Amy Bauer
A letter always arrives at its destination
Message in a Bottle
"The island will show us"
"That would be silly"
The other who really believes
"Are You Him?"
notes
NB: this essay discusses events and characters in Lost through season 2, episode 9.
The letter - in its old fashioned and very material appearance as a message written with pen on paper and signed by hand - plays a role in Lost that echoes its role in classic literature through the ages. That is, it functions as a one-sided communication, a message delivered at a distance from one party to another, with little or no indication that that message will receive a reciprocal response. The letters enclosed in a bottle and lovingly sent out by the castaways on the raft at the end of season 2 returned unceremoniously to the same shore at the beginning of season 2, washed up as if forgotten, never to reach their intended destination. But the scene in which Claire discovers the full bottle in the tide simply underlined that fact I that the letters had always already been delivered, just as the message young James Ford wrote to his alter ego "Sawyer" had been delivered, many times over, to its true recipient. As Lacan noted in his famous essay on Poe's Purloined letter, a letter always arrives at its destination.1 That is (one meaning among the many punned in French) is that a message sent always reaches its intended recipient because its message is conferred retroactively. It doesn't "mean" anything until it is received and "decoded." It then has meaning conferred upon it, meaning which therefore, by virtue of its import, can never be wrong nor wrongly delivered.
Claire's message is a clear evocation of Lacan’s paradox. Claire received three messages from Malkin:2 1) “I can’t give you a reading” (i.e., what I see is too disturbing to relate); 2) “You and only you must raise this child”; and 3) “I have arranged for a couple in L.A. to adopt your child.” Each message has one apparent meaning on the surface, but provokes an entirely different response.
1) The message is “Go away and don’t come back.” But Claire does come back, for a second reading.
2) The message is “Keep your baby.” But Claire takes steps toward adoption.
3) The message is “Disregard all previous warnings, but follow my new instructions to the letter.” This time Claire does, but the outcome is the opposite of the apparent intent of the message.
Why did Malkin’s messages always meet their intended response? Message 1) alerted Claire to her “specialness,” and got her to take the psychic seriously (he must be real, he didn’t take her money!) Message 2) provoked Claire, and sent her out into the world, where she had to confront her situation, her feelings, and the strange coincidence that “aborted” the adoption proceedings. Message 3) of course was but message 2 in disguise, leaving Claire stranded but sole guardian and parent of her child.
Sawyer "conned" Kate into thinking that his letter meant, “I am a vicious con artist who has ruined lives” when it was originally written as “I am going to hunt you down for what you did to my family.”3 When Kate "decoded" the letter by filling in the blanks of Sawyer's story, she seemed to find the “true” meaning of the letter. But Sawyer’s letter had two, equally true meanings: he was both victim and victimizer; the letter was a moebius strip that represented his life as a paradoxical prison he couldn’t escape.
The first message Kate received was every bit as “true” as the second message, perhaps more so. In some sense it doesn’t matter whether the traumatic event actually happened or not; what matters is that the story represented by the letter-the message it communicated-created Sawyer as we know him. The letter from the little boy to the absent Sawyer did indeed reach its destination: it told the adult where he came from, and it told his inamorata everything she needed to know about him. The “real” Sawyer may not even exist; what is not in doubt is that James wrote the letter to himself.
Michael's letters were intended for the toddler Walt, yet not delivered in a timely fashion.4 The letters arrived at their destination in Amsterdam, Italy, or Australia but not their intended recipient. Yet they were eventually delivered, and likely had a much greater impact on the 10 year-old Walt then they would have had on a 2 yr old. Michael’s letters arrived at their destination in time and space, as cumulatively they spelled out Michael's recent history for his son at a time when Walt could appreciate it and in a place where they could develop a unique bond.
"Joan Hart's" letter led Kate back home but also back to tragedy; can we really say that this letter arrived at its destination?5 If Tom’s tragedy defined who Kate is now, then it certainly did. But the most important message that circulates through Kate’s story, the pure signifier that structures her character arc, is Tom’s toy plane.
