The Expression of Orientations in Time and Space with

Flashbacks and Flash-forwards in the Series "Lost"

Promotor: Auteur: Prof. Dr. S. Slembrouck Olga Berendeeva Master in de Taal- en Letterkunde Afstudeerrichting: Master Engels Academiejaar 2008-2009 2e examenperiode

For My Parents Who are so far But always so close to me

Мои родителям, Которые так далеко, Но всегда рядом

ii Acknowledgments

First of all, I would like to thank Professor Dr. Stefaan Slembrouck for his interest in my work. I am grateful for all the encouragement, help and ideas he gave me throughout the writing.

He was the one who helped me to figure out the subject of my work which I am especially thankful for as it has been such a pleasure working on it!

Secondly, I want to thank my boyfriend Patrick who shared enthusiasm for my subject, inspired me, and always encouraged me to keep up even when my mood was down. Also my friend Sarah who gave me a feedback on my thesis was a very big help and I am grateful.

A special thank you goes to my parents who always believed in me and supported me.

Thanks to all the teachers and professors who provided me with the necessary baggage of knowledge which I will now proudly carry through life.

iii Foreword

In my previous research paper I wrote about film discourse, thus, this time I wanted to continue with it but have something new, some kind of challenge which would interest me. After a conversation with my thesis guide, Professor Slembrouck, we decided to stick on to film discourse but to expand it. I chose to analyze my favourite series Lost, to see how flashbacks and flash-forwards are organized there. Next to that, we noticed that time and space play a significant role in this series, in connection to flashbacks and flash-forwards and in general. Lost is a perfect series to research in this area, as it has very complicated relationships between time and space, flashbacks and flash-forwards.

iv Contents

Foreword………………………………………………………………………………………….iv

Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………..1

1. Philosophy of Time and Space………………………………………………………………..2

1.1. Ancient Times and Middle Ages…………………………………………………………2

1.2. Modern views……………………………………………………………………………..4

1.3. The Theory of Relativity………………………………………………………………...10

1.4. Concluding remarks……………………………………………………………………..12

2. Spatio-temporal problems in sociology……………………………………………………...13

2.1. Humanistic frame of time and space...... 13

2.2. Social anthropological aspects...... 15

2.3. Psychological aspects of time...... 17

2.4. Variations in time experience...... 18

2.5. The colonization of time...... 19

2.6. Absolute and relative views on time and space in sociology...... 22

2.7. Concluding remarks...... 24

3. Time and Space in Linguistics...... 25

3.1. Language and space...... 25

3.2. Spatial representation in linguistics...... 31

3.3. Time and language...... 32

3.3.1. Verbal tenses and time...... 35

3.3.2. Temporal modifiers...... 36

v 3.4. Concluding remarks...... 37

4. Time and Space in Lost: flashbacks and flash-forwards...... 39

4.1. The role of space in Lost. The Island...... 39

4.1.1. The location of the island...... 40

4.1.2. The island as a peril...... 43

4.1.3. The island as nowhere...... 47

4.1.4. The island as destiny...... 55

4.1.5. The personification of the island...... 60

4.2. The role of time in Lost...... 64

4.3. Formal realization of flashbacks and flash-forwards...... 70

4.3.1. Visual realization of flashbacks and flash-forwards...... 70

4.3.1.1. Place...... 70

4.3.1.2. The characters‟ appearance...... 71

4.3.1.3. Other visual devices...... 72

4.3.1.4. Characters‟ meetings...... 73

4.3.2. Plot structure...... 74

4.3.3. Verbal realization of flashbacks and flash-forwards...... 75

4.4. Functions of flashbacks and flash-forwards...... 85

4.4.1. Jack Shephard...... 86

4.4.2. Kate Austen...... 89

4.4.3. James “Sawyer” Ford...... 91

4.4.4. Hugo “Hurley” Reyes...... 96

4.4.5. John Locke...... 100

4.4.6. General view on flashbacks and flash-forwards in Lost...... 105

vi 4.5. Concluding remarks...... 111

References...... 113

Referred episodes...... 118

vii Introduction

In the first chapter we will look at different philosophical approaches concerning time and space, beginning from Aristotle up to Einstein. The second chapter is dedicated to sociological approaches to time and space, how human time is organized, variations in time experience, etc.

The third chapter delves into about linguistic approaches to time and space, how people talk about it and express different spatial relations in their speech. We made this kind of research in order to learn more about the nature of time and space.

If the first three chapters are purely theoretical, the fourth and the last chapter is completely practical, dedicated to the analysis of the series Lost. It begins with a general characterization of space in the series: the island, a complicated subject that thus deserves extra attention. The island can be represented from several points of view: the ways in which the characters see it - as a location, as a peril, as nowhere, as destiny, and some even consider it to be a living creature.

Further on, we focus on time in the series, a significant subject as some personages manage to time travel. Next, we look at flashbacks and flash-forwards, researching their formal realization, namely how they are shown through setting, characters, other visual devices, plot, and verbal devices. Finally, the functions of flashbacks and flash-forwards are explained in connection with five personages and in general.

1 1. Philosophy of Time and Space

1.1 Ancient Times and Middle Ages

Originally, time has always been one of the major concepts to reflect on; perhaps its ambiguous nature makes it so difficult to grasp. In philosophy, religion, and physics many different ideas appeared from Ancient Time up to present-day, explaining the essence of time. It seems logical to examine the main philosophical theories in order to have a better understanding of time.

One of the first concepts belongs to Christianity wherein, according to the Bible, time is strictly linear. It begins with God‟s creation of the universe and then slowly moves forward, when Christ returns to the Earth for the second time. Nevertheless, God himself is considered to be eternal and therefore beyond time. Some ancient cultures such as Mayan, Hopi, Babylonian,

Hindu, and Ancient Greek, on the contrary, regard time as cyclical: “the universe goes through repeated cycles of creation, destruction and rebirth” (Wikipedia).

Among the outstanding ancient philosophers Aristotle was the first to make a serious attempt at analyzing the concept of time. His ideas were based on the influential view of Plato who identified time with process. In Aristotle‟s book Physics, “time is defined as the number of movements in respect of „before‟ and „after.‟ Motion is an attribute of a substance, and time in turn is an attribute of motion … Motion is potentially time and becomes such in actuality when its temporal succession is noted and measured by some sentient creature. Thus time is not a substantial entity which is capable of existing separately from other things” (Gale 1). Moreover,

Aristotle indicates the continuity of time which derives from the continuity of motion

(accordingly coming from the continuity of the space). “Time is made continuous be the

2 indivisible, present now-moment, which links the past to the future by serving as the termination of the past and the beginning of the future” (Gale 1-2). Obviously, the connection between motion and time leads the reader to the conclusion that Aristotle “provides a definition not so much of time as of duration” (Van Fraassen 16). Aristotle‟s theory explains time only in connection with motion, while, as we know, motion is not considered to be a crucial element to define time, as time may easily flow by without any observable motion at all.

Later, Plotinus in the Third Ennead opposed Aristotle‟s theory of time. Plotinus‟ main point criticized the definition of time, saying that “time, obviously, cannot be a number, but is what is numbered. Before and after, if they are to refer to temporal relations, must mean before and after in time, rather than in the space traversed” (Gale 2). Moreover, Plotinus presumes that time should be defined on its own, apart from other things, and thus, independent from motion. “All motion and rest occur within the time, but time does not occur in something else” (ibid.).

Nevertheless, criticizing Aristotle‟s theory, Plotinus did not make any further progress, although he offered a sensible idea about defining time apart from other essences, strictly on its own.

St. Augustine, a very influential theologian and philosopher, was the first to mention that time exists only in our minds and not in reality. In his Confessions he is arguing about God‟s creation of the world and accordingly about time in this matter. “We must see what reply can be made to those who agree that God is the Creator of the world, but have difficulties about the time of its creation, and what reply, also, they can make to difficulties we might raise about the place of its creation. For, as they demand why the world was created then and no sooner, we may ask why it was created just here where it is, and not elsewhere. For they imagine infinite spaces of time before the world” (Capek 183). Later on he comes to the conclusion that some ideas and

3 universal principles are eternal and exist outside the confines of time and space – therefore proving the existence of God. Thus, God is not limited by time and space, moreover, he created it Himself, it had its beginning with the creation of the world. Time according to St. Augustine,

“is essentially constituted of a past, a present, and a future; without this division it would be impossible to speak of time. But the past is not existent, for it has passed; nor does the future exist, for it has yet to come; the present is the moment which joins the past with the future” (The

Classic Philosophers). By denying the reality of time, St. Augustine became trapped in his own theory. To solve this problem, he appealed “to the intellective memory, which records the past and foresees the future. Thus both the past and the future are made present to the memory, and here time finds its reality of length and brevity. For Augustine, then, as the Scholastics were to say later, time is a being of reason with a foundation in things which through becoming offer to the mind the concept of time as past, present, and future” (ibid.). This is how he draws the conclusion that time exists in our minds.

