Oh! So this is what the show's REALLY about...?!? Who knew? Not me! This whole time, five seasons later... and the whole time, the show's really about THESE guys!
Holy Shittake! This was an awesome episode. If you can even call it an "episode," it was more like an epic film. All broiling down to an epic battle between black and white, good and evil, the sun and moon, night and day... and any other archetype for life/death you can find under the sky. Lost is gradually unfurling the origins of this drawn-out tale, and me likey!
Briefly... Last week, Locke came back to the
Last night... We open on shots of a man, obviously on the island, crafting things and in an old-fashioned manner. He weaves, makes thread, fishes, and hangs out -- under the shadow a HUGE statue. He wears a white shirt - and he's cute, in a offbeat sort of way. Then this other guy comes and sits down with him, wearing a black shirt, noting with concern, the large ship (The Black Rock, probably for sure) slowly approaching the island. Black Shirt tells White Shirt that he knows the ship is here because White Shirt brought it here. White Shirt twinkles from behind his smile. Black Shirt laments that it will always be the same - people come to the island and it ends up in death, destruction, and war. White Shirt believes in 
the hope and that all it takes is one change to affect the entire cycle (has he been drinking the Obama Kool-Aid again? LOL) and something about people having choices - all that variable stuff Daniel was spouting before he died). White Shirt says, "All it takes is once, and the rest will all have been progress). Black Shirt looks at White Shirt with venom, "You know how badly I want to kill you right now," he spits. White Shirt smiles kindly, but with a shit-eating grin, like - ha ha! You want to kill me, but you can't! Black Shirt rises, with a "Goodbye...JACOB." And then he returns to wherever he hangs out for fun. Could this be the biblical Jacob and Esau? Po
ssibly. But, something about these two seems bigger than the conflict between Ben & Widmore (like their conflict was the red herring, meant to distract us from the REAL conflict of Jacob and his pessimist buddy).
the hope and that all it takes is one change to affect the entire cycle (has he been drinking the Obama Kool-Aid again? LOL) and something about people having choices - all that variable stuff Daniel was spouting before he died). White Shirt says, "All it takes is once, and the rest will all have been progress). Black Shirt looks at White Shirt with venom, "You know how badly I want to kill you right now," he spits. White Shirt smiles kindly, but with a shit-eating grin, like - ha ha! You want to kill me, but you can't! Black Shirt rises, with a "Goodbye...JACOB." And then he returns to wherever he hangs out for fun. Could this be the biblical Jacob and Esau? Po
ssibly. But, something about these two seems bigger than the conflict between Ben & Widmore (like their conflict was the red herring, meant to distract us from the REAL conflict of Jacob and his pessimist buddy).I read a really cool breakdown of the mythology references in this episode at Lost Redux --http://www.eonline.com/uberblog/watch_with_kristin/b123839_lost_redux_what_just_happened.html
I'm reposting it here because it's good stuff:
"MYTHOLOGY
This episode seemed to be positively chock-full of allusions to ancient mythologies. Here are some highlights:
This episode seemed to be positively chock-full of allusions to ancient mythologies. Here are some highlights:
Ancient Egyptian:
- Jacob's tapestry appeared to depict a winged sun, which is a key icon of ancient Egyptian art.
- There were also three jars in Jacob's temple. Any chance those are the canopic jars that typically contain the organs of ancient Egyptian mummies?
- Is the statue the crocodile-headed Egyptian god Sobek, representative of Nile fertility, or is it another member of the Egyptian pantheon? Michael Emerson says it's Taweret, a hippo-headed Egyptian goddess of childbirth, but those teeth look crocodilian to me...What's your call?
- Jin said that him being away from like Sun was wrong like the "sky being apart from the earth." In Egyptian mythology, the goddess of the sky is Nut and the god of the Earth is Geb, and as depicted in the image to the right, they are lovers lying together, forever mating and creating the world.
Ancient Greek stuff:
- There have been many references to the Odyssey in the show and another oblique one would appear to be Jacob's hobby of wiling away eternity by weaving a tapestry. The original Penelope (Odysseus' wife, not Desmond's girl) warded off the many suitors who wanted to court her by saying she would consider their offers once her tapestry was finished. She wove during the day…and unraveled her work every night, buying herself endless time to wait for her man.
- Another classical myth worth mentioning is the Fates (Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos), the three sister weavers of destiny, who manipulate our mortal lives with their spinning, measuring and cutting of thread.
Contemporary fairy-tale stuff
- You can't throw a spinning wheel and spindle into a story without reminding us of Sleeping Beauty, and her affiliation with Dorothy Gale and all the other dreamers of myth and legend. Our Losties surely have been living in a dreamtime since this tale began. Will they ever be able to awake?"
Everything changes... so much so that I couldn't even finish this blog... I promise to come back and rewrite this after I watch all the seasons again. It's almost time...!
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