Lenny gave Hurley the "letter" of the numbers, a message given inadvertently, and never intended for Hurley's benefit.6 But Reyes won the lottery and a huge serving of tragedy as well, thus the "message" seemed to reach its recipient regardless of intent. It can be argued that if the numbers affect one, then one was meant to receive them.
At this point in Lost’s master narrative the numbers seem to be the purest signifier of all, the ultimate MacGuffin. Do they need a probable cause or purpose “other” than that of structuring the narrative, bringing all the characters together, and appearing to create both great wealth and great tragedy for all they “infect”? Could the numbers ever be more important as a number series then they are as a pure signifier with no substance, one whose sheer kinetic ubiquity quilts the elements of Lost together and confers a higher order upon the whole?
Of course the truly inexplicable, mixed messages are the visions, whispers and hallucinations, and Locke receives the most troubling of these. Did he misread the prophetic dream of downed plane and bloody Boone, thinking his mother’s glance upward led to salvation?7 As we see the island collectively crack at the seams, followed by an explosion of messages –secrets are revealed, bonds tested, and fears confronted – we can say that for us, the viewers, Locke’s “letter” has definitely arrived at its destination.
We know a great deal about John Locke by the time he has surreptitiously tracked Kate and Sawyer to a private campfire in Episode 16, Outlaws. We have been witness to the abuse he received in his prior job, the trauma he suffered when his Walkabout dream was denied, and the disability that disappeared when he deplaned from that fateful flight 815, not to mention the newfound prowess he shows in hunting and woodcraft. Yet Locke remains perhaps the most mysterious character on the island (with the possible exception of Kate), an enigmatic loner who seems to vacillate from spiritual guide and healer to lost child and doubting Thomas by turns.
As a forceful rival to Jack for moral leadership of the island clan, writers and fans have identified him as a representative for faith as opposed to science, the latter exemplified by Jack's ostensibly more rational approach to the mystery of the island and the task of surviving on it. But this conflict is rarely unambiguous; Locke often seems to take a rational course of action directly opposed to Jack's, whose decisions are overtly emotional and contingent on his inner struggles. By contrast, Locke's actions imply a deeper and less mercurial motivating principle than Jack's: a faith in something beyond himself that can be challenged but never fully extinguished. Those points at which Locke has expressed shock and anguish occur in the context of that belief, but paradoxically, that belief is never located in a particular person, place or creed, other than "the island." Indeed Locke's references to the Island do not refer to the island as an object in which one has faith, but as an object that secures faith for the willing believer.
In White Rabbit Locke first discusses the island as a character onto itself with Jack:
Episode 5, White Rabbit
Locke: 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. . . . I've looked into the eye of this island. And
what I saw was beautiful.
Locke is largely silent on the "specialness" of the island until he secures an acolyte in Boone, and becomes obsessed with opening the hatch by any means necessary.
Episode 19, Deus ex Machina
Boone: So, we're just going to build another one of your inventions, hope it
works this time.
Locke: That's right.
Boone: What if it doesn't?
Locke: Then the island will tell us what to do.
Later in Locke's dream the debate with Boone grows heated, as the image of
Boone challenges Locke directly, mocking the latter's seemingly baseless faith
in providence:
Boone: Oh, we're supposed to. We're supposed to find this, right? We're supposed
to open it, right? Then tell me something, John, if we're supposed to open
it, then why the hell haven't we opened it yet?
Locke: The island will send us a sign.
Boone [sarcastically]: The island will send us a sign.
Locke: All that's happening now is our faith is being tested - our commitment. But we will open it. The island will show us how.
Boone: What kind of kind of sign will the island send us? Huh, John?
The dark sign the island sends implies Boone's death which, when it eventually comes, elicits naught but a strange light that floods from the still-sealed hatch.
After Boone's loss Locke might be expected to waver, but such is not the case.