Further on in the Middle Ages philosophers and theologians determined that the universe had a definite beginning (whereas earlier people believed that the past was infinite). This idea was inspired by the story of Creation, wherein the world was created by God. Consequently, this sense of time was supported by Christianity, Islam and Judaism.

1.2 Modern views

When thinking of modernity and new philosophical and scientific approaches, the name of

Isaac Newton, an outstanding English physicist, theologian, mathematician, philosopher and astronomer, certainly comes to mind. Obviously, history would be different without him.

4 In his approach Newton developed a theory of absolute time and space. He partly rejects a relational theory which insists that things, bodies and events define space by their identity; that space is shaped only by the presence of other objects. Nevertheless, Filmer Stuart C. Northrop defends a relational theory of time and space, asserting that “the relative, apparent and common space and time which Newton contrasts with absolute, true and mathematical space and time are the private visual space and subjective psychological time of immediate sensory experience”

(Grünbaum 6).

Newton defined an absolute time as that which “flows equally without relation to anything external” (Newton 6). He opposed it to time which is relative and “commonly used instead of true time” (ibid.), measured by hours, days, months and years. Measurement of time by different periods like days is considered to be incorrect as it is based on natural days that are “truly unequal” according to astronomy. Northrop adds that time may vary “from person to person, and even for a single person passes very quickly under certain circumstances and drag under others”

(Grünbaum 7).

In relation to space Newton is known for introducing the concept of absolute space. He begins with the idea that people perceive different quantities (such as time, space, place, and motion) only in the relation to other objects. Therefore it would be appropriate to remove certain prejudices which will help to distinguish those quantities into relative or absolute. “In philosophical disquisitions, we ought to abstract from our senses, and consider things themselves, distinct from what are only sensible measure of them” (ibid. 8). In that respect

“Absolute time, in its own nature, without relation to anything external, remains always similar and immovable. Relative space is some movable dimension or measure of the absolute spaces; which our senses determine by its position to bodies; and which is commonly taken for

5 immovable space … Absolute and relative space are the same in figure and magnitude; but they do not remain numerically the same” (Newton 6).

Generally speaking, Newton claimed that location and time where physical events occur are autonomous. No objects are able to define space or time by their identity. Moreover, “receptacle space and time each have their own intrinsic metric, which exists quite independently of the existence of material rods and clocks in the universe” (Grünbaum 6).

Thus, Newton‟s theory basically approaches time and space as absolute categories, which are not material substances but are similar to substances in the sense that they are independent from events, things or motions, and they would exist with or without those matters.

A contemporary of Newton, famous German philosopher Gottfried Alfred Leibniz totally objected this theory. He rejected prior theories, arguing that time and space cannot be considered to be substances or substance-like. His most famous statements are presented in his letter to

Clarke in their discussion: “I hold space to be something merely relative, as time is; I hold it to be an order of coexistences, as time is an order of successions. For space denotes, in terms of possibility, an order of things which exist at the same time, considered an existing together; without enquiring into their manner of existing” (Leibniz). Thus, Leibniz‟s theory of time and space is in fact a theory of temporal and spatial order. He understands space and time as internal features of other things, “the location of an object is not a property of an independent space, but a property of the located object itself” (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Generally, this theory has two major points, “First, there is no absolute location in either space or time; location is always the situation of an object or event relative to other objects and events. Second, space and time are not in themselves real (that is, not substances). Space and time are, rather, ideal.

Space and time are just metaphysically illegitimate ways of perceiving certain virtual relations

6 between substances … Space is nothing but the order of co-existent objects; time nothing but the order of successive events” (ibid.).

Another interesting point he made concerns the principle of sufficient reason. “Nothing happens without a sufficient reason” (Leibniz); that is everything that happens has a reason or at least an explanation why it happened exactly that way.

In the 18th century a German philosopher Immanuel Kant, regarded as one of most influential thinkers of Western Europe, was especially famous for his theories concerning time and space.

His most prominent work is Critique of Pure Reason where he investigated spatial and temporal relations. According to Kant, “we experience the objects of (outer) perception as being all in space and all in time, as spatially and temporally related to each other” (Van Fraassen 46). In a process of conceiving events and how they are ordered in time people apply some rules to time ordering, known as Analogies, which help them to deal with time.

Kant defines three main aspects of time: duration, succession and simultaneity. “There will, therefore, be three rules of all relations of appearances in time, and these rules will be prior to all experience, and indeed make it possible. By means of these rules the existence of every appearance can be determined in respect to the unity of time … These three rules … relate these temporal concepts to other concepts applying to the physical world: duration to substance, succession to causation, simultaneity to reciprocal interaction” (ibid. 47).

The First Analogy explains the relation of duration to substance. Generally, we conceive events in a sequential order. If there are several sequences, they mostly do not have connections with each other. Such a sequential order occurs because our perception is connected with an object. If there are many events involving the same object, then we conceive them as belonging to the same sequence, the history of that object (ibid. 47).

7 The Second Analogy connects succession with causation. Kant shows that everything that happens must be conceived of as an alteration to the state of a substance, mostly those changes have a causal connection (ibid. 49). “The objective relation of appearances that follow upon one another is not to be determined through mere perception. In order that this relation be known as determined, the relation between the two states must be so thought that it is thereby determined as necessary which of them must be placed before, and which of them after, and that they cannot be placed in the reverse relation” (Kant B234). This second Analogy of Kant reminds us of

Leibniz‟ temporal causal theory or the principle of sufficient reason.

The Third Analogy deals with substances being in a mutual interaction with each other. “All substances, insofar as they can be perceived to coexist in space, are in thoroughgoing reciprocity” (Kant A211f). Further on, Kant dwells upon the simultaneity of perception when we perceive two events at the same moment. If we see two things happen at the same time and at the same place, we consider them to be happening simultaneously and we inevitably connect the two or create reciprocity between them.

In general, Kant‟s basic idea states that time is presupposed in human activity. Moreover, time structures the perception of the world and objects within it.

Later on in the 19th century Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche‟s theory of Eternal Recurrence became a breakthrough in the philosophy of that time. Originally this theory was based on the fact that time may be topologically closed. Thus, things may repeat and occur several or even an infinite amount of times, making the world process cyclical or periodic. “According to the theory of cyclical recurrence, then, world history consists of a series of cycles, each exactly like the others in all respects” (Van Fraassen 63). A weak point in this theory is that finding empirical evidence to support it has proven difficult. That is why Nietzsche mostly concentrates on the

8 “thought of eternal recurrence”. He calls this idea “horrifying and paralyzing” giving, as an example, a man who realizes that his life has already happened before. Everything that he is experiencing is no more than a repeat of somebody else's life:

“What if a demon were to creep after you one day or night, in your loneliest loneness, and say: „This life which you live and have lived, must be lived again by you, and innumerable times more. And mere will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and every sigh - everything unspeakably small and great in your life - must come again to you, and in the same sequence and series‟. Would you not throw yourself down and curse the demon who spoke to you thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment, in which you would answer him: "Thou art a god, and never have I heard anything more divine!" (Nietzsche 341).

In his other book Thus spoke Zarathustra Nietzsche is developing this idea by mentioning that “all things recur eternally, and we ourselves too; and that we have already existed an eternal number of times, and all things with us” (220-221). Though it is simply a tale, this mentioning of eternal recurrence may be taken quite seriously as he alludes to it in The Gay Science as well, as we have seen earlier. Obviously, Nietzsche puts it out just as a hypothesis, without arguments, evidence, or any axioms which prove it. Nevertheless, it became quite influential and was developed further by other philosophers.

In general, there are a number of important theories from seventeenth up to the end of nineteenth century. The opposition of relational and absolute theories of time and space, Kant‟s analogies and Nietzsche‟s eternal recurrence, significantly contributed to the philosophy of time and space as well as to the sciences and other disciplines.

.

9 1.3. The Theory of Relativity

As we have seen, in the 19th century philosophers were mostly concerned with the problem of temporal order, while in the twentieth century the theory of relativity has dramatically changed the approach to such problems.

At the beginning of the 20th century Albert Einstein came up with his impressive theory of relativity. This theory assumes that all physical laws should count for all observers relative to other observers, whether or not they are moving or standing still. Here we will not concentrate on the whole theory as it is but on the parts that deal with temporal and spatial relations.

