• I love that Sawyer’s “Booty Babes” magazine features a cover story called “Getting to the bottom of it.” It’s as though the writers are hinting that we’re “getting to the bottom” of the major Island mysteries – that soon, some big secrets will be revealed. It’s also really amusing.

• That other book Ben is holding was apparently authored by Benjamin Disraeli, and it features one of his most famous quotations: “Justice is truth in action.” I’m not particularly familiar with Mr. Disraeli or his writing, but here are a few phrases that seem applicable to Lost, pulled at random. If you know the title of the book that’s shown, let me know:

“Grief is the agony of an instant, the indulgence of grief the blunder of a life.”

“”What is duty, and what is faith? What ought I to do, and what ought I to believe?”

“The more extensive a man’s knowledge of what has been done, the greater will be his power of knowing what to do.”

• Also in “the library”: Chaim Potok’s “The Chosen.” Obviously, the book’s title can be seen to refer to the candidates on the Island, but I wonder whether Lost is also giving us a bigger hint about the narrative. The Chosen focuses on the friendship between two boys, the tense relationship between one of those boys and his father, the idea of duty, the burden of expectation, and a bunch of other stuff. It’s good. Very moving stuff, even if I never quite bought the Rabbi’s reasoning at the end. You should read it. Remembering the novel’s basic plot, I began wondering if, perhaps, the central relationship of the two boys might mirror the as-yet-unseen origins of Jacob and the Man in Black.

It also occurs to me that the relationship between the Rabbi and his son mirrors the relationship between Jacob and Ben. SPOILERS FOR THE CHOSEN: In the novel, the Rabbi has been seen as distant and uncaring toward his son. At the novel’s end we discover that the boy’s father had discovered the boy’s fierce intelligence when he was very young, and was worried that his son might become a cold, hard person, without a real idea of what suffering actually is. And so he decided to become distant, in order to teach the boy a lesson about its importance.

Think of the way in which Jacob treated Ben – his figurative son. Was Ben’s dip in the Temple waters the equivalent of the Rabbi’s glimpsing his son’s intellect? Did Jacob intentionally distance himself because he wanted Ben to learn something? And is there an echo of this dynamic in the back-story of the MiB?

Ben: “I can get off this Island, and when I do I have a vast network of people and resources that will get you that money.”

• Ben bargains with Miles to set him free (one of the seven stages of grief – something I’ll get into a little further down in the column), and tells Miles what we think Miles already knows (remember his comment to Ben in Season 4: “I know what you can do.”): Ben can leave the Island, probably through the same means that Richard may have obliquely referred to earlier. But Miles has apparently picked up on Nikki and Paolo’s beyond-the-grave-broadcasting, and knows all about the diamonds that were scattered over them as they were buried alive (check out the Rewatch Column for “Expose” to take a nostalgic trip back and revisit the audience’s two FAVORITE CHARACTERS). And so, Ben is rendered effectually impotent. He has nothing to offer – nothing to bargain with.

• Miles’ use of “Jabronies” makes me smile. Who says that anymore?

Miles: “Right up until the second the knife went through his heart, he was hoping he was wrong about you.  I guess he wasn’t.” 

• If Miles is telling the truth here (and we’ve no reason to believe otherwise), then Jacob isn’t really some all-seeing, all-knowing “God” figure (although he is, in the metaphorical sense). He’s more like a guy who’s figured out the odds on human behavior either through repetition or through the Lighthouse mirrors or through his “thing for numbers” or through these Island tests he’s running. He’s kind of a scientist, no?

In the Season 6 thread, there’s been an ongoing and fascinating discussion about what Jacob does, what his plans are, how much he knows or knew, and just how “omnipotent/omniscient” he really is. It’s an interesting debate, and I encourage you to read it. Here’s my opinion:

“Dr. Linus” gave us confirmation that Jacob had been hoping to have been wrong about Ben right up until the moment he was killed. That pretty much explicitly confirms that Jacob doesn’t control (and doesn’t want to control) everyone’s actions – it also confirms that he isn’t certain about outcomes. Which means, to my mind, that he’s operating at a “higher plane” than the castaways, with more information, but that ultimately he’s relying on these characters to make their own choices.

