“You’re not John Locke. You disrespect his memory by wearing his face, but you’re nothing like him. Turns out he was right about most everything.”
Those words from Jack to the MIB in the finale episode of the Lost series pay fitting tribute to this fascinating character. When Locke was introduced, people on the show as well as real people watching the show couldn’t make up their mind about whether Locke was a good guy or a bad guy. The main reason for thinking the latter was because Locke was so mysterious and spiritual and that’s outside most Americans’ comfort zone. It creeps people out. But he turned out to be an excellent mentor for Charlie, Claire and Boone (yes, even though Boone died working with Locke...I’ll get to that). Even to Jack: think of the scene in “White Rabbit” when Locke explains to Jack why he (Jack) is not crazy and encourages him in his role as a leader. Sometimes people were skeptical of Locke’s advice, but he always turned out to be right.
Probably the most remarkable thing about Locke as mentor, though was the contant thread running through all his counsel: Let go. Claire letting go of her fear, Charlie letting go of his addiction to heroin, Boone letting go of his infatuation with Shannon, and even Jack letting go of his father; with the exception of Jack, Locke not only advised, he literally trained these people to let go. Long before the series end, letting go was clearly an important theme. By the end of the finally, it was the central message of the whole show. And the central purpose of each of the characters lives.
Christian Shepherd: You needed them just like they all needed you.
Jack: For what?
Christian: To Remember. And to let go.
The central purpose. The central message. And John Locke was the first to bring that message to the castaways. My conclusion: John Locke was the prophet of Lost.
But how, you ask, could that be when Locke was so wrong about so many things? Wrong about what?
The hatch? Locke’s pursuit of the hatch saved Desmond’s life, which was not only good in its own right, but central to saving the island and the world from the MIB.
The computer that saves the world? Locke was right about that, too. It was Jack who was wrong. Locke was only wrong when he became convinced that Jack was right (more on that later, too).
Ben? Locke’s initial mercy on Ben was indeed due to Ben’s manipulation; but it also was what kept the island from blowing up. Locke’s temporary alliance with Ben in the hatch allowed Ben to put the numbers into the computer when Locke couldn’t get to it in time. (Ben said he never touched the computer. He lied.)
The Others? Locke seemed to go over to the others. But he believed the others were originally good (demonstrated by his pursuit of, and alliance with Richard Alpert) and as he revealed to Ben, was disgusted with how Ben had corrupted them. All correct.
The freighter? Locke looked like a madman when he knifed Naomi and said the team on the freighter would kill them all. Whoops, he was right about that, too. After most of the castaways had been killed by Keamy and his gang, Jack blamed Locke for their deaths. But they were killed because Ben was with Locke’s group (admittedly a mistake on Locke’s part). Who was it that contacted the ship and let the freighter crew get to the island in the first place. That’s right: Jack.
But telling Jack and the castaways not to get rescued? that they should stay on the island? Well, they all had to come back to save the island and the world. Locke was right again.
I refer again to the quote above from Jack: “Turns out he was right about most everything.”
Most everything. Two glaring points where John was wrong need to be addressed.
One of the few times Locke was wrong was when he took on Jack’s position about the hatch, that the whole business of entering numbers into the computer was a mind game. He came to this conclusion by watching the orientation film in the Pearl station. At that time Eko had a vision of (by then dead) Ana Lucia telling him that he needed to help John. Later he saw his dead brother Yemi telling him the same thing, adding that John had lost his way. Eko maintained the mission of pushing the button and helping John uncover other mysteries of the island. Executive producers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof have gone on record as saying that Mr. Eko was originally supposed to be a major character through the arc of the whole Lost saga, but was killed off early in Season 3 at actor Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje’s request because he has a personal and professional rule of not playing the same character for very long. Mr. Eko was indeed the other prophetic character on Lost and I believe Mr. Eko’s originally intended role in Lost was to be John Locke’s partner in the prophetic office of the island. When Eko was attacked fatally by the smoke monster, his last words to Locke were, “You’re next.” The MIB wanted to destroy the partner prophets Eko and Locke and this work was finally completed when the MIB’s unwitting accomplice Ben murdered Locke in Los Angeles. It’s no accident that when Mr. Eko was killed, John Locke buried him and gave the eulogy at his funeral. And as he used Eko’s staff as inspiration for where to go next, Locke essentially combined Eko’s prophetic office with his own as he continued his work.
And now let’s talk about Boone—especially Boone getting killed. First of all, Locke didn’t get Boone killed. He was hesitant about Boone going alone into the plane, but had no choice, since his own legs became suddenly, mysteriously useless. In fact, Locke shouted to Boone repeatedly to get out of the plane before it fell. If Boone had listened to Locke, he wouldn’t have been killed.