First of all, after the major contribution of Albert Einstein, space and time could no longer be treated separately. This can be explained best by two famous consequences of the theory of relativity: time dilation and length contraction. Time dilation means that clocks, measured while in movement, tick slower than a “stationary” clock. In theory, if an observer moves and has a clock with him, this clock would show different time in comparison with the same clock moving at a different speed. “Clocks in relative motion with respect to each other simply do not agree”

(Van Fraassen 157).

Length contraction holds that objects, moving relative to an observer, appear flatter in the direction of movement in comparison with identical stationary objects. Thus, one moving meter seems shorter than one stationary meter. Therefore, in Einstein‟s view, space and time cannot be absolute.

Another important consequence of Einstein‟s theory redefines the concept of simultaneity.

The theory shows that two different events occurring simultaneously for observer A, will not appear simultaneous for observer B who is moving relative to A. The major conclusion drawn by

Einstein is that events cannot have the relation of simultaneity if they are spatially separate.

Thus, simultaneity, time, and space are considered to be relative.

10

Another major twentieth century philosopher in the field of time and space is Hans

Reichenbach with famous works such as The Philosophy of Space and Time (1928) and The

Direction of Time (1956). Reichebach was the first to define two kinds of geometry: a mathematical one and a real one – namely, our physical world. In reality we can never measure the real length, so instead we have to choose a measuring unit, for example, the Standard Meter or a wavelength.

Within the philosophy of time, Reichenbach distinguishes two different concepts: the order of time and the direction of time. “Reichenbach asserts (in The philosophy of Space and Time) that the reality of space and time is an unquestionable result of the epistemological analysis of the theory of relativity. With respect to the problem of reality, space and time are not different from other physical concepts. But the reality of space and time does not imply the concept of an absolute space and time. Space and time are relational concepts and we can study their properties because of the existence of physical objects, e.g. clocks, that realize relationships between space- time entities. Reichenbach also emphasizes the causal theory of space and time: causality is the basis of both philosophical and physical theory of space and time” (Internet Encyclopedia of

Philosophy).

Thus, in the framework of the theory of relativity, the major attention was paid to the fact that there is no absolute time or space. Things always tend to be relative to the motion or position of the observer. Obviously, this brought some complications. The theory made it impossible to define the real length and the real time because every time we measure it, it could be relative to something else and the measurements may not coincide.

11 1.4 Concluding remarks

In this chapter we have covered main philosophical ideas concerning time and space. It is apparent that the views on time and space have undergone a lot of change throughout history. It turns out that time is relative from epoch to epoch, and culture to culture.

Some ancient religions, such as Mayan, considered time to be cyclical, while in Christianity, on the contrary, time is strictly linear. In Ancient philosophy, Aristotle defined time through motion, as a succession of events that happened before and after the present moment. Plotinus opposed Aristotle‟s theory, claiming that time should be defined on its own. St. Augustine proposed the idea that time exists only in our minds, for example, when we are thinking about the future or remembering the past.

In the 17th century Isaac Newton developed the theory of absolute and relative space and time, where absolute is something that does not have any relation to anything and exists on its own.

Leibniz has rejected Newton‟s theory, claiming that time and space are relative and defined by other objects. Kant, in turn, defined three main aspects of time: duration, succession, and simultaneity, and pointed out three analogies for how we experience time. In the 19th century

Nietzsche suggested his theory of eternal recurrence which implies that time is cyclical and consists of a chain of repeating events.

In the 20th century Albert Einstein amazed the world with his Theory of Relativity, defining that both time and space are relative and depend on the observer‟s position. Further on

Reichenbach developed his view, asserting that there exist two kinds of realities – a mathematical and a physical one. While we may measure a mathematical one, the physical one will always be relative, and difficult to measure precisely.

One can expect many different theories to be developed in the future.

12 2. Spatio-temporal problems in sociology

2.1 Humanistic frame of time and space

Sociology has always been concerned with time and space because the two surround us, in some way define who we are, and tend to be much more difficult to explain than we can imagine.

Very early on people learn about time, how to measure it, yet it is still difficult to understand it completely. Different methods of sociology can be used to examine several approaches concerning the humanistic frame of time and space, which in the end helps us to understand the concept better.

Originally, in mythology time is represented in three different forms: a cosmogonic one, an astronomic one and a human one. The cosmogonic form implies the story of origin, creation of the world and universe; the human form is accordingly about the course of human life; and the astronomic form is measured by the change of day and night and the change of the seasons.

Cosmogonic time is often ignored or weakly symbolized, while astronomic time is represented by symmetrical space and modeled after the North Star and the Sun (Tuan 8). Space in mythology is more often described as a mythic place, with a concrete character and a coordinate system of cardinal points which is organized around a central vertical axis. However, what interests us the most is the human time.

“Human time … is directional. A human life begins at birth and ends in death; and despite a common belief that death is a return to the womb leading to re-birth, life is individually experienced as a one-way journey … Life is lived in the future – close as the next meal and distant as the next stage of a career” (ibid. 9).

As for a human place, which is more concrete than space, most people consider their home to be the center of their life, the primary starting point: “In modern society the circular movement

13 centers on the two poles of home and workplace” (ibid. 15). Nevertheless, those two experiences, going to work and going back home, are quite different. When we go to work, we move forward into the future. When we come back home it is a return to the past, to our roots, and going backwards in space and time: “The fact that one leaves home at the beginning of the day and returns at sunset reinforces the impression that with the trip to the office one follows time‟s arrow into the future, and that with the trip back home one moves against directional time”

(Straus 12). However, this does not count for every worker. For people of middle or low-income families this would be correct but for a high-income executive often moving between different places, places tend to lose their special character. Spending much time at his office, he begins to consider it as his home, while if he brings his work home his home starts to resemble the workplace (ibid.). Thus, for human beings time is directional, beginning with a birth and ending with a death, and place is mostly home-centric.

Wallerstein defines five other categories of TimeSpace: episodic geopolitical TimeSpace, cyclico-ideological TimeSpace, structural TimeSpace, eternal TimeSpace, and transformational

TimeSpace.

Episodic geopolitical TimeSpace implies “categories by which we discuss immediate history

… The key element is that it is short-term in its definitions of both time and space, and the events are tied to the meanings given to them by the immediate context in which they occur”

(Wallerstein). Mostly, it can be applied to newspaper articles when it refers to some event in some place (for example, news report about strike in Wales).

Cyclico-ideological TimeSpace means “categories by which we sometimes explain immediate history … that emphasizes a longer run of time, and that involves some definition of the situation deriving from an evaluation of the meaning of location in time and space of particular groups”

14 (ibid.). For instance, some recent event from the newspaper article is explained by some historical incident.

Structural TimeSpace refers to categories by which we can define different cultural phenomena of which “the explanations … are much more long-term, and are in fact definitions of the kind of historical system in which we live as well as its boundaries in time and space”

(ibid.). For example, the concept of Roman Empire belongs to this category.

Eternal TimeSpace implies “the assumption of timelessness and spacelessness, in effect, of the irrelevance of time and space to the analysis” (ibid.). For example, the effect of climate on the social behavior of individuals.

Transformational TimeSpace means “the opposite kind of analysis, one which emphasizes the specialness of the occurrence, its exceptional quality, and its profound effect on all the major institutions of our world” (ibid.). For instance, if we talk about the Christ‟s coming to Earth, place and time do not matter but the incident itself does. This demonstrates the importance of the occurrence.

To conclude, human time is mostly directional, and human place is home-centered for most individuals.

2.2 Social anthropological aspects

However, in different cultures there are various approaches to grasping time and different ways of understanding it, depending on cultural traditions. According to Leonard W. Doob there are several social and anthropological aspects that are related to temporal judgments.

15 1) Natural changes that occur perpetually and eventually. They might be cyclical, such as

changes between day and night, between seasons, or irreversible changes, like aging or

death.

2) Social events associated with natural changes. Sunsets, beginning of a rainy season,

different stages of life or somebody‟s death. These things mostly require a behavior

change such as a ceremony or a prayer.

3) Cooperative activities supported by temporal judgments, such as the beginning of a hunt

with the sunrise.

4) Socialization processes when an individual learns traditions, values, and beliefs of the

group he belongs to. This process implies the ability to respond correctly to the temporal

cues of the society. Thus, a child learns a series of temporal judgments, for instance, that

he cannot expect to have a meal when it‟s dark or if he wakes up before sunset, he should

wait till the sunrise when his mother gets up.

