Across the Sea

[chani]

I'm pretty sure that I am in the minority, but even if there were flaws and heavy dialogues here and there in the last episode of Lost, I liked it.

Here are a few thoughts. 

The episode had mythological vibes (Biblical but also Greek-Roman ones)which is always better than stuff like love triangle and tv cliches like that, and I didn't mind not seeing Jack and co. Actually I found it daring from the writers to do THAT so close to the end!

Claudia and mother Island spoke in Latin so I guess she and The Others came from a Roman ship...Jacob was Romulus and The Nameless Son was Remus, and they definitely were raised by a she-wolf! 

Above all, I liked it because it worked as an allegory. No realism here, only poetical licence and metaphors. Hence a birth with very clean and big babies! 

I liked how "Across the Sea" showed the archetypes of things we have seen before and would happen later on the island. I like the fact Claudia was murdered, for it fit in the mythology: pregnant women are killed by the island! 

In French the word meaning island has a female gender("une île"), and so it has on Lost!

Also Mother Island stole the babies, setting a pattern for future characters(Ben, Rousseau...Kate). Her way of thinking was very Rousseau-like (the philosopher, not the crazy woman!): man can remain good if keeping a "state of nature" (Mother and Jacob live in the wild and don't even wear shoes!) because it's society that corrupts! Bad habits are the products of civilization. 

Jacob accepted that belief and stayed within Nature while watching society from afar and coming to the conclusion that there was good in it; The Nameless didn't accept the belief Mother tried to instil into him, he went and experienced society and left nature, while having no illusions about people. Faith versus Cynism?

Not sure it's that simple. MiB seems to embody the very human "I want to know what there is across the Sea" and its corollary: "don't tell me what I can't do!".  Anyway no matter that Mother told Jacob that he was like her now, Jacob and The Nameless are not in two different teams but the two sides of a same human coin. 

I am not sure how to interpret the fact that The Nameless could see the ghost of his biological mother and learned from dead Claudia what Mother did. Not sure it fits in...However it seems to emphasize the fact that The Nameless was indeed the special one, not Jacob.  

I liked how Adam and Eve turned out to be mother and son instead of a couple! Nice twist, and sorta subversive. Jacob and his brother obviously had Oedipus issues! "East of Eden" anyone?


Oh, and I liked the wheel stuff (I've always found it very poetical) but I was less impressed by the glowy cave/source of life thing (an the dialogue was really bad there). The invention of the wheel has often been considered as "a proof of civilization", a pivotal moment in late Neolithics when mankind progressed (although some civilizations actually didn't know the wheel!), and the episode made a point of showing The Nameless being attracted to men's devices and "sophisticated" artefacts so it makes sense that he build the wheel that Ben and John would use later to leave the island. I like the metaphor: leaving the island is using/choosing" technology" over "nature".

By the way Jacob tells his brother that he made "the rules" of the game i.e a "social contract" which according to Rousseau is the opposite of the "state of nature".  

I like that the brothers started "playing" thanks to an Egyptian game that Nameless kid found on the beach.  

Above all, I liked that it was all very grey despite all the white and black stones, and not a matter of good vs evil!

Jacob created the Smoke Monster by forcing his brother into the source!!!!

 Mother Island killed the Roman people and destroyed the village and we still don't know where the big statue, the temple and all the hieroglyphs come from. If anything they represent civilization!

Because I missed Desmond, and I think he must have the last word, I will end this with what David Hume thought of "the state of nature" that MiB deserted and Jacob embraced:
 
"’Tis utterly impossible for men to remain any considerable time in that savage condition, which precedes society; but that his very first state and situation may justly be esteem’d social. This, however, hinders not, but that philosophers may, if they please, extend their reasoning to the suppos’d state of nature; provided they allow it to be a mere philosophical fiction, which never had, and never cou’d have any reality." (Book III, Part II, Section II: "Of the Origin of Justice and Property."

Comments

[lijability.livejournal.com]

Well, so much is coming together on LOST. Past forshadowed the future and the future has reconciled the past. So much more struck me between the time I read your response on Sin & Tacos and then your piece here. And I am surprised you didn't see the obvious, Laurence! Because it has to do with your beloved Desmond!!