But Locke was responsible for Boone’s death. Why? Because he lied to Jack about what happened to Boone and because he was alone with Boone in the first place. If someone other than the two of them had been at that plane, things would likely have turned out very differently. And Jack himself said that his medical treatment was based on false information from Locke. Locke had lied to Jack for the same reason that he had been alone with Boone: he didn’t want anyone to know what they were doing. He wanted to uncover and open the hatch alone, apart from the rest of the castaways. This is a violation of the only principle as central to Lost as letting go. Recall again those words of Christian Shepherd: “No one does it alone. You needed them just like they all needed you.” Locke isolated himself from community, and the resulting death of Boone led the rest of the community to isolate him further. This was what changed Locke from the strong prophetic leader he was in most of season 1 to the scared, insecure prophet that he was until his death in season 5.
At that point Jack finally became a believer. When the two met again, in the sideways world, the two reconciled and paid their restitutions: Jack discovered what it felt like not to be believed, and helped Locke with his surgical skills. I loved watching the warmth and joy in John Locke’s eyes when he realized who he was, where he was, and who Jack was. At the church, as the two met, John Locke greeted Jack with a handshake and the most appropriate greeting from a prophet to a leader, and from friend to friend: “I’ve been waiting for you to come.”
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Thursday, June 10, 2010
The end (almost)
I was glad to see some kind of closure. Lost strengthened my ability to see the connections with people, the power and importance of letting go, and the often hidden, but very real purpose in our lives. It jump-started my son’s interest in philosophy and spiritual things and perhaps permanently got him thinking more intelligently about issues of morality and responsibility. It gave us some great father-son time, including great father-son conversations.
As for the finale, I say this as a general statement: I think it was the best that they could have made it. No it didn’t answer all the questions; far from it, and I’m one of the people who wants questions answered.
But in a way, I appreciate the writers’ leaving some mythology for me to write (which is what unanswered questions amount to, after all). And they stuck to what was really important: the deepest meaning of the big picture of the show. One great thing about Lost is that it is in a sense a 120-hour long movie with ultimately one great story. Lost didn’t let the subplots keep the one big story from getting all the time that it needed.
And hey, how about that wild and crazy sideways world? Turns out it wasn’t sideways at all. At the premiere episode of season 6, before I’d ever heard of the term “flash sideways” I had the bright idea that the sideways world was actually a flash forward, that what we were seeing there was where the characters would all end up by the end of the season. Not bad: I was pretty close to right. But then Darlton told us that this was not a flash forward at all so I dumped that idea.
In fairness, I was wrong about a couple of things. I thought the sideways world existed in real time in our world. But Darlton was at least half right: it wasn’t a true flash forward because it didn’t exist in real time. “There is no ‘now’ here,” Christian Shepherd observed. In fact that world wasn’t a real one at all.
But it wasn’t purgatory, either. Whether you believe in purgatory or not, the sideways world doesn’t fit the description. Purgatory is a real place prepared by God, but the sideways world is an unreal place prepared by the collective consciousnesses of all the castaways (that last idea is one of my favorites from the show). Purgatory is to punish souls for their venial sins. But the sideways world wasn’t about punishment at all. It wasn’t even about the characters working through their issues.
That’s right. There’s some complaining, I understand, among Losties that, hey, if the characters can work out their issues in the sideways world, what’s the point of growing and suffering to work through your issues in this world? (One could answer that it’s a package deal, but uh-uh— the sideways world isn’t real, it’s not part of the package with the real world). The answer is that the only chance to work through our issues is in the real world—this world—and the sideways world (made only for the Oceanic 815 survivors and Co., remember) is for restitution.
Now, as a Christian, I’m thinking of this from a Christian perspective—the biblical concept of “the restitution of all things”—but I don’t believe the Lost finale was reflective of any particular religion. More on that later.
But for now, think about restitution, like when you steal something, think better of it, and take it back to its rightful owner. Or hurt someone, think better of it, and apologize to that person and make it up to them.
Now think of this: you kill someone, a good person. Later, you repent. Then, at the end of you life, you die. You and your victim go to the same place. How will you share eternity with your victim without making restitution? But you had no chance to in this world so you construct a world in the hereafter where you can make restitution. This, I submit, is what the sideways world is all about.
Take Ben and his dad. Ben’s dad was a decent guy gone bad because of tragedy and his own ego. He became a horribly abusive father and alcoholic. He finally repented of his ways on the day that Ben decided to kill him. Later Ben found his own redemption—again, in this world, on the island, first by confessing his crimes and repenting to Ilana, and continuing in that vein all the way through his righteous career as Hugo’s assistant.