5) Conscious memories about the past that can be occasionally evoked. An adult seeing a

child may remember himself as a child, and that state was a long time ago for him.

6) Anticipation of the future (even in societies not oriented on the future). The child realizes

that he will get certain privileges and responsibility only after reaching a definite age

(Doob 59-60).

It is evident that temporal relations are represented in all societies, even if it may look that certain cultures do not use a concept of time. There exist several parameters to indicate temporal patterning of a certain society: such as situations in which people use temporal judgments, frequency, measurement (clocks or calendars), value of time, which moments are considered to be significant or insignificant, accuracy of temporal judgments, orientation (emphasis on the past, the present and the future) and conceptualization (whether time and existence are

16 conceptualized as linear or cyclical). (Doob 61-62). All these parameters help humans to understand and analyze the nature of temporal judgments in various cultures. For the most part, the differences are connected with social and economic conditions, different activities, and, as a result, different orientations and temporal judgments.

2.3 Psychological aspects of time

There is a minor connection between people and nature and insulation from climatic changes

- for example, central heating allows us to forget that it is a cold winter outside. However, we are still using “natural” counting systems such as day, night, months and years. Even if time is linear, we experience it more in cycles or biological rhythms. “Man is far more influenced by internal biological rhythms than people realize” (Colquhoun 66). Many parameters like body temperature, blood sugar, and pulse rate vary throughout the day. That is why some people tend to be more energetic in the morning, while others feel better in the evening. “The whole organism, in a sense, is the clock … The individual has a number of psychological sub-clocks”

(Orme 67). For example, a heart rate: sudden changes in those rhythms may influence the whole experience of time. If those changes are happening in the nervous-system or brain, an individual can have unusual experiences, like “time is standing still” or a sense of déjà-vu.

During last the few decades with the frequency of trans-continental air travel, people now experience the phenomenon of “jet-lag.” Though it seems easy to adjust to a new time zone by sleeping a few extra hours, the reality is that an individual needs several days to adjust the new rhythm. Also in a modern society there is a tendency towards later and later entertaining activities. If fifty years ago city life stopped before the midnight, nowadays it is just beginning.

Obviously, those changes in temporal behavior have a great impact on people - a lack of sleep, for example (ibid.).

17 “Weekly cycles of behavior are, perhaps, more individually acquired than the genetically based circadian rhythms. But although a seven day cycle is an acquired rather than a natural phenomenon, its effect is important. The days of week tend to be regarded differently especially to feeling tone. In general, a gradient of pleasure exists with Sunday and Monday being the low spots and Friday and Saturday, the high spots” (ibid. 69). Naturally, it is connected with the pleasure of weekends and less pleasurable working week.

At a monthly interval it has been noted that mostly women do suffer mood changes according to their menstrual cycles.

Even seasonal changes have an influence on the modern urban man, though we may seem completely independent from seasons. “It is worth noting that among the mentally handicapped, and also among schizophrenics, that a peak of births occur in winter” (Dalen 70). Suicide and mental breakdowns are believed to have their peak in spring and early summer. Those phenomena reflect a connection between psychological and social factors associated with temporal changes.

2.4 Variations in time experience

Obviously, time experience may vary from person to person and have variations within different situations. “Not only does conscious awareness occupy a definite amount of time

(rather than space), it also appears to be inevitably moving forward in time. It is a feature of everyday life that a person‟s activities or mood directly affects his experience of how quickly time is passing” (Orme 70). Mostly an enjoyable holiday passes very fast, while a disease that requires a long time spent in bed goes very slowly. In general, time “filled” with events passes faster than “unfilled” time. Psychopathic personalities can have abnormalities in the experience

18 of time, feeling excluded from the normal flow of time. Various drugs may also disturb the perception of time, slowing it down or making people feel out of temporal reality.

Another interesting concept of time perception is the “pastness” or memories, realizing that an event belongs to the past. Some memories can seem more bright, more recent, often in an old age those memories come from childhood while some recent events can be remembered in a less detailed way. Definite years may form a linear series until a particular year when something significant happens. In connection with “pastness” the experience of déjà-vu would be interesting to investigate. This is so called moment of familiarity of the past, already happened events. “Such an experience can be attributed to an undetected similarity between the new even and a past one. A more mysterious possibility is that déjà-vu is due to the effect of a previous precognitive experience” (ibid. 72).

Nevertheless, not everybody deals with the feeling of déjà-vu. Its nature is still unexplained and may differ from person to person, as well as the time experienced in general.

2.5 The colonization of time

When social changes happen in our society we see temporal activities shifting, this is known as the process of colonization. If earlier work was limited to 8 hours per day, from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m., nowadays with 24 hour restaurants, hotels, auto repair stations, hospitals, airplane flights, radio stations always working, people are working multiple-shifts more and more. General changes in their rhythms occur, for example, when staying awake during the night. “The temporal ecology becomes an issue – the relative proportions and different types of people who are up and about outside their residence around the clock” (Melbin 100).

19 Mostly this colonization occurs in urban areas, it is generally the “migration” into pre-dawn or post-nightfall hours. The causes of this phenomenon according to Murray Melbin are the following: enabling factors, demand push, supply pull, and stabilizing feedback. We will discuss those causes further.

Important achievements such as electricity typically led to the expansion of the active day. It can also be called an enabling factor. The development of long-distance transportation (cars, trains, public transport, airplanes) and communication technologies also belong to enabling factors. “The telephone, the wireless, and more recently the communication satellite have brought all time zones around the globe into a single instant-access network. For the multiple embassies of more than one hundred nations that are in constant contact with their capitals, the news networks, the field offices of international corporations … the communications system makes it possible for people to be in touch with one another even of they are out of phase of time” (ibid. 103). Two other factors are the availability of late-night or early-morning shifts and the heat of the city. Cities tend to be warmer because of masses of buildings and overheated pavements. Even during the night those pavements still give off heat stored during the day.

“Since more people go out into the streets under warmer conditions, the city uniquely provides extra aid to being up and about long after dark” (ibid.).

Demand push implies forces that extend the active day. Most of them come from outside the city – taxis have to transfer people from one place to another, deliverers of fresh food must get up at 5 a.m. for food to be delivered at 7 a.m. Farmers in turn have to get up even earlier, at 2 a.m., to pick up eggs and fresh dairy products that will be transported to the city. The need for fast customer service makes bank and office workers to stay later at work, while emergency services have to available all the time. “The complexities of today‟s civilization foster evening and night activity” (ibid. 104). Demand push in general refers to “crowded conditions in one

20 time period driving people and their activities out of that period into earlier or later time spans”

(Tomplinson 243). Economic motives do mostly influence time shifts. For example: the need for night work, from night shifts workers who seek radio and television programmes during the night, and who need supermarkets and auto stations open in during the hours convenient for them.

Late hours presuppose another kind of life, as some people feel more comfortable to be outside during the night than during the day. “A subtler, individualistic movement resembling emigration to escape persecution also takes place. The city harbours a myriad of life styles, some more deviant than others” (Melbin 104). Among those deviants are homosexuals, criminals, the deformed, and the ugly, most of contacts they have with other people tend to be strained by intolerance. That is why they escape into spants (the shortening of space + time) with fewer people which allows them to feel more secure. The night becomes a refuge for deviant personalities.

Generally, “theories of urban growth are demand oriented” (Richardson 193). Accordingly, higher demands are boosted by the lures of supply. Therefore, people in control of the situation try to maximize resources. “A maximizing strategy is one which deliberate additional use is made of facilities at hand, in order to reduce the overall cost of owning them, by drawing the greatest possible yield from them” (Melbin 105). For example, at some factory or company expensive equipment is used around the clock. People are working at night to make a maximum profit, computers remain on all the time because the start-up and the shut-down process take extra time and money. At the same time “a smoothing strategy aims to even the load on facilities by making off-hour usage more attractive, thereby redistributing the demand. This is tried where building a facility to cope with peak demand entails huge capital costs, but the daily cycle of demand fluctuates widely” (ibid. 106). For example, during the night electricity is cheaper while

21 in peak hours the price is two times higher. Moreover, the fact of supply itself will enforce supply, while the existence of new bridges and roads will attract more traffic there. This is called a supply pull.

Nevertheless, the growth of any system cannot be unlimited. In the case with time colonization, there is stabilizing feedback, namely social barriers, that try to regulate time changes. In spite of the fact that public transport works till midnight, people prefer to come home earlier. In this case social barriers keep them “normal” and make them return home at earlier hours.

