beyond lost pol cruells 1 pol cruells abel ies bosc de la coma

BEYOND LOST
POL CRUELLS
POL CRUELLS ABEL
IES BOSC DE LA COMA
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“Nothing freer than human imagination”
David Hume
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INDEX
1. Introduction
2. Lost as a TV revolution
2.1 Lost success on the TV
2.2 J.J.Abrams, the current master of mystery
2.2.1 The Mystery Box
2.3 The showrunners
3. Lost as a serial
3.1 The characters
3.1.1 Philosophy inside the characters
3.1.1.1 John Locke
3.1.1.1.1 Jeremy Bentham
3.1.1.2 Rousseau
3.1.1.3 David Hume
3.1.1.4 Mikhail Bakunin
3.1.1.5 Hugo De Groot
3.1.2 The Island
3.1.3 Other important characters
3.2 Dharma Initiative
3.2.1 Research Stations
3.2.2 Orientation
3.2.3 Electromagnetism
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3.3 The Seven Wonders of the World
3.4 Biblical references on Lost
3.5 The Numbers (4 8 15 16 23 42)
3.6 Recurrent thematic and cultural references
3.6.1 Symbolism
3.6.2 Cliffhanger and plot twists
3.6.3 A new way to tell a story: Flashbacks Flash forwards and
Flash-sideways.
3.7 Literary influences and appearances on Lost
4. Conclusions
5.Personal Opinion
6.Sources:
1. Introduction
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As a 1st Batxillerat student I must do a TDR and I decided to do it
about Lost because once I watched it on my laptop in English,
subtitled in Spanish, then I investigate a little and I found that Lost
had lots of both cultural and literary references and influences and I
felt interesting to go deeply at this point. So this point covers forty
pages from this research, and the other fifty pages come after as a
continuation from the first forty pages.
However, the main reason to do this research is that in a future, I
would like to work on something related to the world of the audio
communications, especially if I can work with TV series or cinema.
So I think with this work I can learn more about what made Lost a
phenomenon on America and how it revolutionized the broadcast in
the United States in the beginning of the century.
Lost was absolutely a TV revolution, from 2004 to 2010, especially on
the United States. Its pilot, which is the most expensive pilot in the
history of TV, created such an expectation on the series that the first
episode of the sixth season did cancel president Obama’s speech
about the State of the Union. It is just a sign, but it reflects the
importance of how such an event affected people.
Besides, Lost has become a referent on American culture because it
breaks molds already from its beginning, enthusiastic both public and
critics, thanks to its plot twists and brilliant scripts.
In order to do this research, I will analyse the topic from two different
points of view. The first one will be Lost as a TV revolution and the
second one, Lost as a TV series.
With Lost as a TV revolution I will try to explain about the success of
Lost on TV, about his author, J.J. Abrams and his “Mystery Box”, the
beginning of Lost in the TV and finally its controversial end. Moreover
I will talk about the show runners, the brains behind the series.
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In the second part I will try to do an introspective reflexion about the
series. I will start talking about the main characters and their
characteristics, The Dharma Initiative, the numbers, one of the great
mysteries on the series, and finally about the recurrent thematic and
the cultural references that Lost is based on, besides the literary
influence on the series.
On the other hand, Lost is fed on lots of references, for instance,
some of the philosophical names of the main characters. Moreover, it
could be interpreted as the human life: a group of people trapped on
an island, and rediscovering themselves as they evolve to become
human beings.
At last but far from the least, due to I saw the complete series in
English and subtitled in Spanish I am more confident and I find more
meaning doing this searching work in English
Finally, my personal expectations about doing this TDR are to be able
to improve my English language in general and also to learn more
about how Lost became a phenomenon on television and in American
culture.
2.Lost as a TV revolution
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On September 22nd 2004, the most expensive pilot for a series was
broadcasted on ABC channel in the USA. The pilot itself lasted 2
hours, but it was cut off in two parts because of its large duration.
It was (and it is) one of the most critically claimed television pilots of
all times, furthermore both parts of the pilot gained high ratings, and
the episode would later win several awards like two Emmy Awards,
two Golden Reed Awards and it was nominated for an Hugo Award,
which is the most important award in science fiction. This pilot was
the beginning of Lost.
During 6 years, Lost gained a lot of supporters and won an excellent
reputation, becoming a basic reference in the new American TV
culture. Yet, its stunned, odd and astonishing end, after six years of
mystery, time-jumps, flashbacks and flash forwards, an alternative
timeline and a lot of non solved questions made of it one of the most
controversial and criticized of a TV series.
From my personal point of view, one of the hooks of this TV series
was the good use of different literary techniques, flashbacks, flash
forwards
and
an
alternative
timeline,
and
not
conscious
but
unconscious people understand that it was not a typical series of a
group of people wrecked on an island, but a series about the sense of
the human existence, moved on an island. Furthermore, the show
runners included lots of references about literature and pop culture.
We are living in a so materialistic world that it is reassuring this
series has raised some very important spiritual dilemmas which have
made us think that we have developed uncertainties about human
nature, death and fate. That is to say, we have seen them argue,
fight, kill, die, love, hate, fear... all feelings have surfaced and we
have to side one or the other, change their minds about their
behavior, get on your skin, convert some of our heroes. Who was
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good? Who was the bad guy? Were they good and bad or just human
beings with their faults and virtues?
At the beginning, Lost was conceived under the name of Nowhere,
which was a realistic drama, and the writer, Jeffrey Liebel, credited
The Lord of The Flies and “El Náufrago”, a book and a film, as his
influences, but the ABC desestimated the project. Then ABC delivered
to J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof the project and they transformed
the script into Lost.
Abrams and Lindelof changed its nature from realistic drama to
science-fiction and mystery and then the ABC agreed to shoot the
pilot.
In my opinion, a classic situation like a wreck mixed with the
mysteries on the island (as if the island were alive) with this
philosophical reflexion of life, it gave to the series the reputation and
the success it has nowadays.
Too much has been said about the controversial end of Lost, a dizzy
and strange end that disappointed a lot of fans.
It was obvious, due to the two hours that spent the last chapter,
called “The End” (part 1 and 2) lasted and most of the questions
remain in the air, still unanswered.
2.2 J.J.Abrams, the current master of mystery
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J.J. Abrams was born in New York City on 27th July 1966. He attended
Sarah
Lawrence
College,
and
furthermore his parents
were
both
TV
producers.
At the age of 16 he raid
on movie business to
write
the
Nightbeast,
music
a
for
science
fiction film. During his
years at the college, he
collaborated, with a partner, on writing a feature film treatment. The
treatment was the basis for Taking Care of Business, a film comedy
made in 1990.
Abrams also collaborated with the producer Jerry Bruckheimer
(Pirates of the Caribbean, Pearl Harbour, National Tresure) and
director Michael Bay (Transformers, The Island) on the 1998 film,
Armageddon, a science fiction and catastrophic film.
In 2001 created Bad Robot, his own company, which is the
responsible behind Alias, Lost, Fringe, Person of Interest, Alcatraz,
Super 8…
His first series was Felicity, with four seasons on NBC. After that, he
created and produced Alias. The threshold before his great series.
However, he became famous in television business thanks to two
series: Lost and Fringe. Fringe is nowadays on Fox with its five
seasons and his latest proposal, Alcatraz, an unexpected series about
the legendary prison of California, which began last January but was
cancelled with the first season.
Alcatraz is set on the prison with the same name, where inexplicably
appear several prisoners, who mysteriously disappeared fifty years
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ago, suddenly reappear with the very same appearance as the one
they had when they disappeared.
On the other hand, Fringe can be considered by someone as the
successor of Lost. Fringe is about a FBI department, "Fringe Division"
who investigate a series of unexplained and fringe events, which are
known as “The Pattern”, but still nowadays it has not a clear
definition. Nevertheless, from the third season on, it follow a lineal
plot based on a parallel world, and the two last seasons are about
these parallels worlds and about the fact that one cannot exist if the
other exists.
At the time this research is written, has began the fifth and last
season of Lost, which seems to be tremendous.
In 2007 J.J. Abrams made a speech in TED, one of his most famous
speeches about his Mystery Box.
TED
(Technology,
Entertainment,
Design)
is
an
organization
dedicated to the Ideas worth spreading and it is famous for its
conferences and its talks. In these talks speakers talk about very
different subjects such as technology, science, art, politic, culture…
2.2.1 The Mystery Box
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One of the references to the figure of J.J. Abrams is his Mystery Box.
In his speeches, he always talks about his mystery box, a present
from one of his relatives in his childhood, hand all the things that
hypothetically could be inside. He says that his mystery box has
never been opened; remaining the mystery of what it keeps inside.
That is where it remains the success of Lost, Fringe or whatever you
know about J.J. Abrams.
Some years ago, when he exposed his own concept of The Mystery
Box, he said:
“What are stories, but mystery boxes? . . . What’s a bigger mystery
box than a movie theatre? You go to the theatre, you’re just so
excited to see anything — the moment the lights go down is often the
best part.”
it represents infinite possibility,” he told his audience. “It represents
hope. It represents potential.” And who would want to give up those
things? 1
What Abrams was talking about
specifically was something he
got at Tannen’s Magic, a magic
store
in
Midtown
Manhattan,
thirty years ago. A real box with
a question mark on the outside
and
unidentified
objects
shuffling around inside, that Abrams had never opened.
1
http://6thfloor.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/02/whats-in-j-j-abramss-mysterybox/ (8/02/12)
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There it lays his success on television business, series like this
mystery box, which hides a lot of
enigmas, showing us only what they
want us to know. Above that, a lot of
times you do not understand what it is
trying to tell to you. It happened
blatantly
in
Lost,
and
now
it
is
happening again in Fringe.
What`s more. J.J. Abrams and his
series are secrets keepers, sometimes
lots of secrets and mysteries which
are not going to be revealed, at least,
some of them.
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2.3 The show runners
Although J.J. Abrams is the creator of Lost, earlier he abandoned the
crew who made him and
only
had
the
title
of
producer.
So this part is dedicated to
the
people
cameras,
behind
the
the
10
screenwriters who spent 6
years
of
their
life
to
continue Lost, the brains
which the audience didn’t see but brought this category of master.
The most recognizable of them are two creators: Damon Lindelof and
Carlton Cuse 2, although the whole team was consisted of ten
screenwriters. But from this
team of ten the visible face
of the screen writers on
conferences were these two
mentioned
Moreover,
above.
during
the
running of the series they
brought the Official Podcast
of
Lost,
which
contains
exclusive interviews with members of the series and actors, and other
information occurred behind the cameras.
To show the actual success of these screenwriters, I learnt that
Damon Lindelof had already written the plot for Prometheus, the new
film of Riddley Scott.
2
Above, Damon Lindelof; Below, Carlton Cuse.
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3. Lost as a serial
This part will be focused on the different aspects of the series like
philosophical references, the main characters, the symbology and
literary influences which made Lost be a much higher series than
other series and why it reached this so famous level.
