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To This Great Stage of Fools: Born October 27th

Oct27

“For unflagging interest and enjoyment, a household of children, if things go reasonably well, certainly makes all other forms of success and achievement lose their importance by comparison.”

“There are two things that I want you to make up your minds to: first, that you are going to have a good time as long as you live – I have no use for the sour-faced man – and next, that you are going to do something worthwhile, that you are going to work hard and do the things you set out to do.”

“Don’t hit at all if you can help it; don’t hit a man if you can possibly avoid it; but if you do hit him, put him to sleep.”

“I don’t think any President ever enjoyed himself more than I did. Moreover, I don’t think any ex-President ever enjoyed himself more.”

Theodore Roosevelt became president at forty-two, when William McKinley was assassinated. Although he wasn’t the youngest man ever elected president (Kennedy, age 43), Teddy was the youngest to become president. When TR’s second term was over, he was still only fifty years old, making him the youngest ex-president, too.

T.R., b. 1858, is my favorite of all the presidents. I don’t say he was the best or the wisest or the one I would most agree with politically, but he would definitely be the most interesting dinner guest of all the presidents. Which president, or first lady, would you invite to your home if you could?

LOST Reading Project: Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens

Aug21

From the introduction (Penguin Classics edition) to Our Mutual Friend:

Most of the life in Dickens’s last completed novel tends to a state of suspended animation. Nothing seems certainly dead nor entirely alive.”

Well, if that motif doesn’t relate to the TV series LOST . . . Fans have been trying to decide whether the survivors of Oceanic Flight are alive or dead or someplace in-between ever since the series began.

p. 130 I’ve discovered a new word, and a very useful one at that: Podsnappery.

. . . The world got up at eight, shaved close at a quarter-past, breakfasted at nine, went to the City at ten, came home at half-past five, and dined at seven. . . . As a so eminently respectable man, Mr. Podsnap was sensible of its being required of him to take Providence under his protection. Consequently, he always knew exactly what Providence meant. . . . And it was very remarkable (and must have been very comfortable) that what Providence meant, was invariably what Mr. Podsnap meant.
These may be said to have been the articles of a faith and school which the present chapter takes the liberty of calling, after its representative man, Podsnappery.”

Having read a little over half of the book, I would now say that it’s not so much about suspended animation as it is about pretending to be dead or the advantages of playing dead and changing identities. One of the main characters is a man who allows everyone around him to believe he is drowned, takes on an alternate identity, and lives a life of observation as he watches to see the effect of his death on those he leaves behind. Two young ladies find a hideaway on a rooftop to escape the hard realities of their poverty-stricken lives. One of the young ladies, Jenny, feels as if she were dead when she’s up high above the city on the rooftop:

‘How do you feel when you are dead?’ asked Fledgeby, much perplexed.

‘Oh, so tranquil!’ cried the little creature, smiling. ‘Oh, so peaceful and so thankful! And you hear the people who are alive, crying, and working, and calling to one another down in the close dark streets, and you seem to pity them so! And such a chain has fallen from you, and such a strange good sorrowful happiness comes upon you!'”

Is this feeling of escape from the real world exactly what Jack and maybe some of his cohorts miss in the last episode of LOST Season Three? They’ve escaped death-in-life on the island and now they wish they could go back and again be above or outside of the real world.

Other characters in the book run away to their own hiding places, in the world but hidden away: Lizzie Hexam and Betty Higgins to the country, the Boffins hide themselves in their Bower, the incessant London fog hides everyone and everything. Many of the Losties are also escaping or hiding from the real world: certainly Kate and Sawyer, Shannon and Sayid, Claire and Charlie are hiding , running away from something or someone in their past. LOST Island is a great sanctuary, but as Season Three ended, their cover had been blown.

Some other obvious connections between LOST, the TV series, and Our Mutual Friend are: lots of strained father-daughter relationships (Kate, Penelope Widmore, Lizzie Hexam, Sun, Jenny Wren, Pleasant Riderhood), the effect of the sudden aquisition of great wealth (Hurley, Mr. Boffin), a profusion of peculiar characters whose stories intertwine (everybody in both stories).