However, time colonization has negative effects as well. As people are engaged in late-night activities the crime rate grows. Small shops become especially vulnerable. As a result, more shops prefer to close earlier, around 6 p.m., and in several churches they even cancelled evening messes as some church-goers were being mugged.

“The appearance and spread of extended-day and increased activities signal an evolutionary step in the growth of cities” (ibid. 112). However, some of those changes may deeply affect the psychology of human beings, their life styles and their relationships with other people, in both a positive and negative way.

2.6 Absolute and relative views on time and space in sociology

As we know, the absolute view on time and space derives from Newton, although, already in the 19th century this view was replaced by relative theory of time and space. “In absolute space distance and location are measured in unchanging units of miles, kilometres, degrees of latitude and the like. In the relative scheme of things distances take on different measurements, such as cost, time or levels of attractiveness” (Holly 6). Though, if we deal with time, this distinction may present a series of difficulties, since time can be relative and absolute simultaneously. In the

22 modern society there are many devices one can use to time events, apart from clocks and calendars. However, in some industries, such as agriculture, absolute timing is not needed and a relative one can be used instead. For example, rather than being planned around specific days, harvesting occurs according to weather conditions and seasons. “This leads to the conclusion that at the scale of the society under scrutiny the timing system is absolute, but this in turn may be relative to the mode of production” (ibid.).

Perhaps, a more interesting example is the existence of different sociological and psychological conceptions of time whose meanings may vary for individuals. Those timing devices may be in accordance or in conflict with an individual‟s psychological or biological rhythms. In many cultures meals are strictly timed; breakfast, lunch and dinner are spread throughout the day and not always correspond to personal feelings of hunger (ibid.).

People regard events in temporal order, whether they are related to the future or the past. “The individual‟s perception of time is not independent of social and cultural concepts which, operating through language and social convention, allow the coordination of one individual‟s actions with those of others. These social aspects of time are built around „formalized reference points‟ to which past, present and future may be related” (Harvey 412). Everybody has their own framework of time, their personal peculiarities, and that is why we have to call time and space relative. Mostly, those time frameworks are shaped by social life, age norms or opening hours of shopping malls.

According to Hägerstrand‟s model, time and space are physical properties of the environment, and all activities are undertaken through a time-space “prism”. Individual behaviour is based on the fact that at a particular time he has to be in a particular location (Hägerstrand 1970).

23 2.7 Concluding remarks

In this chapter we have examined different sociological approaches, considering time and space.

First of all, human time is believed to be directional, and human place is mostly home- centered. Secondly, there exists a number of different TimeSpaces, including episodic geopolitical, cyclico-ideological, structural, eternal, and transformational TimeSpace.

Further on we dealt with different factors that are related to temporal judgments in various cultures, mostly they are connected with nature, biological process of ageing, and sociological rituals. Nevertheless, time experience may vary from person to person, depending on their psychological or biological characteristics. Further we covered the process, called the colonization of time, when normal hours tend to shift and more people work irregular shifts, and therefore stay awake during late hours.

Finally, we examined the absolute and relative time and space in sociology. As it turned out, while most people are obsessed with exact time, some individuals can manage with the relative notion of time (as seen in agriculture).

24 3. Time and Space in Linguistics

3.1 Language and Space

The existence of language adds complexity in conveying spatial and temporal information. In this chapter we will examine ways in which spatial cognition is reflected in language, and how people talk about space.

The framework we use here belongs to Jackendoff who was influenced by Fodor‟s “language of thought” theory, which was based on the fact that “one cannot learn a language unless one already has an original language to structure the learning process” (Peterson, Nadel, Bloom, and

Garret 554). He called this original language the “language of thought”. Jackendoff extended

Fodor‟s model. He distinguished language representations (LRs), spatial representations (SR), and conceptual structure (CS) (ibid.). “LRs include all aspects of language structure, including the lexicon and grammar; SRs include all aspects of spatial structure as it is represented in the brain” (ibid.). A conceptual structure, in its turn, “is an encoding of linguistic meaning that is independent of the particular language whose meaning it encodes” (Jakendoff 5). The conceptual theory has many approaches (including the one of Fodor 1975, Lehrer and Kittay 1992, Pinker

1989). As natural language does, a conceptual structure must include all the distinctions of meaning.

Spatial representation, namely, a configuration of objects in space, needs some criteria to be satisfied:

1. SR must be able to recognize the shape of objects, so that an observer can distinguish an

object from different perspectives and from distance.

2. “SR must be capable of encoding spatial knowledge of parts of objects that cannot be

seen, for instance, hollowness of a balloon.”

25 3. “SR must be capable of encoding the degrees of freedom in objects that can change their

shape, animals or humans.”

4. “SR must be capable of encoding shape variations among objects of similar visual type.”

5. “SR must be suitable for encoding the full spatial layout of a scene” from different

perspectives, to see how a place would look from another side.

6. “SR must be independent of spatial modality, so that haptic information, information

from auditory localization, and felt body position” can all be brought together. If a person

wants to hold something, for example, he is able to imagine how it feels like (ibid.).

As we see, the spatial representation is not just an image of a place. It extends further, allowing us to see shapes and to imagine different perspectives. Spatial and conceptual representations share some aspects, though they still differ from each other.

In fact, this is how we can talk about space. What happens is simply the interaction between linguistic conceptual representations and spatial conceptual representations. Though the interaction does not occur in all aspects. “The most basic unit they share is the notion of a physical object” (ibid. 10). However, in SR an object can be seen as a geometrical unit, its location and spatial characteristics, while for CR an object is presented in a more fundamental way. The other shared notions concern an object‟s place or path (trajectory). Obviously, they take their place in SR, and play a role in CR, “they are invoked … in locational sentences” (ibid.

10-11). For example, in a sentence The dog is laying on the floor, floor denotes place.

Furthermore, “the notion of physical motion is also central to SR, and obviously it must be represented in spatial cognition so we can track moving objects” (ibid. 11).

However, not all the spatial representations can be expressed verbally or in a linguistic way.

26 When talking about spatial relations, we mostly use axial vocabulary, which means mentioning spatial axes of an object. Ray Jackendoff distinguished 3 types.

1. “The axial parts of an object – its top, bottom, front, back, sides, and ends – behave

grammatically like parts of the object, but, unlike standard parts … they have no

distinctive shape” (ibid. 14). They determine front, side, back and other axes.

2. “The „dimensional adjectives‟ high, wide, long, thick, and deep and their nominalizations

height, width, length, thickness, and depth” (ibid. 15) determine size and the horizontal or

vertical position of an object.

3. “Certain spatial prepositions, such as above, below, next to, in front if, behind, alongside,

left of, and right of, pick out a region determined by extending the reference object‟s axes

out into the surrounding space” (ibid.). They can denote the distance between two objects

or their relation to each other in space.

As Miller and Johnson-Laird have noted, “the axial vocabulary is always used in the context of an assumed frame of reference” (ibid.). The frame of reference is important for the study of spatial relations. Basically it means “a unit or organization of units that collectively serve to identify a coordinate system with respect to which certain properties of objects, including the phenomenal self, are gauged” (Rock 404).

Often two types of frame of reference are distinguished, an intrinsic or object-centered frame and a deictic or observer-centered frame. However, Jackendoff points out at least 8 different kinds.

Intrinsic frames denote properties of the object:

1. “The geometric frame uses the geometry of the object itself to determine the axes”

(Jackendoff 15). For example, it may determine object‟s length or whether it is

symmetrical or not.

27 2. “In the motion frame, the front of a moving object is determined in the direction of

motion” (ibid.). For instance, an airplane is faced towards the direction of motion.

3. “The canonical orientation frame designates as the top (or bottom) of an object the part

which in the object‟s normal orientation is uppermost (or lowermost)” (ibid. 16). In this

case the bottom of a car, even turned upside down, is located at the wheels though we

may not perceive it as the lowest part of the car.

4. The canonical encounter frame implies intrinsic parts of an object. For example, a house

has a front from where people enter it, while from the inside the front may be another

wall, for example, the one that the people most often face.

Environmental frames point out the properties of the environment where an object is situated:

1. “The gravitational frame is determined by the direction of gravity, regardless of the

orientation of the object” (ibid. 17). For instance, a hat laying on the wheel of a car turned

upside down, would be still considered as laying on the top of a car.

2. “The geographical frame is the horizontal counterpart of the gravitational frame,

imposing axes on the object based on the cardinal directions north, south, east, and west,

or a similar system” (ibid.).

3. “The contextual frame is available when the object is viewed in relation to another object,

whose own axes are imposed on the first object” (ibid.).

4. “The observer frame may be projected from a real or hypothetical observer” (ibid.). In

this frame the front of an object will be the side facing the observer.