First of all I will tell a bit about its different components and later I
will explain the different meanings.
From my point of view, it seems Lost is a mix of lots of things that
always the humanity are fascinated about- like philosophical themes,
mystery…-. Maybe because you think a thing like this is very
improbable to occur to you.
I think seven different points were great to explain the inspiration of
putting cultural references. As I named it “Lost as a serial” its name
could be equally “Lost as a cultural revision”.
The first part is centered on the characters, specially those main
characters that have philosophical references or inspiration; the best
known are John Locke, David Hume or Mikail Bakunin. And there is an
special part for the Island, which firstly seems to be only the place,
but along the series seems to be more important.
And in a minor degree, a little explanation about the rest of the
characters who don’t have any philosophic reference but their origin
is interesting as well.
The second point explains what exactly Dharma Initiative is and all
the mysterious buildings which are buried on the Island underground.
As I said above, on internet I came across a website where people
commented up to what extend Lost had included different references,
they mentioned something about the seven wonders of the world, so
I investigated about it and, although there isn’t seven wonders on the
Island, if we lump together the different buildings that conform the
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seven wonders of the ancient world, (a statue, temples, a lighthouse
and a pyramid) we realize that there are three of the four buildings
on the Island.
Furthermore, I included a section about the numbers because of its
appearance on the first episode; they appear constantly, and finally,
on the sixth season we know the numbers have a great role.
Besides, there is a point talking about different techniques the screen
writers used in the whole series to explain better the complex plot of
Lost. These techniques are the Flashbacks and Flash-forwards, which
are taken from literature and a new brand from Lost: the Flashsideways.
Finally to end up my research work I have included a section which
talks about the influence literature has upon Lost. This part,
obviously, is nearly completely invented, because these are my very
personal impressions of parallelisms I found between books and Lost.
This part is the aim of this research; the twelve previous pages are
only a kind of introduction.
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3.1 The Characters
In this part I will talk about the main characters that conforms the
series.
Firstly I will talk about one of the most known facts of the series:
eight of the characters and their relationships with philosophers and
their ideas, even though, maybe, there are few who are less know,
such as De Groot or Jeremy Bentham, there are a group necessarily
known like John Locke, David Hume, Rousseau…
Secondly I am going to talk about the Island where the action takes
place, but it is not only the “place”, actually, but we can consider it
like another important character in the series.
And
finally,
other
characters
who
have
no
connection
with
philosophers but they are inspired by writers or other important
people in different fields, like Kate Austen, who is clearly inspired by
novelist Jane Austen or Jack Shepard, whose surname I will analyze
on the Biblical references section, is related with Sam Shepard, an
American playwright.
As in any kind of creation (whether literary or cinematographic) the
most important fact are the characters.
So this part is focused on them, on their personality and on what
certain acts they perform.
As this part is a comparison between philosophers and Lost
characters, there are two sub points – the points refer to Rousseau
and DeGroot- which do not have neither the main philosopher’s
name nor character’s name. This is because the other six has the
same name between characters and philosophers, and this is not the
case of Rousseau and DeGroot, I must use only the surname.
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3.1.1 Philosophy inside the characters
As I said, there is a clear nexus between the huge world of Lost and
the wide world of the philosophy.
Locke, Rousseau or Hume are just only the clearest references. There
are lots of philosophical bases and reflections on the series, but the
most identifiable are the main characters and their behavior on the
Island based on the different philosophic theories.
Their behavior is related to their own personal thinking as far as their
theories about the conception of life and the world are concerned.
In this section we can find two types of relations with the
philosophers and the characters: similarities and divergences.
What’s more; I think Lost is for curious people who do not only want
to hang out watching the TV but people who want to know about the
inner society.
For example: Lost leads me to know more about philosophy and
society behavior rather than what I learned in class and also guides
me to meditate from philosophical themes that other series don’t do.
To highlight the great success of the series, it is curious that when
you type the name of one philosopher, for example on Internet,
appears both, the real philosopher and the character in the series.
But, from my point of view, if the show runners want to show that
philosophy is important on the daily life, they forget lots of great
philosophers such as the “Nihilism” of Nietzsche or the “Existentialist”
of Kierkegaard.
Nevertheless we have one only true fact to cling; in Lost nothing is
casual.
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3.1.1.1 John Locke
John Locke was a British philosopher, father of Liberalism and
Empirism. The last is what the philosopher and the character share.
“Everything happens for a reason”. This is the sentence used by John
Locke to justify everything that happens to him on the island.
The Empirism has also a very strong repercussion in the character of
John Locke too.
Firstly, he was paraplegic before he wrecked on the island, but after
the accident, when he was lying on the beach, he was able to stand
up and walk again, what led him to believe he had a special
connection with the Island and he was taken there for one specific
objective that the Island led him to walk again.
Another fact in common is that John Locke, philosopher, criticized the
absolute authority to only one person and traced the division of
power, which seems that John Locke, the character, believes too.
I put the character of John Locke first because probably Locke is the
most recognizable of the philosophers and, the character, from my
point of view, is one of the deepest characters, but the most.
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3.1.1.1.1 Jeremy Bentham
In the series, Jeremy Bentham is the name used by John Locke when
he returned to the real world in the flash-sideway to persuade de
Ocean Six, the six losties that left the Island, to return to the island,
because they should have never left the island.
Jeremy Bentham, like more characters in the series was the name of
a british philosopher, father of the Utilitarism, which its basic basis is:
“the maximum welfare for the greatest number of people”.
Associated with the series, the short period John Locke take this fake
identity and turns into Jeremy Bentham he tries to find the Ocean Six
and returned them to the island for the welfare of the rest of the
people who is in the Island.
This name was given to John by Charles Widmore in Túnez, after his
time-travelling from the Island to begin his mission to find and
convince the Ocean Six.
When John asks Charles why he gave him that name Widmore
justifies himself by answering Locke’s parents had sense of humor.
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3.1.1.2 David Hume
David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, father of the Empirism.
Desmond David Hume in the series takes the philosopher’s name and
his ideas (and, as an anecdote, both are Scottish, too)
Desmond is a man who crash into the island before 2004 and a man
called Kelvin rescue him and bring him to “The Swann” 3.
David Hume believed that all knowledge comes from senses. Parallel
with the series, Desmond, once in the Island, he believed also with
his senses: first, with pulsing every 108 minutes the countdown on
“The Swann”, then, on the third season, he has premonitions about
Charlie, which can be interpreted as a sixth sense.
In fact, Desmond has three premonitions about Charlie’s death, first
killed by a thunder, then drowned and finally killed by an arrow. At
last, Charlie die drowned on the station “The Looking Glass” 4 at the
end of the third season due to save Desmond, because Mikhail
Bakunin 5 where outside the underwater station with a grenade on the
hand.
Explained below at point 3.2
Explained below at point 3.2
5
Explained below at point 3.1.1.4
3
4
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3.1.1.3 Rousseau
Rousseau was a French philosopher who believed that the society
itself hurts people who are part of society. His most famous phrase
is: “The man is born free, but it is shackled from everywhere”
The parallelism in the series is the character of Danielle Rousseau,
who at the time of the wrecked was living along on the island,
because twenty years earlier she and her expedition wrecked on the
Island and the “Monster”, a black smoke -which I will explaine it
below- killed all her peers.
In the fourth season Danielle is killed by a mercenary team, who
travel to the Island by order of Charles Widmore.
It is very impressive that a woman along survive on a mysterious
Island and was able to resist a disease who killed the rest of her
crew.
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3.1.1.4 Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin was a Russian anarchist, who founded the first
international along with Karl Marx, and was the first great promoter
of anarchism as a political and popular movement.
In the series Mikhail Bakunin is an old soviet soldier recruited by
Jacob through an advertisement on a newspaper. His mission on the
island at the time of the series took place is the communicators
manager on the station “The Flame”.
Furthermore, it seems to be immortal. I think it is related to the fact
that it is inspired by the anarchism, which doesn’t follow any superior
power. My theory is that as inspired by the anarchist movement, he
is “free” from life inside the Island, because he is shot twice and left
uninjured, or that the Island gave to him that power.
I don’t know the aim he seems to be immortal, but in a forum I found
once that because he has the name of an anarchist, he doesn’t follow
the rules of nothing, included the death.
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3.1.1.5 De Groot
Karen and Gerald De Groot are the founders of Dharma Iniciative
although they never appeared in the series. They only have a short
appearance in the orientation videos of “the Pearl” 6 and “the Swann”
that maybe could pass unnoticed.
The surname DeGroot means “the big” or “the great” in Dutch.
Gerald DeGroot was inspired by the Dutch philosopher and jurist
Hugo De Groot, whose book “De iure belli ac pacis” was the first
agreement of the International Rights, which regulates the external
relationships between countries and Sates.
The two De Groot, the real and the one in the series were prodigious
children. Both went to the University at a very young age and were
very smart. One became jurist at the age of 19, the other leaded the
Dharma
Initiative
just
after
being
graduated
from
Michigan
University. There was also a Dutch chess player and psychologist
named
Adrian
DeGroot.
He
leads
many
psychological
chess
experiments, some of them the most known of the world. In these
experiments,
he
investigates
the
cognitive
requirements
and
processes of the mind involved in moving a chess piece.
6
Explained below at point 3.2
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3.1.2 The Island
The Island could be classified as a character on the series; besides it
has its own wishes and plans.
It is very difficult to discover the Island, and it seems that the Island
is able to move by itself through space and time.
It is said that the Island is located in the South Pacific because the
plane crashed during a flight between Los Ángeles and Sydney.
But in the 5th season we learnt that it is possible to move the island in
the space by a frozen wheel, under “the Orchid” 7.
There are a lot of references in
the Island about its own history.
The oldest: odd symbols on the
cork of the Heart of the Island.
After that, there was a gigantic
statue
of
an
unknown
god,
however by this time only a foot
with four fingers reminds. The complete statue is only shown when
the losties (the nickname we know the main characters) travel
through time, and the statue reminds us of Egyptian one.
Moreover, in the finale of the series we could appreciate that about
two thousand of years ago there was a guardian of the island, too 8.
Later, in the ninetieth century a ship wrecked on the island due to a
very strong storm and pulled the statue down breaking it up.
In the fifties, the U.S army landed in the South Pacific due to some
nuclear proofs. The Others, the people who live on the island, killed
the army, but they were able to bring a bomb called “Jughead” which
later would be buried under the Others’ Village to prevent it to be
detonated.
7
8
Explained below, at point 3.2
Explained below, at point 3.7: Ayn Rand
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In the beginning of the 70’s, there was a great activity promoted by
Dharma Initiative, few constructions were built on the island
(scientific stations, barracks and a large communications network).
Finally, in 2004, there was a fault of the magnetism of “the Swann”
on the Island, the plane 815 of Oceanic crashed onto the beach of the
Island.
Even though it is very difficult to find the Island, we discover that
there was a lot of activity on it through the time, but it could be the
fate that the Island had for its people.