I’ll write some more thoughts when I finish the book. I just thought that those of you who are missing LOST might like something to ponder, and a book recommendation, too. I’m enjoying the eccentric characters in Our Mutual Friend, and I would suggest that Desmond read it sooner rather than later. Wanting a certain book to be the last one you read before your death is all poetic and romantic-sounding, but the plan has some practical difficulties. How do you decide when death is imminent but far enough away to give you time to finish a Dickens tome before it’s too late?

Author Steven Berlin Johnson on LOST Season Two and Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend.

Lostpedia on Our Mutual Friend.

More about my LOST Reading Project.

LOST Reading Project: The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

Jul18

Ambiguity. Spectres, ghosts, and apparitions. Good versus evil. Children captured by Others. Illicit or unrequited passion. Incipient insanity.

These are some of the elements that The Turn of the Screw shares with the TV series LOST. In a season two episode (Orientation), Desmond tells Jack and Locke that the DHARMA Initiative orientation film is on the shelf behind The Turn of the Screw. As anyone who’s been watching the show for a while knows, the books that are featured or mentioned are there for a purpose. James’s ghost story, The Turn of the Screw shares quite a bit in common with LOST.

First and last, there’s the ambiguity. I read James’s story to the tragic end, and my first thought was, “I don’t get it.” I re-read some sections and became even more confused. I wondered whether the narrator was at all trustworthy, whether she was sane, whether the ghosts were real or imaginary. (LOST fans: do those questions sound familiar?) The “screw” of the narrative does turn around and around, presenting a different view of the events in the story with each turn.

Ghosts appear —or are they real? Are the appearances in LOST real, or do they only appear to those who see them as some sort of aberrant psychological experience? Lots of dead people have appeared in LOST to various of the survivors: Jack’s dad, Yemi, Ben’s mother, Boone, Ana-Lucia. Are these messengers from beyond the grave evil or good? Then, there’s Hurley’s imaginary friend who leads him to the edge, both literally and figuratively, almost exactly the same thing that happens to the governess narrator in The Turn of the Screw.

The two children in The Turn of the Screw are also ambiguous characters. They may or may not be innocent children. They may be influenced by the evil spirits that the governess sees. According to the governess, the spirits are trying to capture the children and lead them to the pit of hell. In LOST, there’s a similar motif of Evil Others who capture children and do something to them or with them. Or the Others may not be evil at all.

The governess who narrates James’s story, who is the only one who says she sees the evil apparitions, admits from the beginning that she is in love with her employer, a shadowy figure whose main concern is that he not be bothered. Is she making up all the supernatural events in the story to impress her employer? To get his attention? Are the LOST characters also trying to get or to escape attention?

Are they all mad? Is the island imaginary or does it exist in another parallel universe? Do the ghosts that the governess sees exist in a parallel universe, or is she simply psychologically disturbed?

James leaves the ending to his story deliberately ambiguous. I certainly hope the writers and producers of LOST don’t do the same. From a review in Life magazine, 1898 by reviewer “Koch”:

Henry James does it in a way to raise goose-flesh! He creates the atmosphere of the tale with those slow, deliberate phrases which seem fitted only to differentiate the odors of rare flowers. Seldom does he make a direct assertion, but qualifies and negatives and double negatives, and then throws in a handful of adverbs, until the image floats away on a verbal smoke. But while the image lasts, it is, artistically, a thing of beauty. When he seems to be vague, he is by elimination, creating an effect of terror, of unimaginable horrors.”

What effects are the LOST writers producing as they turn the screw around and around from one season to the next? Are the LOST characters headed on a downward spiral into madness and death, or are they moving toward a resolution of their emotional and psychological dilemmas as they redeem themselves through suffering on the island?

We’re back to unresolved ambiguity —so far.

Poetry and Fine Art Friday: The Flag

Jun29

I love the way words in poetry play off one another like shadows across the floor.
I think poetry is one way to blow away all the fog and see life in full light. A certain kind of poetry can prettify and falsify life, no doubt about it, but the right kind can boil it down to its essence.”
From A Garden to Keep by Jamie Langston Turner.

American Parade

Some more of “literature’s greatest lines” courtesy of Dr. Huff:

The Flag Goes By by Henry Holcomb Bennett

HATS off!
Along the street there comes
A blare of bugles, a ruffle of drums,
A flash of color beneath the sky:
Hats off!
The flag is passing by!