28 Axial vocabulary attracted attention because of its ambiguity, for example, we came across with three different meanings of the word “front.”

Moreover, frames of reference may vary from language to language. “Some languages do not employ our apparently fundamental spatial notions of left/right/front/back at all; instead they may, for example, employ a cardinal direction system, specifying location in terms of north/south/east/west or like” (Levinson 110). In English we talk about space using axes of the ground (“the boy stands behind the tree”) or by utilizing the angles from observers perspective or his coordinates (“the boy is to the right of the car”).

Stephen C. Levinson has another distinction of frame references. First of all, following

Newton, he distinguishes relative and absolute frames. Absolute space is abstract, infinite, and immovable, while relative is specified by relations between objects. In addition, “relative space became associated with egocentric coordinate systems, and absolute space with non-egocentric ones” (ibid. 128; see further). What concerns language is that ordinary languages are made to deal with relative frames of space because we mostly talk about objects and their relations, using the system of coordinates from an observer‟s perspective. Though some other languages, using north/south and other fixed angles as a system of coordinates, may be related to the absolute frame of reference.

The next Levinson‟s distinction is between egocentric and allocentric frames. An egocentric frame has its center situated within the body of an organism or an object, while an allocentric frame may have the center anywhere, not exactly specified. This distinction is often being examined within brain studies. For example, infants up to 6 months have only egocentric frames of reference while after some time, by sixteen months they can identify objects in space in a

29 more lucid way. Campbell identifies “the egocentric versus allocentric distinction within the opposition between body-centered and environment-centered frames of reference” (ibid. 130).

The next differentiation is “viewer-centered” versus “object-centered” frames of reference developed by Marr (1982). The former concerns the position of an observer, the latter presents the space from the perspective of an object, where an object is the center (which is difficult to imagine but possible with 3-D technologies).

Further on, there is a difference between “orientation-bound” and “orientation-free” frames of reference. The orientation-free frame occurs when shapes do not have any orientation, and the orientation-bound frame implies that “shapes are recognized by apparent analogue rotation to the familiar related stimulus” (ibid. 131).

Another classification that we have earlier touched upon is “intrinsic” versus “deictic” frames of reference (see below).

However, what we have just seen is not purely linguistic distinction but rather a philosophical or a psychological one. Purely linguistic distinction will include three frames of reference:

“intrinsic”, “relative,” and “absolute”.

The intrinsic frame of reference “involves an object-centered coordinate system, where the coordinates are determined by the “inherent features”, sidedness, or facets of the object to be used as the ground or relatum” (ibid. 140). By inherent features we understand facets. In English we mostly use “top,” “bottom,” and “front.” The distinction between front and other sides lays in the properties of the object, its shape, orientation, motion, and so on. Describing a person or an animal, we talk about “front,” “back,” and “sides,” while in some other language one would rather describe it with “heads,” “roots,” and “feet.”

30 The relative frame of reference “is roughly equivalent to the various notions of viewer- centered frame of reference” (ibid. 142) but still it is not the same. “The relative frame of reference presupposes a “viewpoint” V (given by the location of a perceiver in any sensory modality), and a figure and ground distinct from V” (ibid.). The coordinate system is centered on the position of an observer, describing left/right and front/back settings. “Such a system of coordinates can be thought of as centered on the main axis of the body and anchored by one of the body parts … Although the position of the body of viewer V may be one criterion for anchoring the coordinates, the direction of gaze might be another” (ibid.). Though not all languages possess left and right coordinate system, some specify the location of an object with the help of another object, using a binary relation (for example, “at the animal‟s front”).

The absolute frame of reference implies the idea of fixed directions in space. “Such a system requires that persons maintain their orientation with respect to the fixed bearings all the time”

(idbid. 145). It may be a polar system with orientation directions like north/south/west/east as primary or it may also have a secondary axis, for example north-west.

In general, those three frames of reference may occur with or without a center. Not every language uses all three frames, some restricted to one or two frames.

To conclude, “linguistic expressions may be specialized to a frame of reference, so we cannot assume that choice of frame of reference lies entirely outside language, for example, in spatial thinking, as some have suggested. But spatial relators may be ambiguous (or semantically general) across frames, and often are” (ibid. 148).

3.2 Spatial representation in linguistics

In the English language, spatial locations are mostly headed by spatial prepositions. For example, in the sentence “the pen is on the table”, the preposition on indicates the location of an

31 object. However, “spatial prepositions do not exhaust the possibilities for talking about spatial locations” (Landau 321), there is also a number of verbs, such as stand or kneel, that can represent a vertical or horizontal position.

As for spatial prepositions, they are not so numerous in English, approximately eighty exist.

In other languages some English prepositions are presented by one preposition only (for example, Spanish preposition en means both in and on) or may be split in more categories (like

German auf and an have a meaning of English on but differentiate horizontal or vertical position). Nevertheless, there are universals in how some objects become schematic and presented in spatial relations. For instance, in the two phrases in a vase and in a car the same preposition in is used because both vases and cars appear to be volumes. In general, John

O‟Keefe distinguishes several general types of prepositions: vertical (below, down, under, up, beneath), distance (for, near, far from), horizontal (beyond, behind, beside, by), omnidirectional

(at, about, between, along, around, across, through), and temporal preposition (see further).

3.3 Time and language

There are various linguistic expressions in Indo-European languages denoting temporal relations, verbs with temporal semantics (like Present Continuous in English), or a range of nouns (tomorrow, yesterday) implying time. “Temporal relations probably cannot be imagined in a single visual image … when one imagines a temporal sequence, however, it often seems to unfold in time like the original events, though not necessarily at the same speed” (Johnson-Laird

449). This kind of representation uses time according to a temporal axis. Though there are other possibilities of representing time relations: against the temporal axis, from left to right or “back in time”. For example, in the sentence The boy called the police after his house was robbed

32 events are described in a reverse order. Events may also occur simultaneously with the usage of the continuous tense.

“Verbal forms are used typically in English to denote what takes place in time. The temporal can be located in the past, in the future, or at the point of utterance itself. What takes place in time may be something instantaneous, or an ongoing process, or the completion of activity”

(Gabbay, Moravcsik 60). In English there is a complex system of tenses and temporal modifiers which we will examine in this chapter.

In general, according to Dov Gabbay and Julius Moravcsik, temporal aspects are presented with the help of four systems: “a) Semantic verb phrase categorization, b) Tense, c) Aspectual semantics, and d) The semantic categorization of temporal modifiers” (ibid.). We will examine here only English examples but this scheme can be also applied to other languages.

Dov Gabbay and Julius Moravcsik distinguish in their study temporal and atemporal properties of expressions. By atemporal properties they mean some constant state, for instance,

“being human”, “if something has it, it has it necessarily and throughout its temporal career”

(ibid. 62). Temporal property is not constant, for example, when somebody is being sick, travelling. In English there is a wide range of expressions that cover different temporal properties. Gabbay and Moravcsik call them instantiations of temporal properties. Some of them do not represent temporality but are rather states, for example, being healthy. Such a state occurs when it endures, not instantaneous, and does not undergo specific changes or interruptions within the process of duration.

“Non-states, therefore, are either without duration, or if they have duration they imply specific changes, or at least allow gaps in what is nevertheless counted as one instantiation”

(ibid. 63). They can also be called events, among which events with duration can be divided into

33 two categories, mere events and processes, where “processes are made up of a series of changes that culminate in a state not reached at any time while the process takes place” (ibid.). For example, writing a book would be a process, but once the book is written, the process has finished. Processes may allow interruptions or gaps, as they do not have to last all the time (in our previous example, writing a book can be easily interrupted several times). “So the semantic representation of an event (which has duration) will be composed of one big interval in which the entire event occurs and a list of subintervals in which the actual activity occurs” (ibid. 64).

Consequently, instantaneous events can be divided into two groups, repetitious, built up by intervals, and non-repetitious.

All of the instantiations of temporal properties are represented in the language with the help of verbs or verb phrases. Here we will address to the classification of use of verb phrases:

1) State verb phrases “denote the continuous instantiation of temporal properties over a time

interval, without allowing gaps, and without the implication of specific changes required

by the state” (ibid. 67). Such expressions as know, is healthy belong to this group. In fact,

this characterization explains why those verbs are not able to be used in a progressive

tense, as the progressive tense may allow gaps or pauses which are absolutely not

possible here.

2) Non-repetitious instantaneous event verb phrases also do not have a possibility to take a

progressive tense, as they do not admit intervals (such as the verbs as see or start).

