• The visual of the Cork evokes Pandora’s box quite well yet again.
• The carvings on the Island’s Cork are cuneiform script, which apparently originated out of the area now known as Iraq, and is associated with Sumerian language groups. Sumer is considered “the cradle of civilization,” given that it’s the earliest ‘civilization’ we’ve yet to discover. Its name translates to mean “Land of the Lords of Brightness,” and Sumerian culture is typically credited as being responsible for the invention of the wheel (wonder if they made any Frozen ones?), of writing, of agriculture and of irrigation.
The show’s sly nod toward this culture indicates that the Cork was placed and/or discovered by members of, or contemporaries/immediate descendents of, the Sumerian people. In other words – people have been coming to the Island, and creating Incidents, since the beginning of civilization. Which begs the question: What was there before the Cork? Were an ancient group of inquisitive people responsible for some sort of proto-Incident, which resulted in there being a need for the Cork to begin with? Or was the Cork instead designed to alter what was already present and malign? Did some forgotten group somehow begin the process of changing “dark” to “light” millennia ago? Are the Castaways a link in a causal chain that stretches back past recorded history? Arguably, yes.
That’s the bee’s knees as far as I’m concerned.
The way that this detail connects to and enriches the religious preoccupations of the show makes me a happy camper. Sumerian myth was the earliest belief system to have been recorded, and traces of that system can be found in the Bible, the Torah and the Koran (see: Genesis, and a creation story that’s intriguingly similar to the Sumerians’, see Eve and her curse-inducing consumption of greenery, the tale of a global, devastating Flood, etc. et al).
And consider this: the beliefs of Sumerian religion were not exactly the glad tidings of the New Testament. They had a dim view of life and the afterlife:
“In Sumerian myth, the part of the Netherworld where humans were dwelled after they died was dark, dusty and unpleasant…. As a result of the sun traveling beneath the Earth, the Underworld became very hot, a place of fire and brimstone, which resulted in naphtha springs and bitumen seeps erupting on the surface of the Earth. Occasionally the constant reheating of the Underworld would turn exceptionally violent and produce volcanoes and earthquakes…The Sumerians envisioned Kur as lying under the land of the living as people are buried under the ground and so the gates of the underworld lead downwards.” (there’s also a whole bunch of stuff about women sleeping with Bulls and having kids and all sorts of bizarreness in Sumerian legend. Worth glancing at, if you’re into learning about the Ancient Kinks of our Ancestors).
If you examine the concept of “Underworld” throughout history, our conception/perception of it slowly changes, throughout different cultures and time periods. It goes from a place that’s much like hell as we might describe it now to the featureless but relatively-more-‘benign’ Underworld of Greco-Roman belief to the Jewish idea of Sheol to the Catholic notion of Limbo to the Tibetan notion of rebirth and on and on anon. It’s as though the Light sums up and represents all of these ideas while standing outside of any sectarian interpretation.
This is a perfect example of an unanswered question that’s suitably mysterious and “mythic,” allowing us to theorize about it without it interfering with the characters I care about. The pieces are there for us to assemble, but there’s no one “answer” to the mysteries of this place. I like that we can take a good long look at those tunnels and come away with guesses, theories, pretty-good-hunches, while leaving the “truth” of them aside. Here are some of my thoughts on them, and on the water of the Pool:
It seems to me that water is fed into the Pool via what looks like two separate stone channels (two sides, one black, one white). The water collects in the central pool, where it’s somehow “supercharged” by whatever energy/presence/power/steamy jell-o is located underneath the Cork. That water then flows out of the Pool, through the tunnels that we see briefly, and to several locations all over the Island.
As one Chud commenter pointed out, it makes visual “sense” to think of the Pool as the hub at the center of a spoked Wheel, with the tunnels representing those spokes (like the Dharmachakra). This mirrors the Island itself, which seemd to be at the “center” of Time and Space, with “spokes” (or “warrens,” to shove some Watership Down in there too) radiating outward from it that will allow passage to it.
