The story of Lost is ultimately the story of Jack Shephard and his adventures on the island. Sure, there are other characters and many mysteries and a lot of peripheral plotlines, but the show can neatly be summed up with Jack. Lost begins with Jack waking up in the jungle and ends with him dying in exactly the same place.
It’s interesting to consider that Jack was originally going to be killed at the end of the Pilot—and also funny to consider that he was going to be played by Michael Keaton. Sorry if there are any fans of Keaton's, but it just wouldn't have worked for me. Matthew Fox is perfect for the role of Jack for one simple reason: his ability to cry. Foxy (as he is apparently called by castmates) can effortlessly tear up, and does so in over two-thirds of the episodes of the series. I just can’t see the same guy who played Beetlejuice handling such a sensitive role. Kate was originally supposed to become the reluctant leader of the survivors, but I can't imagine what would have happened to the survivors if this had been the case. We ended up with Jack as the protagonist, and I’m certainly glad we did.
Two words describe Jack as he wakes up in the jungle and quickly makes his way to the wreckage: heroic and scared. By the time Jack reaches the series finale, he's still acting heroically, he's just no longer scared of his own destiny.
Jack’s complete transformation from this doubtful reluctance by the end of the series provides an interesting contrast to John Locke’s demeanor upon waking up on the island. John wakes up from the crash and realizes he can walk for the first time in three years, reaching his own fulfillment immediately after the crash. On the survivors' second day on the island, a sudden rainstorm moves in, and all the survivors except John seek cover. Instead, he embraces the rain, enjoying a little giggle as it falls around him.
Throughout Lost, water has been a symbol of purification and redemption, washing away the past experiences of the characters. By embracing the rain, John is the first character to achieve his destiny on the island, starting a new life free from past restrictions. So what is John’s destiny? His purpose on the island is to guide Jack toward fulfillment, serving as a catalyst for his transformation. It’s not until “The End” that Jack achieves this fulfillment, finally embracing his fate on the island. As the water slowly begins to flow over him after he re-plugs the Light of the island, Jack begins to laugh, taking obvious glee. John's embrace of the rain all the way back in the Pilot mirrors this moment perfectly.
After Jack wakes up scared in the jungle, he begins to run toward the crash. As Jack runs through the jungle, his path is marked by a white tennis shoe which had been on Christian Shephard's body. Jack is guided unknowingly by the white shoe, marking his path ahead to fulfill his destiny of island leadership. The shoe probably wasn’t planted by Jacob himself, but it’s nice symbolism of Jacob’s silent and unnoticed pushes of our main characters toward the island.
Jack looks pretty awesome running around and tending to the injured, seriously in his element. But really, why does everyone else look so completely confused? I’m a big believer in the competency of humankind, but these other survivors seem pretty worthless. To be fair, Boone does try to help out a bit, most notably performing CPR on Rose. While Shannon is nearby screaming incessantly for Boone, he is not worried at all about finding her. He is focused on helping those around him; he’s completely selfless. It’s just kind of sad to see how much Boone sucks at helping people, especially when compared to Jack Shephard. Even the name Jack Shephard screams leader. Boone Carlyle? Not so much. Boone later tries to make himself sound like a badass by telling John that he runs a COMPANY! A huge wedding company! Boone just needs to accept the fact that he's kind of lame, definitely not leader material. Jack later leaves him in charge of the injured as he, Kate, and Charlie head out to the cockpit. But really, he’s just a crappy fill-in for Jack. His heart is in the right place, but this just makes his early demise that much more pathetic. Also, I’d like to note what a touching moment it is to see Jack drop everything to help his pregnant half-sister Claire.
At the time of the crash, each of the survivors is literally separated from everyone else. Even those on the plane who knew each other beforehand all seem to have been separated. The most obvious example is Rose and Bernard, who are literally on separate sides of the island. Shannon is also seen calling for Boone, Michael for Walt, and Jin for Sun. All three of these couples should have been sitting right next to each other, and I'm unsure how they ended up in different locations. Literally here, it is the island that unites these individuals, allowing them to come together and truly unite with each other for the first time in their relationship. Even though pretty much everyone dies by the end of the show, they're all with someone they care about. Maybe not in physical proximity, but emotionally.