3) Mere event verb phrases (such as walk, write) are “the ones with duration that do not

qualify as process verb phrases. Negatively, this implies that they do not lead to a

terminal state that is different from the states characterizing partial stages of events.

Positively, it implies that the events denoted by these verb phrases bring with them

34 specific changes” (ibid. 68). It is also possible that events have gaps or pauses. However,

it depends on the lexical meaning of a used verb and phrase in general.

4) Verbs describing position (such as lie, sit, stand) are very peculiar in nature. Aristotle has

already paid special attention to these verbs and put them in a special group, apart from

other verbs. This group and the next one are similar in the way that they “do not entail

specific changes, but still behave syntactically like event verb phrases, and qualify

semantically by allowing gaps” (ibid.).

5) Verbs of attention (like hope, wait, watch) allow gaps within a period of time. For

example, the sentence She hopes to go to Spain in September does not imply that she is

hoping all possible minutes, but on the contrary, she may not be thinking about it for

days. “Attention is analogous to movement or change; it is something active and

dynamic” (ibid. 69). Thus, it refers rather to events than states.

6) Process verb phrases “differ from event verb phrases only in their perfect form describing

a state that did not hold at any stage” (ibid.) or in other words, they represent a series of

changes.

“A comparison of the ontology and the verb phrases classification shows that the capturing of the verb-semantics requires more than a mere ontology of things, properties, temporal intervals and temporal instances” (ibid. 70)

3.3.1 Verbal tenses and time

As we know, there are three tenses in English: past, present, and future, and two aspects, the progressive or continuous and the perfect. “When it comes to tense, there are generally two options available within the formalist research program. One is to define tense forms in terms of the relations they express with respect to the time of speaking … A second approach is to stress

35 the anaphoric dimension tense meaning, which links a situation to a reference point or antecedent on top of situating it deictically” (Brisard 175). As for the first approach, in some sentences two clauses may have the same tense form, which makes it difficult to distinguish the relationship between those two clauses. For example, in the sentence Alice said that her father was sick we cannot say whether those actions are simultaneous or one precedes another. In the second approach the point of reference is mostly defined by the context and situation. “The use of imperfect and perfect tenses to refer to a past situation would be then a typical example of a difference in reference-point construction” (ibid.).

As it was mentioned below, there are two aspects in English language, the progressive and the perfect. “The progressive indicates continuous actual activity or happening, while the perfect singles out completion and relates that to the point of evaluation” (Gabbay, Moravcsik 74).

3.3.2 Temporal modifiers

Besides, there exists one more important manner of denoting temporal relations, namely, by using temporal modifiers (such as in an hour, for some time, before). Syntactically they can be divided into two groups: those which are generated within a verb phrase and simple ones (like before and after). Moreover, temporal modifiers can also differ in a semantic way, “some are sentential operators, others give us a point or interval of reference and only a restricted group of temporal modifiers have a strictly adverbial role” (ibid. 77). For example, in the sentence “they worked in a garden for some time, for some time” is a true adverbial. Some words and expressions (e.g. yesterday) may function both as adverbials or as the ones giving a period as reference.

Hence, according to the classification of Gabbay and Moravcsik we can distinguish three classes of temporal modifiers:

36 a) True modifiers (see above), among which

1) Durationals (for a while, for some time, for two hours) mostly imply an interval of a

period. They cannot denote repetition, nor duration verb phrases.

2) Containers (in a day, within an hour) “signify completion and give a durational

specification” (ibid. 79).

3) Instantaneous modifiers (right now, just now) are compatible with any verb phrase

group and with two aspects (e.g. She is driving home right now, He has left the room

just now).

b) Referentials (on May 21, 1980, in April, until) are not adverbial modifiers, that is why

they tend to be neutral to the usage of different verb phrases or aspects. However, words

like until and since seem to be an exception as they mark the beginning and the end and

can only be used in verb phrases with duration.

c) Sentential modifiers (every day, every week) imply repetition, and “the period within the

repetitions take place is determined by context, linguistic or otherwise” (ibid. 80).

Thus, in the English language there are a number of devices that help to denote temporal relations; namely, aspectual semantics of verbs, temporal modifiers, tenses, and semantic verb phrase categorization.

3.4 Concluding remarks

In this chapter we have examined how time and space is represented in languages and how people talk about it. Jakendoff‟s theory distinguished language representation, spatial representation, and conceptual structure. When we talk about space, there is an interaction between linguistic conceptual representation and spatial conceptual representations. Also he defines intrinsic frames (among which there are the geometric frame, the motion frame, and the

37 canonical orientation frame, the canonical encounter frame) and environmental frames of reference (the gravitational frame, the geographical frame, the contextual frame, and the observer frame).

Further on we covered temporal representation in language, which mostly occurs through verbal forms, tenses, and temporal modifiers.

38

4. Time and Space in Lost: flashbacks and flash-forwards

In our study of time and space we decided to analyze Lost, a popular American series (2004-

2009). The choice was not coincidental as Lost presents a complex interconnection of time and space. The action takes place on a mysterious tropical island where the characters are survivors of an airplane that crashed on the way from Sydney, Australia, to Los Angeles, USA. The peculiar detail of this television show is a fascinating use of flashbacks and flash-forwards, a

“game with time,” which helps to explain the characters, their life, and the reason they are on the island. In our study we will examine how this is achieved through flashbacks and flash-forwards.

First of all, we will provide a short summary of the series. After a plane crash, on a tropical island, a number of survivors try to be saved while getting to know each other, making friends, and investigating the island. It turned out that they are not going to be saved, as people are searching for them in the wrong place. After a while the characters begin to establish their lives on the island where they, surprisingly, find other people. Each character is provided by a story line about his past (mainly in flashbacks). This is how the audience gets to know them and sees their evolution throughout the time. The series is full of mysteries and unexpected outcomes, especially about the place of action: the island. In the fourth season some characters manage to return to the real world.

In this work we will analyze the first four seasons of Lost, because on the moment of writing of this thesis, only four seasons have legally appeared on DVD. However, we will also take the fifth season into consideration which was airing during the writing of this very study.

4.1 The Role of Space in Lost

39 The Island

To begin with, it should be noted that the main place of action in the series, the island, is extremely significant. Geographically situated in the Pacific Ocean, it turned out to be not so easily found by the outside world. In the following chapter we will examine its major features, beginning with its location and its dangers. Some characters consider the island to be situated in another dimension, others believe it to be their destiny. Sometimes the island is even treated as a creature with its own demands.

4.1.1 The Location of the Island

In S01e01 (S = season, e = episode) the location was mentioned for the first time, after they had just crashed. One character says:

REDSHIRT #2: Technically, you know, we don't even know if we're on... (an island?).

Though he does not get any answer, we see the concern of characters to locate themselves, whether they have landed on an island or on mainland. Later in the same episode the pilot tries to define their location: We turned back to land in Fiji, by the time we hit turbulence we were

1000 miles off course. From this moment, it becomes clear that they are indeed on an island which is far from their actual course. They do not know exactly where they are. Apparently, they are lost in geographical terms, off course. Therefore chances to be found are minimal.

In S01e06 another peculiar event happens. Michael, a black character with a troubled son, stole an expensive watch from a Korean man. MICHAEL, after stealing a watch: Look, I get it, right [takes the watch out of his pocket]. It's the watch. Mine broke and I found this in the wreckage, and I figured, hey, why let a $20,000 dollar watch go to waste which is ridiculous since time doesn't matter on a damn island. In his defense he says that the theft was senseless

40 because time does not matter anymore. And by this phrase he implies not only that one does not need a watch on a desert island but also that laws of time are not relevant here. The island exists apart from normal human time, apart from an outside life. We will see proof of that further.

The remarkable thing is that most of the characters do not know the nature of the island but they somehow manage to talk about its abilities in the right way, without realizing it. Michael, during the conversation with his son Walt in S01e22, mentions, MICHAEL: The thing is -- this island, uh, is uh -- finding it again might be hard. The conversation took place before their leaving from the island on a self-made raft, Walt asked whether they could come back later to save other people. Michael answers negatively, because, apparently, the island is hard to find. As one sees from his utterance, he is doubting and makes pauses. Perhaps, he is just making it up, so that his son does not want to come back to the island. Probably, he somehow realizes that this island is difficult to find, as rescue workers failed to find them. But the truth is, has already been mentioned, the island is not that easy to reach, it is not seen with the help of GPS or other devices.

In S03e19 a woman, called Naomi, jumps out of a helicopter and lands on the island with a parachute. She turns out to be a part of scientific expedition. From her one learns that to find the island is not an easy task to do.

SAYID: You knew about the Island?