Blue and crimson and white it shines,
Over the steel-tipped, ordered lines.
Hats off!
The colors before us fly;
But more than the flag is passing by.

Sea-fights and land-fights, grim and great,
Fought to make and to save the State:
Weary marches and sinking ships;
Cheers of victory on dying lips;

Days of plenty and years of peace;
March of a strong land’s swift increase;
Equal justice, right and law,
Stately honor and reverend awe;

Sign of a nation, great and strong
To ward her people from foreign wrong:
Pride and glory and honor,—all
Live in the colors to stand or fall.

Hats off!
Along the street there comes
A blare of bugles, a ruffle of drums;
And loyal hearts are beating high:
Hats off!
The flag is passing by!

Essential or prettifying? You decide. At any rate, that ought to get you ready for the Fourth of July! And if you don’t live in the USA, then salute your own country’s flag the next time you see it.

LOST Reading: An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce

Jun20

I’ve heard of Ambrose Bierce’s short story, but I don’t remember ever reading it. According to Wikipedia, “Kurt Vonnegut referred to ‘Occurrence’ in his book A Man Without a Country as one of the greatest works of American literature, and called anyone who hadn’t read it a ‘twerp’.”

I guess I just escaped twerpdom, thanks to LOST. In the second season episode entitled The Long Con, “Locke is shown holding this book (Occurrence) upside down, in the Swan, flipping through the pages as if he’s trying to find loose papers between them.” So, getting overly-analytical as I’m prone to do, I wonder what Occurrence has to do with LOST? (If you haven’t read the short story, there are spoilers ahead.)

In Bierce’s story, Peyton Farquhar is a Confederate sympathizer who falls into a Union trap and tries to burn down a bridge, Owl Creek Bridge. He’s about to be hanged from said bridge and in the brief interval between drop and death, he imagines that the rope breaks, he escapes, swims downriver, and returns to his home. Alas, the return home is only a figment of his imagination, and at the end of the story, Farquhar is dead; “his body, with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers of Owl Creek Bridge.”

Bierce plays with Time in this story just as the writers of LOST play with Time and Space in their story. There’s also a possible analogy between Peyton Farquhar’s supposed escape from death and the near-miraculous escape of the LOST survivors. (People don’t usually survive in a plane that breaks in half in mid-air and falls from the sky.) Are they really dead, as Naomi indicated when she said that the plane had been found and the passengers mourned? Maybe they’re caught somewhere between the final moments of life and death, and the Island itself is just an illusion? In the story, Farquhar imagines an alternate series of events in which he escapes the noose, escapes the bullets of the Union soldiers, and returns home to his wife, and the reader is conned into thinking that the escape is real. It feels real in the story; the circumstances surrounding Farquhar’s escape are described vividly.

So, is LOST a “long con”? I don’t really think so, but if we find out at the end that everyone’s really dead, that the entire six seasons were only a brief imaginary interval, a great many viewers are going to be unhappy. People don’t like being swindled, even by such a handsome devil as Sawyer/James/Josh Holloway.

“Doubtless, despite his sufferings, he had fallen asleep while walking, for now he sees another scene—perhaps he has merely recovered from a delirium. He stands at the gate of his own home. All is as he left it, and all bright and beautiful in the morning sunshine. He must have travelled the entire night. . . . As he is about to clasp her he feels a stunning blow upon the back of the neck; a blinding white light blazes all about him with a sound like the shock of a cannon—then all is darkness and silence!”

Lostpedia on An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.

Read Bierce’s story here.

More information about Semicolon’s LOST Reading project.

Red Moon at Sharpsburg by Rosemary Wells

Jun9

I know Rosemary Wells, and maybe you do too, as the author of the Max and Ruby picture books for young children. She can write for young adults, too. Red Moon at Sharpsburg is proof that Ms. Wells has the ability to write and research and create a wstory and a world for young adults as vivid as the one created with very few words and pictures in her Max books.