Where do these tunnels lead? One presumably leads to The Temple, where the waters bubble up into the “healing” spring that the Others protected. Why did those Temple waters grow dark and muddy in the wake of Jacob’s death? Well, we can surmise that the Island’s protector and the “heart” of the Island are connected, and that the darkened waters of the spring indicated that the protector had died without first naming a replacement – which I presume weakens/disrupts/discolors the “natural” golden quality of the Light somehow.
What about the other tunnels? Presumably, one leads to/beneath the Swan Station, one leads to/beneath the Orchid Station, and the others lead off to other, similar locations. I like the notion that the Island is one big Dharmachakra, and that the Pool’s hub-like nature is mirrored by the Island’s hub-like nature.
• What more can we imagine/theorize/extrapolate/BS about as regards the Island and its heart?
As I’ve noted before, The Island is literally a “sea of stories.” It contains at least one other world, and probably an infinite number, where stories change and overlap and become new stories and perpetuate through eternity. By snuffing out the Light, you snuff that out. You remove Limbo, and because it exists in a timeless state, the ripple effect of doing this would presumably consign all of history’s unmoved souls to oblivion, and would prevent anyone else from remixing with the Oceanic sea to have their story retold, reincarnated in familiar but different form. It would be “true death” for the world.
Or maybe it’s even “worse”! Maybe, given the Electromagnetic properties of the Island and the way that the Light shifts from ethereal and golden to an ugly, sinister red, the uncorking of the Island is the unleashing of “darkness” into all possible worlds – a reversal of the Island’s “positive” polarization, which enables people to move on if they’re able, into a “negative” polarization, making Limbo/Quantum worlds into Existential hells from which there is no escape, no moving on, no change or Grace or connection.
That’s all fanwank, you say. Pure speculation. You’re doing the writers work for them.
That’s one way to look at it. Another way to look at it is that I enjoy thinking about this stuff, and I’m glad that some (not all) of the ambiguity of the show – specifically this ambiguity – allows me to continue thinking about it. I like the possibilities more than any potential answer. It’s a kick. Some of you feel the same way. Some of you don’t. I’m cool with that.
• The light of the uncorked Pool looks volcanic as well, and that reminds me of the fact that the Island itself is volcanic (according to Olivia Goodspeed, anyway), and has been dormant or extinct for a long time. It’s possible to infer that the last occurrence of seismic activity was a result of whatever ancient Incident occurred here.
Jack: “Looks like you were wrong too.”
• The Man in Black’s shift back to mortal man means that we can finally see Jack and (Anti-)Locke get their brawl on. I’ve been waiting six seasons for that smackdown, and it did not disappoint.
Eloise: “Are you going to take my son?”
Desmond: “Not with me – no.”
• Those of you wondering whether the Limbo of Season 6 exists only for the Castaways we see in the church at the end? This line (among others) should correct that misapprehension. Note also that Desmond seems to imply that someone else will be the one to take Daniel away from her.
• And let me underline again how knotty and sad this Limbo is. It’s not all unicorns and rainbow bridges – this is a level of reality where someone can actively conspire to keep someone “asleep” and unaware of what’s happened to them. Eloise’s attempts to keep Daniel there is, as mentioned, very interesting to me. Her motives for wanting to keep her son in Limbo are at once deeply selfish and eminently relatable. This kind of selfishness isn’t something you’d expect to find in “heaven” – someone who’s arguably already been “enlightened” choosing to stay and choosing to manipulate her son in order to get him to stay too. That’s dark, and it refutes entirely the notion of this Limbo as cuddly-care-bear-heaven. It also nicely mirrors the way that Eloise worked so hard to have her son killed by her younger self (still one of Lost’s best mindf*cks).
• The choice not to give us much of the Daniel/Driveshaft collaboration was a smart one. Oh, and hey, Table 23!
• Kate finds enlightenment in Claire’s golden vagina.
• Snark aside, this is where my eyes started tearing up. The emotional investment I’ve placed in these characters paid off in spades during The End, and that changed not one whit when I rewatched the episode for this column.
• I despised Charlie and Claire’s weirdly orgasmic, Season 1 Fake Peanut Butter scene. I’m firmly anti-CharliePorn in general – the world is not ready to watch Dominic Monaghan making O-Faces while sucking on his own finger. So of course Lost has to revive that image for me here. DAMN YOU, LOST!
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