After watching last season’s Lost finale a couple times, the opening conversation between Jacob and his unnamed nemesis have begun to remind me of the Book of Job. ThinkChristian blogger Jerod Clark wrote last year about how these figures seem like God (Jacob) and Satan (Man in Black). And when they vaguely reference a long-standing disagreement over humans, I am reminded of Satan's conjecture regarding Job’s faith and God's offer to allow him to test it.
"You're trying to prove me wrong," says the Man in Black.
"You are wrong," says Jacob.
In a season that turned Lost’s religious symbolism and blatant references up to 11, this wasn’t all that has struck me as I’ve rewatched those final two hours.
I’ve noticed how Locke (or more correctly the Man in Black in disguise) goaded Ben into murder with classic temptation tools of Satan himself: guilt, loss, arrogance, shame, sense of entitlement. Fake Locke tells Ben: "Despite your loyal service to this island, you got cancer. You had to watch your own daughter gunned down right in front of you. Your reward for those sacrifices? You were banished. You did all this in the name of a man you never even met." These feel like the kind of devious whispers that may have been whispered into the ear of a heartbroken, destitute Job about his faith in an absent God.
I also noticed that despite the claims Fake Locke makes, Jacob really isn’t absent and passive. Much has been made out of how Jacob touches each Oceanic Flight 815 survivor he visits, but his touch isn’t his only intervention. Instead, he plays a substantial role in the action each time he appears in a character’s story. He's no passive observer. If you remove him from each scenario, the events would play out very differently. Young Kate would have had to face the police. Little Sawyer’s pen would have died meaning that he’d never gotten his uncle’s pep talk that he later quotes as a life philosophy. Sayid would have also been hit by the car that killed Nadia. And Locke, it seems, would have died instead of being crippled.
Of course, as the final season starts tonight, we have no idea where Lost will take these characters of Jacob, Ben and the Man in Black. I assume this modern myth will continue to explore good versus evil, predestination and redemption.
But how? What do you make of the Jacob/Man in Black struggle? Is free will and choice a reality in Lost’s world?
What are your predictions on where the show’s religious themes are going?
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Comments (9)
There's a big and very overt season one connection with Jacob and Man in Black. When Locke is describing backgammon to Walt, Locke calls it a game "older than Jesus Christ. . .Two players. Two sides. One is light one is dark." This appears to be what we're seeing played out on the island.
If Jacob did change the path of each 815er he visited, this is the hardest one to guess what he changed. My guess would be that they needed someone to tell them not to take their love for granted. They needed to hear their love was special. And if they really held on to that, than just maybe it led to a different matrimony for them. But that is my only guess.
The theory that the Man in Black is Esau is very popular. That could be his name--and these could be two rival brothers vying for something--but my guess is that these are not in any way the Biblical Jacob and Esau just like this isn't the real John Locke or a female C.S. Lewis. But I am thinking that these characters are archetypal representations of good and evil.
Locke/Esau insists he's not an impersonal What, but a Who trying to get home. And we know he accuses humanity of nothing but corruption.
He describes Locke--his everyman puppet--as a hopelessly broken and confused being, shouting at the world for being told what he couldn't do (even though they were right), yet possessing a cetain strength and clarity.
Jacob sees his own murder coming, but gives his life willingly. It looked a lot like Aslan at table rock to me. He then appears to followers to give them direction.
Sayid, as good as dead, must be drowned in (blood-colored) waters to have his life renewed.
And of course, there's a list of who's in and who's out (written by Jacob?).
Of course, I'm still waiting to see how they reconcile the timelines of the crash-Losties and the LAX-Losties. Why, if "It worked," is there still a hatch station?
For those wondering about the reconciliation of this season's two very different plotlines (a great new twist on the old flashback device), I recommend this great interview with the producers (there is a spiritual connection...): http://popwatch.ew.com/2010/02...