Despite the attacks and kidnapping by Ethan, internal conflict amongst the
castaways, threats from the "others" and the violent death of Arzt,
Locke remains steadfast even when challenged directly, in the "real" world,
by Jack:
Locke: Me, well, I'm a man of faith. Do you really think all this is an accident
- that we, a group of strangers survived, many of us with just superficial
injuries? Do you think we crashed on this place by coincidence - especially,
this place? We were brought here for a purpose, for a reason, all of us.
Each one of us was brought here for a reason.
Jack: Brought here? And who brought us here, John?
Locke: The island. The island brought us here. This is no ordinary place, you've seen that, I know you have. But the island chose you, too, Jack. It's destiny.
Jack: Did you talk with Boone about destiny, John?
Locke: Boone was a sacrifice that island demanded. What happened to him at that plane was a part of a chain of events that led us here - that led us down a path, that led you and me to this day, to right now.
Jack: And where does that path end, John?
Locke: The path ends at the hatch. The hatch, Jack - all of it - all of it happened so that we could open the hatch.
Jack: No, no, we're opening the hatch so that we can survive.
Locke: Survival is all relative, Jack.
Jack: I don't believe in destiny.
Locke: Yes, you do. You just don't know it yet.
At this point the confused viewer may well confront Locke herself, asking how, given the dreadful "chain of events" that constituted Locke's life to date, could he place so much value on the idea of destiny, much less on faith that there is some overriding plan or beneficent guide that directs the castaways' progress?
Certainly, for Locke, a miracle has occurred, for once he was paralyzed and now he can walk. Even if this "gift" somehow redeems Locke's life to date, as a series of disappointments, betrayals and traumas, it can hardly compensate for the horror of the plane crash, and the terrors the castaways confront on a daily basis. From whence springs Locke's overpowering belief, and why is he so very certain that there exists something worth believing in?
To answer that question I return to the scene I came in on, which occurs in the middle of season 1 but includes the earliest known information regarding Locke's past. It is significant that we do not see this reminiscence played out as a flashback. The individuals involved do not become additional players in the drama of Lost, as do the characters that populate the stories we witness every week. The people in Locke's memory exist from his point of view only, and the enigmatic parable he tells depends on this point.
We hear this story after Locke has tracked . When Locke confronts Kate and Sawyer he brings with him two welcome gifts: a peace offering of precious coffee, and a preacher's humble wisdom with which to counsel the distraught Sawyer. Sawyer has feverishly and quite ineptly tracked an antagonistic boar miles from camp, with the aid of Kate who has, as usual, ulterior motives. With no prompting and little apparent reason, Locke begins the tale of an orphan, who, once upon a time lost both parents and a sister, then, as if that weren't traumatic enough, almost lost his only caregiver: a foster parent who suffered unbearable guilt and grief over his sister's Jeannie's death.
Episode 16, Outlaws
Locke: Anyway, about 6 months after Jeannie's funeral this golden retriever
comes padding up our driveway, walks right into our house, sits down on the
floor, and looks right at my mother, there on the couch. And my mother looks
back at the dog. After about a minute of this, of them both staring at each
other like that, my mother burst into tears. Beautiful dog, no tags, no collar,
healthy, and sweet. The dog slept in Jeanie's old room, on Jeanie's old bed
and stayed with us until my mother passed 5 years later. Then, disappeared
back to wherever it was she came from in the first place.
Kate: So, you're saying the dog was your sister?
Locke: Well, that would be silly. But my mother thought it was, thought that Jeanie had come back to tell her the accident wasn't her fault, let her off the hook.
Locke's little parable gives way to a flashback to Sawyer's darkest hour, and we are left to ponder the obvious connection between a dog that may house the spirit of Locke's lost sister and a cantankerous boar that may contain the spirit of Frank Duckett, or perhaps Sawyer's lost father, who suffered, as did Jeannie, an untimely death. But, typical of the fine character writing in Lost, we have subtly received a quite different message entirely.