And getting back to the scientist analogy – it seems as though Jacob spent a fair amount of his time “playing the odds,” so to speak. He seems to have had some kind of “future knowledge,” but Miles’ comment above confirms that he wasn’t/isn’t certain about the potential outcomes of events. Rather, it seems that he’s aware of the potential possibilities, and is attempting to shepherd (Shephard?) the candidates toward an as-yet-undefined goal – offering them choices that they must decide between. To do this, he’s been pulling people to the Island for a long time. He’s been testing them, presumably recording/noting the results, and then re-testing other groups. While this gives him a “God”-like quality that I’m enjoying exploring in these columns, it’s also arguable that it gives him a “Scientist” quality as well. Which again unites the concepts of faith and science.

Richard: “There’s something I need to do.”
Jack: “To do what?”
Richard: “Die.”

“Thus I draw from the Absurd three consequences, which are my revolt, my freedom, and my passion. By the mere activity of consciousness I transform into a rule of life what was an invitation to death, and I refuse suicide.” – Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus

• Richard, Hurley and Jack re-enter the Black Rock – a location that we haven’t returned to since Season 3. We get confirmation that Richard arrived on the Island via this ship, as one of its slaves/prisoners. We also learn something fascinating and illuminating about Richard’s unlikely immortality:

Richard: “Jacob touched me. And when Jacob touches you it’s considered a gift – only, it’s not a gift at all. It’s a curse.”

When Jacob touched Richard it made him “immortal.” But that’s not all it did. It also took away Richard’s ability to kill himself. How might these two things be inter-related? Is the process of aging (by which our body slowly dies, over a period of 70-some-odd years if we’re lucky) a form of self-harm, perhaps? The body hurting itself?

• Richard isn’t the only person to have been touched by Jacob – all of Jacob’s “candidates” have received this gift, as we saw in the Season 5 finale. So, by implication, none of the “candidates” are able to take their own lives, and suddenly we understand why it is that Jack’s suicidal attempt to jump off of a bridge was interrupted by a car crash, why Michael wasn’t able to kill himself in a car crash or with a firearm.

• As several commenters on the message boards have pointed out, taking away Richard’s ability to commit suicide hampers Richard’s free will. As we’ve seen, Jacob appears to be all about letting people make choices. So what gives?

Obviously, we don’t really know the “actual” answer to this question. But I’d like to suggest that there’s an interesting philosophical element to Jacob’s “gift” and Richard’s subsequent inability to take his own life. And what’s that element? Well, it’s Absurd.

Jean Paul Sartre (who should be familiar to you if you’ve read the Lost: Rewatch columns), Soren Kierkegaard (the author of “Fear and Trembling,” the book Hurley found in the tunnels leading to the Temple) and Albert Camus all wrote and thought about “the Absurd,” or “Absurdism.” What’s Absurdism? The “simple” answer (haha!) is that Absurdism is a philosophy stating that “the efforts of humanity to find inherent meaning in the universe ultimately fail (and hence are absurd), because no such meaning exists, at least in relation to the individual” (a very Existentialist POV). The disconnect between the meaning we seek and the apparent meaningless of the universe results in “the Absurd.” If that sounds a lot like Exitentialism, you’re right. It does.

Sartre, that famed Existentialist, wrote on the Absurdity of existence, Kierkegaard on the Absurdity of certain religious truths, and how they can block us from finding “God.” Camus focused on the dualism of life (two sides, one black, one white). Camus believed that happiness was momentary, but death was forever. Morbid as this sounds, it was meant to be a positive and life-affirming idea. We KNOW we’re going to die. And as in Existentialism, the Absurdist believes that life and the universe are meaningless, rendering our lives meaningless. And yet, despite this knowledge, we crave meaning. This is Absurd. It is a paradox. And yet it’s still true, says Mr. Camus.