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3.1.3 Other important characters
Apart from the characters described above, there are also more
important characters throughout the series that instead of being
inspired of philosophers, they have references to real people. I will
make only a slight mention to this part, since the characters that
have a literary parallelism – and who have a sort of importance to
me- will be analysed in point 3.7.
Jack Shepard:
The surname itself means the man who leads the rest, like the
shepherd leading its cattle, in reference that in a beginning he is the
leader of the group. Moreover we could found an American drama
writer called Sam Shepard who is considered one of the most
important contemporary playwrights. In 1979 he won the Pulitzer for
Buried Child, a play which seems to be inspired Jack’s life.
We could found parallelisms in the play and Jack’s life:
The play depicts the destruction of a traditional and nucleolus family,
more or less what happens with the actions Jack do before wrecking
on the Island. 9
Kate Austen:
She represents the beautiful girl, although we soon learn, already in
the first season, that she was flying to Los Angeles in the role of a
fugitive. After having murdered his father, she was pursued by agent
Mars, who die after the crash onto the island, for three whole years.
9
Explanation below, at point 3.1: Sam Shepard
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Her surname is inspired by the novelist Jane Austen, whose magna
opus was Pride and Prejudice. As you can see, this choice is not
casual.
In the mentioned book the main character is a woman which was not
very usual at that time and she is also a woman with a very strong
personality. 10
In the series, Kate has a strong character too and she is one of the
corners in the love triangle between her, Jack and Sawyer.
James “Sawyer” Ford:
Although his real name is James Ford, his nickname, Sawyer, is taken
by “The adventures of Tom Sawyer”, by novelist Mark Twain. Both
are scammers. The parallelisms between the childhood of Tom
Sawyer and James Ford are practically identical; both lost their
parents early, having to survive alone on the world. The only great
difference is the century, Tom, in the nineteen century and James on
the twenty-one. 11
Hugo Reyes:
He is the typical “fat” but sympathetic guy who gives the humour on
the series. He believes he is damn after wining millions of dollars on
the lottery thanks to the sequence 4-8-15-16-23-42 12. On the Island
he realise that the numbers are there too, increasing his fear to the
numbers.
10
11
12
Explained below, at point 3.7: Jane Austen
Explained below, at point 3.7: Mark Twain
Explained below, at point 3.5
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At the end he become the protector of the Island relieving Jack, and
he ask Ben Linus for help to be his second, starting a new era on the
Island.
Sayid Jarrah:
The character of Sayid is influenced all the series by his past as a
torturer, and in the Island he try to redempt himself, reaching the
fact that he has to die one time to reborn as a new man. I explain the
character deeply below, on point 3.4: 1- Redemption and 4- Reborn.
Daniel Faraday:
He first appears in the four seasons as a member of the Kahana. His
surname is taken from Michael Faraday, who was an English physicist
who researched electromagnetism, one of the characteristics from the
Island.
With Faraday’s research took a major step in the development of
electricity
by
establishing
that
magnetism
produces
electricity
through movement.
To sum up this point, I reached the conclusion that most of the facts
in the series have a close relation to the real world, and I believe this
is one of the bases for the success of Lost, because although several
people don’t know from this fact, the series has more from real than
fantasy.
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3.2 Dharma Initiative
In the first episode of the first season, a polar bear appears
mysteriously on the Island in the South
Pacific.
But in the first episode of the third
season, called Tale of two cities,
which is the name of a Charles
Dickens’s book, this mystery is
solved.
Later,
in
the
second
episode, the actions of a secret
organization
D.H.A.R.M.A,
scientific
are
revealed,
which
experiments
stations
for
a
better
in
world
through the Valenzetti equation (an equation whose digits are 4, 8,
15, 16, 23, 42). Since Ezio Valenzetti made the equation, it is used to
predict humanity doomsday.
Dharma Initiative, which is an acronym meaning Department of
Heuristics and Research on Material Applications built few scientist
stations on the island. The missions of the stations were meant to
change the numbers of the Valenzetti equation. The Valezetti
equation is a sequence of numbers capable of measuring the human
history in numerical terms.
As a curiosity Dharma is a word from Asian religions which means
Duty, and its opposite is Karma. Moreover inside the Dharma
Initiative people greet themselves with the word “Namaste”, which
means: “the spirit that dwells in me greets the spirit that dwells in
you”.
Furthermore, in the 5th season and as a consequence of the actions of
John Locke in the frozen wheel under “the Orchid”, which I will
explain below, a part of the losties were transported in the seventies,
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when the Dharma Initiative had its apogee, and they became part of
the Initiative joining it as workers. It is also curious that almost all of
the names for the stations are inspired by an attribute from Greek
God Apollo. For example, one of the animals devoted to Apollo was
the Swann, he was the protector of archeries (The Arrow), and he
was the God of the sun (The Flame).
Their stations logos have a background in black and the draws in
white, while the few stations that have no relation to the God have
the colours inverted.
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3.2.1 Research Stations
This part is centred on some buildings we can find on the Island. The
aims of these stations are to investigate about physical phenomenon
of the nature which can influence the Valenzetti equation. 13
The stations were built by Dharma and all of them were built
underground (or underwater) except for The Flame.
In this part I will try to find similarities between this research stations
and facts or themes from the real world that inspired the creators to
put it on the series.
Every station has cultural references of our modern world, such as
references to religion, popular culture and literature influences.
As a curiosity almost all of the station names have also literary
references.
13
Explained below, exactly at point 3.6
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- The Swann:
The Swann is the first station to be
discovered,
just
after
the
second
season started due to content the
audience who were deceived with
the abrupt end of the first season.
Inside “The Swann” lives Desmond
Hume, a man who clashes in the
island with his ship. Inside the station
there is a computer on a dome, and has a
flip-card timer. The computer resets the timer
through manual entry of a numeric code "4 8 15 16 23 42" every 108
minutes. The code could not be entered until four minutes before the
countdown reached zero, at which time the alarm begins to ring.
Initially, the station was built to study the magnetism on the island,
but after and accident occurred at the seventies drilling a bag of
magnetism, it was used to control this magnetism.
According to the producers, the inside of the station was inspired by
the thematic land of “Tomorrowland”, in Disneyland, probably
because they wanted to make the stations a “developed” place within
the island, and the inside of the Swann, which is the first station we
can see, reflects that.
Although it is one of the most important stations- for Dharma
Initiative and for the series- I have to admit I didn’t succeeded in
finding any relationship between the swans and the station, although
the swan was an animal who follows god Apollo.
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-The Pearl:
The Pearl is a psychology station, a base
for monitoring the behaviour of the
other
personal in
the
rest of
stations through cameras from
“The Swann” as well as possibly
from the other stations. But the
real purpose of this station was to
control the behaviour and actions
from people of “The Pearl”. It is said
by Desmond that perhaps the people of
the
Pearl
were
the
subjects
of
the
experiment.
Besides, its name reminds us about the Nobel Prize winner in 1962,
John Steinbeck’s novel, The Pearl. The novel “The Pearl” is about a
couple with a son who are fishermen, and they are very poor. One
day the husband found a pearl while he was fishing, and they think if
they sold the pearl they would became rich, but the pearl didn’t bring
to the family any positive thing, but negative things.
One of my conjectures is that people who went to “The Pearl” though
they will control and follow people on other stations. This will be the
positive thing as the family in the novel “The Pearl” though at the
beginning with the pearl. But in fact workers on “The Pearl” were
controlled as we see there were cameras to follow their behaviour,
and all the work of the people of “The Pearl” went to the rubbish,
meaning that the negative thing (but this is only a conjecture that I
though, but I think this is not the purpose similarities between both
“The Pearl”, book and station).
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-The Hydra:
The Hydra is a zoological research
station situated on a small island
apart from the main island.
It has two parts: one above
ground
and
another
underwater.
This station take importance
in season three, because the
Others kidnapped Jack, Kate and
Sawyer and brought them to The
Hydra;
Jack
was
enclosed
on
an
aquarium for sharks and dolphins, and Kate and Sawyer were
enclosed on a cage for bears.
There is also a little chamber called “Room 23” where the Others
made brainwashing through drugs, loud music and a psychedelic
video. It remembers us to one of the most known films by Stanley
Kubrick: A Clockwork Orange, were Alex, the protagonist, is
submitted to the Ludovico Treatment to change his behaviour. This
film, but, is an adaptation of Anthony Burgess’s novel of the
homonymous title.
The name is possible referred to the mythological animal or also an
invertebrate animal of fresh water. Both have the ability of
regenerate themselves. And also related with the fact that station
“The Hydra” has different parts on the small island, as it is cut in
different parts.
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-The Arrow:
The
Arrow
is
a
small
station
camouflaged by a cottage. It was
used for Dharma Initiative for
making
strategies
against
the natives on the Island.
After the Crash of Oceanic’s
flight 815 it was the refuge
from the survivors of the
plane’s tail.
They
are
the
tailies,
the
passengers that were on the back
part of the plane at the time of the crash.
The plane broke into three parts, and the bottom fell here.
They were living on the beach too, but one day they discovered this
station and made it his “home”.
Furthermore, inside the stations Mr. Eko found a Bible, which had a
hole inside it to keep objects, which has a part of an orientation video
inside it.
The name could refer to the typical weapon to kill natives from
undeveloped lands, often used by the conquerors.
Here the parallelism -I though- is that the natives of the Island are
the natives of America, and Dharma Initiative are the colonists from
Europe in the XV century.
This is shown especially on old western films, where the white people
kill Indians up on their horse and shooting arrows.
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-The Orchid:
It
is
the
last
station
to
be
discovered. It is situated under
a botanic garden to research
for “Casmir effect”. It is the
last
station
showed
and
probably one of the most
important
stations
in
Dharma, although it only
appears on few episodes.
Ben Linus and John Locke travel
to this station and while Locke is
watching the video orientation, Linus is putting metallic objects into a
camera to destroy it.
After this, Ben goes down to a secret cave where is buried part of a
frozen wheel which moves the Island. Behind the wheel there was a
yellow light, which later we discover it is the light from the “Heart of
the Island”.
Ben broke the ice on the wheel and, difficultly, he moved the wheel
using lots of effort, the light increased extending itself and covering
the whole cave.
Outside, the Island made an odd sound and the sky became purple
again, like when “The Swann” went off on the second season.
Suddenly, a light enveloped the entire island, making it vanish.
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-The Flame:
The
survivors
discovered
The
Flame because of a monitor in
The Pearl shows a man
looking
to
the
camera,
Mikhail Bakunin, who was
an Other living in “The
Flame”. From there the
Others were reported with
the external world.
Ironically, the end of the station was when someone active the C-4 (a
kind of bomb) fixed on the pillars and The Flame explode creating a
great flame.
The station has the name of “Flame” maybe because the fire expands
itself very quickly, like communication nowadays, more or less.
Besides, in the fourth season the station explode due to the C-4, a
type of explosive, stuck under the stations, and the explosion ended
at least with a huge flame.