Red Moon at Sharpburg is, as can be deduced, a Civil War novel. It’s told from the point of view of a southern girl, India Moody, who lives in Northern Virginia with her family —her daddy, a harness maker, her mother, her little brother and her aged grandfather. The Moodys aren’t rich before the war begins, but they are comfortable with a home and a profitable business. The war, of course, changes everything. In spite of a couple of holes in the plot, I thought Red Moon at Sharpsburg was one of the best Civil War novels written for young adults that I have read. The “holes” involve minor characters, namely India’s baby brother and her elderly grandfather, who have a tendency to disappear when they might interfere with the action. I also found it difficult to believe that a young girl in the South during the war was able through a series of fortunate connections to obtain medicines (aspirin?) from Europe that would cure fever since aspirin wasn’t really invented until the late 1800’s. And the one of the characters has a suspiciously modern knowledge of medicine and chemistry and bacteriology that would have made him somewhat prescient in the mid 1800’s.

Still, the narrator and main character, India, is a delightful young lady and role model. And the descriptions of the war, of battlefields and prisons, and of atrocities are accurate and chilling. Ms. Wells says in the back of the book that part of her purpose in writing it was to reveal “the profound immorality of war.” She goes on to say, “Sometimes we must fight wars, but it is unforgivable to pump war full of glamour and glory.” I’m no pacifist, but I agree with Ms. Wells. She also has a mildly feminist agenda, but it doesn’t become overbearing or preachy.

The best thing about this novel was the gems of language and writing that popped up when I was least expecting them. Here are a few examples:

“I follow him down to Buckmarsh Street to catch a last glimpse of him. Then I cry, standing in the the street like a child with a skinned knee.”

Mauve is a pinkish purple of such delicacy I can only hold the silk square to the light and gaze at it. I have seen it only in petunias and stained-glass windows.”

“The moon is in its last quarter. It appears low on the horizon above the smoke. The crescent sits like a bloody smile in the sky.”

“I am aware of a sudden force, as if I have been flung through space at the speed of a comet. I know what this speeding ahead is without being told. It is me being hurled forward in time to the empty spot at the head of my family. It is a place where I was not meant to be for years to come and now I’m there.
48hbc
Other good Civil War novels for young adults:

Beatty, Patricia. Turn Homeward, Hannalee.
Beatty, Patricia. Be Ever Hopeful, Hannalee.
Beatty, Patricia. Charley Skedaddle. (Bowery Boys and deserters)
Hunt, Irene. Across Five Aprils.
Fleischman, Paul. Bull Run.
Keith, Harold. Rifles for Watie. (Cherokee Indian leader Stand Watie and the repeating rifle)
Paulsen, Gary. Soldier’s Heart: a Novel of the Civil War.
Perez, N.A. The Slopes of War: A Novel of Gettysburg.
Rinaldi, Ann. An Acquaintance with Darkness. (Lincoln’s assassination)
Rinaldi, Ann. The Last Silk Dress.
Rinaldi, Ann. Numbering All the Bones. (Andersonville Prison)
Wisler, G. Clifton. THe Drummer Boy of Vicksburg.

LOST books

Jun6

James Brush at Coyote Mercury has been reading the books referenced on the TV series LOST. An interesting reading experiment. What if you deliberately concocted a TV series or a movie that would spur the American public to read more books? That stir curiosity through literary references embedded in a story? I’m not talking Oprah’s Book Club or Reading Rainbow, although both of those are creditable efforts.

Has any TV series stirred more curiosity than LOST? (Dallas: Who shot JR?) I wonder if the books featured on LOST have risen in Amazon rank or in total sales and popularity since being shown or mentioned on a LOST episode?

Lostpedia says that the following books have been mentioned or shown or alluded to in LOST episodes:

After All These Years by Susan Isaacs.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.

Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume.

Bad Twin by Gary Troup.

Bible, especially the book of Exodus and the 23rd Psalm.

A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking.

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Carrie by Stephen King.

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller.

Dirty Work by Stuart Woods.

The Epic of Gilgamesh

Evil Under the Sun by Agatha Christie.

The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand.

Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling.

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.

Hindsight by Peter Wright.

I Ching

Island by Aldous Huxley.

Julius Caesar by William Shakepeare.

Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton.

Lancelot by Walker Percy.

Laughter in the Dark by Vladimir Nabakov.

Lord of the Flies by William Golding.

The Moon Pool by A. Merritt.
The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne.

Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce.

The Odyssey by Homer.

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck.

Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens.

