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"Revisiting the Six Items"
weltek 16933 desperate attention whore postings
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03-23-10, 03:12 PM (EST)
 
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"Revisiting the Six Items" |
LAST EDITED ON 03-23-10 AT 03:15 PM (EST)In light of the Richard centric episode tonight...I've always found the puzzle of the items Richard brought to young Locke intriguing. There was: -a baseball glove
We know Dogen had a baseball from his son that was killed in the car accident. His son was an avid baseball player. -a knife
From looking around on LOSTpedia, I don't know that we've seen this exact knife. It has a old wooden handle, and doesn't look like Jacob's knife. It is the item Locke chooses and Richard gets upset and says he's not ready. -a vial of granules
Well, we know the folks at the temple use the sand to keep them safe from the smoke monster, and that Jacob's cabin was surrounded by ash. -a comic book
There are a myriad of small connections to LOST, notably that the story relates to time travel, and someone on the Oceanic flight was into comic books (Walt found one). -a compass
We know Richard gives John a compass during time travel, and that John and Sayid both have a compass after crashing on Oceanic. -"Book of Laws"
Well, we know a lot of rules exist, so there is likey a book of them somewhere, as they relate to Jacob, Smokey and the Island. He asked Locke which items "already belong to him". So what did Richard WANT John to answer? Did Richard KNOW what the answer should've been? 
-A Tribetastic Creation
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dabo 25344 desperate attention whore postings
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03-24-10, 09:57 AM (EST)
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2. "RE: Revisiting the Six Items" |
The comic book Walt found belonged to Hurley.
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Outfrontgirl 6830 desperate attention whore postings
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03-25-10, 00:08 AM (EST)
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3. "RE: Revisiting the Six Items" |
LAST EDITED ON 03-25-10 AT 00:11 AM (EST)Thanks for bringing this up. The granules meant nothing to me back when I saw this episode. IIRC, it wasn't just any comic, but Hurley's that featured a polar bear, which Walt found. Book of Laws: this is the holy text of the Baha'i faith. Here is the Wiki article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitáb-i-Aqdas The only English translation that would have been available when Alpert visited Locke was likely the 1900 one.
A poster called Teacher on Lostpedia put together some excerpts from the Book of Laws.
http://forum.lostpedia.com/more-book-laws-t14229.html Portion of his post that summarizes principles from BoL:
_____________ "-Every religion is equally important because each was founded by a messenger from the same God. "Progressive Revelation" basically means that God has slowly over time made himself known in different ways to different people in whatever ways were appropriate for that time - thus, different religions were formed. -There was no original sin and Satan does not exist. People who become evil have done so of their own free will. -Humanity will never understand God. We only know little pieces from what God's manifestations have told us (Jesus, Buddha, etc.). -The worst "sin" (though they don't use that term) is PRIDE. "The prideful person feels in absolute control of his life and the circumstances surrounding it and he seeks power and dominance over others because such power helps him maintain this illusion of superiority." -About the afterlife:
"Thus Bahá'ís do not regard heaven and hell as literal places but as different states of being during one's spiritual journey toward or away from God. Bahá'ís understand the spiritual world to be a timeless and placeless extension of our own universe--and not some physically remote or removed place. But beyond this, the exact nature of the afterlife remains a mystery. Bahá'u'lláh wrote, "The nature of the soul after death can never be described." " In general, the religion focuses on world peace and teaches that all of humanity's problems are due to spiritual problems. Every so often, a new manifestation of God is chosen to deliver more information to us. They also believe that science and religion are harmonious." As of right now, I think every single point of that could apply to LOST! And no doubt you guys can see the relevance, so I won't elaborate except to note that the concept of original sin, of the devil, of hell as a separate place, and the afterlife, were all central to Ab Aeterno. The concept of the messenger from God may apply to Jacob and his candidates. Pride was Ben's sin, Locke's, probably Jack's. Locke should have picked the compass, but failed. I agree with that.
I don't know if the knife is key to a future scene or not, maybe. At the time, I read it that Locke had a passion for knives and adventure that was reaching for a type of existence that wasn't his true path - because knives were a part of his rejection by the Walkabout people. I read his reaching for the knife as Locke falling into the same old trap.
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michel 10812 desperate attention whore postings
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03-26-10, 04:15 PM (EST)
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5. "RE: Revisiting the Six Items" |
So... You WANT them to tell us we've wasted 6 years??
**Scratches head**
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michel 10812 desperate attention whore postings
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03-26-10, 08:02 PM (EST)
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8. "RE: Revisiting the Six Items" |
>Sort of like life. We
>pretty much know we won't
>enjoy our ending, but we
>get as much out of
>the journey as we can. But I don't have to watch Lost. Turning the channel isn't suicide. Some would say it's actually getting a life! I'd like to say they were wrong to have abandoned Lost, that the ending was worth the journey. I may not like the answers but we were promised answers. The story does need closure or else it was a waste just like other shows: Travelor, The Nine, Jericho etc... I'm hoping for more from Lost. Ending it with the Flash-sideways would be as dumb as Dallas erasing a full season as a bad dream. >I would like to see the
>Losties not end up as
>tools of demigods, God/Satan, victims
>of bad parenting, etc..