Moreover, possibly “The Flame” has its own kind of protection. When
the losties went there, John Locke tried to unlock a computer by
playing chess with the computer, and when he won, some options
were displayed. The options were: asking for a food supply, contact
with the outside world, have access to a submarine sonar system and
report of an incursion of the Hostiles. When they left the station
Locke typed 77, which meant an incursion, and making the explosion
of “The Flame”.
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-The Staff:
The
staff
is
a
medical
station.
Nowadays it is used by The Others.
In the first season, Claire, the
pregnant girl is kidnapped by
Ethan, one of the Others,
and he bring her to the Staff
to save both, Claire and the
baby’s life.
Later, in the third season,
Juliet, once is infiltrated with the
losties,
bring
Sun,
who
was
pregnant, to this station, because the
Others who got pregnant died in the Island, and Juliet can`t do
nothing for them, so her hope is to help Sun to have the baby in the
Island. When they arrived at the station, Sun noticed that the station
was empty and without any medical equipment, but then Juliet
opened a hidden room behind the some metallic wardrobes at the
time Sun asked Juliet what the purpose of this room is. Then Juliet
replied: “This is the place where we bring the pregnant women to
die”.
The symbol of the station is referred to Greek God Aesculapius.
He was the god of medicine and healing. He was also the son of God
Apollo, whom most of the stations are referred to. The (red) stuff
with snakes rolled on it represents the attribute given to the god.
This is the only station that has its attribute in red, instead of the
typical black or white from the other stations have.
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-The Looking Glass:
The
Looking
Glass
is
the
only
underwater station of Dharma.
It
is
presumed
to
transmissions
block
and
anchorage submarines. It is
believed to be flooded, and
Juliet think so, but later it is
shown two women were on
the station.
In this station is clear that
Mikhail
Bakunin
is
immortal,
because he was shot by Desmond with
crossbow from the Looking Glass, hitting him on the chest.
The name for this station is taken from the second part, less known,
of the books of Alice. The first book, called Alice in Wonderland, is the
universal known, where Alice fell inside a burrow and discovered a
magical world with weird and odd characters. But Lewis wrote a
second part, Alice through the looking glass, where Alice crosses a
mirror and she is involved on a chess game. So, this station takes the
name of this second part of the series of Alice.
What is curious is that, actually, many of the cinematography
adaptations
combine
the
two
books,
calling
them
Alice
in
Wonderland. But in fact there are two books.
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-The Tempest:
“The Tempest” is a station that has
chemical
weapons.
Charlotte
were
Daniel
there
and
to
neutralize the toxic gas all
over the island, but when
Jack realizes they were
missing, they search for
them. When Jack, Kate
and Juliet arrive at the
station, firstly they thought
that the couple tried to release
the
gas,
but
after
the
misunderstanding, finally they disconnect the system to prevent the
release of gas by Ben.
The name of the stations was inspired by Shakespeare’s play “The
Tempest”, which paradoxically is set on an island. The plot is that a
wizard, Prospero and his daughter, Miranda, are left on a mysterious
island. Prospero caused a tempest and a ship with his enemies
wrecked on this island, and after that Prospero, who is a wizard,
manipulates the survivors for his own purpose, which is restore his
daughter to the throne of Milan, where Prospero is the Duke.
It is evident that the essence of this play and the essence of Lost are
nearly the same (with the exception that Lost is more complete in all
the ways).
As literary critic Harold Bloom said:
“all the literature and arts comes from the genius Shakespeare” 14
So in Lost must be a reference to him.
14
“How to read and why”, Harold Bloom, 2000
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-The Lamp Post:
The station named The Lamp Post is
localized under a church in Los
Angeles, used to find the island
in
the
space-time
line,
because the Island is an
odd entity which (or who)
has abilities to move itself
through the line of time and
space.
In the centre of the station
there is a mapamundi and a
Foucault
pendulum.
Currently
the
person who is in charge of this station is Eloise Hawking, the mother
of Daniel Faraday, the physicist who landed on the Island on the
fourth season. The surname of Eloise is taken by another great
physicist who has a theory about the black holes, Stephen Hawking.
The name of the stations is taken of the best known work of C.S.
Lewis’s “Chronicles of Narnia”. The Lamp Post is situated just when
Lucy, one of the main characters, crosses the wardrobe and arrives at
the magic world of Narnia.
The Post symbolizes the nexus between Narnia and the real world,
whereas the station of Lamp Post symbolizes the nexus between the
world and this mysterious Island.
The aim that “Chronicles of Narnia” doesn’t appear on the point 3.7 is
because it has no more meaning beyond what I explained here.
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3.2.1 Orientation
In every station there was a video called “Orientation”, which showed
the aim of every station and sometimes a portion of the history of the
Inititiative. What’s more, apart of the aim, it showed how the stations
worked.
During the episodes we are able to watch few videos, which included
the Orientation for the Swann, the Pearl, the Flame and the Orchid.
Moreover, in every video there is a presenter, called Pierre Chang,
who is one of the “Heavyweights” inside Dharma Initiative, along with
Horace Goodspeed, a mathematic and leader on the seventies of the
Initiative in the Island and Stuart Radzinsky, the Head of Research in
Dharma and the architect of The Swann. Later, he was closed inside
the Swann to switch the countdown with another partner called Kelvin
Inman, and he committed suicide after finished a map hidden on “The
Swann” where Radzinsky drew the place of the other station. This
map helped Locke to find The Pearl.
After this short explanation, going back to the beginning, Dr. Chang
appeared in all the videos but always with another pseudonym.
In the Swann orientation video his name is Marvin Candle, in the
Orchid orientation video his name is Edgar Halliwax and in the Pearl
orientation video his name is Mark Wickmund. This could confuse the
audience, and in fact it did, but during the different seasons it is not
explained why he is using pseudonyms in every video. Perhaps it is
thought to confuse the workers in the different stations.
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3.2.2 Electromagnetism
Despite being a fiction series Lost deals with science field too and the
most studied scientific element inside Lost is Electromagnetism.
It first appears on the second season, with the appearance of the
Swann station. Moreover on the island, it seems that there are few
events related to electromagnetic phenomenon. Although there are
no explanations about the Island’s magnetism, we have the certain
that the Swann was built to keep the electromagnetism saved after
an accident occurred when the station was being built. The workers
go further drilling than the bag of magnetism was able to resist, and
they made a hole on the magnetism’s bag. So they have to change
the
aim
of
“The
Swann”,
and
its
function
of
studying
the
electromagnetism changed to supervise it through a countdown
installed on the Swann, that every 108 minutes the responsible had
to switch a button to liberate a part of the electromagnetism and not
let the bag of electromagnetisms overcharge.
And from now onwards, every 108 minutes the responsible for the
Swann has to switch a button to liberate a little part of this
electromagnetism power.
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POL CRUELLS
The seven wonders of the world
In my research, I came across a forum in internet where a member
found some parallelism between some of the buildings on the Island
and the seven wonders of the ancient world.
We know the creators of Lost used as many references and
inspirations from the real world as they could, so they made
references from the seven wonders of the ancient world, too.
If we get together the different kind of buildings considered wonders,
we discover that there are also buildings on the island making
references of these wonders:
-Lighthouse of Alexandria:
There is also a Lighthouse on the Island, but this is a little bit special.
The Lighthouse of Alexandria was the highest one, but an earthquake
destroyed it.
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-Temple
of
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Arthemisa
in
Ephestus
and
Mausoleum
of
Maussollos at Halicarnassus:
This two temples were the greatest of the ancient world whereas the
Temple on the Island is the biggest building on the island.
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-Zeus Statue in Olympia and Collosus of Rhodes:
The foot with four fingers is what remains about an old statue of
Egiptian goddess “Tueris”. It was represented by a human body and
an hippopotamus head. Nowadays, but, we can only see its foot,
because the rests of the statue are lost on the island, after the crash
of the Black Rock into the statue.
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-Hanging Gardens of Babylonia:
The last station to be discovered is called The Orchid, a kind of
flower, but it is so called because a greenhouse was the cover for the
real station.
And the adjective “Hanging” was a mistake of translation, so the real
meaning is “Overhang”, and the greenhouse “Overhang” from the
forest too.
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-Great Pyramid of Giza:
Ironically, the only wonder which still remains and it hasn’t been
destroyed is the only one which has no references in Lost.
But although we can’t see any references to the Egyptian pyramids
we know that on a concrete moment on the island’s history the
Egyptian lived there. Evidence of that is the statue, which is an
Egyptian God named Tueris, the goddess of fertility. Represented
with a human body and an animal head, this time an hippopotamus,
characteristic of the Egyptian religion.
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3.4 Biblical references on Lost
In this part I will talk about some Biblical references the creators of
Lost have included in the series.
The Bible – and also in its many different names (Quran, Old
Testament…) - is nearly true that is the most universal and known
book, and in extension, the most influenced- although it is full of
contradictions because people read it not as a fictional masterpiece
but as a real book.
According to a survey made by the Society of the Congress Library in
the eighties, in the American culture, the Bible is the most influencing
book. Apart from being one of the most influential book, the Bible is
also one of the best known books of history- together with others
religion books such as the Old Testament or the Quran- so, it is not
weird that the show runners have included a lot of biblical references
on the series.
I will only write about five points of parallelisms between the series
and the Bible, the ones I personally think are the most important,
although I think there are few more parallelisms.
Firstly, there are at least eight physical apparitions of the Bible: there
was one on “The Swann”, another one in “The Arrow”, another one in
Jack’s shelving in his apartment…
Then, from my point of view, here there is an enumeration of some of
the parallelism between The Bible and Lost:
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1-REDEMPTION
I begin the Biblical references with Redemption because this concept
of the Bible is possibly the most important fact in Lost.
At the beginning, all the characters wrecked on the island with
different troubles -but not simply troubles- like Kate’s out of the law
or Jack’s family situation.
«Everybody gets a new life on this island» said John Locke early in
the first season. And he is right; in different ways, the accident of the
plane benefits almost everybody.
Jack does not have to bury his father and stops blaming himself;
although Kate’s past is revealed, in the third chapter her police guard
died, let her stop running from the police; John Locke recovers his
mobility on his legs, apart of believing their plane accident maybe
was not an “accident”; Claire could have her baby on the Island and
take care of the baby herself, instead of giving the baby to an
adoption family as she first had thought.
Besides, Sayid has to carry about the fault that he has tortured lots
of people on the Army, and it’s a fact that he is not prided. For
example, he was obligated to torture his own lover, a fact that seems
to chase him in the Island.
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2-ESAÚ AND JACOB:
Early on the series a symbolical appearance appears on Lost.
In the fifth episode of the first season, the group found two ancient
skeletons in a cave where they poured some water.
There, Locke baptized them as “Adam and Eve”, when he said: «Our
own Adam and Eve». It makes references to the fact that these two
bodies were the first people to live on the Island.
Beside the bodies, Jack also found a bag with two stones inside it:
one white and other black.
At the end of the series we could realized that the male body
belonged to the “Black Smoke”. It was the body before being
transformed into the “Black Smoke” or the “Monster” and the second
body belonged to “Mother”, the guardian of the island before Jacob.
