LA X
February 7, 2010
The problem of an introduction is that it is not always the beginning. We have mild flirtations of recognition—in some cases, the labor of fantasy in which these introductions are carefully constructed between ignorance and knowing. So when we settle before our televisions in anticipation of the final premiere of LOST, we are not waiting for something new; we demand our speculations play out as imagined over months of absence . . . as if to flaunt our sagely prescience and mastery of understanding. But the story owes nothing to our gaming. To captivate or frustrate, its momentum is its own.
What can be expected, however, is a reply. The premiere is not so much a clean break as it is the second part of the finale. The pair becomes the thematic guide when combined. The Season Five finale, “The Incident,” reveals the mysterious Jacob, his unnamed nemesis and an argument that deserves more attention than the question surrounding Jack’s mission to destroy the Swan site:
1) The Man in Black: “They come; they fight; they destroy; they corrupt. It always ends the same.”
2) Jacob: “But it only ends once. Anything that happens before that . . . it’s just progress.”
These two men stand at a stalemate—one implies the process to achieving success is flawed (as is the end itself) and, as the architects of this design, have a responsibility to end the inherent suffering of their creation; the other insists the inevitability of man to freely find his own salvation. In literature, a version of this argument has been acted out in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. The skeptical brother, Ivan, presents a parable in which the Grand Inquisitor presides over the impending execution of Christ-returned. The Grand Inquisitor refutes Christ’s response to the three temptations offered by Satan: the problem of bread, the problem of conscience, and the problem of unity. The denial of each temptation, suggests the Inquisitor, only prolongs the misery of man. Without the steady direction of Christ, man “will destroy Thy temple. Where Thy temple stood will rise a new building; the terrible tower of Babel will be built again” and “their childish delight will end; it will cost them dear. They will cast down temples and drench the earth with blood. . . . Bathed in their foolish tears, they who created them rebels must have meant to mock them. . . . And so unrest, confusion, and unhappiness—that is the present lot of man after Thou dost bear so much for their freedom!”[i]
Unlike Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor, Jacob’s nemesis appears to have no desire to deny man his freedom. He makes no claim to kingdom, only the simple desire to return home (so far). This suggests an indentured servitude to a game he no longer wishes to play, and, by losing interest, he seeks to end the game by cheating or “find[ing] a loophole.” He becomes the trial lawyer selecting jurors whose biases might influence the verdict to his benefit: Ben is coerced into obedience; Locke is manipulated into believing he is a leader with a great destiny. And for those not eager to act as pawns? Witness the death of Eko after he refused guilt of conscience (We can assume this is the negative result that mirrors Ben’s judgment and subsequent belief in absolution). Are these men any more or less free according to alliance? What are we to think when Bram, Jacob’s bodyguard, looks aghast when the Locke-double says “You can go—You’re free”?
Before we became acquainted with the machination of the Island, we experienced Locke’s crisis of faith in Season Two: “As long as we push it [the button], we will never be free.” And this crisis became one of the many great temptations of Locke as he struggled with a misplaced sense of destiny. He may have not understood his role and death, but his complicity in folly could not be owned by anyone but himself. But what of the hand that plotted to create this end? If this is a story that is ultimately a battle between good and evil, by what measure can we determine the alignment of Jacob and his “old friend”?
Have we misplaced virtue by assigning it to Jacob and the Black Smoke? Slavoj Žižek suggests that “evil is something which threatens to return for ever, a spectral dimension which magically survives its physical annihilation and continues to haunt us. . . .The victory of good over evil is the ability to die, to regain the innocence of nature, to find peace in getting rid of the obscene infinity of evil.”[ii] This criteria might work if the men in question did not influence the course of the Survivors from beyond the grave and throughout time, whether by omniscience or magic.
Jacob and the Black Smoke might be better examined through the aptly named novella The Mysterious Stranger by Mark Twain. This story depicts life in an idyllic Austrian village visited by ghosts and angels. The villagers are tormented by the fear of the unholy—and it is this sensitivity to evil that is mocked by a young angel, Satan, who holds humanity in contempt due to their creation of the Moral Sense. He believes, that despite man’s reason, despite the esteem for morality and justice, he is nothing more than a selfish charlatan intent on suffocating the will of others. Man, as a moral and rational being, constantly violates self-made values. For gods, immortality and unrestrained power allow for a life of whimsical creation; they are exempt from reason and morality. There can be no violation of righteousness when all is accessible and nothing is impermanent: “We others are still ignorant of sin; we are not able to commit it; we are without blemish, and shall abide in that estate always. . . .We cannot do wrong; neither have we any disposition to do it, for we do not know what it is.”[iii]
If Jacob and the Black Smoke are not accountable to morality, will good and evil rest upon the Survivors who rebel against the absurdity of their position . . . to rally around the quest for freedom and the discovery of redemption? Or the defense against the endless cycle of suffering?
Again, the problem of introduction: our expectations, thought to finally meet that moment of clarity, are only confounded by more mystery.
[i] Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Grand Inquisitor, New York: Continuum, 2005, p.8-13.
[ii] Slavoj Žižek, Violence, New York: Picador, 2008, p.65-66.
[iii] Mark Twain, “The Mysterious Stranger,” Great Works of Mark Twain, New York, 1967, p. 286