The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton.

Rainbow Six by Tom Clancy.

Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein.

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.

The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien.

Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James.

Watership Down Richard Adams.

The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum.

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle.

Other books that seem to be related to LOST;

The Stand by Stephen King. Damon Lindelof has said that Stephen King’s novels, especially The Stand are an influence on LOST.

On Writing also by Stephen King. James writes about this writing reference book in relation to LOST at Coyote Mercury.

Beyond Freedom and Dignity by B.F. Skinner. The Dharma Initiative is said to be partially inspired by the work of behaviorist B.F. Skinner.

Lost Horizon by James Hilton. In the season 3 finale, Through the Looking Glass, Jack acts like a man who is trying to return to Shangri-La, the utopian paradise in the Himalayas where people never (?) die. This fictional cmmunity was the creation of of author James Hilton. LOST Island was no Shangri-La, but perhaps the two places have some features in common: prolonged life for some inhabitants and difficult entrances and exits.

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.

“Before I draw nearer to that stone to which you point,” said Scrooge, “answer me one question. Are these the shadows of the things that Will be, or are they shadows of things that May be, only?”

Still the Ghost pointed downward to the grave by which it stood.

“Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead,” said Scrooge. “But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me!”

The Spirit was immovable as ever.

A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving. I tried reading this famous novel a few months ago, but I suppose I quit before I got to the good part.

Lathe of Heaven by Ursula LeGuin.

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess.

I’m definitely going to try to read and review some of these this summer —along with all my other reading projects.

LOST Names

May31

There’s no LOST (TV series) until 2008, and some of us are going through withdrawal. I have a few LOST posts saved up or planned for posting on Wednesday or Thursday —when I was posting my LOST Rehash, an analysis of the most recent episode. Maybe I can get through this dearth of LOST with a little help from my (blog) friends. 🙂

The names of the characters on the TV series LOST seem to have been chosen with an eye to symbolism and significance. I’m sure with all the LOST fanatics out there someone has done quite a bit more work than I have on this subject, but I think it’s fascinating to see what I can come up with on my own. I do a little LOST reading at Thinklings, where the guys live-blog the program almost every Wednesday, and at Powell’s where J. Wood, who is I’m sure some famous guy that I should know all about but don’t, blogs about the previous night’s episode on Thursdays. He particularly notes the symbols and literary allusions in the program. So, some of these guys probably have contributed to the ideas here, but otherwise I thunk it all up myself. And I may be reading way too much into the names or be way off base. But I’m having fun.

Jack Shephard: Jack does become the shepherd of these lost sheep survivors. He’s also forced to become, not just a doctor, but a jack-of-all-trades, doing whatever needs to be done to ensure the survival of the Losties. Jack’s father is Christian Shephard, but his father doesn’t live up to his name. In one recent episode, Jack said the only thing his father ever taught him how to do was drink. Nevertheless, Jack is the Christian “shepherd” that the LOST survivors need, in spite of his self-described lack of faith, and he seems to be able to do whatever needs to be done from carpentry to ping-pong to shooting a gun to negotiating a hostage release. Somebody must have taught him to be a shepherd and a doctor in spite of his father, or maybe his father wasn’t all bad after all. Now in the light of the third season finale, I think Jack’s going to shepherd the Losties all back to the island.

James Ford “Sawyer”: A sawyer is a wood worker, but Sawyer isn’t James’s real name. And Sawyer isn’t much of a worker of any kind. He stole his name from the con man that caused his parents’ deaths, and he became the con man that he hated. His real name “James Ford” sounds like a typical Southern good ol’ boy name, just who Sawyer pretends to be. But no one ever calls him Jim or Jimmy, do they? Not even in his back-story.

Katherine “Kate” Austen: Not much connection with the only Austen that comes to mind, Jane Austen. I guess Kate is attracted to both a “bad guy,” Sawyer, and a “good guy,” Jack, just like Elizabeth Bennett is attracted to Wickham and to the distant Mr. Darcy. Jack’s a little distant, too, got some pride going there.

Boone Carlyle: The LOST writers like philosophers’ names. Carlyle wrote a book called Heroes and Hero Worship, and of course, Boone had a bad case of hero worship with Locke. Boone also wanted to be a hero, but that didn’t work out too well.