After the intensity of the crash itself, Jack ventures to the outskirts of the jungle to patch himself up. He's not ready to embrace his role as leader, remaining around everyone else. Kate is the only person Jack is truly comfortable with from the beginning. She puts him at ease when fixing up his injury, even though she’s pretty scared of being a leader herself. This scene serves as more than a chance to see Matthew Fox topless. It’s also our first look at Jack’s vulnerability, and it’s significant that his injuries here mirror exactly the stab wound he receives in “The End” from the Lockeness Monster.
Jack chooses to have his injury sewn up with “standard black” thread, some subtle black/white symbolism. The black thread is the easiest and simplest choice for Jack, and choosing black over white becomes an easy choice for many of the other survivors in season 6. The Lockeness Monster promises Nadia to Sayid and Aaron to Claire. Instead of dealing with their own grief and abandonment, these characters fall victim to smokey's "infection." These easy options sound enticing at first, but later become much more complex as each character must face the consequences of aligning with the evil Lockeness Monster. Jack’s choice doesn’t get much more complex than choosing black thread, though. So maybe all this symbolism is just in my head.
After the crash, we meet Charlie Pace, wandering around the burning wreckage in some kind of confused daze. He's pretty disoriented and doesn't seem to have any idea what's going on. This is probably because he was doing heroin when the plane crashed, and it ultimately takes Sayid to pull Charlie from this zombie-like trance, giving him a task around camp. This is ironic, since Sayid will reach a similarly melancholy and emotionless state later on in the series. charlie also wrote “FATE” on some weird little finger-warmers in the Pilot, a cynical commentary on the hopeless situation of the survivors. He feels guilty and believes that fate has brought him here as punishment for his misdeeds.
I also feel like season six of Lost provides some serious perspective from which to view Sun and Jin’s relationship, as outlined in the Pilot. Jin says a few things that are of particular note here. He tells Sun not to worry about the other survivors, instead focusing only each other. Ultimately, in “The Candidate,” it’s Jin who refuses to worry about the other survivors as he and Sun face their impending deaths. Jin actually has the ability to escape the submarine with Jack, Kate, Hurley, and Sawyer, but instead chooses to remain with Sun, ignoring the fates of everyone else.
It is also significant that Jin tells Sun not to leave his sight, encouraging her to remain physically with him during their time on the island. As we will see throughout the series, this physical proximity is not enough to ensure an emotional connection between the two. Sun hides her ability to speak English, her plan to leave Jin, and her affair with Jae Lee. Jin hides a violent career at her father’s company and his humble family’s beginnings. It is not until “Ji Yeon” in season four that Jin finally learns of Sun’s affair and forgives her for it, uniting the two emotionally for the first time in the show. But it is in the same episode that the viewer realizes that Sun and Jin are separated after she leaves the island, now separated by time. At first they were figuratively apart, refusing to reveal secrets to each other on the island. Later they are physically apart, finally dying so soon after being reunited. Their death scene together is so powerful because we see just how much the two characters want to be together now, even if it means death.
After these and a few more introductions to the other principal characters in the saga of Lost, we return to Jack and Kate sitting around a fire discussing the crash. When Jack mentions that he’s taken a couple of flying lessons, I remember really wishing we’d eventually get a flashback episode with Jack learning to fly a plane, which would have at least been more relevant than the origin of Jack's tatoos. Instead, this line is never mentioned again throughout the show, but it exists to show us what a grounded guy Jack is. He's a straightforward guy who likes to feel the earth under his feet. A little later we find out that Jack hasn’t heard of Driveshaft, apparently a pretty well-known band. Even the geyser John Locke is a huge fan of Driveshaft. Jack is a guy so intensely focused on his surgeries and his obsessive relationships with ex-wife Sarah and father Christian that he hasn’t even heard of the band. He’s really a man grounded in his own world.
