From "The Professor" comes this awesome bit of comparatives:
Another episode, another literary reference, but this time one that Lost fans have long-suspected was connected to the show. The Tempest has many analogous images with Lost, none more prominent than a vessel (ship, or plane) crash-landing on a mysterious, magical island. But some insight into the characters might help shape your opinion of not only this episode, "The Other Woman," but also the entire show.The Tempest was first performed in 1612-13, and published as a Folio in 1623. (16, 23. Just pointing that out.) It stands apart from other Shakespeare plays in that abides by the unities thought to make for good drama: Time, Place, and Action. The three plot lines of the play take place over a little more than a few hours and all happen on the same island. Lost, of course, breaks apart all of these unities. At the same time, one of the play's most famous passages returns to a favorite Shakespearean metaphor, life as a play:
"Our revels now are ended. These our actors
(As I foretold you) were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air,
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd tow'rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And like this insubstantial pageant faded
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep."
An Island Sorcerer
The words above are spoken by Prospero, the island's ruler and a magician who, curiously, wishes to finally "drown [his] book" of magic and quit the biz. During the course of the play, he creates a maelstrom to bring his enemies' ship to the island, manipulates them toward him, arranges the marriage of his daughter Miranda to the Prince of Naples, and puts down an insurrection by one of his servants, the half-monster Caliban.
What connects Lost to Prospero for me is an interesting distinction Shakespeare had to make in his time. Magic was controversial, and so Shakespeare emphasized Prospero's use of "white magic," which relies on the natural, which we might think of today as science. Prospero is contrasted with the evil witch Sycorax, the only former inhabitant of the Island, who bore her son Caliban there. She worshipped and made pacts with the devil, and thus was a conjurer of "black magic."
The natural assumption from the episode is that Ben is the Prospero analogue. He arranges the appearance of Harper, who would be the equivalent of Ariel, another of Prospero's servants, this time a faerie imprisoned by Sycorax. (In fact, at one point in The Tempest, Ariel presents himself as a Harpie to frighten some of the ship's crew.) He continues to manipulate Locke and even though he gives up some knowledge, retains the upper hand. Juliet would appear to be a somewhat twisted version of Miranda, whom at first Prospero seems to want to keep from Ferdinand, her suitor (ie. Goodwin, or even Jack). Of course, Ben has romantic designs of his own, doesn't he?
Alternate Theory
But what if that insurrection by Caliban I mentioned earlier had succeeded? What if the grotesque servant had become the master? What if Ben had found a way to control Jacob, if only nominally and without learning all of Jacob's secrets?
Perhaps Prospero = Jacob, and Ben is a kind of Caliban. Jacob's power still rules the Island, but is hampered by Ben, though he claims to serve the greater good of the Island. Is the "white magic" used by Jacob tainted when used by Ben?
This theory also supports Ben's attraction to Juliet and his manipulations to keep other men away from her. In The Tempest, though he was freed by Prospero, Caliban has once attempted to rape Miranda, and for this his freedom has been taken away, and both Prospero and Miranda scorn him. While Juliet would clearly be the modern-day analogue of Miranda, the more intriguing question might be: who was the original Miranda? Was it the "her" Harper mentions? Was it, perhaps, Annie?
Caliban looks up to those men from the shipwreck, taking them to be gods with whom he can rebel against his master; this would seem to suggest the original Hostiles were anti-Jacob, yet they don't seem to be. In any case, Caliban is at peace on the island, as he tells the other men:
"Be not afeard, the isle is full of noises,
sounds, and sweet airs that delight and hurt not."
These same relationships can be applied elsewhere in Lost, with the newly-revealed Island-addict Charles Widmore as his own kind of Prospero, or perhaps even Sycorax, or even the greedy brother Antonio. That's par for the course in the way that Lost uses these allusions - they're meant to deepen and widen, not completely explain away, our views of the show.
For me, what has been deepened and widened in this episode? The idea of who is good and who is evil. The connection between the Island's powers as some redeeming source of "white magic" that could be easily turned to "black," itself an echo of mankind's fall from grace, his perversion of the natural workings of the world. The question of wielding this magic's responsibility and the burden of vengeance - remember, at the end, Prospero begs the audience to release him by way of their applause. Is this why Jacob asks Locke to help him? Will Ben ever reach this limit? And finally, the issue of the illusions we see having, always, a rational explanation, a reason, driven by man.