Camus believed that lives must have meaning in order to be valued and that, despite the lack of meaning in the universe, we are capable of creating that meaning. What does all of this have to do with Richard’s inability to kill himself? Well, Kierkegaard and Camus believed that there were three options available to humanity to resolve the disconnect between seeking meaning and outward meaninglessness:

(1) Suicide.
(2) Religious belief.
(3) Acceptance.

Both Camus and Kierkegaard rejected suicide as an option. According to Camus, suicide serves only to proclaim that life is “too much.” To Camus, suicide was, in fact, a rejection of freedom – a surrendering of all options to the void. He and Sartre seem to share some of the same basic views, and as discussed in past Rewatch/Back To The Island columns, existentialism is splattered all over this show (Camus, as you probably know, didn’t consider himself an Existentialist, but despite this there’s still a lot of overlap in their ideas).

Suicide, under this view, is a form of nihilism. It’s a rejection of choice and of created meaning – a rejection of what Jacob arguably stands for. Nihilism – a belief in the meaninglessness of things – is the domain of the Man in Black. So it makes perfect sense that Jacob’s gift wouldn’t allow that particular choice, from a way-too-heady point of view.

Does all of that make any sense at all? It does to me, but then, I’m writing this silly thing. I encourage you to leave questions and thoughts in the comments section, to post them on the message boards, and if those options aren’t available to you, to visit Back to the Island and leave your thoughts there.

Richard: “I devoted my life – longer than you can possibly imagine – in service of a man who told me that everything was happening for a reason – that he had a plan; a plan that I was a part of…”

• The parallels between Jacob/God and Others/followers grows stronger with every episode. Something interesting to note: this is the second time that Jack has been instrumental in renewing Richard’s faith.

• Jack makes the Jacobian choice to let Richard make his own choice, and agrees to help him try and die.

Great Hurley Line: “If you change your mind I’ll be, like, a mile away.”

• There’s an exquisite instance of JACKFACE! in this episode, but I can’t seem to find a screencap of it. Dammit.

• By letting the dynamite’s fuse burn down, Jack takes the “leap of faith” that Kierkegaard described in his book “Fear and Trembling.” In this way, he brings Richard “back to life” and away from death essentially.

• Anti-Locke makes a sneaky appearance to Ben and offers him a chance to live – he sets Ben free of his physical chains (which was interesting – is the Man in Black capable of coaxing physical matter, whereas Jacob is capable of guiding the spirit/consciousness?), tells him where to find a weapon, and tells him where to find Anti-Locke’s growing group of disgruntled grunts. Essentially, Anti-Locke offers Ben a chance to escape his responsibility for what he’s done and Ben, slippery snake-oil salesman that he is, totally takes him up on the deal.

• Since murdering Jacob, Benjamin Linus has arguably progressed through the Kübler-Ross grief cycle. What’s the grief cycle? It’s a defined series of stages through which most human beings process grief in the wake of a shocking/tragic event or a death. They are: (1) Shock Stage (initial paralysis), (2) Denial Stage (Trying to avoid the inevitable), (3) Anger Stage (Frustrated outpouring of bottled-up emotion), (4) Bargaining Stage (Seeking a way out), (5) Depression Stage (Final realization of the inevitable), (6) Testing Stage (Seeking realistic solutions), and (7) Acceptance (Finding a way forward).

These stages were established by Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, a Swiss doctor who challenged the then-conventional wisdom that there was nothing to be done for a grieving person. We’ve seen Ben pass through shock, and we’ve seen him deny his role in the death of Jacob (an echo, as well, of Peter’s denial of Christ – does Ben deny three times?). In this episode, we see his initial fear and anger over being confronted with the possibility of his own death. We watch as he attempts to bargain his way out of what he sees as an inevitable death by offering Miles money. We watch as he sinks into a depression, realizing that there’s no way out for him this time. We see him seek a solution to his problem by taking Anti-Locke’s offer, and we see his eventual acceptance in the jungle. And speaking of which, let’s talk about my favorite moment in the episode – and what might be one of my favorite moments in the entirety of the show.

STILL MORE AFTER THE PAGE BREAK!