Shannon Rutherford: Shannon sounds like a cheerleader name, and sure enough she’s a self-absorbed cheerleader type. Poor little rich girl.

Sayid Jarrah

Michael Dawson: What happened to Michael anyway? Part of his name is “son,” and of course, Michael’s overriding concern was his son.

Walt Lloyd (Dawson)

Vincent, the dog: What happened to Vincent? Is he still on the beach?

Claire Littleton: Claire’s almost a Madonna figure, but her name is Claire, not Mary. I am reminded of Clare of Assissi, who founded the female counterpart to St. Francis’s Franciscans.

Baby Aaron: Aaron was Moses’s older brother in the Bible, the spokesman for the speech impaired leader of the Exodus. Is Aaron the forerunner of Sun’s baby, and will Sun’s baby be the Moses who will lead them out of bondage, off the island?
Hieronymus_BoschThe_Garden_of_Earthly_Delights
Charles Hieronymus “Charlie” Pace: Hieronymous Bosch was the guy who did all those wierd pictures, like the one I’ve posted here. It looks like bad drug trip, doesn’t it? But it’s called The Garden of Earthly Delights. What kind of mother would name her son Hieronymus, even as a middle name. Then, too, Charlie is just a “good-time Charlie,” always following, along for the ride, out to have a good time. Until the final episode. Then we find out there’s more to Charlie than meets the eye.

Hugo “Hurley” Reyes: Hugo is, obviously, huge. He’s also the King, the richest man on the island, the luckiest, the wisest. I think Hurley is the Wise Fool whose backstage managing has done as much if not more to save the LOST survivors as Jack’s more up-front leadership. Hurley’s the king in disguise, alway managing things behind the scenes, always cutting through the complicated bull with a salient statement of common sense —or a van in overdrive.

John Locke: Locke was another philosopher. He wrote stuff that influenced the founding fathers of the American Revolution. He was an Enlightenment kind of guy, big on reason, but John Locke sees himself as a “man of faith.”

Jin-Soo Kwon

Sun-Soo Kwon

Danielle Rousseau: Another philosopher name. She lives in the wild, like Rouseau advocated. She’s untamed, a child of the jungle.

Eko Tunde

Juliet Burke: Juliet, as in Romeo and Juliet? Burke is another philosopher, but I don’t know anything about him.

Benjamin Linus: Benjamin means “Son of my Right Hand,” changed from Ben-oni, Son of my Sorrow because the Biblical Benjamin’s mother, Rachel, died giving birth to him. Benjamin was Joseph’s younger brother in the Bible; he caused his mother Rachel’s death in childbirth. Ben says he was born on the island; at least he’s lived there most of his life. Yet now the Island people can’t give birth, and the mothers die, too. Ben’s mother died, and he somehow survived. Linus reminds me of lying, something at which Ben is quite adept despite his protestations to the contrary. Linus is also the Charlie Brown character, and Ben resembles him with his beady eyes, glasses, and diminutive stature. No security blanket, though, that I can see.

Mikhail Bakunin: Mikhail Bakunin was a philosopher also, an anarchist philosopher. The name could relate to Island Mikhail’s fondness for guns, violence, grenades and shooting at people. Island Mikhail seems like a bit of an anarchist, a wild card at the very least.

Ana-Lucia Cortez

Desmond David Hume: Hume was a Scottish philosopher. He was a skeptic, and Desmond’s an ex-monk who thinks he’s being led/tested by a Higher Power. Desmond is something of a mystic; he has visions.

Alex Rousseau or Linus: Alexandra. She has a Russian princess name, or is it French like Danielle? Alex is a sort of a rebellious princess. She’s probably not Ben’s daughter, but she doesn’t know who she is.

Nikki Fernandez

Paolo

Rose Henderson Nadler

Bernard Nadler: He’s kind of like a St. Bernard, isn’t he? Faithful, bumbling, and loveable.

Elizabeth “Libby”

Penelope Widmore: Obviously, she plays Penelope to Desmond’s Odysseus. She’s waiting for him to come back from his trip around the world. But she’s a bit more proactive than the classical Penelope, looking for the lost Desmond rather than weaving and unweaving.

Naomi Dorrit: I’ve never read Little Dorrit by Dickens, but surely her last name is a reference to that book.