Now it’s time to talk a little more about the Lockeness Monster’s appearances and motivations in the pilot. Soon after Kate motions to Jack where she saw smoke in the jungle from the cockpit, the monster appears in the jungle making noises for the first time. All the survivors are shown around camp concerned with the monster’s arrival, most notably John Locke. Smokie knocks down a bunch of trees and growls a lot, then comes back the next day and does the same thing. So what is the monster trying to do here? Maybe it's attempting to cause chaos, sparking disunion among the survivors. Or maybe it’s just angry that all these people are camped out on the beach. Smokie is not a big fan of humankind; he believes that everyone who comes to the island corrupts and destroys, rather than bringing anything good. Maybe the monster just doesn’t want the survivors venturing out into the jungle and looking for the Source, concerned that they will find the light and take it before he does. Probably the monster’s motivations are a combination of all three of these.
Later on the monster kills Matt Parkman, the pilot of Oceanic Flight 815, pulling him from the cockpit. Besides setting a pretty grim tone for the rest of the series, Parkman's death must be viewed considering everything we know about the smoke monster now. Clearly, Parkman was not one of Jacob’s candidates (otherwise, the monster couldn’t just kill him). Parkman's destiny was to bring 40+ Candidates to the island, and his success in doing this probably frustrates the smoke monster a great deal. Or the murder could just be more scare tactics, removing the survivors’ most likely candidate for a leader. Or the monster could just crave human flesh. But I think the first is the most likely.
I’d like to take a moment to discuss something that Charlie said after he, Jack, and Kate were fleeing from the monster. Jack pulled up Charlie from the ground, and Charlie later comments that “We were dead, I was. And then Jack came back and he pulled me up.” This, of course, foreshadows the events of “All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues,” in which Jack resuscitates Charlie from near the point of death after Ethan hangs him in a tree. Most significantly, now, however, is the foreshadowing of the flash-sideways afterlife in the final season of the show. Jack is the one who ultimately pulls everyone up at the end of the show. It is only after he remembers his life and death on the island that everyone is able to move on to a better place.
Jack, Kate, and Charlie return to camp during a confrontation between Sawyer and Sayid, in which Sawyer uses his first nickname in the show, calling Hurley "Lardo." As commonplace as these nicknames have become by the end of the show, it’s kind of funny to see how absolutely irate people were about this when it first happened. Sure, it’s a little bit mean. Run a Google Image search on “Lardo” and you’ll see what I mean. Hurley looked pretty upset about Sawyer’s remark. Someone in the crowd even yells “whoa” after Sawyer’s invocation, creating a pretty awkward silence. I thought it was kind of funny.
Despite Sawyer’s opposition, Sayid takes the transceiver and attempts to fix it, ultimately determining that he needs a power source. How about the virtually limitless supply of energy under the island? By the time the survivors discover Rousseau’s distress call on the transceiver at the end of the episode, they are understandably pretty concerned. The monster is pretty much the scariest thing imaginable to them right now, as it killed the pilot and all the members of Rousseau’s team and can also throw trees around pretty well. Little do the survivors know that the monster isn’t actually a threat at all: it has no authority to kill them as Candidates.
Finally, it’s definitely necessary to comment on John Locke’s epic discussion of backgammon in the pilot episode, easily the largest sign of things to come in the sixth season of the show.
I don’t think it’s necessary for me to point out that the two black and white sides in backgammon are symbolic of Jacob and his brother. John Locke comments that backgammon is older than Jesus Christ himself, hunting that the island and are greater in scope even than the religions of the world. Human attempts to understand the spiritual world through religion will always be futile, much as human attempts to understand the island through science just lead to more questions. The island is something deeper than humans can comprehend.
John Locke loves to play games, but ultimately his character was just a pawn in a larger game at work. He was a hugely significant piece in the game, but still just ended up getting played. The Man in Black calculates that Locke’s death will allow him to kill Jacob, but completely fails to take into account that Locke’s death might have ramifications beyond this, pushing Jack to his fated role of island protector.
No comments:
Post a Comment