ABC
Previously, I’ve taken a look at the Lost Book Club that ABC has posted at their website. They list all the books that have been featured on the show; some of them have been mentioned in dialogue, some of them have been read by our favorite characters. This week I’m looking at Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut. It was featured in last season’s stellar episode “The Constant” and shares some very interesting themes with our favorite show. In case you don’t recall, “The Constant” was the episode where Desmond finds himself traveling back and forth in time after exiting the island, struggling to connect with Penny, his constant, who will anchor him in the correct time.
In the episode itself, they even refer to becoming “unstuck in time,” a phrase that was coined by Vonnegut in Slaughterhouse-Five. In the novel, Billy Pilgrim becomes unstuck in time, living his life out of chronological order, bouncing back and forth through different periods of his life. Sound familiar?
If we look a little deeper into the book we can develop some crazy Lost theories… and isn’t that what it’s all about? In Slaughterhouse-Five, Billy Pilgrim is taken by a race of aliens that are also unstuck in time, in a sense. When they are born, they have complete knowledge of their entire lives and almost live outside of themselves, having all the experiences of their lifetime at once. The aliens display Billy in a zoo of oddities from around the universe. Hmm… This is starting to come together. The Others have a history of sticking people in zoos for observation. How can we forget the regrettable beginning of season 3 when Kate and Sawyer spent the first few episodes locked up on Hydra island?
Could it be that the Others are really aliens? Could they be like Vonnegut’s aliens? We’ve seen that the mysterious Richard Alpert doesn’t appear to age. Could it be that he is just a time traveler, like Desmond or Billy Pilgrim? We’ve also seen that Ben seems to have almost preternatural knowledge of what is supposed to happen on the island. He’s always one step ahead of everyone else, and he was disturbed when his daughter was killed, noting that it “wasn’t supposed to happen.” Perhaps Ben is like these aliens and has full knowledge of his life experiences. Alright, so I don’t really buy it either, but it is fun food for thought.
Any other Lost fans out there who have read Slaughterhouse-Five?
Clacked by Bob Degon
on Nov 06, 2008 @ 09:06 EST5EDT
I love Slaughterhouse-Five…Kurt Vonnegut was a brilliant author and I’m forever grateful to my 10th grade Honor’s English teacher for making us study it to the extent that we did. It is something I’ve thought about especially in relation to The Constant. Slaughterhouse-Five is so much more than time travel though…WWII, the bombing of Dresden, being captured and held as a POW, then the aftermath when Pilgrim gets home from the war. I wonder if they will bring any of these other themes into the show? They certainly could apply. I’m just waiting for Ben to say “So it goes.”
I’m a big Vonnegut fan myself. If you’ve never picked up Cat’s Cradle, I highly recommend it.