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*Just a quick note before I begin: considering the fact that anyone who would read this has likely seen the episodes at least once and is now rewatching them at the same pace as everyone else, it would be superfluous to recap the episodes. Besides, I want to focus on the thematic material and general theories more than all of the various plots and subplots. So, rather than breaking things down and doing an episode-by-episode analysis, I'll just write on the things that I find most intriguing. Okay, now:
The Selva Oscura
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura
ché la diritta via era smarrita.
"Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost."
These are the first three lines of Dante's Inferno, part of his epic poem The Divine Comedy, first in the original Italian, then in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's English translation.
Ever since Dante was translated into English and popularized in Britain and America, the selva oscura, or, as it is most frequently translated, "dark wood," has enjoyed a rich history of allusion. It has come to be a potent metaphor for being lost. The dark wood is a place where a person is no longer certain of the precepts he has built his life upon, and indeed no longer certain of who he is. The selva oscura is an obscured self. The Modernist poet T. S. Eliot was particularly fond of the image. In his "Four Quartets" he writes the lines:
The knowledge imposes a pattern, and falsifies,
For the pattern is new in every moment
And every moment is a new and shocking
Valuation of all we have been. We are only undeceived
Of that which, deceiving, could no longer harm.
In the middle, not only in the middle of the way
But all the way, in a dark wood, in a bramble,
On the edge of a grimpen, where is no secure foothold,
And menaced by monsters, fancy lights,
Risking enchantment. Do not let me hear
Of the wisdom of old men, but rather of their folly,
Their fear of fear and frenzy, their fear of possession,
Of belonging to another, or to others, or to God.
From the very first scene, Lost is about knowledge, and the fault-prone nature of perspective. A close-up of an eye is always an indicator of this kind of theme. And as the viewer's eye (the camera lens) backs up from Jack's eye, we see he, like Dante, has also awaken in a dark wood, the sunlight obscured by foliage. He only remembers the plane starting to go down, and, as he later explains to Kate, he had blacked out. To this day we still don't know how Jack ended up in the woods when everyone else from his section of the plane was on the beach. The resemblance to Dante is uncanny:
"I cannot clearly say how I had entered
the wood; I was so full of sleep just at
the point where I abandoned the true path."
These first few episodes of Lost seek to establish the dark wood, both metaphorically and literally. After all, in the very first episode we come within earshot of the soon-to-be-famous monster, terrifying the castaways and the viewer by roaming through the jungle and moving trees in its path. Immediately the jungle backdrop of the island becomes a place of mystery and unknown terrors, and we frequently hear conversations like this one from "Tabula Rasa":
SAYID: We should make camp.
SHANNON: What, here?
SAYID: Yes, here.
SAWYER: I'm not stopping. You all have a nice cookout.
SAYID: Excellent, walk through the jungle in the dark.
SAWYER: Oooo, afraid the trees are going to get us?
SAYID: No, what is knocking down the trees will get you.
(Transcript obtained from Lostpedia)
At the same time, this literal dark wood becomes a symbol for the metaphorical selva oscura. The primary focus is on the characters and not the mysteries, as the producers of the show have stated on numerous occasions. And as indicated by the central narrative device of the flashback, we quickly learn that the island will be a place in which these characters are confronted with their pasts. Jack struggles with the fact that the other castaways seem to have appointed him as their leader. (We will learn in future flashbacks exactly why that's so hard for him.) Sawyer seems to have the past of a badass, and we see him periodically looking at his letter. Charlie has his heroin problem. Sayid finds his picture of his lost love Nadia. And of course there are the pairs of people that have troubled histories with each other: Claire and Aaron, Boone and Shannon, Jin and Sun, Michael and Walt. But the two characters we learn the most about, in episodes 3 and 4 respectively, are Kate and Locke.
Kate Austen: She's Dangerous
After rewatching "Tabula Rasa," I concluded that it should probably rank at least in the top 5 in all 100+ episodes of Lost that have been produced. I get choked up every time I watch that last scene. It's technically our first character-centric episode, we get some major info in learning that Kate was the fugitive on the plane, and at the end of it all we're left pondering the nature of past sins and forgiveness. Not bad.
The title of the episode is a reference to the theme that holds the whole thing together. The English philosopher John Locke argued that every human person begins life with a tabula rasa, a "blank slate," and that a person's life can take any of an infinite number of directions, depending on circumstances and choices made. After an episode-long debate between Jack and Hurley, who find Kate's mugshot, about how much Kate's past should affect how they view her and treat her now, Jack comes to the conclusion that their island experience is a rare opportunity for a type of second tabula rasa. He even employs language of death and rebirth:
Kate:I want to tell you what I did - why he was after me.
