Lost Marginalia

The reveal of Kate’s son as Aaron (supposedly Claire’s baby) calls for a re-examination of his biological parents. Claire is Jack’s half-sister. The father is Thomas, who some have pointed out bears a striking resemblance to Ben. I have read one theory that Thomas is the son of Ben and Ann, who somehow got off the island, and that Thomas may have actually been on the island. The latter notion is based on the similarity of his work to the painting in the Hatch (must find this website again). Given Jack’s inability to deal with the innocent child, some connection to Ben seems highly likely. As developed thus far, no other character causes such repulsion. But is Thomas the result of Ben’s seed? Or the result of his cloned DNA? [Which comes first? The chicken or the egg?] Let’s allow for even a third possibility: that Thomas is Ben himself in some sort of time loop/travel.. Another event that suggests the possibility of cloning or of time warps is the encounter of the young Ben with Richard Alpert, the future Other who will appear not to have aged.

In writing the entry on Jacob Boehme, I googled his last name and was amused by also getting websites referring to a 1920s G.W.Pabst movie starring Louise Brooks based on a novel by Margarethe Boehme. So typical of this online database search mechanism to bring together such disparate elements.

In the wake of last night’s “Lost” airing, I browsed online to see what responses “Eggtown” provoked, and I was surprised to see the posting related to one minor detail, the book that Sawyer is reading. Word is that it is “The Invention of Morel” by Adolfo Bioy Casares, a work of fiction that includes one man’s obsession with Louise Brooks, whose photograph is on the cover. Suddenly the name of the Boehme novel hit me – “Diary of a Lost Girl.”

In this instance, “lost” refers to “gone astray” in the sense of a “fallen woman” or “lost angel.” The plot and theme of this novel possesses some striking resemblances to Kate’s story and even the latest plot suggestion. An innocent 17^th-year-old girl, Thymian, loses her mother as a child and is impregnated by her father’s assistant. [The father himself rapes the housekeeper, who then kills herself.] To be brief, Thymian finds herself in a reformatory and gives the child to a midwife. When she escapes, she discovers that her child has died. She subsequently works in a brothel, but by the end she is able through marriage to regain her middle-class status. The novel and the film have been characterized as showing one girl’s pluck in the face of a corrupting patriarchy, and a subtheme is mother-daughter separations.

Rather than a specific clue, what is striking to me is the clustering of ideas within my search. A possible cultural allusion leads me to a 17^th-century theosophist, who happens to have the same name as a 20^th-century novelist. I find a reflection of both Boehmes and their works’ theme of lost in “Lost.” We keep looking for answers, but our pursuit (our mental and emotional engagement) is itself part of the show. Ultimately it doesn’t matter as much if the connection I make is a coincidence or intentional.