>Free of the baggage and
>the manipulation. I would
>prefer that ending to a
>showdown between good and evil
>with the Losties as soldiers.
Seeing Sayid as a eunuch, Kate, Locke and Jack in boring versions of the "Fugitive", "Welcome Back Kotter" and "Father Knows Best" isn't too thrilling.
There's been many great journeys where man is a tool or in conflict with demigods or Gods. We'd be so lucky if our Losties' journey came anywhere near The "Odyssey" or at least "2001: A Space Odyssey".
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Outfrontgirl 6830 desperate attention whore postings
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03-27-10, 10:20 PM (EST)
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11. "RE: Revisiting the Six Items" |
michel,
the Odyssey is in my mind one of the greatest pieces ever written, possibly the greatest, and considering there was absolutely no precedent to it, utterly amazing. It has been reworked by the likes of James Joyce, as you know.Do I trust the LOST writers to come up with anything in that league when writing about good and evil? I do not. They are reasonably good at homage, and literary references are one of my favorite parts to watching LOST. They're real good at throwing it out there, but not very good so far about taking it to the next level. They throw out Easter Eggs; that's not art. Remember that J.J. Abrams was part of the original conceptualizers. The guy who managed to create a whole mythology with Alias and then the show wound up with the botched ending from hell. I think Lindelof and Cuse will come up with something decent, but they just aren't in the league of Homer or Kubrick or Milton or Dante -- and that's why I don't get excited by this veering towards good versus evil. I find their treatment of it either confusing or simplistic -- both. All I'm saying is what they have done well is create characters that I love seeing and will remember always, in an amazing setting, and for the most part have made me care about their fates. That's an accomplishment. Their attempts to weave together various genres and rework themes from other books has been less impressive to me in the long run. In the short haul it's been a blast, but not in overall coherence. "Making it up as we go along and pretending we're not" ~ LOST methodology, established 2004.
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michel 10812 desperate attention whore postings
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03-28-10, 02:39 PM (EST)
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12. "RE: Revisiting the Six Items" |
LAST EDITED ON 03-28-10 AT 05:53 PM (EST)"I think Lindelof and Cuse will come up with something decent, but they just aren't in the league of Homer or Kubrick or Milton or Dante -- and that's why I don't get excited by this veering towards good versus evil. I find their treatment of it either confusing or simplistic -- both." I'm not sure the memory of Lost will endure the end of this decade, let alone outlast the turn of the century or survive for millenia! I used the comparison for 2 reasons: First: I couldn't understand why you were seemingly dismissing all stories involving gods and men. Sorry I misunderstood. Then, I thought opening the door to a comparison between Jacob and Calypso was a nod at all those who think I would be upset if Jacob turned out to be evil. Maybe the end will be botched, I've been expecting that ever since they introduced time-travel into the plot. You see, I wasn't expecting Homer, Milton or Dante. Not even Kubrick or Clarke but maybe something close to Micheal Crichton. When they were talking about Casimir effect I speculated that the island was a place where quantum mechanics applied to the macroscopic universe as well as the microscopic one. I thought that Jacob was a Renaissance man of science who, like Richard, his man of faith, had lived for centuries and had come to understand the island's mysteries and was protecting it from being exploited by Dharma. I thought the island's source of power was a micro black hole. Even when we saw the rabbit in the video, I still hoped that it was creation of antimatter rather than a time-travelling hare who made a wrong turn at Albuquerque. But, alas, we are here. I abandoned Alias before the end and maybe I should have done the same with Lost but I followed the story. I can't write the outcome but I was promised answers and I want them. I still see some possibilities: Jacob could be MIB's jailor or therapist. MIB is a mass murderer from the future who thinks killing isn't bad because lives are worthless anyway. To prove him wrong, Jacob saves the lives of people who otherwise would have died in plane crashes, shipwrecks or whatever. Jacob shows MIB that their lives can have value. Smokey kills those who fail. Poor summary, I know, but just to show we don't really know what could be around the bend... except that Smokey is evil  "All I'm saying is what they have done well is create characters that I love seeing and will remember always, in an amazing setting, and for the most part have made me care about their fates." I may be misreading you here but if you mean what happens to them off the island, I must disagree. What we've seen in flashbacks, flash-forwards and flash-sideways has been terribly uninteresting. Sawyer's story is the only one worth a damn. I'm not sure if ladies would want "Shepard's Anatomy" to replace "Grey's Anatomy" but Locke and Kate had pretty pathetic stories. The writers of Lost have created interesting characters on the island. That's the only place where they have substance so what happens to them on the island is the only thing that interests me. As an aside, during the first few episodes of season 1, I tried to draw parallels between our Losties and Survivor cast members. Most comparisons didn't really hold but I saw Jack as Savage, and Sawyer as Boston Rob. Maybe I just want to see who is the Sole Survivor, the one to replace Jacob or the one to save them all and what they do to get there!