Two other bits of trivia: 1) The Tempest also contains Alduous Huxley's title source for his famous novel, Brave New World:
Miranda: "How man godly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world
That has such people in't!"
Prospero: "'Tis new to thee."
2) Jack Bender directed a TV version of The Tempest set in Mississippi during the Civil War. It featured Harold Perrineau.
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I really like the idea of the link to Shakespeare. especially the part where his enemies were brought to the island by making them crash there.
This could be a reference to the 815 flight or Des or Henry Gale or roussoue?
Or could it mean that we see the freighter get caught in a storm and end up on the island?
All of this Shakespeare talk makes me wonder if the Tempest station serves dual purposes.
1. To bring things to the island.
The idea in the play is that it's the Tempest that brings the ship to the island. I wonder if this station has the ability to pull things or people to the island.
2. To kill unwanted visitors.
In bringing vessels and people to the island, you must have a precautionary plan for those proverbial "bad eggs" that happen to come along. And so, along with bringing vessels and people, The Tempest can rid the island of people.
Just something I've been thinking about.
First off, sorry for that little typo, folks. Miranda's line begins "How manY godly creatures..." not "How man..." My fault, not Doc's.
Anyhoo, Stern, I think you're right in that The Tempest could be alluding to something other than 815 (which seems like a good guess, too), something like Des' boat crash, the freighter...what you said. With Jacob crying for help, I wonder if he arranged for the Freighter to find its way to the Island in order to free him, or if it's strictly a John Locke thing.
Roomforhuman, ol' Bill Shakespeare had a jump start on ambiguous, dual-edged characters, so I think you're right on about this. The only glitch for me is that the station was constructed by DHARMA. If they had access to this, why not turn it on the Hostiles? Or did the Hostiles secretly retrofit the station for this purpose, via Ben and, maybe, Annie?
What if we've jumped the gun about Ben having romantic feelings for Juliet -- what if he has "paternal" feelings for Juliet?
What if by "You're mine" he is referencing a father-daughter possession? This would fit in with The Tempest Theory.
I don't know how exactly this is possible without a time-travelling/ time loop/ time disruption element. But we know Ben most likely stole Alex from Danielle in order to have a daughter in his life. Did he possibly have a child with Annie and lose them both? I guess for this theory to work, Ben would have had to see his daughter growing up... perhaps in an alternative time frame? And then he became obsessed with replacing her -- first with Alex, then with Juliet? I don't know, there's something missing to my theory obviously but I have this gut feeling that Ben's feelings for Juliet are not just typical romantic ones.
Also, think about Widmore and Penny. I've posted elsewhere that the relationship between those two goes way deeper than we've seen.... fathers controlling daughters.... Of course, Sun and Paik have a similar dynamic.
Also, Penny and Juliet kinda look alike....
Rambling.... but thanks for the Tempest Info, because it's totally useful.
also: the tsunami is set to hit in real time on Dec 26, 2004. this could be the storm that brings the bad people to the island as mentioned in the Tempast. The powers that be mentioned the tsunami comes into play.
Kind of. I read The Tempest as a general template for all the characters, out of the episode, in the whole narrative of the show.
Jacob is Prospero, and Ben is Caliban - a guy born on the island who doesn't fit with anyone.
Jack is Ferdinand - the shipwrecked prince, making Juliet or Kate Miranda (looks like Juliet here, as Ben loves her too)
Locke is Stephano - the drunk butler who allows Caliban to worship him, and spends the whole time obsessed with killing Prospero to get the island for himself.
The Black Smoke is Ariel - the fairy that does Prospero's business.
It's not intended as a total fit, more a guideline of character archetypes, and makes a lot of sense. One other tidbit for you, which I LOVE..
At the end of the tempest, the boatswain (guy who steers the boat) shows up. He says that despite them being there many days and nights, only a few hours have passed in the "real world" - a definite Losty reference after the last few weeks ;)
Sorry for writing a novel but I was on a roll.
It is also interesting to note that the movie Forbidden Planet was inspired by The Tempest. I think Doc Jensen pointed that out too. The movie is more analogous to Lost than the play. Here is the link to that Wikipedia entry - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbidden_Planet I don't know that the synopsis gives much insight as it relates to Lost, but the whole idea is that this guy Morbius was using this "mind machine" that gave him great abilities. But the drawback was that his subconscious was creating a monster in real life that eventually killed him. Perhaps in addition to the time theme, there is also something on the island that improves mind powers. Maybe much of the unexplained (smokey, Jacob, Harper's appearance out of nowhere, etc) are projections of Ben's subconscious. Whatever Ben wills in his mind becomes reality due to some machine on the island or special properties of the island. Perhaps another side effect of the wormhole. There is also a parallel to walt. Remember what happens to birds when he is around. Take a look at the Lost missing pieces on Walt. When he is upset, birds seem to die. This whole theory is also analogous to the Twilight Zone episode that was in the movie back in the 80s.