The morality tale on the surface of "Outlaws" has Sawyer come to realize that he is projecting his guilt and rage onto the boar; this guilt and rage stems from having been manipulated into the murder by Hibbs, as well as being abandoned as a boy by a similar murderous rage that led his father to suicide and murder. All well and believably portrayed. But are we to believe that Locke's simple "that would be silly" existed so for the sole purpose of this Hallmark revelation?
For Sawyer, a man who has found little evidence for belief of any sort, rage and vengeance were a religion in themselves. Sawyer's view of himself in the world will likely change only through a slow and uncomfortable process of regaining trust in his fellows. I believe that Locke's little parable has quite a different aim. The story of Jeannie's death and her foster mother's belief crystallizes Locke's faith in a nutshell. How could a man not only cruelly abandoned by his parents but conned by them, a man who has suffered a number of indignities we've seen, an many more we haven't, find support for a faith so strong, so total?
Locke doesn't need to place his belief directly in the island, in guardian angels, or in a higher power. John Locke is insulated from the scars and pitfalls of direct faith, but retains all the benefits. For in the island, in Helen, and in his foster mother years before, Locke found an other who really believes, someone to believe in his stead, for him, as the laugh track in a sitcom spots the jokes so we needn't be bothered, as Tibetan prayer flags "pray" for us in the wind while we go about our day.
From his earliest works to the recent book On Belief and a volley of articles
on 9/11, the Iraq War, and Hurricane Katrina, philosopher and psychoanalyst
Slavoj Zizek has described many current political and social dilemmas as an
outgrowth of the need we have to find another to believe in our stead.8 The
communist members of the former Soviet Socialist Republic often scorned the
Party and it's officials in private, yet went to extraordinary public lengths
to show in public that they supposedly had complete faith in the system, to
please those in power who needed to believe that they were acting in the common
man's stead. Closer to home, our children pretend to believe in Santa Claus
so as not to disappoint their parents, who need to believe that their children
believe (and thus engage in a complex game of faux belief themselves that both
party tacitly acknowledges). "Furthermore," claims Zizek,
this need to find another who "really believes" is also what propels
us to stigmatize the Other as a (religious or ethnic) "fundamentalist."9
In other words, belief sometimes functions at a distance, as though it were embodied somewhere else, in some thing or person that does not share the same space or time as ourselves. In fact, "this other subject who directly believes" need not even exist: it's enough that we reference it as a possibility; some people believe . . .they think . . . it's been said.. . .
As a young boy embedded in the foster care system, Locke already lost parents and likely, before his foster mother, previous guardians. Now his last living relative is violently taken from him, and he looses yet another mother figure to despair and depression. When his foster mother meets the lab, however, everything changes. The dog restores the balance of the household, the dog seems to offer forgiveness and dignity. And the dog rekindles the foster mother's faith in God and man, and in her own fitness as Locke's guardian. Locke's foster mother believes for him; he can find the whole notion of an animal spirit ludicrous because a woman he loves and respects believes for him, for them both. Her belief becomes his by proxy. In the same way, when Helen comes into Locke's life, he certainly doesn't believe he can get beyond his need to have his father's attention, much less get beyond the anger he still holds. He cannot find it in himself to see beyond that moment, but Helen believes for him. Her faith in the power of anyone, and particularly Locke, to move forward in life despite his scars, is enough. Because he has faith in Helen, he may believe through her.
