Jin’s back! We knew he couldn’t really be dead. Is anyone really, truly, without a doubt, never to revived, dead as a doornail, dead on this island? Boone, Shannon, Locke’s dad Cooper, all those Dharma people and redshirt Losties, Ana Lucia and Libby, Mr. Eko, Charlie? I suppose they’re dead, but if we’re going to rewind Island time, why couldn’t we rewind to before they died and start again there? And if we did, would it change anything?

“Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge’s name was good upon ‘Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the country’s done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.”

And yet Marley’s ghost returns. And yet Jin’s near-dead body washes up on shore in another time and place. And I think John Locke is Hamlet. Hamlet’s been talking to his father’s ghost when that confused and indecisive Danish prince complains:

The time is out of joint: O cursed spite,
That ever I was born to set it right!

Of course, Locke is the prince, the anointed one, who’s supposed to set the island right in time and space. But whereas Hamlet was supposed to accomplish his father’s revenge, Locke has another mission: to bring back the wandering Losties who have left the fold and become lost in their lies and deceit.

I’m sure the title of this episode mostly refers to Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s fantasy, Le petit prince. Interesting that the book was originally written in French, and Danielle’s French contingent shows up on the beach in this episode. Also, Aaron’s sort of in the middle of everything (a little child shall lead them?), and I suppose he’s also the “little prince” of the title. I don’t really understand why Aaron is so very important, but he’s another “special” child, isn’t he?

Speaking of special children, why was it OK for Walt and Michael to leave the island, but not for Jack, Kate, Sun, Hurley, Sayid and Aaron? What’s Walt doing these days anyway? Growing up, I reckon.

What’s going on between Ben and Sayid? Sayid was working for Ben, but now Sayid doesn’t trust Ben and wants to save Hurley from Ben’s influence and machinations. It’s almost as if Ben has some kind of control thingie implanted in Sayid; Sayid’s eyes go dead as soon as Ben enters the picture. Maybe it’s similar to the kind of control he planted in Sawyer (or didn’t plant in Sawyer). Something weird is going on there.

Everyone in Jumping Around Island Time is starting to hemorrhage. Except for Locke, Sawyer, and Faraday. Maybe Charlotte and Miles were on the island as children? And Juliet’s been there longer than Sawyer and Locke. Why are only the Losties jumping around in time and not Danielle’s French people or the Canoe People or Richard’s people or the Dharma people? Who are the Canoe People, anyway? Am I forgetting something?

I’m sure I’m forgetting lots of things.

Best lines go to Sawyer as usual: “Thank you, God!” “I take that back!”
And, Sawyer to Juliet: “Yeah, time travel’s a b—!”

Worst attempt at being profound: Locke says, “I needed that pain to get where I am now.” But the question is: where is he now, and is it such a great place (or time)? I still don’t like Locke, never have, probably never will.

Worst love quadrangle: Jack still loves Kate. Sawyer loves Kate, too. Kate still doesn’t know whether she’s with Jack or Sawyer. Juliet always gets stuck with the leftovers. But Sawyer’s unstuck in time with Juliet, not Kate. And Kate says she’s “always been with you, Jack.” If you can’t be with the one you want, love the one you’re with?

If you’re down and confused
And you don’t remember who you’re talkin’ to
Concentration slip away
Cause your baby is so far away.
Well, there’s a rose in a fisted glove
And the eagle flies with the dove
And if you can’t be with the one you love
Love the one you’re with
Love the one you’re with

Not suggesting those lyrics as guidance for life, just drawing connections. Leave your connections and links at the Lost Books Challenge blog.

Till next week . . .

First, you should read J. Wood on last week’s double episode.

For four seasons we’ve watched the narrative jump from the island time to flashbacks and flashforwards, and we’ve had to piece together events in order to make sense of the storyline and locate ourselves in relation to that storyline. This is just what the island characters are forced to do now; piece together out-of-order events to make sense of them, and locate themselves in relation to those events. In this way, the experiences of the watchers and the watched converge through the narrative.”

Yeah, and then some. The whole time travel thing is messing with my mind. Computer Guru Son said something that helped: each character is on his on timeline/road, and when those timelines intersect may be one time for one character and another for someone else. For instance, Locke meets WIdmore in 2007 (?three years after the crash) when Locke is time-travelling back to the past. But Widmore should remember, in 2007, meeting Locke and Faraday and Sawyer and Juliette on the island when WIdmore was just a youth. (I still don’t understand why Desmond forgets, until his nightmare, that he already met Faraday.) Locke remembers all the times he has met Richard Alpert, as a boy in California, on the island, but in the 1954(?) time travel event, Alpert had not yet met Locke. In fact, Locke wasn’t even born yet. It’s still very confusing for me, and it helps to write it out like that. I am sometimes a bear of very little brain.

In his piece on last week’s episodes, Mr. Wood also talks about what he calls, after another author, Paul RIcoeur, “cosmological time (time that’s measured; minutes, hours, days) and phenomenological time (time as experienced; past, present, future).” I’m assuming that these terms are the same as Madeleine L’Engle’s chronos and kairos. L’Engle defines chronos as ordinary clock time and kairos as God’s time, in which notions of past and present are irrelevant. In kairos it is possible to arrive at a place and time in a sort of circular route before you ever left it. I wonder if Jack and the rest of the Oceanic Six will return to the island in 2007 or before they left in 2004, perhaps taking advantage of what Wood calls a wormhole or what L’Engle names her book, a wrinkle in time.

Oh, and did you notice that Faraday’s abandoned girlfriend is “unstuck in time”, too? And we still don’t know who the good guys are and who the bad guys are. Is Widmore an evil exploiter, or is he the benefactor of a sick and helpless victim of Faraday’s dangerous experiments? Or both? If Ben is fighting Widmore, is he a good guy? Who is Abadon and for whom is he working? Is Faraday bad because he abandoned the girl in the bed (Theresa Spencer), or is he good because he’s trying to save the island and Charlotte? But can Faraday be good if he’s working for Widmore?

Awwww, Penny and Desmond have a baby! And Penny’s loyal to the end, even when it looks as if Desmond is headed back to the Island. Can Penny go there, even if she wants to? And they named the baby Charlie. Awwww.

No books or literary references in tonight’s episode that I caught, but next week’s episode is called The Little Prince.

“Men occupy very little space on Earth. If the two billion inhabitants of the globe were to stand close together, as they might for some public event, they would easily fit into a city block that was twenty miles long and twenty miles wide. You could crowd all humanity onto the smallest Pacific islet.
Grown-ups, of course, won’t believe you.”
Le petit prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry first published The Little Prince in 1943, only a year before his Lockheed P-38 vanished over the Mediterranean during a reconnaissance mission.

Go to the LOST Books Challenge blog to leave a link to your thoughts on this episode of LOST.