Two blogs today revisited the television show LOST, including mention of some of its religious themes and overtones. Since I have (as always) been pondering its mysteries, I thought I would join in the conversation.
The show has, from the very first episode, been gearing up to explore a mythology in which two sides are playing a game. In the finale of last season, we finally got to meet the players, and their clothing symbolized what we were led to anticipate in the introduction of backgammon in the pilot episode. Black and white, light and dark.
Jacob and Esau do not (at least so far) resemble the polar opposites of good and evil as one might expect if Zoroastrianism were in the background. They are more like the light and dark of Taoism, the Yin and Yang. They also resemble God’s two powers in ancient Jewish literature – love and justice in tension. Of course, they have only just been introduced, and so very little is certain about them at this stage. But there is certainly room for an exploration of two sides that reflect two opposing but complementary forces, rather than a battle of “good vs. evil”. In Taoism, it is not that yin or yang is evil – what is evil is when the balance between the two is lost.
Some have suggested that the smoke monster is Esau (or whatever we wish to call Jacob’s nemesis). This is possible, but if it is correct, then Esau has clearly not been trapped in the cabin, since we’ve seen the smoke monster around the island. Was Jacob, perhaps, trapped in the cabin at some point? Or is there a third player in this game? There are systems, such as Vedic thought, in which balance has to be kept between more than two forces, and if that spoils the simplicity of the backgammon symbolism, it wouldn’t be the first time that John Locke has been wrong. But note too that the smoke monster lives beneath the temple that the Others frequent. And this suggests that the Others are not simply “on Jacob’s side”. Like all good polytheists, they seem to have a connection to more than one powerful figure. Alternatively, has the smoke monster been Jacob the whole time? And if we actually see Esau appear as smoke, will the smoke be white?
There are many unanswered mysteries, and while the show has done many brilliant and intriguing things this far, there are still a lot of incongruities that might leave nit-pickers seriously unsatisfied. As for what happens next, it seems that everything that has been orchestrated thus far by Jacob may have one main objective: if setting off the bomb prevented Oceanic Flight 815 from crashing, then John Locke never crashed on the island, and Esau’s loophole has presumably been closed. But where that leaves the plot of the show is hard to say.
One other possibility that deserves thought is whether Jacob and Esau might not be Adam and Eve. Presumably a smoke monster that can appear as the deceased Alex is neither male nor female. And Jacob inhabits a statue of Tawaret, a female deity. Might it be that both will die before the final season is over? And if so, will that be the end of their game? Or will new players take their place?
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