In the series there is also a parallelism between Jacob, his brother
Esau and the Bible.
This book, the Genesis, said that there were two brothers, called
Jacob and Esau, who even before they had born, they fought in her
mother’s womb.
Everything that happens on the island is because of Jacob, due to his
fight against his brother, and he does all what he does in order to
remedy the disaster he caused two thousands years ago, when he
killed his brother physically, creating the “Black Smoke”.
Apart from being inspired by the Bible, Jacob and his brother could
take references from “As I Lay Dying” one of the best work of William
Faulkner, Nobel prize in 1949. The book is about the journey of two
brothers to his mother’s funeral, but they are arguing during the
whole journey, bringing them catastrophic consequences.
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3-SHEPHARD:
In the Christian religion the shepherd is the person who leads the
believers into the Christianism.
Hence, it is not a coincidence that Jack and his father, Christian, have
the surname of Shepherd. In different ways, Jack is the shepherd of
the losties, and Christian, in his few appearances is a kind of
shepherd on the island for his son, Jack. For example, in the fifth
episode of the first season, called “White Rabbit”, the losties had
finished their stockpile of water, so they need urgently a river or a
fountain. Christian appears then on Jack’s dreams and guide him to a
cave where passes a river, which is the cave where they found the
two skeletons “Adam and Eve”.
The title, “White Rabbit”, is an allusion of Alice in Wonderland, by
Lewis Carroll. In the book Alice follows a white rabbit as Jack follows
his father through the Island. So here the ghost of Christian Shepard
is a kind of shepherd for Jack helping him to found the fountain.
Moreover there is an American playwright called Sam Sephard who
won the Pulitzer later on the seventies thanks to the play Buried
Child. If we read this play or we go to the theatre to see it, we will
realize that Jack could perfectly be the main character in the play,
because both stories are nearly the same.
To sum up this point I will make a clarification: I know I’ve been
talking about Jack’s surname as a role from the Catholic Church, but
in fact between the two names there is a clear difference:
Shepard for the surname and Shepherd for the role.
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4-REBORN
When Ethan Rom -an Other who was sent by Ben to the place where
the plane wrecked on the Island, to control the losties- he kidnapped
pregnant Claire, Charlie went behind Ethan and Claire to save the last
one.
In the middle of the wood Ethan and Charlie fought, and Ethan
hanged Charlie after beating him. Later, Jack and Kate, who ran after
them, found Charlie hanged on a bamboo tree. Firstly, they thought
there was no hope for Charlie and they believed Charlie was dead,
but Jack, after hitting Charlie’s chest furiously, revived him.
Another case of Reborn is Sayid Farrah. After the explosion at the
end of the fifth season by the Jug Head, Sayid was bleeding very
badly. Then Sayid told Hurley that if he died now he wouldn’t go to a
comfortable place due to his past life as a torturer and murderer, and
he fell unconscious.
He was close to die, but thanks to Jacob, who previously had told
Hurley what he had to do, Hurley told the guys that they had to bring
Sayid to the Temple, a building in the middle of the jungle, where lots
of the Others lived.
Through a hole on a wall, they entered a secret corridor underground.
The Others caught them and were at the point to kill them, but then
Hurley came to his defense saying he was sent by Jacob. The Others
took Sayid and put him on a fountain in the Temple and drown an
unconscious Sayid into it, at the time they turned a hourglass. It
seems Sayid was drowned, but the Others didn’t remove him. Then
Jack started a fight with the Others, and after a while, a reborn Sayid
said: “What happened?”
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5-EXODUS
The “Exodus” is the second book of the “Bible”. The exodus is maybe
the most known book of the Bible, after the Genesis and The
Apocalypse, so it’s not strange to have a little reference in Lost.
It tells the story of slavery in Egypt of the Israelian people, their
escape and how they had to cross the Red Sea to reach the Promised
Land.
In Lost, Exodus is the name of the final season of the first season,
when the losties, warned by Danielle Rousseau, know that “The
Others” were on their way to arrive at the camp, and Jack believed
the only way to keep save all the passengers of the flight 815 save is
open the trap, so Danielle brought a little group of them to the Black
Rock, an old ship in the middle of the jungle, where there is
dynamite. Meanwhile Sawyer and three other men sailed to the sea
with a raft they made on their own, to arrive in a land from the “real
world”, and then return to the Island to rescue their partners.
In the end of Exodus we saw how the others destroyed the raft in the
sea and left its crew in the middle of the sea. On the Island Jack and
the others managed well bringing the dynamite to the Trap, and
finally they made it go off. Then Jack and John looked inside in the
darkness, and this how the first season ends.
This ending was so controversial because the fans, after all, had to
wait three more long months to the next season, letting the screen
writers decide on the first thing to show on the first episode of the
second season was the inside of the Trap.
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3.5 The numbers (4 8 15 16 23 42)
During the series one of the biggest axes of Lost was the numbers
which were 4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42. They made appearance on the
eighteen episodes -centered on Hurley and how he became rich on
the lottery thanks to these numbers- but they really took importance
in the second season, with the discovery of “The Swann” and the
countdown.
The beginning of the numbers came from an Equation made by a
(fictional)
mathematic
called
Enzo
Valenzetti,
who
made
the
Valenzetti Equation to predict the world’s end.
Even though this was an important fact of Lost, it wasn’t shown in the
TV series. It was shown on the Sri Lanka video in the game The Lost
Experience, which was an alternate reality game.
The aim of the stations built on the Island, and the aim of Dharma
Initiative was to change these numbers and give the humanity a
chance to survive.
On “The Substitute”, the sixth chapter of the sixth Seaton, the Black
Smoke on its human appearance tells Sawyer that the Numbers are
related to Jacob. The Black Smoke led Sawyer to a cave in some
unknown cliffs, and there the Black Smoke showed Sawyer a kind of
list written with chalk on the roof and walls of the cave. There, there
were lost of names from characters in Lost, mostly crossed out.
He tells that names were chosen by Jacob as possible candidates to
occupy the charge of the protector of the Island. And then, Sawyer
asks from what the Island had to be protected from, the Black Smoke
answered: “from nothing”. Every single candidate had a number
before their name, but as most of them were crossed, we only can
see a few of them, respectly the ones who has the numbers that
conform the Valenzetti Equation. If we don’t know The Lost
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Experience and we don’t know the Equation, the numbers for the
candidates could be an answer to us for the Numbers.
4- Locke
8- Reyes
15- Ford
16- Jarrah
23- Shepard
42- Kwon
The black smoke also tells Sawyer that every candidate has three
options on the Island:
1. Do nothing, but his name could be crossed
2. Accept being the protector of the Island
3. Leave the Island
While the Black Smoke is talking that to Sawyer, he crossed the
name of Locke, because he had died two seasons ago, and showing
us what happens if someone chooses the option Locke had chosen.
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3.6 Recurrent thematic and cultural references
Lost is thrives from lots of thematic, cultural references or literary
techniques taken from literature.
Firstly I will explain different literary techniques used in Lost, such as
the cliffhangers and plot twists, as well as the Symbolism used in Lost
to express the frame of mind or the feelings of the characters.
Then I will talk about cliffhangers and plot twists, two techniques
carried to the extreme to keep the audience pending on future
episodes. This is shown in almost every episode. At the end of each
episode there is a cliffhanger, and there are plot twists every two or
three episodes.
Finally, in the last point I will exhibit the three literary techniques
used in Lost to lead the series: the Flashbacks, Flash Forwards and a
brand new invented by the show runners, the Flash-sideways.
Moreover, in the largest part of the research, I investigated about
literary influences on Lost and how they are hidden in the series.
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3.6.1 Symbolism
Symbolism is possibly one of the most used techniques in universal
literature. According to Cambridge dictionary, symbolism is the use of
symbols in art, literature, films, etc. to represent ideas. A thing (an
object or a verbal phrase) is used to make reference to another thing
which has a relation to the first thing.
Yet, we have to remember that symbolism is always subjective, so
everybody could have a different result.
For me, the best example of symbolism is the second episode of the
third season, called “the Glass Ballerina”, which with a glass ballerina
reflects the anemic state of Sun. Sun Kwon is also a main character.
Along with her husband, Jin Kwon, firstly they were the exotic couple
who hadn’t speak English, because they are Korean, but after is
revealed that Sun studied English when she was young.
Another great and well-founded symbolism is the music box of
Danielle Rousseau. During all the years Danielle was alone on the
island, the music box didn`t work, but when Sayid found Danielle’s
cave and discovered the box, he touched it and immediately the box
started to play well. Moreover, when Sayid wanted to leave the cave,
the box stopped playing. So, the music box reflects the loneliness of
Danielle.
All in all, there are two facts which appear constantly: the Rain, which
appears in scenes of a high emotional level or Black and White, the
contrast between good and evil, or simply to show the contrast.
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3.6.2 Cliffhangers and plot twists
First of all, we have to differentiate between what a cliffhanger an a
plot twist is, the two most used literary techniques i Lost.
A cliffhanger is a sudden end, leaving the characters in a difficult
situation. This is used to keep the audience impatient to see the next
episode and see what happens after the cliffhanger, mostly.
The first great cliffhanger of Lost could be the discovering of “the
Trap”, which is the big mystery through all the first season, until we
discovered “The Swann”.
During Lost, there are a lot of cliffhangers, almost in all the episodes,
and normally there is a bigger cliffhanger at the end of the season,
forcing the audience to wait for three long months.
In the first season, the losties open “the Trap”, but we don’t know
about the inside until the beginning of the second season. In the
second season, the countdown of The Swann counts to zero, but the
show runners don’t show us what happened; only we knew that at
least, the countdown was important. And finally, in the fifth season
the Juge head went off being unaware of what will happen later.
On the other hand, a plot twits is an inesperate change to the
development of a series, but the plot twist could be interpretive by
little clues. Moreover a plot twist, as its name says, makes a
repercussion in the series. For example; a plot twist in the Pilot is the
appearance of a monster on the Island, when they found polar bears
wandering through the jungle, or three episodes later when John
Locke, before wrecking on the island he, on a wheelchair.
In the beginning of the third season, after the appearance of the
Others, who our first impression are that they are uncivilized people
living in the wild rainforest, they lived on barracks with electricity and
still water, on a town inspired by a little borough of the seventies in
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America, or that in the middle of the third season we know that
there’s another little island, which has the station “the Hydra”, apart
from the principal.
These are only a few examples of cliffhangers and plot twists which
took place in “Lost”, but in fact, as I said, in almost every chapter
there is a plot twist or a cliffhanger.
So, the main difference is that a cliffhanger is used at the end of the
chapter, just to keep the audience’s attention to the next episode, but
without affecting the plot of the series, while a plot twist
I strongly believe that with Lost cliffhangers and plot twists reaches
their apotheosis in TV series, because cliffhangers and plot twists are
taken from literature.
