Like a lot of great series finales, the ending of Lost is controversial. The revelation, after years of denial, that a version of Purgatory was, in fact, in play hasn’t gone over well in some quarters and has generated a lot of confusion. Were they dead the whole time? Was it all in Jack’s head? But I thought they said it wasn’t Purgatory!
I’m not going to start going into those issues, as they’ve already been covered better by other analysts, other than to cast my vote with the the-Island-was-real, the-alt-was-Purgatory, no-it’s-not-all-in-Jack’s-head people.
I’m much more interested in the alt as a manifestation of the characters’ collective subconscious. Viewed in this light, the alt becomes richly symbolic and reveals a lot of information about each character. I’m going to be doing a series of breakdowns of the alts of a few of my favorite characters with this understanding in mind.
Before I do, though, it’s helpful to set forth what I think is going on generally with the alt—the rules of the road, as it were. I’m not arguing that these are the Final and Absolute and Sole Interpretations-- not by a long shot-- nor are they all my original ideas, but I think they’re a reasonable read, and my analyses going forth will rest upon this framework and will depend upon the assumptions therein.
WHAT IS THE ALT?
The alt, as many have already stated, is Purgatory, albeit not Purgatory in the purely Catholic sense, which I think implies a kind of melancholy over being held back from Paradise. The alt, while imperfect and incomplete, is not necessarily a sorrowful place. It’s more like a waiting room; it won’t do for all time, but it will do for a while, and it represents a wonderful opportunity to get one’s spiritual house in order before making that final voyage to the Elysian Fields. (It’s in that final destination that we’ll all meet again: Locke will eventually find Helen there, Roger Linus will find Emily, Hurley will find his parents, Sawyer his daughter Clementine. However, as I’ll explain in a bit, those souls cannot reunite in the alt.)
Because of the uniqueness of the Island—a place where the light of humanity resides, rendering its Island home a wonderland of mysterious and unearthly phenomena—and the fact that those who find it, however briefly, are somehow called or chosen by the Island to land there—the alt is likewise a unique place. We don’t all get to visit the Island, and ergo we don’t all get to visit the alt either. The rest of us get to struggle our way through endless reincarnations until we finally get it right; the Losties and their ilk get to go straight to the front of the line, bypassing another dozen lifetimes, and have this special holding place where they can diagnose their ailments, resolve their issues, and move on without having to go through cycles of being insects, Paris Hilton or the family dog. In this sense, it’s a lot like the FastPass line at Disney World.
It’s a parting gift given in recognition that, for many people, being on the Island was a nightmare experience that led to an early and painful demise. By sending their souls to the alt, the Island is giving them a huge cosmic make-up.
WHO’S THERE? AND ARE THEY ‘REAL’?
I’ve struggled with this one, but I think I’ve come to a set of rules that work for me, and I think they might work for a lot of others too.
I think that everybody who ever set foot on the Island, however briefly, is ‘real’ in the alt. I reject the idea that there are multiple alts unique to every soul, where that soul is the only reality while all else, including everybody they interact with, is merely a figment of their imagination, for two reasons: 1) if they’re all just playacting with sock puppets, then it renders the moment of reunion and resolution pretty meaningless, and 2) you can’t tell me that Sawyer was moved to tears by a projection of Juliet, or Kate by a projection of Claire and Aaron. Those were real interactions between real souls.
Everybody who was ever on the Island is real in the alt. Even if you only spent a few days of your life there, that’s enough to get you into the alt. This seems to be the common link between characters who we recognize there: they’re not all Oceanic 815ers or Others or freighter people, but they are all Islanders. So if a character appears in the alt who also visited the Island, then that is the real soul you’re seeing. (So, yeah, Zoe gets to go. Sorry, y’all.)
Everybody else is a sock puppet constructed to serve as a place-holder or set piece. So the students at the high school, the other travelers in the airport, the perps in the downtown jail—all of them are basically the equivalent of computer-generated characters. As long as a real soul in the alt needs them to operate, they exist; once they are no longer needed, they vanish.
As for their age in the alt, I think that they’re restricted to the age they were on the Island. This is why Ji-Yeon is a fetus, Aaron an infant, Kate a young woman, Locke a middle-aged man. Aaron and Kate and Ji-Yeon may have all lived to be 85 years old, but they can only appear in the alt as their respective ages on the Island
This suggests that people who grew up on the Island and spent a good deal of time there—Ben, for example—may have some range in age in the alt. Ben could have started out as an 8-year-old and grown to his current age, and could possibly proceed to the age and appearance he had when he died. Alex could have started as an infant, but she can never ‘progress’ beyond a teenager, since that was as far as she went on the Island (and in life). Jack, on the other hand, was always a thirtysomething-year-old man on the Island, and consequently can only be that age in the alt. Of course, given that we only see bits and pieces of the alt world, this is little more than educated speculation. But it’s an intriguing possibility.
HOW WAS THE ALT MADE?
As Christian explained, it was a place that the Losties made to find one another. In other words, it’s a manifestation of their collective subconsciousness.
THIS IS GENIUS. It suddenly puts a whole new spin on the alt, if you go back and realize that everything there is the result of our character’s ids. (I’m also mindful that this is a very meta idea; not only does the alt reflect the subconscious desires of our Losties, the way you ‘read’ this construct says a lot about you. So we’re not just taking apart the psychologies of certain characters, but the psychology of your faithful writer as well. I plead no contest.)
