'Lost': Hungry like the wolf

OK, class, you've completed my week-long look at the intersection of "Lost" and Chuck Klosterman via a week-long look at the pleasures of not knowing things. While Klosterman explored the parameters of this pleasure via Hitchcock films, reality TV, and everyday voyeurism, I chose to apply his insights into the joy of being completely clueless about the events and surprises to come in Season 6 of "Lost." After all, applying random things in pop culture to "Lost" is kind of my thing.

Allow me, if you will, one more detour into Klosterman's latest book, "Eating the Dinosaur," as a way to not look at spoilers but rather than reason why the Island itself has long been the place where Jacob has called people in the name of "progress." Smoke monsters and frozen donkey wheels not withstanding, the Island is a fairly unique place. But does it derive its unique nature because of its indigenous Smokey population and topography, or from its isolation from the rest of the world?

I'd argue that the former aspects are but window dressing hanging upon the latter, more important state. To pivot off Klosterman's theories on the pleasure of not knowing and turn our eyes to the Lostaways stranded in the shadow of Oceanic 815's fuselage, let's look at a key quote from the essay, "Through a Glass, Blindly":

Unknowing feels good to your body, even when it feels bad to your brain--and that dissonance brings you closer to your original state of being. It's how an animal feels. Take the wolf, for example: I suspect it's unbelievably stressful to be a wolf. The world would be an endlessly confusing place, because a wolf has limited cognitive potential and understands nothing beyond its instinct and its own experience. Yet the wolf is more engaged with the experience of being alive. A wolf isn't as "happy" as you, but a wolf feels better. His normal state of being is the way you feel during dynamic moments of bewilderment.

Now, if I were Doc Jensen over at Entertainment Weekly, here's where I would pull out what I'd dub "The Duran Duran Theory of 'Lost'." However, I'm not him, and I'm afraid I'd have to pay him royalties if I actually called it that. But what is the Island, if not an "endlessly confusing place"? And how many of the Lostaways could be accurately described as "dead inside" before arriving on the Island, granted a second chance at life having survived a plane crash should have killed them all? In an environment that presents life or death struggles on a daily basis, the effort to survive sharpens senses perhaps dulled before the fateful flight from Sydney.

Under this line of analysis, The Island's isolation and inaccessibility serve to promote this reawakening of what Klosterman calls the "original state of being." Those that land there need to shed their skin; molt, if you will, and slake off those elements that have encumbered their natural, better, more authentic selves. Some, such as John Locke, are spiritually skinny dipping within minutes. Others, such as Jack, keep holding onto to that something supposedly nice back home. It's not that the act of returning is impossible, but first, a person has to return to their original self before they can return to society at large.

Keying in on Jack a bit further, the paragraph just after the one I just quoted from Klosterman's book offers a little insight into why Jack's "live together, die alone" speech is so crucial to the heart not only of "Lost," but the Island's true purpose:

When you secretly watch the actions of a stranger, you're living like the wolf. You have no idea what could happen or what will happen...In reality, you probably don't want to know what's happening in someone else's life. You merely want to continue not knowing. And most of the time, that's exactly what happens.

These words call to mind all the barely missed connections between the survivors pre-crash: either a face on a television, or a person that brushes by them in a police station, or even a person with whom they conducted a brief and ostensibly unimportant conversation. These are all a microcosm of the missed opportunities that occur every second of every day. On the Island, such missed opportunities are much harder to come by. By narrowing the scope of society, and placing said society in a smaller geographical landscape, strangers are forced to recognize their mutual humanity.

What they do with that recognition isn't always pleasant. In fact, according to The Man in Black, it's a perpetual cycle of pain: "They come. They fight. They destroy. They corrupt. It always ends the same." In short: they continue to continue not knowing their fellow man. Maybe this continued stream of misinformation is selfishly willful; maybe it's an unfortunate byproduct of good intentions gone wrong. But as of September 2004, cycle after cycle of those drawn to the Island have failed to truly shed the world left behind in order to forge a better, more pure, more original form of human interaction.

In other words, they are not embracing the dissonance that comes with feeling like the wolf. Rather than incorporate the unique nature of the Island, they shun it, ignore it, slam the door on it while pushing a button every 108 minutes. Recall Locke's words to Jack in "White Rabbit:

"I'm an ordinary man, Jack, meat and potatoes, I live in the real world. I'm not a big believer in magic. But this place is different. It's special. The others don't want to talk about it because it scares them. But we all know it. We all feel it."

They feel what Klosterman describes: not happy, but better. And that scares the living hell out of most of them. The Oceanic 6 could never have lived happily in the "real" world. I'd compare their premature journey home to Luke Skywalker's journey to Cloud City in "The Empire Strikes Back": both trips were taken before the training/transformation was complete. Now having returned, it's time for them to complete the journey started in Season 1.

It's not a journey outward. It's a journey inward.
 
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