Jacob: Jacob in the Bible is a twin (Esau’s twin), a conniver and con artist; the name means “supplanter.” Is Jacob someone’s twin? Has he supplanted someone to become the dictator on the island?

LOST Rehash: Through the Looking Glass, or When Are We?

May25

Salt Cay, Turks and Caicos Islands

C.G. Son is smarter than the average bear, er, LOST writer or fan. He says that at the beginning of the finale episode after Jack’s first flash forward, he said, “Let me guess. Five years earlier on the island.” Of course, I didn’t hear him say it, but he’s the genius nevertheless. He knew from the start that Bearded Suicidal Jack was after the island, not before.

SO we tried to work out a timeline, but it keeps getting more and more complicated and confused. (I know there are timelines in other places on the internet, but we like to work out our own thoughts.)

1970 The Dharma Initiative starts, sends people to the island to do utopian experiments.

late 1960’s Ben is born prematurely, killing his mom.

late 1970’s Uncle Rico Workman and Ben come to the island to work for Dharma. Ben makes contact with the Hostiles following the ghost (?) of his mother.

late 1980’s Ben grows up, goes to work for Dharma, and joins The Hostiles to kill the Dharma people and take over their town —and their identities?

about 1988 Danielle Rousseau and her team are led to the island by the numbers transmission. Danielle changes the numbers transmission to a distress call three days before Alex is born. Danielle’s team dies or she kills them; then the Hostile Others kidnap Alex and tell her that Ben is her father.

1991 The Gulf War. Sayid, and the guy who was in the hatch with Desmond are both in the Gulf War along with Kate’s father.

1991 or 1992 Soon after the Gulf War, Guy-in-the-hatch finds a job with Dharma and starts pushing buttons. (So Ben knew he was in there. Did Ben ever communicate with the guys in the hatch?)

1994-2000 Sometime in here Mr. Eko is running drugs in Africa, gets his brother killed, and becomes a fake priest. His brother’s drug plane crashes on the island.

2000 Around this time stuff is happening to the other Losties. Kate’s on the run, Jack’s having daddy issues, Sawyer is looking for Sawyer, and Locke is giving his daddy a kidney. In return Locke gets thrown out a window and becomes paralyzed.

2001 Desmond gets a boat given to him by Libby, enters a race around the world, and shipwrecks on the island. He becomes Guy-in the Hatch’s partner in pushing the button.

2001 Juliet arrives on the island.

2003 Hurley wins the lottery. Locke decides to go on walkabout.

September 22, 2004. Oceanic Flight 815 crashes on an island somewhere in the Pacific. Desmond kills Kelvin but misses the button pushing time. Ben sends spies to get names of all who were on the plane.

late 2004- beginning of 2005 Season 3 Finale—Through the Looking Glass. The Losties get rescued but can’t forget the island.

2007 Bearded Druggie Jack tries to commit suicide and becomes a hero for the second time when he rescues a kid and his mother from a burning car. Someone (Ben or John Locke?) dies, and Jack is the only one at the funeral. Tortured by his memories, Jack realizes that the Losties who were rescued must return to the island to finish what they started.

Here’s what we think the next three seasons will feature:

Season 4: Jack Shephard “herds” the LOST survivors together and convinces them that they must return to the island. The season 3 finale was the Losties “exodus” but they weren’t supposed to leave the island. They are now wandering in the desert, so to speak, but Jack/Moses will gather them and lead them back to Promised Island. We are treated flashbacks that explain what has happened to each of the Losties during the time they’ve been off-island and that show us something about what unfinished business they have on the island.

Season 5: The Lost Team finds the island again, encounters the enemy, and begins the fight for control and the quest to find the meaning of the island itself. Locke, who stayed on the island, is the leader of those who escaped deportation, and Jack and his people must confront Locke’s guys and the “bad guys” who have taken over the island.

Season 6: All questions are answered. All loose ends are gathered. All viewers are satisfied. But at the very end the writers leave us with a twist that makes everyone keep talking and buying the past seasons’ DVDs to see if there is something they missed.

It’s a theory, anyway. I like it, but I hope the LOST writers throw me a few surprises and conundrums along the way. I don’t really like the “alternate future” theory —too complicated and unworkable really.

