horus thing in there for fun -- glad someone mentioned it. I looked into it, but I don't think there's anything going on with the Egyptian god (yet).
I saw Doc Jensen brought up Jacob as Locke as well. Someone else thought maybe Jacob is Hanso. Looking at the still of Jacob, I'm not so certain. Jacob has a much different nose, a bit bulbouse on the end and thicker; Locke's is narrower, and a bit hooked. Jacob also has a bigger, more prominent chin. The same goes for Hanso.
There's a load of Oz references going back to Henry Gale at least. Oz is a real part of American mythology, and with 20-some writers on staff, I'm sure they're working in more Oz allusions/half-allusions that we may miss. I sometimes just stand back in awe of all the allusions, literary and biblical. The only thing to do, then, is ask to what purpose they're being used.
Is it possible that Ben was in good graces with Jacob at a certain point. That Ben and Locke share similar "gifts", but that the episode or event where Ben kills his father was a test, and at the point of committing murder, he lost his connection with Jocob (something we don't know yet, but may have been developed at that point)
Is it possible that Locke could actually see and hear Jacob the entire time at the house and could see that Ben was bluffing. Afterall, why was Ben talking to Jacob if he couldn't hear him?
I am certain Ben knew Jacob was in the room, but not where he was in the room. Locke knew where he was, not where Ben thought he was.
Ben tried to trick Locke into committing the 'sin' that caused Ben to fall out of standing with Jacob himself - killing his own father. Of course Ben does not know that Locke did not kill his father. Ben's attempt on Locke's life may have been based on his own false premise that Jacob has abandoned Locke, that Locke could not see or hear Jacob.
I have seen some Kate-Annie speculation based on the freckles, Kate's tracking ability in the jungle, a known connection between Kelvin Inman and Kate's stepfather. But I'd like to add that both women share a belief in talismanic objects used to maintain a connection with another person. For Annie it was the carved dolls, which she explicitly said created such a connection. For Kate it appears to have been that toy airplane (a DC-3), for the possession of which Kate apparently engineered a bank robbery. I guess it made her feel connected to her old boyfriend. Kate's apparent age would seem to negate such speculation, but then there's the case of the ageless Richard Alpert.
Great blog as always!
In re to the Jacob/Benjamin connection, I think it should be noted that one of Jacob's wives, Rachel, is the mother of Benjamin and Joseph and that she died giving birth to Benjamin.
Joseph was Jacob's favorite son. His brothers were jealous and, much as Ben threw Locke into a pit and left him to die, Joseph's brother's threw him in a well and left him to die. Then told Jacob he was dead (giving him Joseph's coat of many colors covered in goat's blood).
Joseph was saved and taken to Egypt where, because he could interpret dreams (and also experienced symbolic dreams like Locke), came into favor w/ the pharoah and went on to become an Egyptian leader -- a leader over Ben and all his brothers. This could be where the Egyptian symbology comes into play and has significance.
So, I think it's possible that somehow Ben and Locke are "brothers" and that Locke, not Ben, is the true leader, the "special one" that those on the island have been waiting for. Ben knows this (and like Herod is making darn sure no babies are born on the island that might take over his power -- possibly due to an ancient island prophecy) -- thus has to get rid of Locke (and will tell Jacob he is dead).
There's a line in the song "Wonderful" from the musical "Wicked" that says
"Then suddenly I'm here Respected - worshipped, even Just because the folks in Oz Needed someone to believe in". I think that sums up what happened with Ben and the hostiles. Think about it - in the stories of Oz, both Frank L, Baum's and Gregory MacGuire's, the wizard is a small time, petty con who lands through no choice of his own in Oz where he finds a group of people (or Munchkins and talking animals) who are desperate for a leader. The people of Oz have a healthy respect for magic, etc. But most magicians are cons are well right? As is the wizard. He exploits their beliefs and becomes their leader. (Now I switch more to the "Wicked" interperation of events from Oz.) Then Elphaba the Wicked Witch comes of age and people start to take note of her "gift" so she gets an appearance before the Wizard. There is a time that he wants her to join him, but she refuses because she knows he a con and that is when he turns on her and she takes her place as the "Wicked" witch. How does this tie to Ben? Ben landed, through no choice of his own, on the island where he meets Richard and the rest of his tribe. Now exactly what is going on with them is not clear, but I think they are an un- sophisticated group who worshipped some mystical force from the island. I think Ben began to see this so, con that he is, he exploited their worship and created Jacob (possibly he knew the biblical origins of his name - possibly a coincidence). Then he coordinated the purge, probably using smoke bombs provided by Dhamra, and then he moved the hostiles into Otherville and introduced them to technology and brought women there (which would make him worship worthy if these guys have been hanging around since slave trade days with no women because they all died in childbirth) etc. I think that Jacob is a hoaz, just like that big fiery ball in the "Wizard of Oz". The only problem is that the spirit of the island is not and Locke communicates with it. When they went to the cabin I think BEn was running an elaborate scam, pulling the strings, but John (Like Elphaba) really does have power and when Ben realized that he heard and possibly even glimpsed "Jacob" it freaked him completely out. He realized that Locke is the string he can't pull so he killed him. But I think Locke will be back - (Elphaba in the musical version of Wicked was faking her death when Dorthy melted her).
I love this BLOG! Keep it coming.
Just two thoughts.
Richard Alpert takes his name, as we already know, from Timothy Leary's partner in experiments with psychedelic drugs, who is also known as Ram Dass, which means *Servant of God*. Lost's Alpert is seemingly ageless: which other servant of God is known to be ageless? At least Melchizedek, who is said to be (Hebrews 7,3) "Without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days, nor end of life; but made like unto the Son of God; abideth a priest continually".
Malchizedek is said to be an emissary of the King of the World, in the book by the same name written in 1927 by René Guénon. Which brings us back to Agartha, Shangri-La aka Shamballa...
On a side note, am I the only one that thinks that Richard Alpert is the real Jacob?
An speaking of Indian traditions, what if that ashes that Locke finds around Jacob's house were vibhuti ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vibhuti ), that particularly gifted gurus (among them Sai Baba) materialise?
Stay Lost!
F.
J....checked for your blog five times before noon....always insightful. Didn't even catch the 22...(literally?).
Howsabout Ben's gas mask scene and its haunting similarity to one Anakin Skywalker?
Keep on keepin on.
jobe!
It's clear there is a vast variety interpretations going on in this one, and the only problem is they can't all be right, and we won't know for a while yet which ones bear out. I've stated my own caution about making conclusions, especially when it comes to how far an allusion goes, so I'll hold back on those, except to reiterate that it all depends on the purpose of the allusion -- which we're still waiting to find out.
But here's something that I can definitely say about the Jacob scene: We were seemingly witnessing the scene from Locke's point of view. We now know that Ben, Locke, and to an extent the general narrative itself, can screw with their audience's perceptions of events to gain some kind of advantage. We know that the writers/producers are also following what's being talked about in online communities like this one. They may even be changing up and organizing things to keep the audience off-balance. Nothing would kill the mystery quicker than having all your suppositions confirmed.
So can we be certain that we were viewing the Jacob scene from Locke's point of view? Probably not. If we were, we can't even be certain that the narrative point of view is direct or indirect -- and if it's indirect, the cameria/Locke may be telling us what Locke is telling Ben. We actually can't be certain if either Ben or Locke saw Jacob; perhaps both did, perhaps neither of them did, and only we were privy to that glimpse.
In any case, it was a very well-crafted scene, and probably accomplished exactly what it set out to do.
The talisman and vibhuti nuggets are intriguing -- I'm going to keep my eye on vibhuti.
J -
A "shackinah" - brilliant!
Juno
Oh, and about the quick image of Jacob: I don't think we should read too much into it yet. I'm sure Darlton very carefully attired and made-up this person to be ambiguous. We could certainly see Locke wearing a wig, as it were, but maybe that's what Darlton want us to see...
Also, Jacob seems to be wearing the same type of threadbare, 19th C. type of clothing that the ageless Richard Alpert wore when he met Harry Potterish Ben in the woods. So that leads me to believe that Ben didn't conjure up Jacob, but somehow (and I'm sure we'll find out at some point) Ben came into Jacob's good graces and became leader of the Hostiles/Others.
Maybe he was 'special' like Locke.
Juno
P.s. I sure hope Darlton doesn't go down the Jacob-is-a-ghost/spirit road. I'm still hoping they can explain everything with science or at least speculative science as they stated in the beginning.
I guess the paranormal would fall under 'speculative' science; but I'm hoping that would be more like remote-viewing or ESP or something, and not 'ghosts'. They might as well write a sequel to Pirates of the Caribbean or something. (I know, the 3rd installment of that movie is just coming out.)
Has it occurred to anyone that Jacob may actually be Locke wearing the fake beard on his head????
Seriously, thanks as always J. Wood for your detailed analysis.
For what it's worth, I don't think Jacob resembled Locke at all, apart from a rather prominent and wrinkled brow ...
I am intrigued by this speculation:
"Perhaps Ben did bring Jacob to the island, and is he keeping him trapped in that shack (and is that what those sick-looking jars of liquid are for?). If so, that may be why Jacob asks Locke to help him."
I think it's probably safe to say Locke brought Cooper to the island (unknowingly, but out of necessity to finally face his daddy issues head on), but why would Ben bring Jacob to the island? Who does Jacob represent to Ben (apart from the obvious possibility that he is some sort of surrogate father figure) ...
A final musing - I noticed the setting in the "shack" was somewhat evocative of the interior of the room in The Third Policeman, where the narrator/murderer encounters his dead victim (Mathers), and proceeds to have a three way conversation with his own soul (Joe), and the deceased. In the novel, although it was daylight, it was unnaturally dark, and the deceased sat in the far corner of the room (as Jacob did). I've seen previous posts concerned with inconsistencies in times/daylight/nightfall in certain scenes.
Any thoughts?
J, it's been a few hours since I first read this entertaining-as-always-entry and I'm still chuckling over "shackinah." I discovered your blog a few months ago and have been enjoying it immensely ever since, dare I say more than the show itself (I admit to often giving up in frustration -- I'm not a big TV watcher at this point and perhaps I'm also too disillusioned after the disappointments of both Twin Peaks and The X-Files.) I have to say though, after this past episode where The Mystery just seems to get Dumber and Dumberer, that I hope you will apply your talents to other, more productive and rewarding areas, and soon. The whole Lost thang just seems to me to be the biggest crowd-sourcing experiment since YouTube -- I consistently read more interesting plot ideas/philosophies in your columns, and in the various Lost message boards, than ever appear in the show. At least you have a book deal, these other people are blithely giving away their intellectual properties for free and let me tell you, when you hit 40, those great ideas don't come as fast and furiously as they once did -- why not hold on to them and develop them yourselves? Just look at the creators' credits -- it's hardly Foucault's Pendulum that they were writing before. This show seems written by an 18 year old college kid who had previously been holed away in his room playing videogames and reading comic books [the callous disregard in the show for human life is very disturbing, and the cheap Spiderman-type psychoanalysis is risible] and who has arrived at Columbia University, is in the middle of his Western Civ course, and is real excited about it. High Concept: A soap opera which seems to be set in Kamaloca and is shot like Tourneur's "Cat People," strike that, like the film-within-a-film in "The Bad and the Beautiful." Then each week, the fans supply the content. It's a hit! Or. . .not.
If the creators had told a big chunk of The Mystery in the middle of Season Two, I think people would be happy to watch a continuing series about how The Losties discover/have resolution with that Mystery. As it is, what we have in the series is kind of interesting in a po-mo Theory of Naughts-Mash-up-Culture kind of way, but I am lately just not finding it entertaining. Nor enlightening. Merely mentioning an historical person or concept is not the same as wisely integrating it into a cohesive work of art.
I want to like this show. I've put in many hours. But there are just too many digital avenues in which to "lose time" these days. I don't know if Lost will remain my choice for one of them.
(did the weather affect your satellite reception the other night? Mine was the pits; I'm 50 miles from y'all and well remember Springtime in SeaVille from my U days [as well as my enjoyment of the film classes of Mr. Korte.]) Cheers.
Amazing reading these posts and other blogs about Lost. I never knew so many people had such strong familiarity with literature and religion -- I doubled majored in religious studies and English and got a Masters in English and never would have drawn such conclusions about Lost as you posters have...but then I'm watching it to be entertained. Over analyzing the meaning behind every thing kind of distracts from the entertainment.