But he couldn’t to the father he’d killed, and because of the murder, Ben’s father never got the chance to pay restitution to Ben. So what happened? In the sideways world, all accounts were settled. Roger Linus was a powerless but loving father(instead of a powerful, abusive, and loveless father), and Ben cared for his dad devotedly to make up for his past hatred and murder. He even gave his father oxygen to make up for the poisonous gas with which he’d killed him!
Think of Locke and his dad. Anthony Cooper, an evil con artist, destroyed people’s lives, especially his son’s, by winning their trust and then exploiting them. In the sideways world, Anthony Cooper gives his son, John Locke, his trust (which John had always wanted) and then John destroys him in a plane. He suffers brain damage—a living death—while John truly lets his father go and goes on to the enlightenment for which he’d always sought. (I’ll say more about the other characters later.)
The intriguing thing about this sideways whatchamacallit is its tangential resemblance to various religious visions while tipping decidedly towards none of them. I’ve already mentioned Christianity. This is no heaven or purgatory; Jack is self sacrificial, but he’s not Christ (the wound in his side is reminiscent of Christ’s, but Christ was lanced after he died, not while suffering). While we’re talking about Christ figures, how about Desmond, the miracle child, but very exclusively human being who, like Islam’s Isa, is the ultimate enlightened prophet who brings enlightenment to the world, but can’t be killed, while Jack who, like Judas in the Koran is the broken disciple who takes Desmond’s place at death. Still, Desmond didn’t ascend to heaven and Jack didn’t disguise himself...it just doesn’t add up to Islam, either.
I never bought into Doc Jensen’s idea that the castaways were reincarnated. And they weren’t: you don’t get reincarnated as yourself—in the same time period, yet! But there was a superficial resemblance to reincarnation. The castaways didn’t just waltz into judgment hall after death. The got entire lives, or at least the semblance of entire lives.
Of course, there was the stained-glass window with all the world religion symbols on it which should have made the point very clear to everyone: all the religions of the world are right, or words to that effect. I’ll say straight up that I don’t buy into that New Age-y kind of message, Lost or no Lost. But I can say that no religion reveals absolutely everything. Given the examples above, that seems to be the stronger religious message of the finale: if you’re sure of how things work in life, the universe, and everything, you’re bound to be wrong about something—and you’re in for some big surprises.
There’s more to say about Lost and spirituality, but I’m saving that for the next (and last) entry in this blog.
On to the characters. I really liked how the writers identified the most basic issues of each of the main characters. Jack had issues with confidence, heroism, leadership, faith, and relationships including parenthood and various romantic relationships, but all of these were derivative of his issues with his father.
I really appreciated what happened with Kate. With all the fuss over whether Kate was meant to be with Jack or Sawyer, I found it refreshing that the answer was neither. Kate’s calling was to be with Claire, helping her out of her mentally and spiritually messed up state and supporting her in raising Aaron.
Oh, and the whole mystery about why Aaron was so important? That was one of many things left for us to imagine, which is a very good thing. But I think it was partly answered. After all, the real “prophecy” was that Claire had to raise Aaron alone, no one else. That was to warn her that someone else with Aaron would always be a danger signal. If Claire had remembered that, the sight of her father holding Aaron would have been seen for the danger signal it was. Instead, she trusted her father and went out with him—who turned out to be MIB in the shape of her father—and Claire was “claimed”. Following the psychic’s prophecy would have prevented that.
As for Sawyer, I say, forget about who is better for Kate, Jack or Sawyer—ask who’s better for Sawyer, Kate or Juliet. Lost history bears record that Juliet was better for Sawyer. This is a consistent theme on Lost: each person is supposed to grow into some beautiful individual. Who you’re supposed to be with is determined by who leads you to be that person. Juliet and Sawyer accomplished that for each other so they were meant to be together. Kate and Claire did that for each other (though not as a romantic couple). Claire and Charlie did that for each other. Desmond and Penny, Bernard and Rose, Hugo and Libby all fit the pattern. Sun & Jin, tragic and so beautiful need little comment in this regard. The whole series, from first season to last, was the saga of how those two shaped each other.
And Sayid and Shannon did that for each other. The anti-Sayid-Shannon camp are put to silence when we understand this. We might like Nadia better than, Shannon, but Nadia was already who she needed to be. It was Sayid who made Shannon feel truly validated and valuable for the first time in her life. And think about it: Sayid’s lifelong struggle with letting others define him as evil came to a screeching halt when he and Shannon were a couple (and promptly resumed after her death). I don’t know how she did it, but Shannon accomplished in Sayid what Nadia could not, not even in the sideways world.
