LT297: I See Dead, Half-Dead, and Never Alive People

BACK IN ACTION

Hope everyone had a good Labor Day weekend. There are a lot of new things about LOST out there, so you might find an extra post this week. For now, here is what I’ve been thinking about…

DEAD PEOPLE

Do you remember way back when to a time when we were pretty convinced that the Survivors were dead and living in some purgatory? The reasons for this were pretty obvious including statement by Henry…er, I mean, Ben…about how God can’t even see this island.

And then we saw Jack’s dad walking around. But the producers were quick to shoot down the purgatory theme. Then, in LOST-style, we get introduced to author Gary Troup whose name is an anagram for purgatory.

I wonder if the point wasn’t that we SHOULD notice the death theme, but it is not literally purgatory as some religions define it.

So I began pondering and came up with four kinds of death on LOST:

APPARITIONS - like Ben’s mother for she was never on the island

PHYSICAL – like Boone and Charlie

GHOSTS – like Christian

DREAMS – like Horace chopping down trees in Locke’s dream

I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that each one has a slightly different set of rules surrounding them.

Apparitions are close to hallucinations. Some people want to see something so bad, that they see it. I’m inclined to place Boone’s vision of Shannon in this group. Also in this group would be Locke’s vision quest. Mostly, these are drug induced situations. Young Ben was likely not high when he saw his mother at the fence, but I put this sighting in this group mainly because Richard asks Ben, “Is she on the island?”

Physical is pretty clear cut – people can die here a very real death. Ask Mr. Eko.

Dreams we can get our mind around as well. I’m a firm believer that dreams are from a person’s past experiences ONLY. In other words you can’t dream what you haven’t experienced in some part. Now some might argue that finer detail, but I would counter that SOMETHING inside your brain comes out in a dream even if is a composite of other things. Anyway, John dreaming about Horace who he never met is odd…except now we know he did meet Horace previously.

The final group is Ghosts and I wish to rename that to Angels and Demons in order to keep the unifying theme of religion. Living beings, but dead in a human-sense.

In fact, wouldn’t this explain why we felt this island was purgatory? Would being “after-life beings” also allow the producers to claim everyone was “alive”?

AFTER-LIFE BEINGS

I’m sticking with this term, after-life beings, for now. Let’s take it a step further…what if these after-life beings like Christian and Locke II are angels and demons? What if they are controlled by Smokey?

We have evidence that Smokey can look at Mr. Ecko and then manifest itself as Yemi, his brother. We have evidence he can scan Ben and then manufacture Alex in the temple basement. These “ghosts” could be angels and demons taking on the form that Smokey desires.

While you are mulling over this post about death, let me part with a final reminder: the producers claim that Jacob has NEVER appeared to the Survivors as anyone other than himself. Oh my! That either means I’m wrong about the after-life beings coming from people’s memories OR someone has met this Jacob before. For the record, only John has “seen” Jacob, right? Hmmm…


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Enjoy,
KC