J. Wood - I love your book, it is very insightful as this blog proves to be each and every week (and hopefully for 3 years to come). Everyone here has such intelligent analysis! I agree that the minute I saw the circle I thought of Wiccan and Native American rituals and asked myself whether Ben had conjured Jacob or somehow lured and trapped him there. The circle could be made of ground sage as it has a strong scent and acts to repel spirits, although others have speculated it could be salt or ash. (If ash, then perhaps the classroom volcano demonstration foreshadows some future event or backstory.) My question is when did the circle happen, and did Jacob have something to do with Ben's acquisition of a cancerous spine? Retaliation perhaps?
It also appears Ben's murder of John Locke was foreshawdowed in Season two's literary reference from The Brothers Karamazov, "Men reject their prophets and slay them. But they love their martyrs and honor those whom they have slain." At first this appeared to indicate Ben would be the martyr but now the perspective has been switched to Locke.
In addition, Ben uncharacteristically allows Locke to order him around (in front of "his people" no less) and just before killing Locke, that is assuming John is dead, Ben confesses that he is indeed a liar. When he has gone to such great lengths on so many occasions to prove to everyone that he does not lie, is Ben looking for redemption here?
Considering all the previous lies, manipulations and the Hostiles' elaborate cons it is anybody's guess just what Jacob will prove to be and with so much hanging after this episode, it is anyone's guess where we go from here.
I just wanted to encourage you to keep up this great blog. It adds to my enjoyment of the show—and has taught me a few things about religions and literature.
First, just an update: Someone who has a direct line to the writers was intrigued by the idea of Locke looking into the camera and breaking the fourth wall, so he asked them. They said no. That's not to say they haven't acknowledged the audience in the past, or that Locke can't look creepy, but just not that time.
If Ben brought Jacob to the island like Locke brought Cooper, then we have more to learn about Ben, because that person came from some time in the ten years before Ben came to the island. The next question is which other character's path Jacob crossed way back when.
I'm not sure if the shack was hearkening back to Flann O'Brien, if only because the context is pretty different. O'Brien's protagonist had already killed Old Mathers in order to get the box, and when he returned to Old Mathers' place, there was Mathers sitting in a chair. The protagonist was trying to justify it to himself in the narrative, but Joe kept interrupting, trying to snap the protagonist back to reality. To make the analogy, we'd have to figure out who killed Jacob, Locke would have to be seeing Jacob, and Ben would be Joe.
But there's just something inherently creepy about old, dusty places with strange, decaying items laying around. When I was young, I got a job cleaning out a house where two brothers and their mother lived for many, many decades, hardly ever coming out. The mother died in the house, the brothers couldn't stay, the house was sold, and I landed the clean-up job. There was trash in there older than me. The cellar was old enough that it was made of cemented rocks instead of concrete, and there were jars of dark, vile-looking liquid all over, covered in webs and insects. Over thirty. I had to toss all of them. On occasion, when I picked one up, a bone would float up through the liquid against the glass. I don't ever want to know what was in there, but I've never looked at old ramshackle places quite same way.
Lesley, if we follow the Dostoevsky line, does that Locke the martyr or the prophet? I suppose that all depends on if he's actually dead.
Ms. Gretchen, no worries, this isn't my only thing -- I'm also doing my PhD and I run the University of Virginia Writing Center. But I wouldn't write off the writers just yet -- they're not quite high school hacks (and I actually was in school with some). And they're not losing audience share; in fact the 18-45 demographic has grown. Cuse got his start years ago, and made a mark with Brisco County Jr.; what was interesting about that show was that since it was a relative blip on the television radar (it was grouped with shows like Xena), they had a lot of freedom, so Cuse did some narrative experimenting. He set the show exactly 100 years earlier than the current date that the series aired, and he took current events and concerns of those times and allegorized them in a 1893 setting, making a show that was working on multiple narrative levels. That was new, and its a technique they've adopted into Lost (among others).
No doubt it's crowd-sourcing, but in a way that incorporates audience response and various media like never before -- and it's not like they have a model to follow, this is all new ground. And a good deal of it is done on the audiences terms; they've come to the audience's various media, rather than making the audience come to them. They did reveal a huge chunk of the mystery during the alternate reality game, but that was part of the crowd-sourcing, so people who didn't participate in it were missing pieces of the picture come the start of the third season.
But the other side of this is that a decent narrative has a shape, which means it needs an end, and until a week ago, they didn't have that. The amorphousness of an endless narrative is what strangled the X-Files. You can't really write Foucault's Pendulum for 44 minutes of television a week if you don't know what part of what chapter you can include in episode twelve. And lets face it, you couldn't write Foucault's Pendulum for film, either; that's why it's a piece of difficult literature, where there's more narrative freedom, and not popular entertainment. But that's not to say those in popular entertainment can't read Eco, and Eco is hardly above picking and choosing allusory influences he finds interesting and including them in a text. In fact, two of the only people that I can think of who worked in a popular visual medium and achieved something as dense as a high modernist novel are Orson Welles and Stanley Kubrick -- and both of them needed seasoning, too.
I doubt it'll look so much like a po-mo mash-up now that it has an end-date. One of the problems is knowing what to make of the allusions; and as I've tried to show here and in my book, they're not just name-dropped (which would be a kind of frustrating po-mo collage move), but each one serves a narrative purpose in that respective episode. Most recently, I think "The Brig" does this with the philosopher Anthony Cooper's theory of moral sense, and the philosopher John Locke's theory of war and slavery (wrote about it last week). With the end-date, they can tie things together much more cleanly; and with the shorter seasons, they have more time to develop each episode, and less season time to load with filler. Hang in there.
And yeah, we're having all kinds of satellite signal issues. I panicked a few weeks ago when I came back from work during a storm to watch my dvr'd episode, and I only had 34 minutes because of signal loss. The thunder's rolling right now and wreaking signal havoc again.
I also went along with the Locke as Jacob thing, although I also thought Alfar Hanso. But how about him being something to do with smoky? Why was that substance around the outside of the shack, is it to keep Jacob from leaving?
Once again, another great analysis J. Wood. Your blog is very interesting to read and I greatly appreciate your time and effort.
In regards to Ben's birthday, December 22nd, are we almost to that day in "Lost time"? The last number of days that I recall that the Lostaways had been on the island was about 77. If I am in fact recalling correctly, then we are not too far from another of Ben's birthdays. 9-22-2004 to 12-22-04. Now taking it a step further, is the impending attack on the Lostaways going to be on Ben's birthday. He purged the Dharma group on his birthday, so is his plan to purge the Lostaways on his birthday as well?
Seeing Ben as a youngster reminded me of that other preternatural boy-child, Walt. Perhaps they kidnapped Walt because Ben saw him as his natural successor?
i've watched this episode a couple times now, and i hope i'm not repeating anyone's comments or that i'm way off ... but i listened to jacob's "help me" a few times now. i swear his voice sounds exactly like that of actor clancy brown, who played joeiInman and/or kelvin inman in one of desmond's first/flashback episodes as well as one of sayid's flashback episodes. check it bleen.
What does anyone make of the painting of the dog in Jacob's house? The camera lingered on this painting for quite awhile. What breed of dog is it? I am sure it is a clue to Jacob's identity.
In my post earlier I made a reference to Jacob being a hoax created by Ben to keep the hostiles in line, but after re-reading my post I realize that I didn't clarify what I meant. I think that the hostiles, possibly Richard, told Ben of this force on the island who called the shots and that none of them had the gift that allowed them to communicate with him. Perhaps once upon a time some of the islanders did have the gift. Anyway, I think Ben saw this as an opportunity to seize power and thus exploited what he believed to be an island legend. He named it Jacob and started "communicating" with it in order to control them. He took John to meet him in the hopes of either getting John in line (and giving him the chance to exploit John's connection to the island) or convincing John that he was insane and thus running him off - What he wasn't prepared for was that Jacob was actually real and Locke had the gift to communicate with him. It's like the "scam faith healers". No one is more surprised, awestruck and sceptical than them when someone is actually healed.
This may be far fetched, but it certainly ties in with Ben being the man behind the curtain.
Every since "Henry Gale" and his balloon entered the story I've been saying that the losties were over the rainbow. Now I'm convinced that Ben is the great and powerful OZ!
One shot that I haven't seen on this or other write-ups on the episode comes in the shack immediately after the brief glimpse of Jacob. It shows (and I'm away from my tivo so the order may not be quite right) Jacob, then cuts to Locke, then to Ben, and then a closeup of someone's eye looking to their right and then into the camera (about 15 frames), then back to Locke as he turns to go out the door.
The eye is dark brown, so it's not Locke's, and the shot right before it shows Ben looking toward the camera and almost straight ahead, so it would seem it's not Ben either. I'm guessing this is a second shot of Jacob. If it is, then it seems to rule out the whole Locke-is-Jacob theory. And rather than in the shadows, it's a pretty clear shot. Not to mention the whole Lost/close-up on the eyes thing.
I don't have much to add to the discussion, just curious if anyone else had any thoughts on that scene.
Great analyses and posts again, everyone! I like this blog because it fosters quality discussion and doesn't devolve into one of those this-episode-sucked-kate-is-whiny-sawyer-is-so-hot blogs.
So Jacob and his little shack certainly give us a lot to ponder this week. I still don't know what to make of it all, and I guess that's what the writers want. And in my opinion, good writing will leave room for interpretation. So here's my interpretation. The island's strange electromagnetic properties are centered in this shack. You notice how the weird poltergeist stuff didn't start until Locke turned the flashlight on? Remember that Ben told him he had to turn the flashlight off to go in the shack. Perhaps when Locke turned on the flashlight (powered by electricity), it incited some sort of mini electomagnetic event-thingie, causing things to fly around. Or something like that... (Okay, so that's a far-fetched theory and I obviously don't know anything about electromagnetics, but, hey). And as for Locke hearing "Help me" in the shack, I think he was hearing a prophecy of his own last words. I think that Locke is definitely gone, now that he has resolved his daddy issues and is no longer "Lost."
Also, in this episode, we see Ben killing his father. True, his father was a jerk. But on the scale of nasty dads, he ranked maybe worse Christian Shepherd, but definitely much less worse than Anthony Cooper or Wayne. So why is it okay for Ben to kill his father, and Ben demands that Locke kill his father, too, yet Kate doesn't make "the list," seemingly because she blew up her father, who was much more of a jerk than Roger?
And as for Miss Gretchen's assertion that Lost doesn't stack up to Foucault's Pendulum, that may be the case. I haven't read it, but I have read other Eco. But have you read Dickens lately? He wrote his books for serial publication, and it shows. Dickens is rife with melodrama and stereotyped characters. So, I would argue that Lost is no less literary or poorly written than Dickens.
I wonder how young Harry Potter Ben got the combination to the sonar fence? Also since numbers have significance all over LOST, could "54439" -- the deactivation numbers mean something? I haven't come up with much yet--but they seemed to figure prominently on the paper Ben carried. I'm not too familiar with Biblical texts, but am fairly good with 19th century literary references. Still I'm drawing a blank.
J:
An wonderfully thoughtful blog as always - but I was very surprised you didn't catch another very possible allusion to Ben's Birthday, December 22. It's the Winter Solstice and of course that brings along a whole host of religious symbolism by it being the day that the Sun (son) is reborn. Just a quick glance at the Wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_solstice) alone causes my mind to swirl with echoes to events that happened on these particular December 22s. There's the Japanese Requiem of the Dead with the episode ending with a look down into the mouth of hell. There's the Roman Saturnalia with all the echoes of the torturous father-son relationship of Jove and Saturn. There's the German festival of Modresnach or Mother's Night with all those echoes from Ben's birth. And the list could go on and on.
I believe the painting was of a hound dog. I have two beagles, and the face looked a little familiar. It also looks like the first painting not done by that one director.
This past episode was set on Ben's birthday (he tells Richard it's his birthday when he's looking at Annie's doll), but we're also getting close to another important event: the 2004 Christmas tsunami, which was foreshadowed in the Swan hatch painting.
If you think Jacob was Locke, I've put up a comparison pic of their profiles here. There's a couple reasons why I'm saying it's not:
First, we've seen Others who look a lot like main cast members -- there's a Juliet look-alike and a Michael look-alike. No reason there can't be a Locke look-alike.
