I haven't done a fandom post in a while, so I'm a little rusty. Bear with me.
I hope this isn't too obvious to too many people, but I can't ignore the book that Locke was (presumably) searching through for another missing filmstrip: An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge. In case you don't know, this is the story of a Confederate soldier who is about to be hung from a bridge during the Civil War. As the Union soldiers go to hang him, the rope snaps, and he plunges into the river below and swims away to freedom. Eventually he makes his way back home to his plantation, and his wife, who is waiting for him with open arms. Just as he's about to reach her for an embrace...
SNAP! The rope pulls taught and he is hung. His reprieve from death and everything that happened thereafter was merely an elaborate hallucination in his final moments.
Hmmm.
Maybe this means nothing. Maybe JJ just likes to throw out meaningless fodder for internet debates, and none of this seemingly significant symbolism has any significance whatsoever. Maybe it was just a shout-out to The Twilight Zone, of which a short film version of Owl Creek Bridge served as the pilot episode. But if St. Elsewhere could turn out to be the imaginings of an autistic kid, and the life of Dick Loudon could turn out to be a nightmare of Bob Hartley, then, well. An Owl Creek sort of ending to this show won't really surprise me.
2 comments:
The movie Jacobs Ladder is a kind of homage to both An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge and The Twilight Zone. It has at least as much in common with Lost as with the other two - just a thought. Might be worth a trip to Blockbuster.
I keep forgetting about Jacobs Ladder. Perhaps because it freaked me out enough that I tend to block it from my memory. ;P I never made the connection between it and OCB, but I think you're right. Now I'm curious enough to watch it again. In the daylight. With my fiance and my poodle by my side.
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