Questions to be answered in future posts or future episodes:

What will happen to the rest of the Losties post-rescue?

Will Sun and her baby be OK since the baby was conceived on the island?

Is Kate pregnant?

Are Walt and Michael still alive? If so, where?

Did anyone stay on the island, and if so, who? Rousseau said she wouldn’t leave, and Locke didn’t want to leave and indeed ran away. Does Alex stay with her mother? What about Karl? Ben’s Others were going to the Temple, so I doubt Naomi’s boat people found them. Ben didn’t want to go, but may have been compelled by Jack. Does Desmond go on the boat or the helicopters, or is he too suspicious because of Charlie’s dying message?

Speaking of Karl, where did he come from? He’s about Alex’s age. If the Others can’t have children, and Alex is only there because she was conceived off-island, where did Karl get conceived and born?

Did Charlie really die? I think he did, but it seems that he thought he had to do so since there were several ways he could have tried to save himself.

Is Jack’s dad, Christian, alive? How? Where?

Who was in the coffin?

Is a Locke a Christ-figure or a cult leader?

Did Ben ever tell the truth? When he said they would all die if they called the boat, he was either mistaken or lying unless he meant that they would be subject to death back in the world. (Like outside the Garden of Eden.) Does the Island confer immortality on some of its inhabitants? Mikhail? Jack? Richard? Not Ben.

Who was it who would be wondering where Kate was when she met with Jack? Sawyer? Someone else?

Why is Kate free and not in prison?

What do the numbers have to do with the meaning of the island?

Who is Jacob? Is he in God-like control or is he a captive?

Who are the “bad guys” that Ben is so afraid of? What is Ben’s bottom line motivation for all he’s done?

Where is the island? How do you get there? How do you get away? What is so special about this island?

What happened to the plane Naomi said was found with all their bodies in it? Was it a fake? Who faked it? Why? Or was Naomi lying? Why?

Will all the Losties “get a second chance” or be redeemed in some way? What about those who died?

If you’ve written about LOST on your blog and would like to leave a link to the post, please do. If you’d rather leave a comment, you’re welcome to do that, too. How will we wait until 2008?

 

LOST Rehash: Greatest Hits, or Charlie’s Gotta Die and Jack’s Gotta Lead

May16

Best lines from tonight’s episode:

 Charlie: “Why does everything have to be such a secret? How about some openness for a change?”

 Jack: “We’re gonna blow’em all to h—!”

Naomi to Charlie: “Look on the bright side. You’re not really dead, right?” (Heavy irony)

 Sayid to Jack: “You said you were our leader. It’s time for you to act like one.”

Charlie to Desmond: “We both know you’re not supposed to take my place.”

 I loved Charlie’s list. Could you list the five best moments of your life? I may think about that for another post. Anyway, Charlie’s best and brightest list was illuminating. Will God catch Charlie when he dies just as his father caught him in the pool? Is Charlie really a hero as the woman said? (Yes!) Is he a “bloody rock star” even though he’s only had one hit record?

Apparently, Charlie lives a little while longer anyway. I think he’s doomed, though. Who are those Commando Ladies? And what will happen to Charlie’s ring left in Aaron’s cradle? Will Desmond wake up in time to escape whatever is going to happen to Looking Glass station?

The season finale episode is named Through the Looking Glass in imitation of Alice’s second adventure. What will happen is anyone’s guess, but I’m predicting:

Charlie’s death.

Locke’s reappearance.

Ben’s capture and maybe death.

Desmond has a headache.

Juliet has to spill some more secrets.

Did you notice that Ben said that Jacob told him to move the timetable up on the kidnapping? I maintain that Ben no longer hears from Jacob, if he ever did, and he’s using Jacob’s name to keep his “cult” members in line and make them carry out his (Ben’s) wishes.

Oh, and Rose and Bernard are back. This reappearance makes me and Lindsey (Just Enjoy the Journey) happy. Locke’s reappearance will not make me happy. Jack did better this episode. At least, he listened to Sayid, the real brains of this operation. And Hurley, the Wise Fool, sensed something was going on with Charlie. If they ever kill off Hurley, I’m done. No more LOST. The writers and producers have been warned.

Thinkling De’s liveblogging LOST again.