Second, there's some features that just don't match up. Jacob has a shorter and more bulbous nose than Locke, and Jacob's eyebrows slope up to his forehead, while Locke's slope down toward the bridge of his nose.
Here's something I haven't seen any discussion of:
When Ben makes the comment about the Dharma people that "they couldn't even get along with the natives" everyone seems to just accept that by "natives" he's referring to the "Hostiles" who end up being the Others.
I say no way. I say it's the "Hostiles" who DID get along with whatever the "natives" are, and that they were originally probably part of the Dharma Initiative, and that they turned against it for that very reason: they (the Hostiles) were originally a group of Dharma people who found that they were in tune with the island's "energy"; they split from those who weren't and eventually came to believe (or were "told") that the "non-receptives" didn't belong there and needed to go.
This fits in with the scene in which young Ben first sees Alpert and calls him a Hostile - when Alpert asks Ben if he even knows what that means, he's saying, "We're not the hostiles, because we are receptive to the island," or, to turn it around, "The people still at Dharma are the hostiles, because they AREN'T receptive to the island." And obviously when Ben told Alpert he'd seen and spoken to his dead mother, Alpert knew that Ben was a "receptive,' and therefore not a "hostile."
(This also fits with Ben telling Jack, "We're the good guys.")
Anyway, I'm sure it's completely wrong - and I still think that part of the "scientific" aspect of the show is going to relate to Project Thin Air and Tesla coils, so what the hell do I know?!
And I love the Locke as Jacob theory. Here's a guy who came to the island as a prisoner of his paralysis and his wheelchair and his rage, and became the very embodiment of physicality. But does he end up where he started - stuck back in a chair, with a barely visible physical presence, once again raging against the unfairness of it all? ("Help me!")
But it almost makes too much sense - maybe a red herring? Also, I haven't studied it closely (cuz, y'know, I have a job and stuff), but my first thought was that Jacob looked a lot like Horace Goodspeed, who in the scene in which Ben and Roger arrive on the island seems almost like a father figure to Ben, or at least more of one than Roger ever was. Also, Goodspeed is the only Dharma person whom Ben seems to have any feelings for - at least, he's the only one whose dead eyes Ben closes after the "purge."
Then there's the possibility that Jacob looks different to different people...
I fear I am going insane...
Not sure if anyone else has mentioned this, but there has always seemed to be great sense of forgetting/letting go of your past on the island as seen in Jack's speech, Rose's cure, and Locke's ability to walk again. Ben wants Locke to let go of his past with his father through Cooper's death. Yet this is in strike contrast to the fact that Ben himself hasn't seemed to let go of his past as can be seen in the scene with the Wooden Doll and his few lines to Richard along the lines of "...Don't you remember Birthdays..." Perhaps this is why Ben has fallen out of good graces with the Hostiles/Others in leading ablility and if one wants to take it further, with Jacob.
Two points (other than great analysis once again): First, someone briefly mentioned a thought I had during the episode - that young Ben seems to have very similar powers to Walt. It seems that they can both turn thoughts into reality. Walt with the polar bear and the dead bird. Ben with the volcano and his mother. Perhaps Ben mastered his power (like Harry Potter) and can "summon" things from his ideas like Cooper and Jacob and many other things. Ben is in fact the magic box. Perhaps Jacob is a product of his imagination that became too powerful for Ben to control.
Point two was the interesting way the scene was shot where Jacob asked Locke for help - it was immediately after John turned his head. The fact that we are looking at the back of Locke's head - and not Ben - reminded me of a scene from the movie ironically named "The Others" where the daughter is telling her brother she hears the voice of a ghost and the brother doesn't believe her. At one point the audience DOES hear a voice but it is shot in a similar way where we cannot tell if it is in fact a ghost or just the girl disguising her voice. This deliberate camera angle says to me that it cannot be ruled out that it was Ben who said, "Help me." Either by disgusing his voice or (more farfetched) communicating telepathically. Perhaps Ben knows that Locke will survive (with the healing power of the island) and will stumble back to camp and confirm the existence of Jacob by acknowledging the fact he heard him. Maybe it was actually Ben asking Locke to help him by confirming Jacob's existence and regaining his slipping control over the Others. Unfortunately for Ben, maybe this plan will backfire and if Locke can hear Jacob as well, they'd rather have him be their leader.
54439 is the zip code of Hannibal, WI.
Another great blog and great comments as well. It's great that I can always check into this post and really understand what I saw the previous Wednesday.
One thing that I'm suprised is getting little mention is Alpert. I'm not sure if he's getting enough credit for the influence his character may have on this narrative. If he's ageless...just how old is he? What's his con? Alpert seems to by in large benevolent, however; it also seems that he orchestrated "the purging". In my opinion, Alpert has been the smoothest talker in the show and seems to be capable of manipulating everybody. I don't think we have scratched the surface of who this guy really is.
...J, please explain your take on the character.
I'd also like to comment that it's interesting that Alpert seemed to have the same interest in Ben that the Others had in Walt, primarily when Ben mentioned that he was seeing things (only saw the episode once so far, but did he not say he saw his dead mother?). If that's what made Ben special, then there are a lot special lostaways. Would Alpert have the same interest in Jack, Sawyer, and Kate because they are seeing things that shouldn't be there (Jacks dad, horses, etc.)?
In any case, I hope J or some of you other brilliant literary types can help me figure this out.
Alpert is truly entertaining with his oily smoothness wherever we find him. It's interesting that Ben says to him, early in the episode, "you do remember birthdays, don't you?" This can be taken two ways: That Ben peevishly resents those who don't remember birthdays, or that Ben understands that it's been an extraordinarily long time since Alpert was born, so that perhaps he no longer remembers his own birthday. N'est pas?
First of all, I can't wait to see Locke come crawling back from the mass grave and beat up Mikhail again...
Secondly, I think Locke DID see Jacob, only because of the look on his face afterwards, and his sudden inclination to get the hell out of the shack!
I think poor Jacob is being held captive. When Ben tells him he's 'had his fun', it's clear Ben's in charge, despite Jacob's possible powers.
I don't think Locke is Jacob though...that's too creepy.
Sorry if someone has mentioned this but absolutely NO WAY Annie was killed in the purge. I am 100% positive that she died prior to or after the purge, because if she had died w/ the Dharma's, Ben would NOT have wasted his time closing Horace's eyes. I may be wrong, but I really don't think so. This site is awesome! Shannon
On the Winter Solstice idea: I like it in general, but it's such a broad topic (as you saw) that it's hard to specify how it might be at play, beyond the general sense that the world over it's a marker of the dark times (and my wife's and my anniversary). That's why I went with the numerology; we've had precedent for that already with the Valenzetti equation. But if you get the chance, check out Newgrange in Ireland. It's a massive megalithic burial chamber, older than the pyramids. It's dark the year round, except during the Winter Solstice, when the rising sun floods the crypt through its only opening. It's pretty impressive.
Here's a question on the Hostiles: If some of the Hostiles are ex-Dharma Initiative, how does that explain the agelessness? And if they stopped aging after joining up, why does Ben look like he's aged?
Another question: There seems to be some sneaking similarities between Ben and Walt. If so, they may have taken Walt to groom a new leader at some point. But what was it about Walt that was too much for them to handle?
It's interesting how the Jacob scene leaves so much open to interpretation. We don't really know who said "help me," if Ben saw Jacob or not, if Locke saw Jacob or not... the way the entire scene was shot was designed to leave a heck of a lot open to everyone's interpretation. Despite it's chaotic feel, it was heavily, carefully, planned. And the way Ben got Jacob to stop supports the idea that Ben has trapped this powerful entity in some way.
As for Richard Alpert, he was mentioned back in the post for "Not in Portland," and has come up again here and there, but we've never gotten a whole lot of him at any one time to really see what makes him work. But here's what we do know: The real Richard Alpert was a Harvard psychologist who ended up working with conter-culture guru Timothy Leary. Alpert grew apart from where that movement was heading (Merry Pranksters and the like), and went east to become a spiritual seeker. When he returned he was now Ram Dass, a guru and a spiritual teahcer, psychologist and psychonaut.
The Richard Alpert of Lost seems to be able to tap into what drives people both psycologically and emotionally/spiritually. He also appears to be a very balanced person; he doesn't get upset, and cant' be perturbed. We'll learn more, but Alpert may have been Ben's Yoda.
J: you mentioned feeling wary of playing with "The eye of Horus." But I think we can. Remember the hieroglyphics in The Hatch: translated, they mean "Underworld," according to the producers. Further, according to Damon Lindelof, they refer to the Egyptian underworld that's ruled by Set. Now, Egyptian mythology ain't my specialty, but I believe Set and Horus were enemies. I think one plucked out the other's eye, while the other ripped out the other's tecticle. But more relevant to Lost, I believe Set killed Horus' father, Osiris. And I also think there is a myth in which Horus ventured into the underworld to rescue his father's soul.
In general, I'm noticing an undercurrent of allusions to Egypt--specifically, the nation of Israel's migration to/enslavement in Egypt. We have Jacob and Benjamin, who played key roles in the Joseph/Egypt story in The Bible. Now, the Others' plan to abduct the castaway women by raiding tents marked by Juliet has Passover written all over it.
Where's all this heading? My guess is that in the finale, Locke stumbles onto the beach, screams at Ben "Let my people go!", then parts the waters with a wave of his hand and leads the castaways off the island.
On Annie: I wonder if she could be Isabelle, the "sheriff." Where has she gone? Also, I am re-wathching Season One and having serious thoughts about whether Rousseau was really ship wrecked as she tells Sayid. Could she be like Bakunin--an Other living on the fringes with her own special mission? Or could she be Annie?
Sivan Cotel brings up the falling out of Moses with God, but how about the more obvious: Lucifer's falling out with God in Milton's "Paradise LOST". One of Satan's minions is Beelzebub who is literally Lord of the Flies, or Satan as the great liar i.e. Ben. Also, in an earlier post I had mentioned the Tom Robbins book "Jitterbug Perfume" (a hippie story to be sure, Dharma Bum) where the main character outlives a normal lifespan (per the hippie-like Richard/Ram Dass) because he refuses to accept the fate of man. Robbins is based not far from Portland (Seattle area) and since cowboys have daddy issues, cowgirls get the blues.
I forgot to mention my (slim maybe) rationale for wondering about Rousseau being Annie--it could be her nickname from "dANIElle." Also, the sixteen-year timespan of her transmission seems to fit the ages. A few other justifications--it would explain how her daughter, Alex, ended up with the Others. If Rousseau was Annie--it also might be that Alex was fathered by Ben at some point since the wooden birthday dolls signify their union.
This is all predicated on the idea that either Ben helped her to escape and hide out during the purge, or that she herself escaped the purge and that's how she knows the Others/Hostiles are evil forces. And since everyone else seems to lie, why not Rousseau?
Thanks Cattlefeeder for Hannibal zip.
Thanks J.Wood for this most interesting blog and discussion forum.
I haven't noticed much said about this, but I have a theory based on the premise that the island forces its inhabitants to face events/people from their past that haunt them - and that it manifests people and situations to do so.
There are many examples of this: Charlie is faced with a planeload of heroin as he's trying to kick the habit for good, Hurley throws alway all the food he's been hiding from everyone and a new shipment of food drops down, Sayid is forced to using torture again, all examples of these 'skeletons in the closet' of the losties being faced, although many flashbacks seem to serve this purpose as well. Things happen on the island and we see flashbacks of the person it is happening to and we often see the difficulties faced in the flashback mirror those faced on the island as the losties contemplate their actions. In addition, all 'ghosts from the past' seen manifested on the island (jack's dad, hurley's dave, eko's
brother etc) further this as well. We're not sure why this happens yet, but there is evidence that has to do with
jacob and/or the smoke monster. i guess that remains to be seen. but anyway....