As for Ben, Danielle, and Alex...Doc Jensen actually found the romance between Ben and Danielle to be funny—what’s wrong with that guy? I found it very touching. At first when Ben told John Locke and Hugo that he would be staying in the sideways world a while I thought he was thinking, “This is all right...I think I’ll stay and enjoy this awhile before moving on.” But I see now that it was deeper than that. It’s back to the idea of restitution. Ben owed Alex the father (and mother) she never had. Danielle deserved the lost years with her daughter and the husband and father Ben never was.
See how nicely all this fits together? And it’s magnificent that Hugo, a character who wasn’t even in the original cast of characters but was created as an excuse to have Jorge Garcia on the show—ended up as the island guardian at the end of the series.
But...what about John Locke? Well, he gets an entry all his own.
As for the finale, I say this as a general statement: I think it was the best that they could have made it. No it didn’t answer all the questions; far from it, and I’m one of the people who wants questions answered.
But in a way, I appreciate the writers’ leaving some mythology for me to write (which is what unanswered questions amount to, after all). And they stuck to what was really important: the deepest meaning of the big picture of the show. One great thing about Lost is that it is in a sense a 120-hour long movie with ultimately one great story. Lost didn’t let the subplots keep the one big story from getting all the time that it needed.
And hey, how about that wild and crazy sideways world? Turns out it wasn’t sideways at all. At the premiere episode of season 6, before I’d ever heard of the term “flash sideways” I had the bright idea that the sideways world was actually a flash forward, that what we were seeing there was where the characters would all end up by the end of the season. Not bad: I was pretty close to right. But then Darlton told us that this was not a flash forward at all so I dumped that idea.
In fairness, I was wrong about a couple of things. I thought the sideways world existed in real time in our world. But Darlton was at least half right: it wasn’t a true flash forward because it didn’t exist in real time. “There is no ‘now’ here,” Christian Shepherd observed. In fact that world wasn’t a real one at all.
But it wasn’t purgatory, either. Whether you believe in purgatory or not, the sideways world doesn’t fit the description. Purgatory is a real place prepared by God, but the sideways world is an unreal place prepared by the collective consciousnesses of all the castaways (that last idea is one of my favorites from the show). Purgatory is to punish souls for their venial sins. But the sideways world wasn’t about punishment at all. It wasn’t even about the characters working through their issues.
That’s right. There’s some complaining, I understand, among Losties that, hey, if the characters can work out their issues in the sideways world, what’s the point of growing and suffering to work through your issues in this world? (One could answer that it’s a package deal, but uh-uh— the sideways world isn’t real, it’s not part of the package with the real world). The answer is that the only chance to work through our issues is in the real world—this world—and the sideways world (made only for the Oceanic 815 survivors and Co., remember) is for restitution.
Now, as a Christian, I’m thinking of this from a Christian perspective—the biblical concept of “the restitution of all things”—but I don’t believe the Lost finale was reflective of any particular religion. More on that later.
But for now, think about restitution, like when you steal something, think better of it, and take it back to its rightful owner. Or hurt someone, think better of it, and apologize to that person and make it up to them.
Now think of this: you kill someone, a good person. Later, you repent. Then, at the end of you life, you die. You and your victim go to the same place. How will you share eternity with your victim without making restitution? But you had no chance to in this world so you construct a world in the hereafter where you can make restitution. This, I submit, is what the sideways world is all about.
Take Ben and his dad. Ben’s dad was a decent guy gone bad because of tragedy and his own ego. He became a horribly abusive father and alcoholic. He finally repented of his ways on the day that Ben decided to kill him. Later Ben found his own redemption—again, in this world, on the island, first by confessing his crimes and repenting to Ilana, and continuing in that vein all the way through his righteous career as Hugo’s assistant.
But he couldn’t to the father he’d killed, and because of the murder, Ben’s father never got the chance to pay restitution to Ben. So what happened? In the sideways world, all accounts were settled. Roger Linus was a powerless but loving father(instead of a powerful, abusive, and loveless father), and Ben cared for his dad devotedly to make up for his past hatred and murder. He even gave his father oxygen to make up for the poisonous gas with which he’d killed him!
Think of Locke and his dad. Anthony Cooper, an evil con artist, destroyed people’s lives, especially his son’s, by winning their trust and then exploiting them. In the sideways world, Anthony Cooper gives his son, John Locke, his trust (which John had always wanted) and then John destroys him in a plane. He suffers brain damage—a living death—while John truly lets his father go and goes on to the enlightenment for which he’d always sought. (I’ll say more about the other characters later.)