But as cliffhangers and plot twists reach the series to the Olympus of
American (and world) series, ultimately it produces the fall of Lost, by
keeping lots of mysteries during the series and no given solutions at
the end, causing the audience to feel ill ease.
Earlier in the first season cliffhangers and plot twists are a constancy,
and in almost every episode there is a cliffhanger at the end of the
episode or lots of plot twists in the season, just to keep the
audience’s attention on the next chapter.
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3.6.3
A new way to tell a story: Flashbacks,
Flashforwards and Flashsides.
This section is spilt into three parts: the Flashbacks, the Flash
forwards and the Flash-sideway and I will proceed according to these
parts. Firstly, the flashbacks to know more about the characters, then
the flash forwards to show the Ocean Six life after leaving the Island,
who are living a “normal” life on Earth again, and finally the flashsideways, a kind of alternate reality.
FLASHBACKS:
We could say that Lost is a series of action. At present time, on the
Island, the characters don’t speak too much to each other and they
don’t share their anxieties, either.
We learn more about the
characters thanks to this kind of “past events” called Flashbacks.
With the Flashbacks we learn about the character’s life before
wrecking onto the Island, we also learn about their relationships and
their personality.
After twenty minutes of the first episode we saw the first flashbacks,
which showed us some previous minutes before the wreck. In these
flashbacks we saw how the passengers got to know each other, but
they thought they wouldn’t see all those people once the plane had
landed in Los Angeles.
Every main character has at least more than five flashbacks during
the series, which shows us what happened to the characters before
the wreck.
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One curious thing that reflects the passion with which the show
runners work is that the flashbacks have thematic or narrative
parallelisms with the events occurred on the Island, so any flashback
is not a chance on Lost.
With the last episode from the end of the second season and beyond,
the flashbacks begin not only to show the past of the losties, but also
flashbacks from Desmond and then from The Others.
Flashbacks didn’t appear with Lost, but this series brings flashbacks
to unexpected limits, making flashbacks a very important fact to
every episode and to the series in general.
After the fourth season, whose flashbacks and flash forwards both
have the same episodes, then flashbacks disappear.
FLASH FORWARDS:
At the end of the third season a new kind of narration comes up: The
Flash Forwards. In the end of the third season, they show us the
future of the losties when they were able to leave the Island. The
Flash forwards, then, mostly shows the future life of the Ocean Six
(Jack, Kate, Hugo, Sayid, Sun and Aaron, Claire’s son) and their life
out of the Island.
At Comic-Con in San Diego in 2007 Damon Lindelof said: "Both
myself and Carlton (Cuse) knew that flashbacks would not last in the
series history. By the time we left to show the audience the most
relevant moments character’s lives and the time when it seemed that
we were making all along the way, such as Jin suddenly had a second
wife and was like "Oh, really?, never mentioned it," we knew we had
wave change, and we did as flash forwards ".
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FLASH-SIDEWAYS:
As the episodes went by, some of us thought that the show runners
couldn’t include any other literary technique, but they did. They
invented a brand new. We could describe it as the Flash-sideways as
an alternative reality.
At the end of the series we discover that these flash-sideways show
us what kind of life would have been carried out provided that the
Oceanic 815 wouldn’t have wrecked on the Island.
The Flash-sideways were a way to explain an hypothetical life of the
losties if they hadn’t wrecked on the Island, but at the end of “The
End”, we discover thanks to the words of Christian Shepard to his son
that these flash-sideways were made by the losties, to made a final
place (the church) to reconnect themselves after death.
The End:
But it is not until the very last episode that we learn about these
flash-sideways chances. It is told by Jack’s father Christian Shepard,
in a “universal” church, formed by all the main religion idols on the
planet.
VOICE: Hey, kiddo.
[Jack turns around to see his father standing behind him.]
JACK: Dad?
CHRISTIAN: Hello, Jack.
JACK: I don't understand...you died.
CHRISTIAN: Yeah. Yes I did...
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JACK: Then how are you here right now?
[Christian sighs.]
CHRISTIAN: How are you here?
JACK: I died too...
[Jack begins to cry as he remembers.]
CHRISTIAN: It's okay...it's okay. It's okay son.
[Christian approaches Jack and they hug each other.]
JACK: I love you, dad.
CHRISTIAN: I love you too, son.
JACK: You...are you real?
CHRISTIAN: I should hope so. Yeah, I'm real. You're real, everything
that's ever happened to you is real. All those people in the
church...they're real too.
JACK: They're all...they're all dead?
CHRISTIAN: Everyone dies sometime, kiddo. Some of them before
you, some...long after you.
JACK: But why are they all here now?
CHRISTIAN: Well there is no "now" here.
JACK: Where are we, dad?
CHRISTIAN: This is the place that you...that you all made together,
so that you could find one another. The most...important part of your
life, was the time that you spent with these people. That's why all of
you are here. Nobody does it alone Jack. You needed all of them, and
they needed you.
JACK: For what?
CHRISTIAN: To remember...and to...let go.
JACK: Kate...she said we were leaving.
CHRISTIAN: Not leaving, no. Moving on.
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JACK: Where we going?
CHRISTIAN: [smiling] Let's go find out. 15
Jack reconnects with all the losties, and after they embrace each
other, they sit on the banks. Finally Christian opens a big door and a
powerful white light invader the church.
15
Last dialogue of Lost. It is between Jack and his father, Christian, and he tells his
son where they are.
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3.7 Literary influences and appearances on Lost
This last part of my work is centred mostly on literary influences that
the creators had acquired- or not, maybe it’s just an impressionfrom the great novels and novelists of the history of literature.
Actually, this is the most subjective part of this research as some of
the scenes in the series remind me of novels I know or I have read. I
found some equal facts or parallelisms in the series I considered
interesting to comment, but perfectly could be rebutted.
In this section I chose 15 great novelists, poets and essayist whom I
have read about- and I felt like to write about- and I have written my
most personal impressions, helped by extracts from their novels or
from impressions of other people, like essayist Harold Bloom or
Virginia Woolf about other writers.
The fifteen writers I have chosen are: William Shakespeare, Dante
Alighieri, Jane Austen, William Faulkner, Virginia Woolf, Lewis Carroll,
John Steinbeck, Marcel Proust, Mark Twain, Cormac McCarthy, Ayn
Rand, Sam Shepard, Jules Verne, the Bible and the Quran and Jorge
Luis Borges.
*All fifteen I have chosen and the way they are structured doesn’t
follow any kind of order or aim.
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1-William Shakespeare:
Harold Bloom (born July 11, 1930), the greatest contemporaneous
literary critic holds in his works that William Shakespeare created the
human personality on his thesis “William Shakespeare: The invention
of the Human”.
Bloom, in almost for thousand of pages, holds with great works such
as “Hamlet”, “King Lear”, and “Henry IV” that Shakespeare created
the human behaviour.
“Before Shakespeare, the literary character changes only a little; men
and women are represented aging and dying, but not changing
because his relation with themselves, rather than with gods or God,
has changed. In Shakespeare, the characters develop themselves
rather than unfold themselves, and they develop because they
conceive themselves again. Sometimes this occurs because they
listen themselves talking, themselves or each other. Spying himself
talking on his real way to the individuation, and no other writer,
before or after Shakespeare, has achieved so well the nearly wonder
of
creating
voices
extremely
different
although
coherent
with
themselves for his one hundred-odd main characters and several
hundred distinguishable minor personal” 16
So, in a Shakespearean way, we could affirm that without the
influence of Shakespeare, the complexity of the characters of Lost –
and extension the literature in generally- would lose part of their
charm, and moreover part of Lost essence in itself.
16
Harold Bloom, “William Shakespeare: The invention of the Human”
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2-Dante Alighieri:
“The Divine Comedy” is an epic poem written by Dante Alighieri –
often named the Supreme Poet- in the fourteenth century. It tells the
journey of Dante, the Christian poet, visiting the world beyond death.
Firstly visiting Hell, where all the sinners who at the time of his death
are not regretful about his past acts and they are punished there.
Secondly the Purgatory, where people who have committed sins
before their death but they are sorry about them are trying to
redeem themselves. And finally he reaches Heaven, where people
freeing from all sins are waiting for the Final Judgement.
One of the most known theory about what was the Island was that
the Island was a sort of Purgatory, and the losties were there to
redeem their sins.
This reminds us to the “Purgatorio”, the second book that forms the
Divine Comedy – the others are “Inferno” and “Paradiso”.
In this passage of the IX chant, Dante explains how an angel marks
on his forehead seven P, symbolizing the seven sins people in the
purgatory have to redeem of:
“Devoutly at the holy feet I cast me,
For mercy's sake besought that he would open,
But first upon my breast three times I smote.
Seven P's upon my forehead he described
With the sword's point, and, "Take heed that thou wash
These wounds, when thou shalt be within," he said.” 17
“Within” could be the Island, and the losties could redeem all his past
sins on the Earth, to delete the seven P on their forehead to finally
reach Heaven.
17
Dante Alighieri, Divine Comedy, Purgatorio, chant IX
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3-Jane Austen:
Kate Austen was inspired by Jane Austen, the great British female
novelist- along with Virginia Woolf- in the twentieth century. In her
novels, Austen shows the life of women in the nineteenth century
society, where the women were merely considered as a house-wives.
We found the parallelism between Kate Austen and Jane Austen in
“Pride and Prejudice” and “Emma”.
Austen considered that women were more imaginative than men, and
so the show runners of Lost.
Jane Austen brings us characters of strong personality, such as Emma
Woodhouse in “Emma” and Elizabeth Bennet in “Pride and Prejudice”.
Both took all the attention of the reader and although it doesn’t
happen in Lost because it will be impossible as women in the series
have a strong personality, too.
Most of us hated Ana Lucía, a tailie, when she made her first
appearance- although when we start to sympathize with her, she
dies- , or we connect with Kate very soon as she is the only woman
with strong personality. Then Juliet appears, the mysterious Juliet
who is one of the Others and we don’t know which side she plays in,
and who finally died on the “Jug Head” explosion in “the Swann”.
“IT is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in
possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” 18
With this beginning, Austen makes clear that women are not just
housewives for men, disagreeing with thought of her century, but
possibly establishing the foundations for a future movement called
“feminism”.
18
Jane Austen, “Pride and Prejudice”, 1813
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4-William Faulkner:
The masterpiece of William Faulkner, “As I die lying”, it tells the story
of two brothers -Darl and Jewel Bundren- on their way to a
Mississippi, the place where their mother- Abbie Bundren- wants to
be buried. After reading the “AsI die lying” plot it comes to my mind
the history of Jacob and his brother. After killing their mother, Jacob’s
brother fights against Jacob, up to the extent that Jacob throws his
brother to the Island’s heart, killing him and creating the “Monster”.
Faulkner is a genius at the point to create convincing men and
women, as we see on his work, but cruel ones, at the point we see
they hatred goes through killing each other.
The vision of Faulkner on his works is the horrors of the family and
the community, like the strange family conformed by Jacob, his
brother and Mother, which through familiar hatred, Mother and the
Men in Black eventually die.