Finally there is Locke on the island, the Locke who experienced a miracle that cannot be explained, but has also witnessed death, destruction and extraordinary hardship since the crash. Even if he continues to believe in the miracle that is his renewed mobility, Locke has no idea to what or whom he may attribute it. Despite looking into the "eye" of the island in "Walkabout," he seems to have no more idea than do we, the viewers, regarding the monster, the Nigerian drug plane, the rising plume of smoke, or the Dharma Initiative. But Locke, as he tells Jack, is a man of faith and he believes they were all brought there for a reason. Locke does not have to see the connection or reason it out. The island, the ultimate "Other" of all others encountered in Lost, has shown patterned, goal-oriented activity that Locke recognizes and pays obeisance to. Locke believes that the island will show us how, the island demanded a sacrifice. Locke believes in destiny because the island believes for him. Twice he breaks down and implores the island for a sign, and twice a sign is forthcoming. A sign that shows Locke not what to believe, but that there exists belief, above and beyond himself, his past, and the lives and histories of other castaway. Locke believes, quite simply because the island believes for him.
The lonely Desmond in the hatch seems to have sprung from some twenty-first century version of a Hitchcockian universe, one where in the words of Slavoj Zizek,
a wholly external and accidental intervention of Fate radically changes a person's symbolic status (the wrong identification of Thornhill as Kaplan in North by Northwest, the wrong identification of Balestrero as the bank-robber in The Wrong Man, the couple in Mr. and Mrs. Smith who suddenly learn that their marriage is void).10
Desmond was on a solo race around the world; he was never supposed to be the "one" who took up residence in the hatch, "saving the world" every 108 minutes at the behest of a 24-year old faded filmstrip.11 Yet at some point he stepped into the symbolic network as its resident button pusher and left his old life, his old identity, behind. The filmstrip is the message, delivered to Desmond as though he was always the intended receiver, as though the filmstrip was waiting patiently for him to arrive and heed its message.
The mystery, of course, is why Desmond should ever believe in the first place, why he should sacrifice everything to push that button as though, as noted by many online, he had taken up residence in a Skinner box, observed from afar. Desmond adopts the beliefs of Dr. Candle (and, presumably, the late Kelvin) for a tautological reason: simply because his role demands that he believe. Dr. Candle's eerie gaze out from his celluloid prison threatens Desmond, as it does anyone who watches the film. For anyone who sees it is "infected" with the knowledge that something terrible will happen if the hatch computer is not attended with extreme vigilance.
What is crucial in this confrontation is not what we see in Marvin Candle's expression, nor the words we hear him say, but rather the reverence we witness in Desmond, the way Desmond confronts this voice and this gaze. Desmond willingly bends to the Other's desire in a way we the viewers cannot understand until Locke enters the hatch, to offer a third gaze that triangulates this relationship and lays bare the necessity behind Desmond's actions.
Although Locke will view Candle's film as well, he remains ignorant of the "truth" behind the Orientation film. Locke is our stand-in as the third gaze that witnesses the dance of wills between the Other who knows (Candle) and his operative Desmond. Locke's steady but unknowing gaze confirms the radically symbolic nature of the "law" that Desmond enacts. The button must be pushed in just such a manner at just such a time for no averred reason. Candle has simply ordained it, and Desmond has accepted his task. We not only do not know why we must push the button, we do not even know whether the Dharma Initiative is" good" or "evil," only that it it is the only known representative of " law" (authority) on the island.
The peak of tension in the third episode of season 2 "Orientation" erupts neither as the computer is shot nor as Desmond races to grab a few belongings before vacating the hatch. For if the timer would go down to 0 and there were nothing they could do, we would be but passive viewers of the spectacle, assume our role as pure objective gaze. The height of tension hterefore corresponds to the point where we are drawn into the naked ethics of the symbolic structure: when we are forced to acknowledged that Locke's ensuing existential dilemma - to push or not to push the button - is being staged for our benefit. No longer the passive observer of the diegetic law that is the plot, we are forced to identify with either Jack or Locke. We must acknowledge our secret desire to obey Dharma law or to risk annihilation in order to assert our own, if perverse, desire over that of the Law. We face one of two conflicting but equally base desires: do we sadistically wait incalculable devastation, or find enjoyment in the Law qua Law of Dharma, to obey without reason or evidence, to please the Big Other that is the world trusting us to keep it safe?