Here is a synopsis from wikipedia of the original Twilight Zone episode I was refering to earlier. It sounds a lot like Ben.
Six year-old Anthony Fremont looks like any other little boy, but looks are deceiving. He is a monster, a mutant with godlike mental powers. Early on, he isolated the small hamlet of Peaksville, Ohio. In fact, the handful of inhabitants do not even know if he destroyed the rest of the world or if it still exists. Anthony has also eliminated electricity, automobiles, and television signals. He controls the weather and what supplies can be found in the grocery store. Anthony creates and destroys as he pleases, and controls when the residents can watch the TV and what they cannot watch on it.
The adults tiptoe nervously around him, constantly telling him how everything he does is "good", since displeasing him can get them wished away "to the cornfield", where they are presumably met by a less-than-happy ending. Finally, at Dan Hollis' birthday party, Dan, slightly drunk, can no longer stand the strain and confronts the boy, calling him a monster and a murderer; while Anthony's anger grows, Dan begs the other adults to kill Anthony from behind -"Somebody end this, now!"- but everyone else is too afraid to act. Before he is killed, he is shown, indirectly by his shadow, transformed into a Jack-in-the-box.
His widow breaks down, but no matter what happens, the people of Peaksville make sure to think only good thoughts and repeat "That's a real good thing what Anthony did!" and "It's a good life."
Finally, I thought this was interesting from Wikipedia:
Forbidden Planet follows Aristotle's rules for tragedy. A great man is brought down by a single "tragic flaw" or error of judgment — his belief in his moral superiority, which supposedly follows his intellectual superiority. The same flaw destroyed the "noble Krell" as well. And, as Aristotle preferred, the story takes place over many years (in this case, twenty), yet is told almost entirely through exposition. Exposition a technique by which background information about the characters, events, or setting is conveyed in a novel, play, movie or other work of fiction. This information can be presented through dialogue, description, FLASHBACKS, or even directly through narrative. Whether Aristotle regards the “flaw” as intellectual or moral has been hotly discussed. It may cover both senses. The hero must not deserve his misfortune, but he must cause it by making a fatal mistake, an error of judgement, which may well involve some imperfection of character but not such as to make us regard him as “morally responsible” for the disasters although they are nevertheless the consequences of the flaw in him, and his wrong decision at a crisis is the inevitable outcome of his character (cf. Aristot. Poet. 6.24.)
So maybe Ben's fatal flaw will be his crush on Juliet.
i posted this same thing here:
http://forums.buddytv.com/lost-general-discussion/66067-tempest.html
& here:
http://www.fanpop.com/spots/lost/soapbox/2067
I've revised my opinion since this morning - Ben fits the Prospero mold much better. Enslaving the island magic to his own ends, he will have to give it up to find redemption in the end.
Interestingly (or maybe not) Caliban, the simple savage, complains of hearing "a thousand twangling instruments" - a constant noise that torments him around the island - the whispers maybe? In the play, it's Ariel and the other spirits playing with him. See? I KNEW teaching theatre would be useful one day.
"roomforhuman said:
All of this Shakespeare talk makes me wonder if the Tempest station serves dual purposes.
1. To bring things to the island.
The idea in the play is that it's the Tempest that brings the ship to the island. I wonder if this station has the ability to pull things or people to the island."
Somewhere I read people talking about the switch box in the station that was marked "BoxMaker." They were wondering if this control box was used to bring people to the island in "the box" that Ben mentioned when Anthony Cooper was brought to the island. This might also explain why Cooper was in the Black Rock when he arrived. I thought that it connected.
If there was in fact a switch that says box maker, then we would have some enormous possibilities. I don't think Cooper was originally in the black rock though. I seem to remember him being held in a room in the basement of somewhere in Otherton. Interesting enough though is that the name "tempest" could assimilate to electro-magnetism, which would probably go a long way to explaining the box maker...