First, though the Island Mother wasn't the first, she wasn't a product of the Island. She said it herself, she got there by accident. Though we know that nothing is truly by accident if one comes to be on the island.

Second, light has been an important motif on the Island. The light from the hatch (really just Desmond turning on a light) that Locke saw and spurred him on. The light when the Swan Station was destroyed, when Desmond turned the key in the fail-safe. The light when Ben and then Locke turned the wheel with the intent to move the Island - though it didn't move!!! What is now known is that this was the MiB's mechanism, likely completed and implaced but covered over when something (Mother Island, I am not so sure) destroyed the Greco-Roman encampment (I add Greeks in the mix because they were the scientitst of that period). The MiB had them turn it simply so they would leave the Island (he was pissed Ben turned it first, meant for Locke to do so). And lastly, the 'Light of the Source.'

Now comes the Desmond analogy with this episode. Desmond was shipwrecked on the Island like Claudia/her twin sons. Desmond was taken in by Kelvin with the purpose of 'saving the world' by entering the numbers in the computer. Desmond is told that outside of the hatch the Island is evil which mirrors thee Island Mother's insistance that outside the Island all is not so good and that others (Romans then 'the others') on the Island are 'bad.' Desmond finds that Kelvin has been lying to him about the sickness on the Island and in a fit causes his death which mirrors the actions of Mother, Jacob and the MiB, collectively. Finally, Desmond turned the key in the failsafe and set off a bright light (liberated it?) was a mirror of Jacob throwing his brother into the 'Source' and creating the Black Smoke (but I wonder, could there be a prior 'Black Smoke?' And thus two?).

So what does it all mean. It might come to what 'Mother' said, that we all have a piece of the light in us and want more of it for ourselves. The light being power(?) and now even though the MiB/Black Smoke has the power he held prisoner on the Island by it. The Jack - 'man of science' versus Locke - "man of faith" motif was present between Jacob (faith) and his brother, the MiB (science). Now as we draw to a close Jack is taking on that mantle of faith and asking others to follow him again, but not as a leader from the basis of science. It all comes down to faith.

But where answers are found, more questions are born.

...

[sister-luck.livejournal.com]

A much better episode than last week's. I didn't mind some of the more obvious aspects, like Claudia giving birth to twins. And I just love the actress playing Mother - she was brilliant on West Wing as C.J. and here she gave us a fitting mixture of strength and tenderness.

I didn't mind the glowy cave - the CGI was bad, yes, but I like the idea of a source of divine light that has to be protected. Is it spiritual knowledge? The divine spark?

[kashmanik.livejournal.com]

I like how Jacob/MiB are mirroring Jack/Locke even more.

During the birth scene The Mother seems very happy and relaxed at Jacob's birth, and it's only when MiB is born that she grows concerned and murders Claudia. I know later in the episode she claims this is because she couldn't let Claudia take the babies back to her people, but I think that's only half right.

I think Jacob is correct in that he was unimportant. If it had just been him who was born I think Mother would have let Claudia leave unharmed; it was only MiB she was interested in.

Of course, Jack and Locke are similar to the boys. Jack isn't particularly special like Locke, who had an intuition for the island (and in S1 could sense the approach of rain, like Mother could). Jack is like Jacob; someone who has been told to stay and protect the island and will, simply because he has no other choice.

Speaking of "special", I thought it was interesting to see the language and terminology used by the Mother and the boys. These simplistic terms like "good people", "bad people", "special people" is just how the Others talk millennia later. Which lead me to think about Walt and his "special"ness. The MiB seemed to have some kind of psychic ability as a man (in that he intuitively knew about technology and how to tap into the Source - interesting that the smoke monster is a man of science, not a man of faith!) and maybe Walt was similar. Perhaps the Others abducted Walt simply to determine whether he was going to become a major threat like the MiB...

Anyway, rambling over! I enjoyed the episode, though I'd hoped for something a little more shocking and revelatory. I suspect, however, they gave us this relatively quiet episode to allow us a rest before the colossal finale episodes coming up.