'Lost': Cabin confusion comes to light, Part 1

One of the perks about writing a "Lost" blog is the chance to interact with fans of the show from throughout the world. This blog is global, y'all: I know this very fact from this site's Facebook group. Not a member yet? Even after I pimp it in each article? For shame. Go join, then come back. I'm not going anywhere.

A reader of the site and a member of the aforementioned group dropped me a message the other day, and asked a question I want to address today. So let's get to reader Heidi's query:


This gets to the heart of the long con perpetrated by The Man in Black over the course of "Lost" as a whole. Course, it's also part of the long con perpetrated by Darlton and the rest of the writing staff: leading us down the Jacob road for three years only to introduce another party at the end of Season 5. Some might cry foul at introducing a new party so late in the narrative game, but what I've tried to do in the "Light vs. Dark" series is demonstrate just how long The Man in Black has been part of the show, albeit unseen.

Again, let's get John Locke's take on backgammon, possibly the most important words ever uttered in the show's history: "Backgammon is the oldest game in the world. Archeologists found sets when they excavated the ruins of ancient Mesopotamia. Five thousand years old. That's older than Jesus Christ....Two players. Two sides. One is light ... one is dark." They introduced Jacob and The Man in Black in the freakin' pilot episode of the show. But instead of showing them right away, they simply pulled the camera back slowly over a series of five years from a close-up of Jack Shephard's eye to finally show, in frame, the two parties that have cast their shadows over all that's come before.

So we now look at "Lost" not in terms of events that took place after a mysterious plane crash. Rather, we have to look at the plane crash in the larger context of a conflict dating back centuries, if not millennia. The show is capturing the end-game of a war spanning thousands of years. The Egyptians that found these shores couldn't end it. The 19th-century slave traders couldn't do a damn thing about it. The mid-20th century American military brought a hydrogen bomb but more of the same attitude. And all the while, Jacob held onto hope while The Man in Black seethed.

See, both sides see this as the end: it's all or nothing for both parties. It's not enough to look at "Lost" as the culmination of Jacob's efforts. That ties a little too neatly into something akin to "destiny," a word that has its uses to a point but still ultimately trumps human will. It also dismisses The Man in Black's equal (and equally powerful) attempts to prove his nemesis wrong once and for all. To do so required an insane amount of planning, psychological manipulation, and patience. It also required more than a fair share of subterfuge, and that's where the cabin comes into play. It's not only a simple shelter made of wood; it's a metaphor for the Island itself, a battleground fought over, contained, hidden, and moved throughout the ages as the two sides seek to stake claim to it.

So far, I've only laid the ground work for the cabin's importance. But I felt it necessary to state the conditions under which the cabin took on significance before analyzing it head on. Tomorrow, I'll get to its central purpose and answer Heidi's question more directly.

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