Ben is a bit different. he's kind of... messed up. Now, obviously it's not REALLY his fault that his mom died when he was born. However, when he was a kid his dad convinced him that this was true - this is his source of guilt and he cannot live it down. We first see evidence of this when as a kid, Ben sees his mother on the island, even though he has never actually met her - he becomes obsessed with finding her, so much that he sneaks off the camp and turns off the fence to search for her in the jungle. Before killing his father,he asks him "Do you really think it was my fault?" and then goes on to say that he loves his mother very much, perhaps even as much as his Dad does. We also should take note of how before he leaves to do this, before the purge, he takes out the doll that Annie made him. The fact that we see him looking at this doll again in present day time, as well as the fact that Richard Alpert acknowledges to Locke that Ben has become obsessed with figuring out the fertility problem even though much "bigger" things are going on on the Island, leads me to believe this:
Annie is already dead at the time of the purge. Annie and Ben ended up together, she got pregnant and died in childbirth. and it continues - every time a woman gets pregnant on the island, she dies before the baby reaches full term. I think that this is Ben's GUILT anifested on the island.
The fertility problems DID come with him when he came to the island and so now that both his mother and his wife have died as a result of it, he has become completely obsessed with finding out how to stop it from happening and why it is happening, without realizing that it's actually coming from him....
J. I like your idea that Alpert is Ben's Yoda, albeit a dark-side Yoda. Although I am guessing that Ben somehow is more perceptive than Alpert regarding the island's powers. It appears that Alpert does not age, implying he may be an island native but his conversation with Locke in "The Brig" suggests he is not familiar with all the island has to offer. So who is this guy, really? Regarding the ever present references to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. That story overall provides that everyone has what is necessary to get out of Oz, one simply needs the self-confidence to actualize those attributes in order to leave. That growth process is what we see in many of the lostaways since their landing.
J. Wood, your post is impressive as usual .Finally I recieved your book in France. It’s interesting to read and I think it will be certainely useful as a guide if the show « Lost »will be continued until 2010 !
I would like to thank every blogger and especially dharma bum for personal reserach , ideas, allusions, comparisons and discoveries.
I have some comments/ questions.
In the flashbacks about Ben we have met two women connected with his life : Emily his mother and Annie,a young woman who he probabely loved. Buth there is also another important women in Ben’s life : Alex Rousseau , Ben’s adopted daughter. It is an interesting realtionship to explore…which maybe hides Ben’s Achilles’ heel ??
Alex Rousseau, one of the Others , was a kind of guardian angel for the survivors (Claire , Sawyer, Kate, Jack) and in the last episode once more for Locke.She gives Locke a pistol saying him that he will need it as he decided to meet Jacob in front of amazed Ben. Why is she doing this ? Is her decision the result of her special intelligence/intuition or past experience of people who wanted to meet Jacob ?
According to Lostpedia, the picture of the dog in Jacob's shack is producer/director Jack Bender's dog. http://en.lostpedia.com/wiki/Ms._Honolulu
There's some information on the web about the voice/image of Jacob if people search for it. I don't want to spoil here.
Tamara, my take on Alex giving the gun to Locke was that she was trying to protect him from Ben. I think she knows her father and his tactics all too well.
j wood, thank you so much for writing this blog...i come here immediately after i finish watching the show and it adds so much more to it, an additonal layer of meaning, a whole new dimension of significance and symbolism! i also thought annie might be rousseau, but what about the accent? is she faking a french accent to go along with her story, perhaps forced to in some kind of bargain to be spared of the purge? anyway, lots of love to J and to all of you, whose comments continue to enlighten me every week!
I have a take on the Jacob scene.
I was thinking back to Hurley's imaginary friend Dave who visited him on the island. I think Jacob may be a similar entity to Dave.
What if Jacob is Ben's "imaginary friend", a figment of Ben's imagination? This would mean that Jacob would seem 100% real to Ben. And Ben would think that other people cannot see Jacob. Until Locke turns up that is, and Jacob is actually able to communicate with the "special" Locke to ask for help, to free him from the imprisonment he has been subjected to by Ben, who was able to trick or capture this force at some stage. It was Jacob's communication with Locke that freaked Ben out.
It's probably a red herring, but the creepy jars on the window were filled with red and yellow liquids. Urine, semen and blood (menstrual no less!) are all important ingredients of voodoo and other magic rituals.
I find the Alpert character v. interesting. We have already seen the four-toed statue that apparently dates back 1000s of years. Alpert is apparently v. old, but you don't get the sense that he's that old. My guess is that he is associated with the Black Rock, and has been trying to understand the mystery of the island for 100s of years. Hence his comment to John that the obsession with fertility problems was not why the Others were on the island.
Given the Alpert's crew wiped out the Dharma initiative, I wonder where their funding is coming from? There is a large shadowy organization off-island. Apparently this link must have formed after the original Dharmites were killed off. Perhaps Ben was responsible for negotiating with someone/some group and that is why he is leader. If so who is the group? Is there criminal (Korean?) money involved? Or did the original funders of the DI happily accept all their workers had been killed/replaced by older inhabitants of the island?
A few people have suggested that Rousseau may actually have been a member of the Dharma Initiative (and may even be Annie, though this seems a stretch to me).
If my memory serves me correctly, Rousseau was the first person to use the term "hostiles" (I think in one of those first scenes with Sayid)- which turns out to be Dharma Initiative-speak. How could she be familiar with their jargon if she hadn't lived among them? Perhaps she went insane after Ben gassed everyone- 16 years ago? do we know when the gassing occured?
Ricster, it's amusing to think that Ben's imaginary friend would rather be friends with Locke than himself - imagine losing your very own imaginary friend to someone else! With all the Stephen King allusions, I guess "Tony" in "The Shining" would fit in here. Jacob to me looks like an Enlightenment philosopher (John Locke, perhaps), and I find it interesting that "Lost's" John Locke had to meet Jacob, see him, talk to him, etc. as the old philosopher would've insisted - per knowing mind only through matter. Locke was through with Ben's "trick" until he heard the voice and perhaps had seen him (the flashlight is mightier than the sword). That he recants later seems more subterfuge as he seems quite sure of Jacob's existence once lying in the pit with a bullet in his side. A beloved mother; a bitter, alcoholic janitor father; visions of dead people; the prescence of twins; and now Danny Torrence - I mean - Ben Linus loses his imaginary friend to a sceptic - it's sheer luncacy!
I think Jacob is Hurley in the future. If you freeze the frame you can see a bag of Dharma Initiative cheese doodles behind the pickle jars.
Did anyone else suspect they saw a sort of "shroud of Turin" reflection of Ben's mother in Jacob's "shackanin"? I did but haven't seen mention of it anywhere online.
Most excellent blog, J.
The school lesson on volcanoes got me thinking about the magnetic properties of lava, and I found this Wiki page that put my brain into overdrive this morning.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_magnetic_field
It mentions electrodynamic tethers, which could be the cable that runs into the water, and says, "Magnetometers detect minute deviations in the Earth's magnetic field caused by iron artifacts, kilns, some types of stone structures [our four-toed statue?], and even ditches and middens in archaeological geophysics. Using magnetic instruments adapted from airborne magnetic anomaly detectors developed during World War II to detect submarines, the magnetic variations across the ocean floor have been mapped. The basalt — the iron-rich, volcanic rock making up the ocean floor — contains a strongly magnetic mineral (magnetite) and can locally distort compass readings. The distortion was recognized by Icelandic mariners as early as the late 18th century."
The discourse on Horace misses an intriguing potential clue: Horace's Estate. There are hat-tips here to Roman geography, LOST geography, Roman mythology, DHARMA Initiative power structure, the relationship between LOST Horace and Ben, and some good old fashioned Old Testament Biblical lore.
I don't want to expend all my breath on this matter here, 'cause as I typed it out, I realized just how much space it would consume. However, look for an elaboration by tomorrow night on my blog, Reading This Will Not Make You Popular (thebookpolice.blogspot.com).
J., I love your work so far (only found it a few episodes ago). Keep it up!
feebee, Rousseau hasn't ever called them "hostiles." Indeed, she was the one who first called them "The Others" which Sayid and company then picked up.
And Thea, the idea that Rousseau is Annie seems silly. Where did she pick up the accent? If she knew exactly who he was, why would she turn Ben over to Sayid? Why would she leave the repeating message in French?
Anyway, Joley, great blog as usual!
Okay so Ben and Walt as mirror twins. The first obvious one is black and white. Bens daddy issue was that his dad didn't want care about him nor want to be around him. Walt's seemed to be that his dad cared too much too late and wouldn't let Walt be without him. Both had their mothers die and both are "special" (well actually...do we know that Ben is special?)
Moving on from there. These island manifestations seem to materialize physically, especially Walt's.
So what if Ben has that same ability, which he uses to create Jacob. The manifestations on the island aren't necessarily personal, meaning other people can see them and some seem to have material consequence on the physical world.
Also want to mention that Ben really did take on a Norman Bates demeanor when he started talking to Jacob. Ben seems cool and controlled most of the time, but then again, so are most serial killers. Jacob really brings out Ben's inner looney.
J, I am chastened and do apologize for succumbing to Blog Rage, having so vehemently dissed your schoolChums (of Chance?) I do hope that the new guidelines they have for how to create the narrative will be of assistance to them. Job, I'm glad I read your comment before I could embarrass myself by saying "Well I'll continue to watch the show if it contains more of Sayid, preferably shirtless, and with hopes that he borrows 'Richard Alpert's' eyeliner pencil. Rrrrrow." Just to say, I don't expect a TV show to be equal to Foucault's Pendulum (which, J, I don't find to be such a "difficult" book; it may be more than The Illuminatus! Trilogy but it's not Finnegan's Wake either.) However, I feel like the writers on Lost keep teasing me with the promise that the show just might be the equal to Foucault's Pendulum, so I get my big hopes up. After all, if Gary Groth hadn't thought that comics might be able to be something more than caped crusaders, we wouldn't have Love and Rockets, Safe Area Gorazde etc. It's the writers who, by withholding so many aspects of The Mystery, ratchet up my great expectations that the solution will be "shocking," otherwise, I'd watch the show in the same manner I played the original version of Myst years ago -- assuming that the process was meant to be the entertainment, not the lame ending. And Job, funny you should mention Dickens, as I've been reading a lot of Dickens in the past three years (oddly, having finished Our Mutual Friend a few months before the book appeared with in Desmond's flashback.) Even though Dickens' original audience had to wait about two years or so for the answers to each novel's mysteries, still, the audience wasn't expected to suspend their entire knowledge of the space/time continuum, with barely a glimpse about what the new rules are, for six years and also with many months in between new batches of episodes. If I don't know whether someone really dies or not on The Island, then it's difficult for me to _care_ when someone seems to get fatally shot (or is buried for that matter.) And that affects my desire to watch the show.
Charles Dickens was able to popularize certain concepts which helped his culture and society, like the death of Betty Higden in OMF in relation to the Poor Laws. I'm in the camp of hoping that a decade from now when people discuss the show Lost that they'll say something like "it was the TV show which was an allegory for GWB and his Pappy; what went wrong and how it could have gone right." Or on the psychological level, people in the future might call Lost "a version of Forbidden Planet where the heroes had to learn how to control and take responsibility for not only their actions, but their emotions and thought-patterns as well" (a tradition in Western occultism, for instance in Steiner's book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds: How Is It Achieved?) (Good post punk lunchbox, you and Jason beat me to the punch at addressing the Forbidden Planet crossed with Jungian archetypes theory. And bravo to you PL for the theory that Ben brought the fertility problem to The Island, love that. Although I'm guessing that rather than Ben and Annie getting together, that she went for a hunkier guy to have a baby with ("I love you Ben, but just as friends") and then died at the second trimester. And that this "betrayal" is what pushed Ben over the edge into mass murder (but again, the filming in this episode just didn't carry enough emotional punch for me. Intellectually of course I was reminded of the Holocaust, and I didn't expect to watch "Nuit et Brouillard" on network television, still, the scenes of the gassing and the mass grave were rather abstract -- like in a videogame.) Or, maybe Lost ends up to be known as "the TV show which popularized String Theory." That would be fine. I can only hope that it's not known in the future as "the TV show which yanked people's chain for six years, (Nelson's voice) ha ha."
