A few posts ago I wrote about how one of Lost‘s current season episodes introduced a new character, Charlotte Staples Lewis, a scientist from the mysterious freighter who literally drops into the island. My post referenced the brilliant analysis by Entertainment Weekly‘s Jeff Jensen, who expertly recaps each episode and finds a wealth of allusions, literary, cinematic and others, many of which might acutally be intentional and could tell us something about the significance of a name or character. Charlotte’s initials, being clear signposts to C. S. (Clives Staples) Lewis, came along about the same time her fellow freighter colleague, physicist Daniel Faraday begins experiments that indicate the island is moving through time at a slower rate than the surrounding world. Indeed, in recent weeks the island survivors found the freighter’s murdered doctor washed ashore and when they radio the news to the ship, the doctor himself is still alive there. In fact, the island time seems in flux, sometimes faster, sometimes slower than that of the outside world.
Last week’s episode, “There’s No Place Like Home, part. 1,” itself a reference to The Wizard of Oz, ended with some of our survivors trekking through the forest to rescue friends when they again encounter “the Others,” the strange group of humans who have apparently been on the island far longer than they have. For a long time they were seen as the enemy, but with a group of mercenaries on a mission to “torch the island,” perhaps these forest dwellers might not be the real villains. And that’s where the Narnia connection seems to arise.
With the Disney/Walden adaptation of the second Chronicles of Narnia book, Prince Caspian premiering last weekend, I started persusing the book to reacquaint myself with movie’s source. Set many hundreds of years after The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the Pevensie children find that the land they once ruled was long before invaded by the Telmarines. They discover that time moves much more quickly in Narnia than in their own world. They rescue a dwarf from the Telmarines who tells them of the dire state of the enchanted land now ruled by those who have suppressed the truth about Narnia’s glorious past and it’s wonderful creatures.
When, in the fifth chapter, Prince Caspian learns that his Uncle Miraz seeks his death in order to allow his own newborn son to become the next heir to the throne of Narnia, he flees into the woods and is warily taken in by a talking badger and two dwarves, Trumpkin and Nikabrik. Caspian learns that they are part of “Old Narnia,” the talking animals and mythical creatures who were driven away by the invading Telmarines who conquered Narnia ages earlier. Now considered merely the stuff of legend, Caspian discovers the tales are true. The chapter ends with this paragraph:
There was a great deal more talk, but it all ended with the agreement that Caspian should stay and even the promise that, as soon as he was able to go out, he should be taken to see what Trumpin called “the Others”; for apparently in these wild parts all sorts of creatures the the Old Days of Narnia still lived on in hiding.
Coincidence? With the earlier allusions, it’s now hard to deny that Lost‘s masterminds are either doing some bigtime cultural poaching in the woods of Narnia or trying to weave a brilliant web that captures our imaginations in new and intriguing ways.
In Lost, the Others give us a sense of evil. They have no guilt about killing (or worse) the newcomers for unexplained resons. They have some previous and unknown reason for being there and have some hidden agenda. They have knowledge about all the newcomers and no one knows why. They were brought to the island by some powerful, possibly malevolent entity who does not seem to go gray.
In Narnia, the Others are the remnants of the original dwellers who were conquered by an evil warrior. They seek only to be allowed to live. They seek to do no harm on the newcomers, but the newcomers seek to wipe them out none the less.
It seems to me that the only similarities between the Lost series and the Chronicles of Narnia are that 1) there are two sets of people in each story and each set of people has their own understanding of the events, and 2) the name “the Others” is used in both stories.
After having read the entire Chronicles of Narnia series more times than I can possibly count over the past 20 years, and being a fan of the series Lost, it seems quite a stretch to see similarities between them.
Narnia is a story about Christ (Aslan) choosing to allow himself to take our “crimes” on himself even though he was innocent. There are many references to following Christ’s leading even if we do not understand where it it heading all through the 7 books. Good and evil are clearly marked.
Lost has yet to make it clear who is the “good guy” from week to week. One week we believe one thing, the next week, there is a reason given for the seemingly evil behavior they now show. No character is absolute in Lost. That’s part of the reason it’s drawn all of us into the story.
Maybe we should compare them by seeing one in a jungle and the other story based many times in the woods….both are difficult to travel thru?…no wait…the number of people involved?….no wait….the search for clear water?….no wait….mysterious animals?…..
Comment by Marti — May 27, 2008 @ 2:32 pm |
Well said Marti. Well said.
Comment by naomi — May 29, 2008 @ 12:54 pm |
Marti,
Of course, you’re right. But once you start noticing allusions or outright references like Charlotte Staples Lewis, you’re bound to notice what appear to be others–however they might not play out in Lost the same way they did in the original source. It could be that Cuse and Lindelof just like postmodern borrowing, creating a web of seeming signifiers that may or may not tell us anything about a character or plotline but become the Web-enabled equivalent of old parlor games as we immerse ourselves in the endless game of What It Might Mean. It adds to the fun as long as we think the series actually is going somewhere meaningful. After a while I wonder how all these references could all mean what they seem to mean and the series still add up to something more than a cultural bulletin board of clever references. Maybe in two years, we’ll know!
Comment by Alex — May 29, 2008 @ 1:47 pm |
Alex,
We can add meaning to anything, even if it wasn’t intended by the author. A professor told us that Robert Frost’s poem, “Stopping in the Woods on a Snowy Evening” was about death, etc. I argued. Later that same professor showed us a film of Mr. Frost answering that same question by saying the poem was about stopping in the woods on a snowy evening and nothing else. Maybe we are putting far too much into our analysis of Lost. Isn’t it quite possible that the writing is all a clever web of tricks to keep us entertained and nothing more? Either way, as you said earlier, in two years we will know. Be sure we will still be hanging on till the very end.
Comment by Marti — June 3, 2008 @ 1:15 pm |