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Outfrontgirl 6830 desperate attention whore postings
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03-28-10, 10:50 PM (EST)
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13. "RE: Revisiting the Six Items" |
In that case, we're not entirely far apart.I don't follow the science fiction theories as much as you have. I don't read modern Sci-fi. I read the old classic Sci-fi, when writers were allowed to refer to hyperdrive and jumps and such without much of any reason why they worked other than that they had been "discovered" or gifted by more advanced societies. I'm not technically or scientific minded, so that worked for me. I liked the idea of a metaphysical basis for the story. I liked the way they alluded through names and imagery to the Egyptians and Biblical themes. I liked the idea that they might draw on some lesser known history of religion. It was fine that they threw out the symbolism of black and white, but if the answer turns out to be that behind it all there is Mr. White Rock and Mr. Black Rock, and Mr. White Rock can make all the people he chooses get on the same plane and crash because he has "powers: -- that to me is a boring reveal after all this time. If they wanted me to be invested in the struggle between Jacob and MIB, they shouldn't have hidden it from us for most of five seasons. If that's the core of the show, then they needed to build investment in the struggle. I was super disappointed when they "revealed" that 815 crashed because Desmond didn't push a button. That meant that the characters' interactions prior to crashing were coincidental, if there was no special reason they were on the plane. I guess I wanted to see some shadowy force or metaphysical force that put them together. OK, so now I have that part back, but it doesn't do anything for me, because Jacob is behind it all, and that makes me feel like so what? I don't care about Jacob. I don't care about him or what he wants because they are only starting to develop him at the last minute. I only care about the fates of the characters that they've put some effort into. So the ending had better be about them. A good ending will be IMHO an ending where we feel it could have been us caught in this situation. That's how the show started. A plane crash. Any of us could be on a plane that crashes. Any of us could not be Jacob or MIB, unless some kind of story arc makes us empathize with these beings, and without knowing what they are, that's difficult. So in order for the ending to feel satisfying to me, I need to see the story return to the hands of the Lostaways struggling to find themselves and each other, to overcome the efforts of these two beings to manipulate them. For me that works best if Jacob and MIB remain as the Other, not the center. To go back to literary precedents, look at how Milton set up Paradise Lost, which I believe is an astonishing work of art. The roles of God and Satan are central to the story, but unlike in LOST, the immortals aren't hiding behind the curtain. The epic starts with the aftermath of Satan's defeat, the defeat of the angel army that took on Heaven, and their punishment. Then Satan's escape from Hell. Before we ever meet Adam and Eve, we are caught up in this contest between Heaven and Hell. Then we arrive in Eden, and we see the temptation and fall enacted. We see the unfolding of the whole story, and in the end we understand God's position a little more even if we don't like it, and we no longer sympathize with Satan. At the end, the characters that matter are the humans. The story started out with all the interest placed on the immortal characters. The humans were boring. Then we saw them grow. What Milton didn't do was write a story about Adam and Eve having no idea what they were doing in Eden, and then at the end pull out God and Satan and say, hey, it was us having a war for your souls all along! You know who we are by reputation, right? So what we see LOST possibly portraying is a version of the Garden (with a lot more people), where evil and war are already inside it, and we are all caught up in the struggle, but there is no God, no Satan, just mysterious groups with mysterious agendas - which is intriguing, and we want to sort it all out. Then poof - oh, it was all just the men behind the curtain having a war and using everyone as pawns. Everybody in this thing was being used and duped. Richard the immortal wise man who pulled the strings is a scared rabbit who doesn't know squat. Ben never knew anything. Locke who was our man of faith was just a pathetic insecure man. Kate the woman who is driven is just confused. Our beautiful Sayid is gone. Beautiful Claire is just frizzy lunacy. Jack is a basket case. Hurley's been reduced to an involuntary medium. The Smoke Monster, that thing that scared the hell out of us for so long, is just some being who can turn the smokiness off and on at will. We still don't know how. I feel like the writers sacrificed the story in service of maintaining the mystery. A character who can be a smoke monster one minute, murdering and rampaging, and the next minute can be talking about how bummed he is that "you had to see me that way" -- is a fascinating character, I wanted to know about him six years ago! I don't want to learn his story in the Series Finale. 
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michel 10812 desperate attention whore postings
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03-28-10, 11:33 PM (EST)
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14. "RE: Revisiting the Six Items" |
I love it when you write about Paradise Lost.
"A good ending will be IMHO an ending where we feel it could have been us caught in this situation. That's how the show started. A plane crash. Any of us could be on a plane that crashes. Any of us could not be Jacob or MIB, unless some kind of story arc makes us empathize with these beings, and without knowing what they are, that's difficult.
So in order for the ending to feel satisfying to me, I need to see the story return to the hands of the Lostaways struggling to find themselves and each other, to overcome the efforts of these two beings to manipulate them. For me that works best if Jacob and MIB remain as the Other, not the center."
I couldn't have said it any better. I got caught up with the show because of the connection we had with the Losties. We were just as Lost as they were. Then, one disconnection happened after another. I think a good ending will see us getting the answers when all the remaining castaways reunite, compare notes and find a way to extricate themselves from this game. BUT, for that to happen, the rules of the game need to be explained.
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