It’s a giant game of Second Life: somebody needs a hospital set piece, so one is generated, and everybody who needs a hospital set piece goes there. Somebody needed a school, so everybody who needs a school setting goes there. Somebody needs a police station, an airport, a restaurant, etc. etc., so they’re created and the ones who need to act out a scene in one of those settings goes there. It results in people with similar issues and desires coming together in unexpected ways.
Moreover, the character’s appearances, houses, situations, and occupations are all reflections of their subconscious needs. When one of these constructs is no longer needed by anybody, they simply vanish, and nobody bats an eyelash. Just as odd phenomena manifest on the Island as signs of its unique and extraordinary persona (and if a land mass could have a soul, the Island would), it makes sense that the Islanders-only alt reflects the personae that populate it.
The souls in the alt operate on two levels: a dream state on the surface level, which is fictitious and symbolic, and a subconscious, unseen state, which is reality. They are not aware of the subconscious until they wake up, but the subconscious is nonetheless active and operational, and the actions in the dream state represent the activity of the subconscious.
The goal of the alt is to resolve the issues that created the alt in the first place so that you are free to literally leave them behind and ‘move on’ to Nirvana. Part of being able to do this, however, is finding a partner to go along with you for the ride, your specific match, your kindred spirit, for whom there is no other and no substitute: the soulmate.
THE SOULMATE BUSINESS
The series conclusion doesn’t just underscore the significance of romantic love; it writes it in red pen, circles it with a highlighter and sprinkles a little glitter around the edges just to be sure you notice it.
Not everybody in the church to move on is paired off with a romantic partner, but some 80% of them are. Locke is alone, but that’s because 1) his potential soulmate Helen, who was never on the Island, can consequently never be found in the alt, so the sooner Locke gets to Nirvana, the sooner he might see her again, or 2) much like ascetic people who take holy orders and renounce things like materialism and physical pleasure (food, sex, intoxication, etc.) with the idea that this leads to a closer communion with the divine, Locke was always more spiritually evolved than everyone else, and therefore doesn’t exist on the same baser plane as the rest of us and isn’t subject to the same human desires and needs that the rest of us struggle with. Boone is also alone, but that’s because his soulmate was always Shannon, and even though he’s let her go, there was never going to be anyone else.
EVERYBODY ELSE is paired off. And every last pair reflects a romantic relationship. There are no parent-child pairs save for Aaron, who, being well under the age of sexual maturity during his stint on the Island, cannot find a soulmate in the alt. And I think that Claire was partnered with Charlie, not Aaron; Aaron was allowed to tag along with them due to his infancy. In other words, had he been a teenager on-Island, he would have had to find his own soulmate. There are no best-friends pairs, or sibling pairs, or any other pairs but romantic pairs. And it’s not enough to be romantically involved; you and your partner have to be soulmates.
I’m defining soulmates as people who share a deep, unique emotional bond which manifests in erotic physical expression. In other words, these soulmates are people who love each other in a specifically romantic way (more than anyone else) and demonstrate that love through specific physical acts. To illustrate with contrasts, Jack and Sawyer may be very good friends who have hugged it out, but they’re not soulmates. Kate and Sawyer have a deep emotional bond as kindred spirits, and they’ve slept together, but they don’t love each other more than anyone else; for Kate, that’s Jack (whom she’s slept with as well) and for Sawyer, Juliet (ditto).
The unique quality of the emotional bond between soulmates that elevates their relationship to this special status is ill-defined and hard to gauge. It’s a lot like the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case (Jacobellis v. Ohio (1964), if you’re so inclined) concerning the definition of obscenity: “I know it when I see it.” In a way, the soulmates themselves discern this quality in each other, even when it remains invisible to the outside eye. Soulmatehood seems to bestow a kind of peace; the partners are no longer lost and struggling, but are in position to let go and move on.
The physical demonstration of the emotional bond doesn’t have to amount to full-on intercourse. I doubt Libby and Hurley or Claire and Charlie ever slept together, but both have shared kisses. So every couple in that church has shared some kind of physical intimacy, although the level of that intimacy will vary depending on the pairing and what each partner needs.
MOVING ON
This has been the toughest one for me to work through. Some people (i.e., Hurley) seem to have pretty good set-ups in the alt; why would they ever leave?
I think it’s because your alt is not a conscious creation. You can’t wish it into existence; it exists independently from your control. Otherwise, everybody would have a fantasy paradise existence, but they don’t. Your alt is shaped by your issues—your desires, yes, but also your needs, your fears, and your sorrows. Remaining in the alt means remaining at the mercy of these insecurities. The only way to break free of their control is to move on to the next phase. If you choose to remain in the alt, you will continue to confront and wrestle with these demons.
Of course, that struggle itself is a necessary step, and if you’re not ready to leave the struggle behind for whatever reason, then remaining in the alt is not a bad thing. After all, that’s why it’s there.
With all this in mind, let’s unpack some of our characters and see what’s in their heads. I’m not going to try and address every last thing for a specific character; I prefer to zero in on a less-obvious issue and see what’s going on.
First up: Ben Linus. Stay tuned.
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