In the second episode ("Confirmed Dead") of LOST season four, C.S. Lewis' formidable influence was inserted directly into the show in the form of "Charlotte Staples Lewis." Since then, there's been a steady proliferation of posts and articles discussing what exactly C.S.'s appearance implies for the LOST mythology. Personally, the physical presence of (a) Lewis in the show pushed me further toward LOST geekiness. I mean, now I really care.
So I've been doing a little research, and thought I'd try to compile a "best of" C.S. Lewis and LOST link list. There's a lot of discussion out there, but most of it isn't very substantial, so I'm doing some sorting. No doubt I'll miss some good articles, which is why I'm counting on you to point them out to me. Here's what I've got so far.
- Charlotte Lewis on Lostpedia. Straightforward biographical info on Charlotte.
- "Narnia Connection Confirmed" on Hollywood Jesus. If you have no clue who C.S. Lewis was, this post has some background along with a few
Charlotte tips. - C.S. Lewis Arrives in LOST. My post, documenting Charlotte's entry. No great theories, but some wishful thinking and some good comments.
- Charlotte Lewis post on Doc Arzt's LOST blog. The post merely notes Charlotte's splashdown, but the comments have some good stuff (time travel), including speculation that "even other books such as The Screwtape Letters and The Great Divorce could be of some value to us." Heck yeah, and not just for diagnosing TV shows! As a Lewis fan, I have to chuckle...
- The Great Divorce (by C.S. Lewis) theory on Doc Artz's LOST blog. Artz develops some fascinating
parallels between the island and the plot of Lewis' classic book. Purgatory undertones. - LOST episode recap from Jeff Jensen. Entertainment Weekly's LOST pundit speculates about a Prince Caspian tie-in and his hunch that Charlotte has been on the island before.
- Charlotte Staples Lewis entry at LOSTtheories.com. This theory asks whether the island is a world-between-worlds as in C.S. Lewis' The Magician's Nephew.
8 comments:
I don't have any other links to add to what you have here--your list is pretty comprehensive. I've only recently gotten into Lost too, and I'm still shocked at the extent of Lost information/theorizing out there. I've learned all too quickly that I can't read about the show at work or else I end up losing half my day.
Thanks for adding to the distraction (and obsession)!
Thank you for providing these links. I am the writer of the Blog entry on Hollywood Jesus. It it great to know that I am being read and appreciated! I hope to add a full-length article about "Lost," and its spiritual connections, in the near future.
@ Lindsay: I've learned all too quickly that I can't read about the show at work or else I end up losing half my day.
I'll second that! You're welcome, I'm happy to show my (borderline) obsession with you. I try to limit the time I spend, and just enjoy the show as it unfolds, but this C.S. Lewis connection might just suck me in.
@ Mark: Thank you for providing these links.
You're welcome, man. Keep up the next work; I'll look for the next LOST post.
I intentionally didn't include discussion threads in the above list, but I found one with some really good theories/connections...some highlights:
"could the C.S. Lewis reference indicate that the island is akin to Narnia:
You get there by accident, you can't go intentionally.
Getting to the island is a little like going through the wardrobe.
The island has the ability to call you back (like in Price Caspian)
Aslan = Jacob" - Hakmusic
"In The Magician's Nephew, Digory and Polly stumble into a strange forest. It's a place referred to as the world between worlds, if I'm remembering correctly. In it, they notice the strange way light refracts, just like Dan Faraday on the island." - LostIslandBaby
"The thing that really struck me about the "coincidence" of Charlotte's full name being related to our dear Clive Staples was that to his best friends, C.S. Lewis was known as "Jack".
Would anyone care to guess who one of his best friends was? J.R.R. Tolkien, author of the Lord of the Rings. His first name happens to be John." - jalen_mara
These are all from the Charlotte Staples (C.S. ) Lewis thread on The Fuselage.
That fuselage post with the "Jack" and "John" references was great. I'll bet $1.25 it doesn't ever play out on the show, but it's a great "loose connection".
I love this show.
I too recently read how the producers of LOST came up with names so I picked two (Matthew Abaddon, the gentleman who visited Hurley and who put together Naomi's team and Minkowski, one of the Freighter Folk), did a Google and wound up at Wikipedia with Abaddon, the Angel of the Abyss from Rev 9:13 and Herman Minkowski, a mathematician who working with the Theory of Relativity developed Minkowski Space, a mathematical setting where three ordinary dimensions of space are combined with a single dimension of time to form a four-dimensional manifold for representing a spacetime. On this page there is a link for Electro Magnetic Tensor AKA FARADAY Tensor AKA MAXWELL Bivector. On this page there is a link for Mirror-Matter (in Physics, mirror matter, also called shadow matter or Alice matter, is a hypothetical counterpart to ordinary matter.) which leads to Professor Robert Foot (remember the giant foot Sayid, Sun and Jin see on the shore from the sailboat?), University of Melbourne Physics professor who wrote a paper entitled SHADOWLANDS, A Search For Mirror Matter.
The writers are making this a lot of fun.
http://www.rhettandlink.com/videos/LOST-commercial-spoof
Some researchers have a break through medication to alleviate LOST-withdrawal. I think you'll love the restrictions. (If you're unfamiliar with Rhett and Link, they are a talented group of web comics ;)
Cheers
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