PS to J, to continue on with Walt, I'm guessing that he will return in a season or two as a grown man, because time off of The Island is different than time on The Island for anyone who has not yet reached the physical maturity of age 21. (Oooh, I just gave myself the shivvers thinking of the horrible scenes in The Time Travelers Wife where her baby in utero keeps time traveling and then ending up the wrong embryonic phase back in the womb.) I'm guessing that The Island/Smoky = Jahweh/the Demiurge and it is being held captive by Ben who is a kind of L.Ron/Jim Jones-type messiah. The Island needs Locke to take its place, kind of like how in Dune, Leto (son of Paul Atreides) sacrifices his humanity and becomes the sand worm (the Dune series also deals with the idea of false messiahs, or, if you're of the Dawkins bent, of any "messiah.") I'm wracking my brain to remember a story I once read (I think?) where the god of the place is tired and needs a replacement, could it have been in Philip K. Dick somewhere? The writers had better not be borrowing from a certain sci-fi writer's story "I Have No Mouth" etc because that writer will sue their collective asses til Tuesday, if his history is any kind of precedent.)
BTW if any writer wants to source me, (sounds kinda dirty doesn't it?) how about some cross between James Tiptree Jr.'s story “The Last Flight of Dr. Ain" and Richard Powers' story "The Seventh Event" for ideas in regards to Hanso and their ideas on the future of planet Earth.
Oh yuck (sorry for talking so much) but I've just now had a thought furthering my Ben/Annie theory, by wondering if the reason the scene where Ben got Kate all dolled up for a fancy brunch by the beach was so incredibly creepy, is that when Kate was unconscious they artificially inseminated her with Ben's Precious Bodily Fluid. The brunch was Ben "wooing" her, gag. Kate will think the pregnancy is by Sawyer and so will fight hard to keep the baby. Ben wants his successor through a semi-virgin birth (with assistance from Juliet.)
Ihaven't seen this discussed maybe because it seemed a so blatant - science fair volcanoes are created by combining baking soda and VINEGER, not baking soda and water as the teacher taught her class. Perhaps a nod to the "magical" powers of the island or turning spoiled wine back into water or a red herring or nothing, but the inaccuracy just seemed so over the top, since every kid has experience with this, that it was just begging to be noticed by the masses.
Miss Gretchen, regarding your last comment some of us were discussing that a few days ago on another blog, and I said just what you're suggesting. On reflection, I'm not sure Ben was wooing her so much as setting her up. He wanted her to eat and to have a beverage (maybe the same potion Juliet drank to ease her bumpy journey to the island). Certainly, she looked disoriented when we saw her later. But inseminating her via Ben seems so obvious, which made me think they did something with Jack during the time we didn't see him. I think she'd fight harder to keep the baby if Juliet were to tell her it's Jack's rather than Sawyer's.
So, Ms. Gret is a Pynchon fan? A few basic questions. If the Dharma Initiative was wiped out, why didn't their sponsor take note and respond somehow? Why do the others still use their (The Dharma Initiative's) putative (phoney-looking) submarine to travel to and from the island? A-and why do the Dharma food drops continue so many years after the purge? I find myself hoping that the widely anticipated resurrection of Locke will coincide with the reappearance of Kelvin Inman. P'raps Kelvin will drag Locke out of the death pit and restore him in yet another bunker somewhere on the island, mirroring what happened with Desmundo.
zot, as far as Rousseau being Annie, I wouldn't go straight to "silly." Far fetched and unlikely, perhaps.
Rousseau would be playing a part, just like the "hut" people dressed up in costumes when they took Michael to get Bea's list--the costumes that Kate, Claire, and Jin found in the Maternity hatch lockers--Tom's beard was there, too. Rousseau could be a "plant" by Ben.
But none the less, I agree that it's probably unlikely. I'm more intrigued by the idea of who and where Isabel is, and if she may be Annie.
Just a quick thought, think Locke will become the "zombie(s)" that the writers Cuse and Lindelof mentioned were coming before the Nikki/Paulo death in the "Expose" episode? Or perhaps Jacob? If any place looked like a place where Zombies would be raised from the dead, I think it'd be Jacob's Shack...or a mass grave...
Just to reiterate, it's probably important to keep in mind (as was mentioned) that the pregnant women on the island seem to die at the same point in their pregnancy that Ben was born. And that both Locke and Ben's mothers were named Emily. And that there is an outside possibility that Annie may still be around; just before Ben plugs Locke, he says he was one of the people smart enough not to end up in the ditch, which suggests there were other Others.
Maybe I should have done more with the Eye of Horus bit; I just wanted a bit more to work with. The Egyptian mythology is really plastic, and kept altering across the thirty-some dynasties. Set and Horus were enemies; Set murdered Osiris, Horus's father, so Horus had a vendetta against Set. This was more or less an allegory of the pre-unification of Upper and Lower Egypt -- so it represents two tribes at war, and Horus's victory is the two kingdoms coming together. But it gets complicated; go back far enough, and Horus is Osiris, and is also the resurrected Osiris.
Allegorically, his eyes were the sun and moon; Set took one in the fight, which was repaired by the god of the underworld (and writing), Thoth. That explains why the moon is dimmer than the sun. Set did get a nut busted by Horus in their fight, and that explains why his land, Upper (southern) Egypt, is dry and infertile. This gets a bit to ancient Egyptian views on homosexuality; apparently Set tried to seduce Horus so he could say he inseminated him (and I guess then Set could take claim for the fertility of Lower Egypt). Homosexuality wasn't exactly an accepted practice, so if Set seduced Horus, Horus would be emasculated, but by tearing off Set's testicle, Set gets emasculated. Where's Isis in all this? She's Set's sister/Osiris's wife/Horus's mother, and despite protecting Horus all his life, when the big fight comes down, she wavers in her support for her son over her brother, so Horus takes her head. If we want to follow this, though, I'm not sure if we want to ascribe any characters to Horus or Set yet; but the final unification of the two kingdoms is interesting.
The Greeks also adopted a number of the Egyptian gods into their pantheon. Who was Horus? Apollo.
But if we do roll with it, Horus was also a falcon. Any bird-god-looking things on this island? Hurley? Hurley?
I'm still curious about what to make of Alex giving the gun to Locke in front of Ben. We don't know if that was the gun Ben used to pop Locke. We do know Alex is clear on how sneaky Ben is. If she gives Locke a gun, I'm not so sure that's protection; it seems that by putting the gun into the situation, she's knowingly opening up the possibility that Ben may use it.
And I was waiting for someone to suggest Jacob was Dave. And for someone to get my real name; Zot, you win the Rumplestilskin award.
On the electrodynamic tethers: It's completely interesting, but those tethers are used in orbital satellites (here' a patent). The tethers hang down in the atmosphere (ionosphere I think) to generate energy. But who knows what they're doing with electromagnetism on the island at this point. In my book, I note how you need a massive electromagnet to operate a superconductor, and such superconductors are being used at Brookhaven to prove the existence of unknown particles that in turn could prove something like the existence of wormholes.
It seems likely that Ben and Walt share some abilities. Perhaps Ben manifested his mother in the same way Walt manifested the polar bear and/or that bird in Australia. There really ought to be a graph someday of what characters have mirror-twinned aspects of each other, because it seems we've got a tripartite thing going between Walt, Ben and Locke.
Ms. Gretchen: I had to chuckle a little bit, because for someone who was about to give up on the show, you've put a lot of thought into your posts. Lost may not end up being Foucault's Pendulum (and I'd love to know if Eco has watched the show), but it may end up being the closest thing we've ever had (or may get) to something like that for television. But the different mediums bring different demands, and that has to be kept in mind; TV can do things books and film can't, books can do things graphic novels and TV can't, and so on. And with the different media come different extenuating circumstances (in television, you have a limited amount of time, commercial breaks to consider, and usually no sense of an ending for the overall narrative -- which means it's no narrative at all). Darlton have talked about the problem of "reveals" being held back in their podcast, and with the endpoint, they can now start hitting them more regularly. Less fluff, more stuff. (And I think we got a lot with "The Man Behind the Curtain"; we know about the purge, Ben's background, Jacob...).
Agreed on the political allegory point. Actually, in a conference in Hawaii a year ago, the producers noted that this is something they're trying to do (and I wrote about some of that in my book). I only recently started looking at Cuse's past work on Brisco County Jr to see how he trying his hand at abstracting current events into a television narrative years ago. Again, with an end-point, those sorts of things can be more effectively woven into the text. We'll certainly see more about Bakunin and the roots of Al Qaeda, the Mujahideen. I don't think it's coincidental that after we learned the NSA had been collecting data-dumps on U.S. citizens, we also see that the Others were doing the same to the Lostaways. And given all the daddy issues in this narrative, I think it's fair to note that Dubya famously has those as well.
(Darlton have also stated they've already got the Walt thing taken care of; maybe they shot the scenes well ahead of time?)
Is it still possible to play Myst? My gaming days ended when my mom got hooked on Zelda, so I never actually had the pleasure.
(Kitsis and Horowitz weren't chums of mine at school, I didn't know them, but we were there at the same time and in some of the same circles; with over 40,000 undergrads at Wisconsin, it was easy enough to miss people. But they were working on their writing chops, and I edited the literary journal, and if they took any of the same courses, I can safely say they've got some background and aren't just throwing stuff at the screen to see what sticks.)
Phutatorius, I believe I know why the Dharma supply drops have continued. In The Lost Experience we learned that Alvar Hanso pledged to continue providing for The Dharma Initiative in perpetuity. You can watch the entire Hanso Exposed video to hear where he says this (about 3 minutes in).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PPCCcXarkc
Ben, the hostiles, and those he kept alive at the purge had a long time to plan out how they would handle the deaths and no doubt came up with something creative like a scientific experiment accident or an exotic illness that required the people to be buried immediately to avoid contagion or contamination.
The pregnant mothers have been dying in the second trimester. Ben's mom died in her third trimester. It's an important distinction - in the third trimester you can get viable preemies, like Ben.
Simple question...when Ben was showing Locke the pit, the shot panned across a skull that had a bullet hole in it...not gassed, but shot. Weird. Love this blog. Thank you all for your helpful comments. Gretchen - you're awesome and u 2 J.
>Lesley, if we follow the Dostoevsky line, does
>that Locke the martyr or the prophet? I suppose
>that all depends on if he's actually dead.
I would guess the Others will assume that he's dead when Ben returns without him, but Locke will return in 3 days. Clearly his daughter was expecting Ben to turn on Locke, and I'm sure the others did too.
Ok... other points. Apaprently you can not join the Others without committing patricide. Locke was expected to do it, Ben did it, etc. Looking at the scenario, it's the mirror image of Abraham and Isaac. Rather than father being asked to kill the son (but stopped), the son is asked to kill the father (and allowed to do it.) If the former is a request of God, then is the latter a request of the Devil?
The consecrated circle around the cabin... it's not a device to summon something. The circle is a device to bar entry or exit. In Faust, his conjuration takes place with himself standing inside the circle so that he can not be injured by the demon crossing it. The inverse of that logic would provide that the circle around the cabin provides a jail cell, binding Jacob to that spot. I would speculate that the material the circle is constructed of is the same material that causes the magnetic anamolies on the island... a magnetic circle which forced an electromagnetic spirit to the center.
I believe that when Alpert asked Ben if his mom had died on or off the island, it was a very important question. Spirits that die on the island can linger on, if the Whispers are an indication (Boone was heard welcoming Shannon at the time of her death.) However, spirits from other locations probably do not manifest there without Jacob's approval or intervention. If Ben's mom appears to him, it's an indication that Jacob (their god?) has chosen Ben to communicate with, and as a result, Ben becomes the leader.
I believe that Jacob may have mentioned that there would come another (Locke), and that Ben did not want to give up control. As a result, he tricks Jacob into the circle and binds him there. The servant becomes the master. There is a reason that no one is allowed to know where Jacob resides... someone might break the circle and release him, which is what Jacob is asking Locke do do when asking Locke to HELP.
So what is Jacob? A spirit? A Demon? A Djinn? For all intents and purposes, they're quite similar. Spirit implies the soul of a dead human... it doesn't seem quite right though. We're told that Ben's boss (Jacob) was a terrible master who is not forgiving. That puts Demon and Djinn in striking range. Islam suggests that Djinn were an earlier created race before Man, born with free will, and that Satan was a Djinn. Since we have statues and ancient artifacts, I'm leaning in that direction. Djinn were reportedly capable of possession (Charlie stealing Aaron, doc's husband walking calmly into a bus, etc) and were linked to possession for the purpose of rape, etc. Adam's first wife was reportedly a Djinn. Species incompatibility may be one explaination for the conception issues (if we assume that Djinn genetic material is somehow generated in the scenario :)
Locke is being left for dead, but not killed outright. If Jacob can commune with spirits and he finds out that Ben actually killed him, all cooperation may stop?