JACK: I don't want to know. It doesn't matter, Kate, who we were - what we did before this, before the crash. It doesn't really matter—3 days ago we all died. We should all be able to start over.
KATE: Okay.
JACK: Okay.
Jack's words echo what Farmer Ray told Kate in one of the flashbacks: "Everyone deserves a fresh start."
Of course, as always with Lost, it's not that simple. Through the flashbacks we see that Kate's proclivity for always being on the run has continued to manifest itself on the island. And when Kate tells the Marshall that she finally got away, he insightfully replies, "You don't look free to me, Kate."
And so the title and theme of the episode, no sooner than it has registered with the viewer, is immediately called into question. Do these characters truly have a clean slate? After season 5, I would think the answer would have to be an emphatic no. We now know that there are forces who have been influencing the fates of the castaways throughout their lives. I still believe, however, that all of them are being given an opportunity for a second chance, but none of them have got there just yet.
Even so, the conclusion of the episode allows us to enjoy a brief and joyful glimpse into the power of forgiveness and second chances, as all the conflicts that have arisen on the island seem to be, at least temporarily, "washed away," as the lyrics for Hurley's music indicates. And just as you're starting to get a little emotional, a little teary-eyed, okay, now sobbing uncontrollably, we cut to Locke, in his familiar pose, meditating on the beach, and the most creeptastic music ever tells us that maybe Kate isn't really the dangerous one.
John Locke: Light or Dark?
The image above is probably one of the most telling about the character of John Locke. As I was rewatching "Walkabout," something about the light in the shot stuck out to me. The light coming from the left side just seems especially intense. I don't know if the sun was shining just right during that day of filming or if they brought in some artificial light. Regardless, the way the scene is shot is undoubtedly intentional. Locke is being shown with one light side and one dark side, just like the backgammon pieces he showed Walt in the previous episode.
In contrast with the end of the previous episode, which really tried to creep us out about Locke, this one does everything it can to garner our sympathies for the man, who, as we learn through this episode and many more to come, led a tragic and pathetic life before coming to the island. But of course, if there's one person on the island to whom tabula rasa really applies, it's certainly the man whose eponym most fully expounded the idea. This is the episode where we find out that Locke was in a wheelchair before the crash and was somehow healed on the beach. And we now know how Locke ended up in the wheelchair (his dad pushed him out of an eighth-story window). So we can also surmise that Locke's healing isn't simply physical. The physical healing is perhaps an indication that he can also be free from the daddy issues that have plagued him his whole life.
And if that isn't enough, we also have images of rebirth in Locke's first encounter with the monster. Locke is presumed dead by Jack and Kate. When Jack sees his dead dad in the woods, he pursues him, but then runs into the presumed-dead Locke walking out of the jungle with a slain boar in tow. So just like when he was pushed out of that window and was revived by Jacob, and just like when he was denied what he thought was his destiny, only to be transported to a place much better and receive back the use of his legs, the seemingly hopeless Locke is given yet another chance.
Paradoxically, however, we also see in this episode that Locke is a believer in destiny, which is a motif of this episode, almost a mirror opposite of the previous "Tabula Rasa." It would seem that the ideas of a pre-ordained destiny and that of being born a blank slate would be mutually exclusive. But we seem to be given every indication that both types of forces are at work in the lives of these characters. Jacob seems to be a sort of incarnation of this duality, as he governs the paths of the castaways while at the same time emphasizing their free will. My hunch is that Lost will end in such a way that will allow us to believe in both.
Lost itself is indeed a selva oscura that does everything it can to challenge our assumptions and judgments. And even though this show has way too much moral ambiguity to be a strict allegory like The Divine Comedy, rewatching season 1 assures me that Lost has always been a show about good and evil. It just so happens that it is also a show about the faultiness of our perception of good and evil. The dark jungle of the island is a place where an incomprehensible terror romps about, where dead men walk, where polar bears inhabit tropical climates. In other words, it's a place where all our logical expectations are defied, and we are truly lost.
Perhaps not coincidentally, Kate and Locke seem to be the 2 characters most willing to enter the dark wood. Kate, throughout these first 4 episodes, jumps at every opportunity for a mission into the jungle. Locke steps up as the hunter, wanders the woods alone, faces down the monster, and emerges triumphantly with meat for his new family. And at the end it of all, we are being set up to follow Jack for his entrance into the selva oscura, to find Christian Shephard, his dead father.
Hope is a very dangerous thing to lose (Sayid, "Tabula Rasa")
All hope abandon, ye who enter here (Dante, "The Inferno")
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