Would C. S. Lewis Watch LOST?

OK, I admit it. I'm a LOST geek.  I've watched the show faithfully for six years, discussed it with friends and family, referred to it in my writing and literature classes, even followed some of the blogs that endlessly dissect the multiple meanings and symbolism.  So when the final episode was announced, of course, Janet and I invited our daughter over for a LAST LOST Party!

LOST has seemed to me to be one of the few TV series ever to stay intelligent and creative over a number of years.  I'll admit there were times when the plot took twists that strained credibility (more on that later), but what kept me watching the show was the depth of characterization.  The characters were interesting because, as Jacob says in the penultimate episode, they were flawed. These were not heroic people but people with messy pasts, and mostly I found myself wanting them to find redemption and forgiveness.  The flashback and flash forward narrative techniques, I thought, were very creative and sustained audience interest by slowly revealing bits and pieces of a character's past (or future) that helped us understand them better. And the show consistently addressed significant issues of faith and doubt, isolation and community, sin and redemption.  I also liked the literary and philosophical allusions (John Locke, Jeremy Bentham, Walker Percy, etc.).

As I watched the last episode, I was struck by an odd (or, as I hope to show, not so odd) comparison.  I wondered, in fact, if the LOST producers and writers had read and were perhaps borrowing elements from C. S. Lewis's space travel fantasy Perelandra.  The second book in Lewis's science fiction trilogy, the novel tells the story of Elwin Ransom, a Cambridge philologist, who travels to Venus (called Perelandra in the novel) and discovers an innocent paradise with only two human inhabitants.  Ransom's arrival is followed by that of Weston, a mad scientist type, who wants to conquer Perelandra and use it for his nefarious plans.  However, it soon becomes obvious to Ransom that Weston's body has been taken over by a dark power, who sets out to tempt the female inhabitant of Perelandra and cause her to disobey the commands of Maleldil (God).  Sound familiar?  Ransom comes to the unwelcome realization that he has been brought to Perelandra for one reason: to prevent the dark power, in the form of Weston, from corrupting the innocence of the Green Lady, and, ultimately, to prevent Venus from experiencing the same fate that planet Earth did with the fall of Adam and Eve.

So what does all this have to do with the final LOST episode?  I saw some interesting parallels.

First, you have the man in black/smoke monster/ force of evil residing in the body of the deceased John Locke.  As Locke and Jack lower Desmond down into the cave, the man in black asks Jack if this reminds him of a previous event, and Jack responds, "You're not John Locke."   One of the LOST blogs I follow took to calling this being "UnLocke."  It's a clever name, but C. S. Lewis used the idea first.  In Perelandra, after Weston's body is taken over by the dark power, the narrator of the book refers to him as the "Unman."

Another parallel can be seen in the way Jack is asked to protect the island, a duty for which he volunteers but a role for which Jacob (not to mention the viewers)  seems to have always known that he was preparing.  In Lewis's novel, Ransom slowly comes to the realization that if Perelandra is to be saved, he will be the one to save it.  At a turning point in the story, Ransom finally understands that he is the one called by God for the job. Like Moses, he protests that he is not qualified for the role, but he ultimately accepts it as his destiny, just as Jack, in spite of his failed attempts and the mistakes he has made as a leader, accepts that this is the end the story has been pointing to all along.

The connection that really stood out to me, though, as I watched that last episode was the physical nature of the battle between good and evil that serves as the climax for both LOST and Perelandra.  If you are a LOST fan, you know that much of UnLocke's ability to control the others on the island was his apparent invincibility.  He could walk through explosions and gunfire unharmed.  In fact, when  UnLocke arrives for his rendezvous with Jack, Kate shoots him repeatedly, to no avail.  While Weston's body in Perelandra is not seen as invincible, Ransom assumes, for a long time, that physical action against the UnMan would be futile.  He, therefore, focuses his efforts on trying to persuade the Green Lady not to listen to the UnMan through logic and argument.  Ultimately, though, Ransom realizes that his only chance of protecting Perelandra is for him to kill Weston, or at least, Weston's body.  Ransom reasons (rightly as it turns out) that without a body to inhabit, the dark power will be unable to remain on Perelandra.

In LOST, the interesting twist is that after Desmond disrupts the light source and the island begins to deteriorate, UnLocke's invincibility no longer exists.  Jack realizes this when he tackles and hits UnLocke, drawing blood, and Kate realizes it too since she shoots UnLocke  just before he sinks his knife into Jack's throat.  In Perelandra, Ransom reasons that in physical capabilities, he and Weston are similar (two middle aged scholars, as he puts it); therefore, he has an even chance of defeating the UnMan in physical combat. 

In addition to these larger motifs, there are some smaller details that connect the two stories.  In both stories when the hero defeats the evil force, he throws the body off of a cliff.  Even stranger, in Perelandra, Ransom's only lasting physical wound from the battle with the UnMan is a bleeding heel, which continues to bleed after Ransom's return to earth.  In LOST, the last few episodes showed Jack with a cut on his throat that gradually worsened.  In the finale, we learn where he got the cut--from UnLocke's knife.  Whether these are mere coincidences or not, I don't know.  But given the writer/producers' penchant for literary allusion and borrowing, I wouldn't be surprised if they are more than that.

So, if you are still with me after all that, I must say you are either a huge LOST fan or a huge C. S. Lewis fan, or both (like me).  One final reflection:  earlier I alluded to the feeling among some LOST fans that the series had lost its way.  After the first couple of seasons, the writers ran out of good, believable stuff, so they began to create outlandish scenarios and plot devices (like time shifts and flash forwards and flash sideways)--so the theory goes.  I'd like to propose another possible explanation, which, I hope, will allow me to answer the question in my title:  would C. S. Lewis watch LOST?

A time-honored principle of literary interpretation is that you should always judge a piece of literature according to genre.  Just as it's no good to criticize a pool cue for making a poor broom, so it is bad form to criticize a tragic play because it's not funny (unless it's Shakespeare, of course, who managed to make even his tragedies funny at times).  So my suggestion to those who blame LOST for not being realistic enough would be to ask about the genre of LOST.  What was it trying to be?

In my opinion, LOST resembles no genre so closely as myth.  It is full of classic archetypes, miraculous events, and characters who seem to symbolize something beyond themselves, and it ends with a battle between good and evil forces.  In other words, it is a descendant of that kind of literature that Tolkien and Lewis loved to read and that they wrote in The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia. So, yes, I think Lewis, were he still with us, would have watched and appreciated what the LOST writers were trying to do.  Tolkien would not have liked it as well as Lewis, what with its mixture of Eastern and Western philosophy and religion.  Also, its constant flashing back and forth between the worlds on and off the island would have violated his rule of a consistent secondary world. But Lewis had no problem with mixtures of mythologies (as shown by his introduction of Father Christmas into Narnia), nor with back and forth movements between Narnia and England, and I think he would have appreciated the themes of loyalty, friendship, and community that LOST embodied, I know he would have appreciated Jack's sense of calling and his willingness, in the end, to sacrifice himself for the good of the island and his friends. As Jack says to Desmond in the finale:  "What we do here matters."  It's a statement worthy of Tolkien and Lewis, two masters who knew without a doubt that what happens in the fantasy world matters very much indeed.

Namaste.