"The Benjamite warriors fought left-handed, and a Shekinah resided in the Benjamite land. Ben Linus isn't left-handed (he shot right-handed), but the term is used as a metonym for keeping an opponent off-balance"
Maybe theis is too obvious, but the Latin for left-naded is 'sinister.'
J: On Jacob being a "trickster"-- In your writeup after Stranger in a Strange Land, you mention that Jacob was also something of a trickster after Karl repeats, "God loves you as he loved Jacob." Karl mumbles this while strapped in the chair before his rescue, and later in the boat with Kate and Sawyer, after confirming to them that Ben would kill them if they returned for Jack.
What thoughts on the trickster Jacob and the pyrotechnic display so caused by Lock shining the flashlight into the shack? Trickery (Jacob's/Ben/s)? Irony (God didn't love Jacob all that much)? In Stranger, you say god loves a good jokester. But now, it seems there's something eerie and more sinister about it given the mass grave and the "help me" utterance.
I love this blog!
We know that Darlton is in charge these days, but this show was started and at least in part conceived by JJ Abrams. In his series Felicity, he seemed to try some of the things we see Darlton doing so much more ambitiously on Lost.
First, in the second season, JJ put all of the Felicity characters into an approximation of a Skinner box. Could the island be a skinner box of sorts? (I'm sure I'm not the first to suggest this.)
Second, in the last season of the show, the higher-ups at the WB apparently ordered a bunch of extra, unplanned-for episodes at the end of the season. The main storylines had already been wrapped up. Instead of just continuing the story, JJ added a series of episodes that explored an alternate life for the main character. The changes affected everyone, not just the main character--in the "new" life, some characters had died; others had chosen different paths; the main character had a different lover; etc. I remember the main character "waking up" after a visit to this alternate life--her facial expression looked a lot like Desmond's upon his "return" to the island.
Maybe Abrams was playing with some ideas on Felicity that he then used in designing Lost.
J, well you know what they say, "I want to believe." Thinking before posting is the least I can do in honor of your thoughtful posts. I watched "Galaxy Quest" last night to help myself get in the proper mood for this Wednesday's show (and I ordered your book. Sure, I could have driven to B*****s and had it in hand today, but that would be so disloyal, wouldn't it?) I also tried to figure out if there is a search function either here or at your vox, as I'm thinking that the blast door map looks quite a bit like an enneagram, but I don't want to go on about it if you've talked about Gurdjieff (talk about your tricksters) already. Koralis, thank you for your info on the Djinn (Faust? Faust? Did someone say Faust? ) Soapy, speaking of Skinner boxes, do you think the producers have a samizdat copy of the much-sought-after Jim Henson TV show "The Cube?" That one show made me the woman I am today.
(and J, while I surely am older than you, I really don't think I'm as old as your mother thank you very much. Although I see, from your reference above to 18 - 44, that I've recently fallen off the cliff of the desired demographic. But I'll say this to the producers: I may be one of the Blank Generation (between Boomers and Xers,) but I do buy DVD box sets, unlike my younger confreres who fileswap. So they shouldn't write me off, dadblammit.)
(and may I correct myself to say I was referring above to Our Precious Essence? why I didn't throw on my copy of Strangelove before posting I don't know. thank you.)
J, you mentioned above that Annie might still be around, so I wanted to remind you that Annie was one of Kate's aliases. Some viewers have suggested that they are the same person based on the name, freckles, and both being left-handed. I think it's hilarious myself, but then I'm like the George Costanza of Lost theorizers.
Lain: Maybe I should have said late second/early third trimester. Because it was right on that cusp when Ben was born, and when island mothers approach that point, they bite it.
Although I think Jacob being a djinn is intriguing, after the podcast this week, I'm holding back all judgment at this point. They did outright confirm that he's not a ghost/spirit, but wouldn't say any more. Then they lost it talking about Ezra J. Sharkington getting his Dharma tattoo by Bai Ling. It's one thing that they've insisted upon from the beginning -- and I think this is something J.J. Abrams set up as well; everything will have natural, explainable causes, no matter how fantastic. Which makes it all the more mysterious, because they're certainly using alchemical imagery in the show. But then again, even Isaac Newton dabbled in the alchemical, determined to find natural causes behind the seemingly supernatural.
However, I for one am going to keep an eye on if Ben's outright killing Locke would mean he loses his grip on Jacob. That seems to make sense.
Thea: We know the biblical Jacob was a trickster, but as for this Jacob, everything is really up for grabs at this point. I'm actually looking into something, but won't play my hand just yet. The name resonances, however, are more often than not used to introduce general themes used in the show, usually around social organization, some of which are then explored more deeply in particular episodes (like "The Brig" or "Flashes Before Your Eyes"). The name "Jacob" in conjunction with "Benjamin" serves that purpose, but beyond that, I think some more evidence is needed. Unless he really is Locke. Then he would be a trickster.
Soapy, I've not watched Felicity so I can't speak to it, but the Skinner Box is something Abrams has toyed with in different ways. Wasn't Alias, at least the first couple seasons, sort of like a grand Skinner Box, with the agents not actually realizing who they were working for? I'm not sure how much say Abrams has had in things on Lost (he's been busy with Star Trek), but it may be something Darlton consulted him about. Certainly the hatches were Skinner Box experiments, and the polar bear cages. (Anyone seen Knut lately? I hear he's getting less cuddly.) And with the way the audience has been acknowledged and played with, through the game and elsewhere, I think it's arguable we're part of a larger Skinner Box experiment as well (but I'm not going to elaborate now, it'll take too long; I'll be writing about it later).
Miss G: I have pictures of the blast door map here. It's not so much an enneagram (no nine points) as it is the top or mid part of a kabbalistic sephirot inside an Asian bagua. (But check out the Rosicrucian natal chart.) I like how it incorporates eastern and western mystical traditions into one weird mess; it seems appropriate for the Dharma Initiative.
Here's a syncronicity; I was looking up Gurdjieff last night. Millenial moments -- which seem to have a 15-year life span on either side of the divide -- and slippery gurus seem to gravitate towards each other, and some of them are a little preverted. (When will Crowley show up?) Strange to think of the muppet man doing The Cube; it's more Beckett than Big Bird.
J, "preverted"? Is that a Bat Guano reference?
These are scatter shot notes, the first part mostly cohesive with some extra thoughts tacked onto the end. I’ve been very busy, and the people on this board have been very prolific! I edited as best I could but may repeat some thoughts other people have mentioned this week. Edits upon reading other posts tonight are noted in [brackets].)
Upon first viewing:
I want to throw a new reference into the bunch, something more modern but just as expansive. Beginning with Locke noticing the circle around Jacob’s location, and continuing throughout the creepy cabin scene, the initial Jacob storyline presented here is very similar to the first chapters in Neil Gaiman's Sandman series.
In Preludes & Nocturnes, a powerful entity, commonly known as Dream, Sandman or Morpheus, is entrapped by a fictional mystic that would be a contemporary of the "Golden Dawn"-era occultists. (J. Wood has previously mentioned Yeats, who was one of the more famous figures associated with this occult collective.) The name of the "wizard" is Roderick Burgess, and he is written by Gaiman as an antagonist of Aleister Crowley, who himself was purged from the Golden Dawn because of certain disagreements.
In Sandman, the entrapped entity is not a god; he came before the time of gods. He is an abstract yet quite real power or element of the universe/all of reality. Burgess (and later his son Alex Burgess) keep Morpheus imprisoned within a magical circle (similar to the one we see Locke discover in Lost). [Koralis also discussed this in a specific manner.] This is the result of a summoning incantation gone horribly awry. Instead of Dream, Burgess was attempting to imprison Death in a bid for immortality, and his son follows in his father's footsteps. Both father and son, out of the fear of retribution and in a bid for greater powers, keep the entity imprisoned within the magic circle, and each one demands for Morpheus to speak with him. Morpheus remains completely silent, ultimately driving each Burgess into a state of futility, anger, and desperation; both Burgesses have power yet compared to Morpheus are impotent. Morpheus, not being so concerned with matters of time, waits to be freed in silence.
The portrayal of the relationship between Ben and Jacob is remarkably similar to the relationship between Burgess and Morpheus, not just in the appearance of their relative positions of power but also in the mise en scene of the cinematography and set design of the cabin in "The Man Behind the Curtain†and the illustrations of the graphic novel. I am not claiming a direction correlation, that Ben is a really a “wizard†and that Jacob is a “god.†Instead there is a mysticism theme being introduced much in the way other philosophical, religious, and sociological themes have been incorporated into the show through similar indirect writing devices.
Ben is like Burgess; he appears to have Jacob trapped in an occult-like environment, isolated from the rest of reality, held both prisoner and impotent. When Jacob delivers the “Help me†line, I tend to interpret Ben’s infuriated and violent response to correspond very well to the Burgess/Morpheus relationship. It’s too soon to say, but it appears that Ben has unsuccessfully been trying to get Jacob to talk to him, or that he at least has been trying to hear Jacob, but this is not happening. Jacob wants nothing to do with it (just like Morpheus). Also, while Ben is within the danger zone of the magic circle, he is vulnerable to Jacob’s powers. And so Jacob reacts violently, and silently, to Ben, tossing him around like a rag doll; Ben is vulnerable, but he also is perhaps the only one who has the power to release Jacob, and so Jacob does not kill him. To do so could mean eternal prison.
However, Jacob speaks to Locke, unless we are being mislead by the narrative. Ben is infuriated as Jacob does not talk to him; the feeling that I got was that much like in Sandman, this silence has been going on for a very long time and causing great frustration in Ben. Locke has the ability to free Jacob from the prison, and so Jacob speaks to Locke: “Help me.†Unfortunately there is no analogous character in the Sandman narrative to compare to Locke. (However, there are many Biblical characters; I’ll have to get to that later.) Eventually, it is through the ineptitude of Burgess’ acolytes that Sandman frees himself.
The themes of imprisonment and escape (especially by Ben and the Others, but also by the Lostaways) are prevalent throughout every season, and I suspect that this Jacob storyline is no exception. Ben attempts to kill Locke (but oddly restrains himself from finishing the job) because he is convinced that Jacob spoke to Locke. Why else would he rant in such an uncontrolled way? He is no longer the calm and collected manipulative Ben. Locke has really rattled Ben’s own cage. By this time Ben is familiar enough with Locke’s poker face and is deeply conflicted as to whether or not Locke is lying to him about hearing Jacob.
In reference to “cons,†it appears (if this comparison holds up), that while Ben knows that Jacob is in the cabin, as Ben is likely involved in keeping Jacob trapped inside the circle in the first place, Ben cannot actually see or know where Jacob is physically located within the cabin. Ben “cons†Locke by pretending to talk with Jacob to try and see if Jacob will actually speak to Locke. Locke (if our third person perspective is accurate and not misleading) hears Jacob ask for his help, and this plea likely is out of duress to get out from under the control of Ben. Locke attempt to con Ben by acting like he heard nothing. This is a power play on Locke’s part. He simultaneously drives Ben into a rage of madness. Lock now is calm and collected, and Ben is struggling for answers. The roles are reversed. The other con that appears here is Ben’s con over the rest of the Others. Ben holds his power over the Others by pretending that he acting in concert with Jacob, that he is the only one who can communicate with Jacob while this is not at all the case. If nothing else, it is evident from the events in the cabin that Ben and Jacob are on very bad terms. So, it’s an act, a show Ben puts on to retain his seat of power. And to Ben, Locke is potentially the only one who can see right through his trick. We still really cannot conclude if Locke did hear anything from, much like we really cannot be sure if he blew up the sub… but I would wager from his behavior following the cabin scene that he did. Otherwise he would not have stayed with Ben.
This may be an entirely wrong interpretation. The reason I am going with it is because of a particular through-line of discussion that is occurring in this blog; by our writing about the themes and probably writing accurately about them and so predicting the direction the show is heading in as the result of following the logical or allusional conclusions that we have been slowly realizing, the writers are choosing to move in a different, even more elaborate direction. This is not to say that the previous analyses are invalidated; rather they are incorporated. The writers, at least some of them I suppose, from what J Wood has said, probably read this blog among others, and try to stay ahead of the theories by dipping into new, deep pools of intellectual references. Given that graphic novel/comic book literature has been incorporated previously in the show, I think the Sandman comparison to the storyline presented in “The Man Behind the Curtain†are likely quite valid. Sandman is certainly one of the most famous of all time.