The aim of “As I die lying” is a white family trying to satisfy its
mother’s last wish, like Jacob and his brother, who are trying to
satisfy their mother last wish, which is to protect the Island.
And because sleep is non-being, and the rain and the wind are were,
isn’t, it doesn’t exist. And, however, the cart is, because, when the
cart will be was, Addie Bundren won’t be. And Jewel is, because,
when the cart will be was, Addie Bundren has to be. And therefore I
have to be; otherwise, I couldn’t empty to sleep on an strange
chamber. And therefore, if I’m still not clearer, I am is. 19
This fragment shows the bipolar personality at the end of the novel,
just as Jacob ends mad by trying to find a substitute for the protector
of the Island, foreseeing that his end is near.
19
William Faulkner, “As I lie dying”, 1930
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5-Virginia Woolf:
For me, Virginia Woolf has a very special significance, for her way of
writing and all her spectacular work. Searching and looking into, I
discovered so many parallelisms between Virginia Woolf’s work and
Lost, so this is the reason why this fifth section on Virginia Woolf will
take two pages instead of one.
After being elected the protector of the Island, Jacob started his
search for another substitute, by bringing new people to the Island
and wrecking ships on the Island too. Since none of them were
candidates suitable enough, he finally caused the plane crash on the
Island in 2004. From all the candidates, he makes a list. The list is
written in a cave with in talk, and the names are accompanied by a
number. We see this thanks to the Black Smoke which leads Sawyer
to this cave explaining that they are on the Island because of this list.
Back to the lighthouse, following Jacob’s instructions, Hurley leads
Jack to the lighthouse, a high tower on the edge of some cliffs, but
mysteriously the losties hadn’t seen it the past six years. On the top
of the lighthouse, there is a mirror and a dial.
The Lighthouse uses a fire pit and mirrors to generate light, and it is
controlled by a system of pulleys and gears. When Hurley starts the
lighthouse, the dial starts to move, and Jack sees different mirages
on the mirror. Then he realizes there were names written on the dial,
he asks Hurley to write his name, and then Jack sees his childhood’s
house. Jack, angry, destroys the mirror.
With “Mrs Dalloway”, “Orlando”, “The Waves”, “Between the acts”
and “To the Lighthouse” Virginia Woolf reaches her definitely work,
which we could put on Modernism. But in this part I will focus on “To
the Lighthouse”, which has a relation with the Lighthouse on the
Island.
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“To the Lighthouse” is representative due to moving the plot, the
dialogue and the action to a second term, and giving more
importance
to
the
philosophical
introspection
and
thoughts.
Something like this happens to Jack. During the series he is the
character whose thoughts and introspections we most learn about.
Her first novel was “Jacob’s Room”, Woolf tells the story of the main
character, Jacob Flanders, but from the perspective and impressions
other people have about Jacob.
In Lost something similar happens to Jacob. From the very first time
we heard of him, we already know Jacob starting of impressions
about other characters like Ben and Richard, and we do not know
anything else from the character until the antepenultimate episode
“Across the sea”, which is a kind of bioghraphy about him.
Virginia Woolf left a great literary legacy, with fictional books such as
“Mrs Dolloway”, “To the Lighthouse” and “Orlando”, essays such as “A
Room of One’s Own” and “The Common Reader”. Moreover, she was
possibly the first feminist and one of the most important characters
on Modernism literary movement. Her most famous quote was:
“A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write
fiction.” 20
Getting into her work in depth, we could find lots of parallelisms with
Lost, although maybe the show runners aren’t aware of.
20
Virginia Woolf, “A Room of One’s Own”, 1929
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6-Lewis Carroll:
Lewis Carroll is the pseudonym of Charles Lutwige Dodgson, a
reverend who had not grown sexually and was comfortable with the
companion of little girls. And this was the beginning of Alice.
In Lost there are lots of references to Alice. There is a station named
“the Looking-Glass”, a chapter named -and inspired by- the White
Rabbit, and rabbits are abundant all along the series. For example, in
“The Orchid” orientation video or in the logo of “The Looking glass”.
Virginia Woolf, on her essay “Lewis Carroll”, said about Carroll:
"Since childhood remained in him entire, he could do what no one
else has ever been able to do—he could return to that world; he could
re-create it, so that we too become children again." 21
Probably this was the main feature of Carroll. In his adulthood he was
able to return to the childhood by writing a girl’s “dream”. And the
show runners took this concept of going back to the childhood very
well to include it in Lost.
With the series, they achieved one thing that maybe without Lost the
audience would find impossible: to have all the whole age range of
audience (young people and adults) on the PC screen sharing their
thoughts episode after episode and flooding webs dedicated to Lost
with conjectures and theories about the next episode or what will
happen with a concrete character or a strange thing that had
happened.
I think this is the most admirable “power” of Lost: moving the fans
after every episode to the Internet sharing their thoughts about the
series and the future events.
21
Virginia Woolf, “The Moment and Other Essays”, 1947
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7-John Steinbeck:
John Steinbeck reflected passionately on his works the life of
American people in the fifties. His magna opus -although it was not
included in Lost, but I will not be surprised if there are some grapes
hidden in some chapters- is “The Grapes of Wrath”, for which he won
the Nobel Prize in 1962. In Lost, however, they use other two novels
by Steinbeck, “The Pearl” and “Of Mice and Men”.
Although I haven’t found any semblances between “The Pearl” book
and The Pearl station apart of they share the name, I notice that the
plot of “The Pearl” is the same as Hurley when he won the lottery.
“The Pearl” tells the story about a poor family who found a giant pearl
in the ocean, and they think it will bring fortune to the family, even
though at last the pearl brings the family more troubles than luck.
Something similar happens to Hurley. When he won the lottery he
thinks he would never work again because now he is rich, but the
curse of the numbers only brings troubles to his family.
“Of Mice and Men” is very used in the series. There are at least three
episodes where a fragment of the book is told, the most significative
one is when Ben told Sawyer they are on a smallest island that the
main Island.
Ben says:
"A guy goes nuts if he ain't got nobody. It don't make any difference
who the guy is, so long as he's with you. I tell ya...I tell ya, a guy
gets too lonely, and he gets sick." 22
22
John Steinbeck, “Of Mice and Men”, 1937
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8-Marcel Proust:
Marcel Proust, the last great novelist of the literature spent his
twenty last years writing what would be his magna opus: “In Search
of Lost Time”. It is a review of his childhood and adolescence, and it
begins with Proust taking his breakfast, and at the time he smells a
muffin, all his thoughts came to his mind, and symbolism is not a
minor aspect on Lost.
I wanted to include Proust in this part because is admirable how
through a cupcake he succeeds in recreating his past. And with some
episodes the show runners use this technique either like Proust’s
muffin or by showing one of the character’s feelings.
“No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my
palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the
extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure
had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no
suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had
become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory
– this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of
filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in
me it was me. ... Whence did it come? What did it mean? How could I
seize and apprehend it? ... And suddenly the memory revealed itself.
The taste was that of the little piece of madeleine which on Sunday
mornings at Combray (because on those mornings I did not go out
before mass), when I went to say good morning to her in her
bedroom, my aunt Léonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own
cup of tea or tisane. The sight of the little madeleine had recalled
nothing to my mind before I tasted it. And all from my cup of tea.” 23
23
Marcel Proust, “In Search of Lost Time: Swann’s Way”, 1913
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9-Mark Twain:
If we read closely the biography of the lostie James “Sawyer” Ford
and then we read “The adventures of Tom Sawyer” probably we will
think we have read the same twice. Tom’s first and best known scam
included painting a fence white, and convinced the local boys to pay
for the privilege of painting a fence bigger and harder.
He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it-namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covets a thing, it is
only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. 24
With this famous quote, Tom Sawyer discovered how to survive in the
hard world of the fifties in the banks of the Mississippi.
Although James “Sawyer” Ford didn’t know how to survive by
painting a fence, he discovered it by copying scram techniques used
by a man named Sawyer who swindled his parents, and having
James’ parents committed suicide in front of him.
Then, James Ford life turned out to be the vengeance of his parents
and the final sense of all his swindled was to get to the man named
Sawyer to kill him.
But ultimately, when he found the man who he wanted to kill on the
Island, thanks to the Man in Black, and after murdering him, he
realises he had become like his parents’ murderer.
24
Mark Twain, “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer”, 1876
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10- Cormac McCarthy:
Although Cormac McCarthy won the National Book Award (of
America) with the novel “All the pretty horses”, and won the Pulitzer
with “The Road”, he hadn’t won any important prize for one of his
most important books, “Blood Meridian” one of the great apocalypse
novels of American literature.
We know that fact before opening the book, just only reading the
plot:
“An epic novel of the violence and depravity that attended America's
westward
expansion,
Blood
Meridian
brilliantly
subverts
the
conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the "wild
west." Based on historical events that took place on the TexasMexico border in the 1850s, it traces the fortunes of the Kid, a
fourteen-year-old Tennessean who stumbles into the nightmarish
world where Indians are being murdered and the market for their
scalps is thriving.” 25
But the Kid isn’t the main character of “Blood Meridian”; he shares
this with Judge Holden. Apart from being inspired by a real person
who lived on the XIX century, McCarthy probably bring on of the most
sadistic characters in universal literature. At the last chapter, the
Judge kills the Kid brutally in an outhouse. But Judge Holden is not
only sadistic but he is also ambitious.
At the end of the novel McCarthy shows us the ambition of the Judge:
“He never sleeps, the judge. He is dancing, dancing. He says that he
will never die.” 26
25
26
Cormac McCarthy, “Blood Meridian” (Plot)
Cormac McCarthy, “Blood Meridian”, 1985
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And possibly he never will, because although in the book we saw the
judge on 1850 and after in 1974, his physical appearance never
changes.
The Judge Holden and Jacob and his brother are all equally sadistic
(in their way) and ambitious in the same way:
The Judge believes he will never die; Jacob and his brother in fact
knows this, but they have the very same a great ambition:
Jacob is searching a new protector and his brother is trying to leave
the Island. They fought two thousands of years to achieve this, by
bringing people to the Island.
And they don’t care about all the collateral damage. Judge Holden is
always fomenting violence, because he thought violence is the
foundation of human nature while Jacob and his brother are the
responsible for first, the wreck and all the people lost on The Island,
and also are the responsible for the deaths occurred on the Island.
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11- Ayn Rand:
Ayn Rand is not known in European culture, except little circles of
intellectuals. Her thoughts root on American culture and society. But
this was not a defeat for Ayn Rand but a victory. Her particularly
though was design concretely for the United States and there took
importance, by selling huge amounts of her two novels – “Atlas
Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead”-. This two novels- the one
surpassing the one thousand and two hundred pages and the second
of nearly one more thousand pages explain the foundations of
Objectivism.
Ayn rand’s philosophy is brought to the series by the character of
Mother, who lived two thousands of years ago and was the caregiver
of Jacob and his brother.