I think it might be misguided to take analogies to The Tempest too far- I definately think the name is no coincidence, but to try to line up characters is probably a mistake. Rather than believe the writers were borrowing from Shakespeare, we should look to the people that named the station, DHARMA.
Why would DHARMA name the station the Tempest? My best answer is that, like Prospero did, to control the weather. The blast door indicates there is a weather control station somewhere in a mountainy region, just as the Tempest is. You don't need weird chemicals to generate electricity, certainly, but who knows what you need to control the weather? If it involves cloud seeding, or manipulating the atmosphere, chemicals might be their solution. Moreover, in order to gas the entire island effectively you would need vents in various places (otherwise the wind would probably carry it to one side of the island leaving the other unscathed). Theoretically, these vents may have been placed to manipulate weather island-wide, and it just ended up being an unhappy coincidence that Ben could use those vents to gas the island.
Mark - A very important point you've made there. Let me throw this out to you and everyone else: all of the other stations have very simple, direct, Zen-like names: The Swan, the Arrow, the Pearl, the Staff, the Hydra, etc. The last two we've encountered, the Looking Glass and The Tempest, seem more pointedly influenced by literature in their names...sort of like Ben has been influenced by literature. What if these stations were NOT built by DHARMA, but by Ben once he'd taken over?
Also, I agree it's possible to go too far in trying to make all the characters line up perfectly to any literary analog. The show's creators have repeatedly said there's no single source they're using. But as I said in my post, my feeling is that they use these allusions to widen, even complicate, our understanding rather than explain it away. Myself, I keep waiting for that Paradise Lost explanation that I know isn't coming!
I think that the writers are borrowing from many different areas most recently the Bard's Tempest but they have also borrowed from the Bible and several sci fi novels and other literature.
It would be so interesting to see how they put all of it together and create their own story. I believe they are borrowing ideas in the hopes that we pick up on clues of what their original scenario for Lost is and not so much making an adaptation of any particular work or several works. Or am I talking mish mash? The clues, Easter eggs and borrowed themes are not for answers but they're to guide the viewers to the direction in which the writers want to take us. I for one am enjoying the ride.
Great post Professor!
Interesting here Mark Buehner is that you may have stumbled upon a legitimate theory on Smokey. The vents could possibly be the cerberus vents. Smokey could be chemicals gone wrong (sort of in an x-files "fluke man" sort of way)...
The Tempest.
If you have ever played the vidio game called Half-Life you should have realized that that the first major freak out level you encounter looks exactly like the scene on lost 4.6 The same alarm and everything is going off. This Happens again on level 4 of the Game. Actually called the Tempest. when Juliette is in the Tempest and the alarm is going off just before all hell breaks loose and the mutants take over life as we know it. Gordon Freeman is the Juliette in the vidio game scenario. And if you have had a look at the Dr on the freighter... Does it not remind you of Half-Life Dr's? LOL
We all know that these two enteties. Half-Life and LOST have conections, which makes real life surreal at this point.
Let me know if anymore of you make this connection.
The Tempest.
If you have ever played the vidio game called Half-Life you should have realized that that the first major freak out level you encounter looks exactly like the scene on lost 4.6 The same alarm and everything is going off. This Happens again on level 4 of the Game. Actually called the Tempest. when Juliette is in the Tempest and the alarm is going off just before all hell breaks loose and the mutants take over life as we know it. Gordon Freeman is the Juliette in the vidio game scenario. And if you have had a look at the Dr on the freighter... Does it not remind you of Half-Life Dr's? LOL
We all know that these two enteties. Half-Life and LOST have conections, which makes real life surreal at this point.
Let me know if anymore of you make this connection.
Sorry, I didn't mean to post that 2 times. I'm new but I love this site.
So, If I should have posted a new post, just let me know for the Future. But, I do believe this one is called the Tempest. That scene is a dead ringer of Half-Life the game when you get to the tempest level. This means to me that lots of things are gonna change for the weirder soon.
Thanks for letting me on the board, I've seen every single episode of LOST, so I should be of some help in the future, if not a hinderance?
Sorry, I didn't mean to post that 2 times. I'm new but I love this site.
So, If I should have posted a new post, just let me know for the Future. But, I do believe this one is called the Tempest. That scene is a dead ringer of Half-Life the game when you get to the tempest level. This means to me that lots of things are gonna change for the weirder soon.
Thanks for letting me on the board, I've seen every single episode of LOST, so I should be of some help in the future, if not a hinderance?