To put it simply: it fits. The Biblical direction we have taken thus far fits, and we have seen it further cement. (J. Wood recapped and expanded upon our discussion about Judges and the Tribe of Benjamin already in this week’s blog by eloquently adding some intriguing points; this episode casts some new light upon those notable allusions, especially in regards to the Purge, so I’m not sure I see the need to continue my initial line of thought on that or the time being.) The Wizard of Oz Series references are also rife. And given this generation of writers and their relationship with their contemporaries and predecessors, it is easy to imagine them also being influenced by the grandiose mythos that Neil Gaiman created in the groundbreaking Sandman series, particularly with the likes of comic book writers Vaughan, Loeb, and Lindelof all having hands throughout the writing process.
That being said, it seems like the writers are trying to stay one step ahead of us, with the other foot right with us. They write. We write. They read what we write. They write having been influenced by our writing. They introduce new thematic threads and references. We pick up on that and expand upon them. They notice. They write something new, never forgetting exactly where and how they started. The cycle continues…
When the series wraps, they will have been able to incorporate an astoundingly vast pool of literature, historical events and figures, philosophies, religious texts, cultural criticism, and much more. Just because they started with a few strands and are adding more does not mean that they have ever let go of the original ones. Rather they are capable through a talented pool of writers to weave the old and new together to create a fascinating 21st Century text. At least I hope this is true. I think a lot of us would be disappointed if only some of the major threads were fully explained/connected while other ones are dropped, such as the physics aspect or even the Libby/Hurley connection from the mental hospital. To leave it at this would just leave that unexplained “okay it was weird and we will have no idea that it really was meaningful at all†let down from some of David Lynch’s more questionable forays. (Not that I blame Lynch; in the instance of Mullholand Dr. the first part of the movie was supposed to be an $8 million TV pilot, strangely enough for ABC, and he kind of got screwed over in being forced to piece together a second half it throw it on to the market as a feature.)
For the show to middle and end successfully, the writers will have to take the show in a new direction, an unexpected one, for the final act. First there was the numbers, then there was the traditional religion, and now there is…? Mysticism? New gods? Old gods? Recent or modern occult practices? Can they successfully combine science and spirituality and an edifying manner? I find the introduction of Horus and Egyptian mythology very interesting because it ties directly into the previous Biblical allusions we have discussed. If anyone has read this far, let me know if you are interested in more on that. I can write it up as my schedule permits. Suffice to say, in Exodus, the plagues each represent a different Egyptian god, and YHWH at this point in literary history is merely one other god. The plagues are symbols of YHWH defeating each Egyptian god one by one.
Expanding on the ‘daddy issues’ topic: There is another weird and kind of creepy connection here; Ben’s mother is played by the real-life wife of the actor who portrays Ben. This creates an off-camera weirdness for we who perhaps overanalyze the show concerning the Oedipus complex scenario. This plays out with both ben and with Locke; each kill their father [already mentioned, I know now]… and in real life, the actor who plays Ben is married to the actress who plays his mother. It’s rather funny, and it may just be an in-joke, or a way to get Michal Emerson’s (the actor who plays Ben) wife a fun cameo on the show. It really adds a perverse extra angle on the Oedipus situation occurring on Lost, though. As others noted earlier, Emily is also Locke’s mother name as well. A round of Oedipus complex for everyone!
I repeat this only because it has some heavy implications as to why Ben so fervently wanted Locke to kill his own abusive father. Ben was manipulating Locke because of his own father issues. If “special†Locke, someone Ben relates to, also kills his abusive father, to Ben it would justify his past action of murdering his own father. It would also further serve to place Locke even more under Ben’s influence; Locke however circumvents this to a large degree be delegating the job to James.
The biblical theme resonates again with Emily asking roger with her dying words to “call him Benjamin.†This is a device commonly used in the Old Testament.
Another curious connection: Michael Emerson (Ben) narrated Neil Gaiman’s radio drama “Murder Mysteries†[both notes discovered on lostpedia]. This is random but curious.
Pushing the Gaiman connection further, young Ben resembles Harry Potter… but before Harry Potter there was an identical brown haired, bespectacled young wizard named Timothy Hutton who also had an owl as a familiar. Gaiman wrote this character in The Books of Magic long before Harry Potter was written into existence. (Gaiman, to my knowledge never pursued any legal recourse about the fact that Harry Potter is ridiculously similar to his Timothy Hutton character.)
[The significance of Ben’s birthday has been discussed in fascinating detail already] I want to metion that it is also a little bit funny that his birth on December 22 not only involves the tarot/magic/kabbalah connection, but it also places Ben’s birth as ALMOST being the same day as the day that Christians have adopted for Christ’s birthday (the 25th). It is as if to emphasize yet again, as we get from Ben’s abusive alcoholic father, that Ben is almost special… but not special enough.
[Richard’s agelessness and the “remember birthdays, don’t you†quote has been discussed.] Another Neil Gaiman Sandman connection can be made with Richard Alpert. In the Sandman series, a character named Robert “Hob†Gadling is granted immortality by Morpheus when Gadling offhandedly remarks that he would rather not die. He meets with Morpheus every hundred years. Alpert seems much like this “Hob†character. It may provide you, J. Wood, with that elusive Hobbes connection that you have been searching for! Ram Dass, an immortal, and Hobbes, all rolled into one?
There is a huge teaser to all of us Biblical analyzers in this episode. Ben tells Locke: “I know I promised I’d tell you everything, John, and I wish it was as simple as me taking out a dusty old book and opening it up.†Clearly the allusion here is to the Bible, and it is an ironic crack of the whip by the writers at us, the audience. This can be taken as a sort of confirmation from the writers that yes, there are these Biblical names, themes, and storylines occurring… but it’s not “as simple†as that; there are many other things going on there, and in this episode we see modern mysticism and occultism introduced as story elements.
*I mentioned Biblical characters earlier in that the Morpheus/Jacob and Burgess/Ben analogy does not hold a place for Locke. There are many characters in not just the Bible who hear a god speak to them, while others in futility beg for a god to speak to them. Sometimes it is explained that one person is chosen and the other is not, for sin perhaps, or humility. In other texts, a god speaks to one individual and not another precisely because one strives in vain while the other lives in harmonious humility. I am completely blanking out on examples here, so if anyone wants to fill in some quotes from religious texts, please do.
(I really want to explore this Egyptian/Judeo-Christian mythology/religion more when time permits.)
The Word Power play I discussed last week comes into full force in this episode during the verbal battles between Locke and Ben. Locke finally attains a certain status when he returns to the Others’ camp, and he uses the power of words in order to control Ben, the main “magic’ word being Jacob. “Ben’s not going anywhere with you,†Locke says to Bakunin. “He and I are going to see Jacob.†Locke really emphasizes and draws out the key word Jacob in a very public way to assert authority over the entire situation. The camp is shocked, all their eyes on him. We see the true effect that the power of this word has as Locke beats the hell of Bakunin; Ben all but begs: “Tom? Richard?†in an attempt to get help, to intercede on the brutal beating. But, no, the Others allow for Locke to take the Alpha male role. All because of that one magic word, they are under Locke’s power. And for the first time we see Ben powerless, impotent, no longer able to control his tribe. (This is one reason among many that Ben has to shoot Locke; Locke has suddenly commanded control of the Tribe of Benjamin.)
There was one fascinating easter egg in this episode. We clearly see a book entitled ‘The Stone Leopard’ among the DHARMA children’s normal elementary school books (such as ‘MATHEMATICS’) during the emergency lockdown scene. This is an extremely strange book to set between math and history books for elementary school students! Here’s how Amazon decribes it: “An assassination attempt on the President of the Republic; rumours circulating of an impending coup d'etat and a dying man whispering a codename - "The Leopard". Prefect of the Paris police, Marc Grelle guesses there's a connection that could tear France apart.â€
One last thing that people may not have noticed in this episode. There was a wardrobe oddity that was very revealing inre: Ben and Walt’s powers to manifest things/people. When young Ben sees Emily, his mother, across the sonic barrier, she is wearing the exact same outfit and looks exactly the same as she does in the photograph that the child Benjamin dwells during the episode. There is a fairly direct implication that Ben sees her looking exactly the same as she did in the photograph because it is exactly how he would envision her to be. Clearly the way he saw her on the Island can only be explained by his interpretation of how he envisions her from the photograph.
Apologies for the shotgun approach this week for my contribution to the blog. Very busy, lots of thoughts (several of which I could not follow up upon in detail like I wanted), and little time. I hope each week’s previous discussions continue once the season ends on the various threads so that we can pick up on topics that still could use a lot of exploring and hindsight revising. I greatly enjoy the explosion of ideas this week. (Bonus: mad props to the new Pynchon novel reference, Miss Gretchen! I was hoping that someone else is still slogging their way through his genius.)
Heh -- yep.
(That yep was for Jeffrey on Bat Guano)
J - great job as usual!
You can certainly still get Myst! for less than $15 bucks at Amazon you can get the 10th anniversary edition which includes the first three games in the series(the first being the best in most people's opinion), and some nice features like enhanced graphics and remastered sound, compatible with XP. Fun stuff.
Just thought everyone would like to know that Locke is alive and well and made it out of that pit.
Or so today's guest blogger informs us:
http://www.powells.com/blog/?p=2087
I slogged my way to precisely page 918 of the Pynchon - A-and that is where I put it down several months back, with less than 200 pages to go. I think Gaddis is replacing Pynchon in my list of genius writers.
Whether or not the line of mystery soil is to keep someone in or keep someone out is not as important as it seems to me (at least at this point) to be a threshold from one world into another. I thought the writers were telling us that once the narrative crosses this line, things are going to get weird. In a show that always carefully treads the line that separates reality from fantasy this seemed to be an important bit of foreshadowing. To acclimatize us to what is to follow.
I like the use of mythical reference points such as Djinnis to describe unknown entities in the show. In many ways this show is a brief history in the use of mythology- terms and descriptions such as cerebus and nano technology with reference to the smoke monster are used to describe things we cannot yet understand, and as our understanding grows the mythic becomes ordinary. Or in this case extraordinary.
A quick note on the Rousseau/Annie theory:
Why would Rousseau's recorded message be still playing after 16 years? Ben's tribe clearly has advanced communication technology, and would presumably be able to detect her signal and find the source - if they so desired.
It's possible that they simply know that because of the island's nature, they signal will never be received by anyone passing by, so why bother with her at all?
But Hurley's pal heard a numbers transmission from the island, right?
So I guess the capability of that transmission to reach beyond the beaches is up in the air.
It seems that, either way, Ben would have to be aware of the signal and allowing it to exist. Is he throwing a bone, so to speak, to Rousseau to honor their past friendship? To honor the mother of his child, Alex? We know already the reverence Ben has for the mother figure. Could Ben have helped Annie/Rousseau escape the purge, as she was pregnant with his child, but for some reason or another he banished her from the group?
My point is that there must be some reason that Ben allows Rousseau to maintain her signal and her residence on the island. And this could be Ben's ultimate weakness.
If I have any facts wrong, someone please correct me.
ka, I like your description of Lost as a brief history of mythology. Earlier I was thinking that the producers are creating a time capsule of the arts and sciences and religious doctrine. I expect that by 2010 there will be quite a significant collection of references compiled into six DVD box sets. How I wish Joseph Campbell could be here to join in this discussion. I wonder if he would...
ka, i have to jump on the bandwagon with that note. Lost could be used as a crash course in mythology, if it continues to play out well. I brought up Gaiman because his work resonates with Campbell/Jung archetypes, and Lost's narrative functions in a similar manner.
Phutatorius: I'll have to look into Gaddis. Do you like Cormac McCarthy ( e.g. Blood Meridian)?
I hadn't read Preludes & Nocturnes in years. I toook a quick look back, and what strikes me is all the little details in that, which point to alchemical magic. Gaiman made the Endless very much like archons, and Burgess is performing a very Crowley-like ritual in it (so I guess we do have him). If there was any doubt about Crowley in that text, there's a guard wearing a t-shirt that says "Do what thou wilt, buster." Crowley was known for a spell he used to summon his "guardian angel," the Bornless Ritual. Magic (or magick" circles and all that. But given some of the prior instances of gnostic elements (the symbols and what-not), there may be some resonance here. Although I'd say it's more likely Gaiman and Lost are drawing from similar sources. The one thing to keep in mind, though, is the promise of naturalistic explanations for all this stuff; the supernatural is so 1990's.