The intriguing thing about this sideways whatchamacallit is its tangential resemblance to various religious visions while tipping decidedly towards none of them. I’ve already mentioned Christianity. This is no heaven or purgatory; Jack is self sacrificial, but he’s not Christ (the wound in his side is reminiscent of Christ’s, but Christ was lanced after he died, not while suffering). While we’re talking about Christ figures, how about Desmond, the miracle child, but very exclusively human being who, like Islam’s Isa, is the ultimate enlightened prophet who brings enlightenment to the world, but can’t be killed, while Jack who, like Judas in the Koran is the broken disciple who takes Desmond’s place at death. Still, Desmond didn’t ascend to heaven and Jack didn’t disguise himself...it just doesn’t add up to Islam, either.
I never bought into Doc Jensen’s idea that the castaways were reincarnated. And they weren’t: you don’t get reincarnated as yourself—in the same time period, yet! But there was a superficial resemblance to reincarnation. The castaways didn’t just waltz into judgment hall after death. The got entire lives, or at least the semblance of entire lives.
Of course, there was the stained-glass window with all the world religion symbols on it which should have made the point very clear to everyone: all the religions of the world are right, or words to that effect. I’ll say straight up that I don’t buy into that New Age-y kind of message, Lost or no Lost. But I can say that no religion reveals absolutely everything. Given the examples above, that seems to be the stronger religious message of the finale: if you’re sure of how things work in life, the universe, and everything, you’re bound to be wrong about something—and you’re in for some big surprises.
There’s more to say about Lost and spirituality, but I’m saving that for the next (and last) entry in this blog.
On to the characters. I really liked how the writers identified the most basic issues of each of the main characters. Jack had issues with confidence, heroism, leadership, faith, and relationships including parenthood and various romantic relationships, but all of these were derivative of his issues with his father.
I really appreciated what happened with Kate. With all the fuss over whether Kate was meant to be with Jack or Sawyer, I found it refreshing that the answer was neither. Kate’s calling was to be with Claire, helping her out of her mentally and spiritually messed up state and supporting her in raising Aaron.
Oh, and the whole mystery about why Aaron was so important? That was one of many things left for us to imagine, which is a very good thing. But I think it was partly answered. After all, the real “prophecy” was that Claire had to raise Aaron alone, no one else. That was to warn her that someone else with Aaron would always be a danger signal. If Claire had remembered that, the sight of her father holding Aaron would have been seen for the danger signal it was. Instead, she trusted her father and went out with him—who turned out to be MIB in the shape of her father—and Claire was “claimed”. Following the psychic’s prophecy would have prevented that.
As for Sawyer, I say, forget about who is better for Kate, Jack or Sawyer—ask who’s better for Sawyer, Kate or Juliet. Lost history bears record that Juliet was better for Sawyer. This is a consistent theme on Lost: each person is supposed to grow into some beautiful individual. Who you’re supposed to be with is determined by who leads you to be that person. Juliet and Sawyer accomplished that for each other so they were meant to be together. Kate and Claire did that for each other (though not as a romantic couple). Claire and Charlie did that for each other. Desmond and Penny, Bernard and Rose, Hugo and Libby all fit the pattern. Sun & Jin, tragic and so beautiful need little comment in this regard. The whole series, from first season to last, was the saga of how those two shaped each other.
And Sayid and Shannon did that for each other. The anti-Sayid-Shannon camp are put to silence when we understand this. We might like Nadia better than, Shannon, but Nadia was already who she needed to be. It was Sayid who made Shannon feel truly validated and valuable for the first time in her life. And think about it: Sayid’s lifelong struggle with letting others define him as evil came to a screeching halt when he and Shannon were a couple (and promptly resumed after her death). I don’t know how she did it, but Shannon accomplished in Sayid what Nadia could not, not even in the sideways world.
As for Ben, Danielle, and Alex...Doc Jensen actually found the romance between Ben and Danielle to be funny—what’s wrong with that guy? I found it very touching. At first when Ben told John Locke and Hugo that he would be staying in the sideways world a while I thought he was thinking, “This is all right...I think I’ll stay and enjoy this awhile before moving on.” But I see now that it was deeper than that. It’s back to the idea of restitution. Ben owed Alex the father (and mother) she never had. Danielle deserved the lost years with her daughter and the husband and father Ben never was.
See how nicely all this fits together? And it’s magnificent that Hugo, a character who wasn’t even in the original cast of characters but was created as an excuse to have Jorge Garcia on the show—ended up as the island guardian at the end of the series.
But...what about John Locke? Well, he gets an entry all his own.
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