Lost Marginalia

Conceptually, “Lost” has always been heir to the tradition of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” (which itself is heir to ancient sea adventures and Ovid’s “Metamorphoses”): travelers are stranded on a mysterious island with seemingly supernatural goings-on. As the series progressed, the character of Ben was introduced, and with his puppet-mastery seemed to parallel the magician/exile Prospero in Shakespeare’s play. Now with the latest installments, we have a direct reference with the Tempest station, and the increasing political complexities are in line with the intrigue of Shakespeare’s Elizabethan drama.

In “The Tempest,” Prospero had been the Duke of Milan, until his brother Antonio plotted with Alonso, the King of Naples, He was exiled with his daughter Miranda, but the supplies given to him by Gonzalo allowed him to survive on the island. Prospero freed the sprites imprisoned by the witch Sycorax, thus obtaining the servitude of the sprite Ariel. Sycorax’s son, the half man/half beast Caliban, was put in chains. When a ship with the players (Alonso, his brother Sebastian, his son Ferdinand, Gonzalo, Antonio) sails near the island, Prospero commands Ariel to conjure up and storm and an imaginary fire on the ship, which causes the people onboard to jump over the sides. They wash up on the island, and Ferdinand is separated from the rest. Ferdinand and Miranda meet each other and immediately fall in love. As the play ensues, Antonio tries to convince Sebastian to kill the king, and the castaways Stephano and Trinculo try to convince Caliban to kill Prospero. Power plays from off and on the island interlace.

Shakespeare borrowed from ancient sea adventures from the “Argonautica” to “The Aeneid.” [He would blend ancient tradition with contemporary stories of wonder in faraway lands and tales from the New World.] In such mythic works, harpies (who in ancient mythology were finally depicted as creatures who were half women/half birds) were sent by the gods to punish those who had angered them. In “The Tempest” near the play’s end, Ariel prepares a feast for the castaways and then shapeshifts into a harpy. However, rather than rip these characters to shreds, she tells them that they are evil men, which leads to their “redemption” and ultimately reconciliation with Prospero. Seeming to appear and disappear out of thin air – along with the disquieting whispers – Harper Stanhope of “The Other Woman” may be an allusion to the harpies. Intriguingly her personality and appearance have the qualities of contemporary usage as a bad-tempered or vindictive woman or as someone who preys on others. Certainly she has a score to settle with Juliet, who transgressed in having an affair with Harper’s husband.

An aside: Do we necessarily believe Ben, the puppet-master, when he professes his obsessive love of Juliet?

I can’t help but see the character Goodwin as another Enlightenment reference. This time it’s the political philosopher and novelist, William Godwin, father of intellectual anarchism and influence upon Romantic poets and writers. In his “An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice” (1793), Godwin makes the case for government as a corrupting influence and proposes a utopian model based on the perfectability of man. As the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy summarizes: “Epitomising the optimism of events in France at the time he began writing, Godwin looked forward to a period in which the dominance of mind over matter would be so complete that mental perfectibility would take a physical form, allowing us to control illness and ageing and become immortal.” I chose to quote this online source, because it also seems curiously like a major thread of (or proposed theory to explain) “Lost.”

Godwin’s Enquiry is a response to Edmund Burke’s (yes, the same name of Juliette’s husband) “Reflections on the Revolution in France” (1790). Viewed as an argument for strong government and stability, Burke’s political philosophy is countered: “ Is it well that so large a part of the community should be kept in abject penury, rendered stupid with ignorance, and disgustful with vice, perpetuated in nakedness and hunger, goaded to the commission of crimes, and made victims to the merciless laws which the rich have instituted to oppress them? Is it sedition to enquire, whether this state of things may not be exchanged for a better?” In “The Other Woman,” the theme of governance and sedition is raised when Ben asks Locke if he has a revolution on his hands – in light of Locke’s inability to completely manifest an all-knowing supremacy.

Godwin is just as famous for fathering Mary Shelley, author of “Frankenstein” (seen by some as Gothic portrayal of her father in his zealous educational methods to create the ideal human being). Godwin and the feminist Mary Wollstonecraft both spoke out against the institution of marriage but tied the knot when she became pregnant. Like the birthing mothers on the island, Wollstonecraft died after childbirth.