But what was Sandman's name? Morpheus. We've also had plenty of allusions to Forbidden Planet. The character who gave rise to the Monster from the Id? Morbius. They're a little close, and it makes a nice confluence.
Gaiman, by the way, would be an interesting writer on the show.
Add to this: L. Frank Baum was a member of the Theosophical Society, which is a cousin to the gnostic movements like the Golden Dawn and the Rosicrucians.
I'm not sure how far to take the Egyptian stuff and line it up with the other traditions in the narrative. I have my ideas, but I'm not sure where Lost is taking them. But there are a lot of biblical resonances in early Egyptian myth stories; Horus and Jesus are cut from similar cloth (virgin births, similar messages and miracles, both died at 33 -- the third of the power numbers, 11, 22 and 33). That sort of resonance also plays into the solstice idea; the Christian Christmas used to be a Roman celebration of the solstice celebrated on the 25th, called something like Sol Invictus (bringing back the sun).
As I understand it (from an interview I heard with her), Emerson's wife Carrie Preston was a fan of the show before Emerson ever watched it. When he got the role, they started talking about her playing Ben's mother if he ever got a flashback -- this was before they even knew Ben would be a regular character. They just thought it would be appropriately creepy for the show. Looks like they got their wish.
Oh -- on Leonard and the numbers: If you want to hear something interesting, go to www.archive.com and search for the Conet Project. Leonard heard the numbers from a Navy listening station, and those things (signals repeating strings of numbers) are real.
Last thing: I'm sticking with Hobbes as the island for now (the state of nature). The name "Hob" in Britain is short for Robert, like Rob. It's also a little imp, and a stovetop.
J, It's okay with me but you're gonna have to answer to the Coca Cola company.
Dharma Bum, it's not biblical but that whole "Why does God only talk to him" exchange reminds me of the Mozart/Salieri relationship in "Amadeus". And, to come up with another Egyptian angle, I can only think of Ozymandias (Ramesses II) in "Watchmen". I reread on Wiki the Shelley sonnet then read the poem by HORACE Smith which mentions a wolf (Shelley doesn't) and the ruined statue from a lost time. Maybe Byron the Bulb can shine a light on this.
j. - Looks like you may Gremlins in your system! I know Hob/Robert was a stretch. I still like the "Island as Hobbes" theory and think it is unlikely for Richard Alpert to represent Hobbes... but I'll keep an eye on it. Why not?
Great points about Crowley and Gaiman. Also makes me think of Burroughs... "Nothing is true, everything is permitted."
It could be very interesting if Gaiman got involved at this stage in the project. I fully agree with you in that Gaiman and Lost are "drawing from the same sources." All quite archetypical, Jungian, Necrinomicron-ish, etc.
As to the supernatural being 1990s-ish... I consider that whole Celestine Prophecy New Age post-Hippie mindset to be a new wave version of what happened one century prior. At that point in Anglo history (i.e. the Golden Dawn era), the reigning majority of spiritual movements were based on mysticism and (arguably) alchemy. Christianity in comparison was a minority during this era (c. 1890's). The Christian religion did not resurge until later in the 20th Century as a popular social phenomenon. Most people do not know this.
I really had not thought about it until now. Perhaps the writers are using these two clashing elements (Judeo-Christian religion and modern mysticism) in a very conscious manner. Today in America we live in a (waning) Christian (often enough fundamental) mindset, but we also have had regular resurgences (sometimes dominating) of mystic or gnostic spiritual movements in contrast. Perhaps the clash of these two very different elements of the human soul and spiritual belief are a larger part of the subtext than we have realized. Perhaps only now we are seeing the flipside as the next great clash between the Tribes on the Island begins.
This would work very well in reflecting our current society: we are now controlled by a Christian majority, but there is a greater flux of mystics, spiritualists, pagans, gnostics, and atheists rising to counter this perspective. We see it play out every day in our politics, social conversations, and popular culture (like other TV programs). It actually would be odd of the writers of Lost did not work this conflict between drawing from strict religious subtexts as well as (currently) controversial mysticism.
J, in response to what you say about naturalistic explanations of the show, I was working on a response to what ka said above: "as our [scientific] understanding grows the mythic becomes ordinary." It's not my blog so I try to be as pithy as possible; if I call Jacob a Demiurge, what I mean is, that dramatically speaking I don't really care if the writers in the end tell me that he's not a "spirit" but it's really J.A.C.O.B., a la H.A.L. or V.A.L.I.S., as long as it's written well. Yes, the supernatural on television is so 90s, but for me Lost is more in the newer, Daniel Pinchbeck mood (I keep thinking of the word Hostiles and I know it's not etymologically linked to the words "hostelier" or "host" [in the sense of the consecrated Host] but to one's hearing, they are similar. I wonder if there will be a substance introduced on the island, the mirror to the Medusa venom, which the Others take sacramentally.) (I also wonder if our Juliet will be bitten and then the "roses in [her] lips and cheeks shall fade, To paly ashes; [her] eyes’ windows fall, Like death, when he shuts up the day of life;") For every metaphysical concept people have mentioned here, one can come up with a scientific twin, provided one uses wormholes, string theory, etc. (Nice book on the history of physics I just received as a gift: Black Bodies and Quantum Cats by Jennifer Ouellette. As well, there's a very article on string theory online in The New Yorker, "Unstrung" by Jim Holt.)
And I wanted to say, that in posts above I am snarky about the emotional resonances in the show, but in last night's episode I went through almost a box of kleenex. (However, I don't want to say any spoilers -- dharma bum, I noticed you posted recently to an entry from March, and I was about to do the same with a hindsight theory, but then I realized that I have friends in Europe who might want to read this blog in the future. Can someone tell me what is the convention for posting to past entries?
PS Phutatorius and dharma bum (I like that your Pynchon post showed up at 11:11:) I acknowledge that I yelled at the Lost writers for random name-checking and then I went and did it myself, but it was in genuine obeisance to Master P and his influence on all such shows like Lost. Yeah, I'm not very far into the lastest novel, but I figure I'm not in college, I don't have a blog, I haven't been to a Manhattan cocktail party in some time -- I'm in no rush, I can take as long as I darn well please to read Against the Day. I admit I put it down in order to read Kathryn Davis' great novel The Girl Who Trod on a Loaf but I must say that the boggy references within that book also remind me of my own Lost Experience. Phu, it's funny you mention Gaddis, as he is the benchmark I always refer to when I want to say "Pynchon's not a difficult writer, he's not. . .GADDIS." (I'm not well educated enough to understand him, methinks. Much like Finnegan's Wake in my example above, no matter how much I love Joyce.) dharma bum, thank you for your Sandman summation (I'm embarrassed to say I never read that series.) And I've always had a problem grokking Old Testament stories, I used to have some kind of book of esoteric explanations but it's not at hand, so I for one would be interested in reading the stories of the Egyptian gods.
J: "Do what thou wilt" is evidence of Crowley's obvious debt to Rabelais, something I hadn't been aware of till I read Gargantua & Pantagruel. Dharma: I will have to check out Cormac McCarthy, who I've not heard of. The talk on alchemical symbolism surprises me. I haven't seen it in Lost, despite some passing familiarity with the writings of the Egyptolgist-alchemist Rene Schwaller-Lubicz and other "Hermetists." Also, someone above mentioned the numbers broadcasts having come from the island. I don't think we've ever seen any actual indication of that, even tho it seems like a reasonable assumption.
The one problem with electronic text is it's almost live, but not quite, so sometimes ironic snark doesn't convey as well as it does in person -- like my supernatural remark (I was thinking of the X-Files & Buffy). But it really seems the mysticism aspect has jumped up a few notches this season; maybe it just seems that way because the hatches were so technological that they cast a veneer of "science can explain this" over things like numerology and hyper-healing. But it may be of a piece with the introduction of someone like Bakunin; thematically, they're extending their paradigms (enlightenment philosophy, science, religion) into internal debates. Now we're seeing more tensions within lines of thought rather than between them.
I can completely agree with Jacob being a type of HAL-like demiurge. One of the things about those gnostic traditions is that the idea of a transcendent god is displaced for the recognition and development of the godhead in the self. And isn't that what Pinchbeck writes about (except through psychedelics)? And back to gnostic mysticism for a second: In "Greatest Hits," the cross Charlie wore around his neck in Helsinki is the same kind used in gnosticism, an equilateral cross inside a circle. I believe it's supposed to represent dual male and female aspects conjoined.
By the way, "hostiles" is tangentially related to "host" through an Indo-European root,"ghos," which is where we get guest (man I'm geeky some days). That's the funny thing about language; words can come to mean their own opposites, again like mirror twins. Take the Greek word pharmakon, which can be a medicine (heal you) or a poison (kill you).
And if you want to see the archive of all the posts for this blog, check http://www.powells.com/blog/?author=104.
I was working on a response to what ka said above: "as our [scientific] understanding grows the mythic becomes ordinary."
One book I'm reminded of when having similar discussions with people that insist on scientific, natural explainations for everything in the show is a wonderful little sci-fi book called Lord of Light, by Roger Zelazny.
On the surface, it's a story of Hindu gods battling amongst each other. But that's the surface, and presented from the perspective of the common man. In reality, each of these "gods" are merely men, who have used technology to achieve immortality, and genetic engineering and other technology to manifest godlike powers... at least from the perspective of the peasants of the time who were deliberately kept apart as a second class of citizen.
When push comes to shove, and all things are explained, I expect much the same to have occured in Lost. They'll come up with a "sciency" explaination which directly overlaps the "mythic" explaination. Which is true? Neither? Both? It will depend on how the viewer wants to interpret things. Either way we're back to the old nut noted by Arthur C Clarke... "Any technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic."
J -- as always, great posts!
I loved the whole idea of Richard being Ben's Yoda. But then it got me thinking...to continue with the same metaphor, could Richard be Ben's Obi Wan? Could Ben be the Skywalker (really, either would work...Ben as Annakin or as Luke...since we don't know the whole story yet).
Is Jacob then Yoda? Or is Jacob some sort of Palpatine/Emperor??
J, "One of the things about those gnostic traditions is that the idea of a transcendent god is displaced for the recognition and development of the godhead in the self." And so therefor I am wondering if this is a main theme of the show (what with all the times "Namaste" is said -- it can mean "hello" or it can mean something deeply profound.) The Dharma Initiative maybe has to do with the current "Twilight of the Gods" and how humanity must now become as gods, in some kind of a way (I'm thinking of Owen Barfield [as you know, a member of The Inklings] and his book Saving the Appearances.)
Little addition on etymology of "host" and "hostile".
"host" (1) Eng -person who receives guests, "hospes" - in Latin; "hoste" - guest,host- in Old Fr.
"host" (2) Eng -enemy, stranger, "HOSTIS"-in Latin; "host" - multitude,army in Old Fr.
"hostile"(Eng) -" HOSTILIS" (Lat)- "hostile"(Fr)
There is also the flipside of myth turning ordinary and that is the idea of personal mythology. Where we take the ordinary aspects of our lives and turn them into intimate legends. An excellent example of this is the Charlie story last night where he takes the greatest moments of his life and edifies them on paper.
The element I most love about Lost is how external mythologies come down from the clouds and intermingle with personal mythologies (say in flashbacks) that have been elevated due to the groundlessness of the situation on the island. This show is at its best when the DNA of external and personal legend intertwine. They become poetic.
Is the new post lost in space? :(
It's on the way, sent in yesterday. The blogmaster had to get the guest blogger piece up, and he just wrote me to double check if I meant "Beatrix Potter" when I wrote "Benny Potter." (I was punning on Ben looking like Harry Potter last episode.)
See what happens when you get Creative. :D
I think most readers got the pun - as opposed to those danged copy-editors. Let's see, first we knew him as Henry, then faux-Henry or simply Fenry, later still he became Benry - and now Benny Potter! He's a man of many names, truly.
I LOVE YOU HORACE GOODSPEED. YOU ARE IN THE HEART!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
MRS GOODSPEED (OLIVIA) I LOVE YOU TOO.