Locke views himself and Jack as "chosen" for this mission; later on Eko will challenge Locke's misrecognition with the - already famous phrase "Do not mistake coincidence for fate." Locke doesn't recognize himself in the role of savior because he were chosen; but rather perceives himself as the chosen one, because he saw himself walking again, finding the hatch, sacrificing Boone, and pushing the buttons. Whether Desmond's "Are you him?" is ever coming, or ever even existed, Locke has become "him: by assuming his role in the symbolic structure. Similarly, Locke convinces Jack to push the button, because Locke instinctively knows that acting may well precede belief. The act of becoming the "one who pushes the button (obeys the law)" retroactively confers necessity on the act for Jack, and on Jack's role in the island's fate. (Hence the subtle wit of Jack having remind Locke to push the button six episodes later in "What Kate Did.") We the viewers are meta-theoretically brought into Locke's dilemma when our pathological desires either identify with Locke - with the notion of a savior, no matter how absurd or contingent the circumstances - or with recalcitrant Jack the transgressor.
Why is Jack the transgressor in this scenario? Is he not after all the "man of science" who demands only a rational explanation for whatever the survivors encounter? Jack is the transgressor because his situation in the hatch offers the viewer an opportunity to experience perversion as , in the words of Zizek, a socially "constructive" attitude; "one can indulge in illicit drives, torture and kill for the protection of law and order, etc." (What one might call the "Make my day" scenario). In demanding a meta-law (rational explanation) for Dharma law, Jack risks possible apocalypse, and we as viewers thrill to the possibility that, indeed, all hell might break loose if Jack were to prevail. The dark underside, of course, is that if we side with Locke on this question, we also risk siding with what may well be the greater perversion represented by the Dharma initiative : pursuing a "rational" scientific ideal through any means necessary.
The greatness of Lost surfaces, for me, in those moments in which not only the characters are tested but we, the viewers, are solicited as ethical participants, tempted by our base and conflicting desires. For who among us did not wish for one second that the clock would hit 0, yet who among us did not also want to look up to Marvin, the benevolent authority figure who has only our best interests at heart? Is it not hard to see that as Locke would search for another who believes for him, so we search apprehensively for our own values in the ambiguous ethics displayed by these tortured and flawed characters? And is it any wonder that we the viewers, in analogy to the castaways, might misread every coded message, looking for the symbolic role we might play in the tabula rasa that is Lost, even if that extends to writing excessively self-reflexive essays in a quasi-academic webzine?
Many thanks to sawyerhasbestlines, who inspired this essay with her prescient observation on the Theories and Speculation message boards at losttv-forum.com the close of season 1 to the effect that Kate and Sawyer both have letter baggage, and to LostinWilderness for his penetrating analyses of Locke's character in the Locke forum at losttv-forum.com. All transcripts cited are those by spooky archived at http://lost-tv.com/transcripts/
1. "The Seminar on 'The Purloined Letter'" ("Le Séminaire de la lettre volée," La Psychanalyse, 1957), transl. by Jeffrey Mehlman in Yale French Studies 48, (1973, 39-72). back
2. In season 1, episode 10 "Raised By Another." back
3. In season 1, episode 8 "The Confidence Man." back
4. Shown in season 1, episode 14 "Special." back
5. In season 1, episode 22 "Born to Run." back
6. In season 1, episode 18 "Numbers." back
7. In season 1, episode 19 "Deus Ex Machina." back
8. These include On Belief (London: Routledge, 2001), Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle (New York: Verso, 2004), and "Some Politically Incorrect Reflections on Violence in France & Related Matters" (lacan dot com, 2005) . back
9. "The Interpassive Subject," (Centre Georges Pompidou, Traverses, 1998). back
10. "In His Bold Gaze my Ruin is Writ Large," lacanian ink 6 (Fall 1992, pp 25-42). back
11. In season 2, episodes 1, 2 and 3, "Man of Science, Man of Faith," "Adrift" and "Orientation." back
@2006 drabauer
The Society for Lost Studies