Mother’s egoism lies on the fact she doesn’t want to be the protector
anymore, although she was designated to be the protector and not to
leave her load. This egoism brings Mother to kill Claudia, the
biological mother of Jacob and the Black Men, and then lying to her
sons. And thirty years later bring her to nearly kill her adopted son,
Jacob’s son, just because she discovered the properties of the
Island’s Heart and how to reach it; causing her death and the
physical death of Jacob’s brother.
By Rand’s own words, the main theme of Atlas Shrugged is:
“Not about the murder of a man's body, but about the murder - and
rebirth - of the human spirit” 27
This sentence is directly related to the Black Smoke, after being killed
by Jacob, and becoming the “Black Smoke” or “the Monster”.
27
Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged (plot)
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12-Sam Shephard:
Out of the fifty plays Sam Shepard wrote from the sixties until now,
he wrote in 1978, “Buried Child” -and the one which had brought the
Pulitzer Prize to the writer- have a relation with Lost.
Apart from sharing the surname “Shepard”, Sam Shepard and Jack
Shepard shares too the plot of “Buried Child”:
“Depicts the fragmentation of the American nuclear family in a
context
of
disappointment
and
disillusionment
with
American
mythology and the American dream, the 1970s rural economic
slowdown and the breakdown of traditional family structures and
values”. 28
Sam Shepard’s youth was marked by his father’s alcoholism, and the
destroying of his family, like Jack. His father alcoholism marked his
youth, and after his adulthood.
But what reflexes Jack’s life on Sam Shepard’s work the most is the
great parallelism between “Buried Child” plot and Jack’s life.
The main ghost that follows Jack all along the series is the
destruction of his whole family.
His father becomes alcoholic at the point that Jack causes his own
father’s dispatch, and in second terms his death in Sydney.
Sarah, Jack’s wife before the wreck, had a lung perforated after a car
crash, and miraculously Jack saved her life, and then they married.
But Jack was too busy with his work, at the point they split up, but
Jack was indifferent due to his work again. But then Jack harasses
Sarah because he thinks his ex-wife had a relation with his own
father. So at the end he destroys his whole family and part of his life.
28
Sam Shepard, “Buried Child” (plot), 1979
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13-Jules Verne:
Jules Verne was the father of modern science-fiction. He has a novel
named “The Mysterious Island”, consider his masterpiece, and the
show runners had featured as the main inspiration for the show,
among with “The Lord of the Flies”, by William Golding.
“The Mysterious Island” is about five hostages who escape stealing an
aerostatic balloon and they fall to an unknown island which is not in
the maps. There, they have to try to survive. But during his stay on
the island are monitored by a superhuman strength that lives on the
depth of the island.
At the end of the novel we realize that that
superhuman strength was no less than Captain Nemo, who was living
on a cave on the Island.
“The Mysterious Island” is possibly the novel which has the most
parallelisms with Lost:
-The main characters wrecked on a mysterious island which is not in
the maps, like the losties.
-The act with the balloon is similar with the scene with Henry Gale,
the pseudonym used by Ben Linus to meet the losties.
-During all along the novel a mysterious strength seems to live on the
island, like the Black Smoke on the Island.
-At the end of the novel appears on the island a plume announcing
something bad, just as the plume appeared on the end of the first
season.
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14- Bible & Alcorà:
The show runners managed very well the fact to include facts from
the two books of the catholic religion and Islam because it shows the
great semblances and parallelisms between religions.
Apart from appearing many times the book physically, I think, in
Lost, the character who represents the Bible is Mr.Eko.
Mr.Eko was an old lord of the war from the south of Africa, and had a
brother priest, and was on the tail of the Oceanic 815.
During the series he has a stick with Bible quotes wrote on it, and
when Claire asked Eko why he had written this, he answered that
were thing he needs to remember. When Locke was burying Eko, he
put his stick on Eko’s tomb, but he realized a special quote:
Lift up your eyes and look north.
John 3:05.
Thanks to that losties were able to find “The Flame”.
Also he is often viewed reciting the 23rd Psalm: “The Lord is my
Shepherd”.
As a curiosity, it is said that “the Monster” killed Mr.Eko by making
the sign of the Christian cross.
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15-Jorge Luis Borges:
To end up this point and including one of my favourite writers and
poets, I will talk about Jorge Luis Borges: poet, essayist and story
writer even thought is not related to the plot of the series but on the
promotion of the sixth season.
Cuatro, a Spanish TV channel, which has the rights to broadcast Lost
in Spain, made a short film to promotion the end of the series. It was
so succeeded that Carlton Cuse, one of the show runners retwitted it.
And then they make another one with the voice of Terry O’Quinn,
John Locke in the series.
The short was about a parallelism between chess and the series and
inspired by Borges’ poem, but because of copyright reasons, finally
Cuatro had to add a paragraph about Omar Kayyam, who Borges
mentioned on his Chess poem.
Here is the poem by Borges29:
“AJEDREZ”
I
En su grave rincón, los jugadores
rigen las lentas piezas. El tablero
los demora hasta el alba en su severo
ámbito en que se odian dos colores.
Adentro irradian mágicos rigores
las formas: torre homérica, ligero
caballo, armada reina, rey postrero,
oblicuo alfil y peones agresores.
29
it.
Instead of translating the poem into English, I prefer to leave it as Borges wrote
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Cuando los jugadores se hayan ido,
cuando el tiempo los haya consumido,
ciertamente no habrá cesado el rito.
En el Oriente se encendió esta guerra
cuyo anfiteatro es hoy toda la Tierra.
Como el otro, este juego es infinito.
II
Tenue rey, sesgo alfil, encarnizada
reina, torre directa y peón ladino
sobre lo negro y blanco del camino
buscan y libran su batalla armada.
No saben que la mano señalada
del jugador gobierna su destino,
no saben que un rigor adamantino
sujeta su albedrío y su jornada.
También el jugador es prisionero
(la sentencia es de Omar) de otro tablero
de negras noches y de blancos días.
Dios mueve al jugador, y éste, la pieza.
¿Qué Dios detrás de Dios la trama empieza
de polvo y tiempo y sueño y agonía? 30
30
Jorge Luis Borges, El Hacedor: “Ajedrez”, 1960
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4.Conclusions
Lost is not a common TV series. It tells us about life, death, destiny,
fate, good and evil, strange mysteries. Actually, it tells us about
human nature. From my point of view, I think its only mistake was
to leave lots of unsolved mysteries on the Island, for example, what
exactly is the Island.
Borges warned us long time ago about it. In his short story
“Abenjacán el Bojarí, died in his labyrinth”, said:
“Dunraven, versed on his police books, thought the solution of the
mystery always is inferior to the mystery itself. The mystery
participates of the supernatural and even of the divine; the solution,
of the hand-games.” 31
I strongly believe that the show runners had already realized (but
late) that all the mysteries they built in and around the Island were
too much and complicated to solve, so they were forced to left a lot
unsolved.
But in Lost there were two types of mysteries. The first ones were
those that needed an explanation from the show runners, such as
what was the origin of the Island was or what exactly Dharma
Initiative was.
The second ones were those, the show runners left to be solved by
the audience, such as why there were so many philosophical names
or the strange end of the series.
Although leaving lots of unsolved mysteries, this so lostian end brings
us the most important fact: an end for the characters.
31
Jorge Luis Borges, El Aleph, “Abenjacán el Bojarí, dead on his labyrinth”, 1949
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5.PERSONAL OPINION:
With this research work I learnt a lot about culture, philosophy and
literature, and I have to admit that I have enjoyed myself a lot
searching information for the work and then comparing Lost with
other topics, like the huge influence philosophy had on the series.
Besides, I have to add that my favourite part of my TDR and the one
that I was more exited about and I spent more time is the last point,
the literary influences in Lost.
In fact my last election of choosing the theme for my TDR was a
coincidence at last. I watched the whole series of Lost on the summer
of 2011, and at the fall of 2011 I went to the cinema to watch Super
8, the last film of J.J. Abrams. There I found my English teacher (and
my teacher advisor for this TDR) Carmina Martí, who told me that she
also liked Lost. Some ideas were rounding about my head of which
theme I have to choose for my TDR, and initially I had planned to do
it about a theme related to literature, which is one of my passions,
and its obvious because I stick it at the end of this TDR.
To sum up this huge TDR that brought me so much work and time, I
can only say that I would repeat it again pleasantly, although it took
me long time working on my laptop and searching information both
on Internet and books, because it has not been a waste of time at all.
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6. SOURCES:
-WEBGRAPHY:
- http://lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/ (Recovered on 8/02/2012)
- http://es.lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/Lost (Recovered on 8/02/2012)
- http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost (Recovered on 10/02/2012)
- http://gentedigital.es/comunidad/series/2010/05/20/12-razonespara-entender-el-exito-de-lost/ (Recovered on 3/03/2012)
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_%28TV_series%29 (Recovered on
28/03/2012)
- http://www.4815162342.com/forum/ (Recovered on 2/04/2012)
- http://www.encerradosafuera.com.ar/tele/lost.php (Recovered on
16/04/2012)
- http://www.losttvfans.com/page/Biblical+References (Recovered on
23/06/2012)
- http://voices.yahoo.com/jacob-esau-bible-story-puzzled-overpuzzled-3320550.html (Recovered on 25/06/2012)
- http://www.antronio.com/index.php?/topic/793826-lost-y-la-bibliasupuesta-teoria-de-lost-basado-en-la-biblia/ (Recovered on
1/07/2012)
- http://www.flicksnshows.com/archive/index.php/t-1439.html
(Recovered on 8/07/2012)
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-BIBLIOGRAPHY:
-Harold Bloom, How to read and Why, 2000
-Harold Bloom, Genius, A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Crative
Minds, 2002
-Harold Bloom, “William Shakespeare: The invention of the Human”,
1998
-Dante Alighieri, Divine Comedy, 1304-1321
-Jane Austen, “Pride and Prejudice”, 1813
-William Faulkner, “As I lie dying”, 1930
-Virginia Woolf, “A Room of One’s Own”, 1929
-Virginia Woolf, “The Moment and Other Essays”, 1947
-John Steinbeck, “Of Mice and Men”, 1937
-Marcel Proust, “In Search of Lost Time: Swann’s Way”, 1913
-Mark Twain, “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer”, 1876
-Cormac McCarthy, “Blood Meridian”, 1985
-Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged,1953
-Sam Shepard, “Buried Child”, 1979
-Jorge Luis Borges, El Hacedor: “Ajedrez”, 1960
-Jorge Luis Borges, El Aleph, “Abenjacán el Bojarí, dead on his
labyrinth”, 1949
-The Bible (Genesis, Numbers & Exodus)
-Perdidos: la guía definitiva, 2010
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The plane clears frame, finally free of the Island.
Jack Shepard has done what he came to this place to do.
He has found his purpose.
He has found love, and been loved.
He has finally found a way to love himself.
The bamboo sways across the blue sky
and Jack Shepard's eye closes one final time.
He is gone. 32
The End
32
Last nine lines from the script of the last chapter of Lost, titled “The End”.
89