NAOMI: Island? We were given coordinates in the middle of the bloody ocean. We thought it was a fool's errand. Till three days ago. I was flying back for the ship when all of a sudden the clouds cleared and I saw land. The instruments started spinning, I realized I was going down so,

I grabbed my chute and I bailed.

41 So according to this observation, the location of the island is not defined by simple coordinates which are sufficient for normal locations on Earth. However, there are moments when the island is visible from the outside world. At those moments the instruments of the vehicle begin to act weird, as if trying to reveal the real coordinates of the place. This is reminiscent of the strange nature of the Bermuda Triangle.

In the fourth season another peculiar incident happens. In the episode S04e13 the island literally … disappears.

[In the chopper, everyone continues to look around in a confused state. The sound grows to a roar and the Island is completely engulfed in white. Then all goes silent. As the brightness fades,

Jack is the first to open his eyes. He blinks and looks ahead. With a whooshing sound and a circular wave sent out through the ocean, the Island is gone.]

FRANK: Where's the Island?! Where's the Island?!

FRANK: Where the hell's the Island?!

The island has actually moved. Locke and Ben caused this in the station of Dharma Initiative which is responsible for time and space travel. Ben spins a special device which causes the replacement of the island. That is another feature of the island: it can be moved, moreover, not only in space but also in time which will be shown in the fifth season. Also, one of the characters explains in this season that the island is continuously changing its coordinates, moving in space.

Thus, the island is a very strange location that cannot be seen or reached from the outside world that easily. The characters seem to be isolated temporally and spatially from the rest of the world. Moreover, due to special features of the island, it has the ability to move through time and space.

42 4.1.2 The Island as a Peril

The first night after the crash, loud machine-like sounds came out of the jungle while trees were being knocked over. The next day, some survivors found the pilot of their flight alive in the wreckage of the airplane, but a shadow passed the plane‟s window and the pilot was abruptly pulled into the jungle through a broken window. Blood was all over the place. The pilot was later found dead, lying high in a tree. The mysterious being doing all this soon would be called “the

Monster”.

In the cockpit of the airplane the characters found a transceiver. They were not able to contact the outside world, but the transceiver picked up a transmission signal in French. One of the characters, listening to the signal, translates:

S01e02 SHANNON: I'm alone now, on the island alone. Please someone come. The others, they're, they're dead. It killed them. It killed them all.

After listening to the tape, CHARLIE reacts: Guys, where are we?

First of all, after listening to the tape it becomes obvious that the survivors of the crash are not the only people on a desert island. Moreover, this place possesses a number of mysteries, even perils. It killed them. The use of a personal third-person neuter pronoun it signifies that the others were not killed by people, but by something. Apparently, the transmission code makes everybody scared. Finally, Charlie raised a question: where are we? His question denotes not so much the geographical location but the nature of the island, what kind of place it is, where they are in a semantic way.

Only in the end of the first season, the Monster actually was seen for the very first time. It appeared as a small wisp of black smoke, moving swiftly through the jungle, being able to grow to a huge black cloud. The appearance of the Monster often goes together with hallucinations of the survivors, although both can occur apart. Its unknown nature, large and frightening form, the

43 scary sounds it makes, and its unusual abilities invoke fear among the survivors. It is the first of many mysteries the survivors encounter on the island and remains a central question on Lost.

In S01e04 SAYID mentions: We can find food. There are plenty of things on this island we can use for sustenance. And indeed, as it turns out, there are many animals on this island to be hunted. LOCKE confirms it: We know there are wild boar on the island. Razorbacks, by the look of them. The one's that came into the camp last night were piglets. However, some animals seem to be quite rare for those climate conditions: polar bears are not the creatures one expects to meet on a tropical island. The survivors might feel as if in a surrealistic environment that is full of frightening mysteries.

Then in S01e08 the characters were trying to contact the outside world but they again fail.

LOCKE: I heard you were trying to send out a distress call. So it would seem whoever attacked you has a reason for not wanting to get off the island. Maybe someone who is profiting from our current circumstances? He utters the idea that somebody does not want them to leave the island for some reason, and that there are people who may profit from their situation.

So far, Danielle, a strange French woman who lived alone on the island for 16 years, is the only character who had a contact with mysterious other people on the island.

SAYID: Have you seen other people on this island?

DANIELLE: No, but I hear them. Out there, in the jungle. They whisper. You think I'm insane.

Even though people thought that she was crazy, her speech scared everybody. The use of short sentences makes her speech abrupt, similar to the speech of insane people. That is why she is not taken seriously; not only because of the content of her speech but also of her manner. As one may characterize it, those island people do exist but never appear in the first season, the

44 characters can only hear their strange whisper. Sayid and other personages do not believe it until they hear strange sounds, like whispers, themselves.

However, different personages also use irony towards the island and their situation in general.

In S01e10 CHARLIE: Dear diary, still on the bloody island. Today I swallowed a bug, love

Claire. Charlie tries to make fun of the situation, presenting it in a first-person diary style, as if his friend Claire were writing a diary. They try to deal with a frightening environment with the help of humour.

Later on, a ten year old child Walt notices that they are not alone on this island. In S01e11

WALT says: There could be lot's of other people on the island. People begin to get desperate and start looking around, not waiting anymore for help. Thus, the characters begin to be concerned about the island, their lives, and possible dangers. Charlie realizes that they are not going to be saved at all. One hears insecurity in his words, his fear that he may be hurt by unknown creatures of the island.

In S01e12 CHARLIE: We're stranded on an island. No one's coming for us.

ROSE: You don't know that.

CHARLIE: Well, what I do know, is there's something in that jungle that eats people. Just because we haven't heard from it in a couple of weeks doesn't mean it won't get hungry again.

And I know there's a person, or people, that are trying to hurt us. . .

In the first season John Locke becomes a real hero in the series, because of his special connections to the island, his ability to hunt and to help other people. In S01e13 CHARLIE says:

If there's one person on this island I would put my absolute faith in to save us all it would be

John Locke. Charlie understands that Locke sees much more than ordinary people which gives

45 him power of a redeemer. Later on Locke will indeed become the one who saves everybody and island itself.

In S02e11 the characters meet the Others for the first time. This is what the inhabitants of the island that already lived there before the plane crash are called. The island people claim the right of the possession of the island. MR. FRIENDLY: This is not your island. This is our island. And the only reason you're living on it is because we let you live on it. At this moment, the survivors realize that their fears for those people were reasonable.

Later on we learn more about the goals of the scientific research team sent to the island. In

S03e20 MARVIN says: There are properties on this Island that exist nowhere else on Earth.

Our mission, is to study these properties for the betterment of mankind and advancement of world peace.

Thus we are given scientific proof of the island‟s unique properties because a group of people was specially sent there to research it. Similarly, this is proven by Dharma Initiative, a scientific program that was based on the island in the nineteen-seventies to conduct a research but later was destroyed by the Others.

In S03e22-23 we address to the point of view of the Others, namely their leader Ben, who killed all the members of Dharma Initiative. He tries to defend himself:

BEN: You have to understand, everything I did, I did for the Island.

BEN: Because this Island is under assault by forces stronger than anything it had to deal within many-many years.

His defense bases on the fact that the island has to be protected from other people, that it is under assault, and perhaps it does not have enough power to deal with it all. That is why Ben as a

46 leader needs to be protective and act against the scientific research group (especially as he knows who sent them).

One more peculiar thing is the symptoms people have when getting to or leaving the island.

As Daniel Faraday, a physicist of Naomi‟s team, puts it in S04e05: Okay, look. Uh, we don't know why, but going to and coming from the island, some people can get a little...confused.

In the airplane flying from the island some people begin to confuse their memories. Desmond‟s nose is bleeding and he is constantly switching between past and present in his memory. First, those shifts last for a long time but then they become more frequent and thus shorter. Desmond cannot help it. Another member of the crew has recently died from this same thing. It happens perhaps because of the island‟s strange abilities. Captian Gault explains it in such a way:

CAPT. GAULT: Some of my crew has been dealing with, what might best be described as a heightened case of cabin fever. I think it's got something to do with the close proximity of the island.

In general, most fears of the survivors are caused by all kinds of frightening mysteries. In the beginning those are only represented by strange noises and whispers. Later, the survivors face the black smoke or the so-called “Monster” which only makes them more scared. Another danger is the island people or the Others who claim possession of the island and behave in an aggressive way. Finally, the island itself seems to be a dangerous place because of its strange features: two scientific organizations try to research its abilities. However, the island seems to be in danger itself, wanted to be possessed by many rich, powerful people.

4.1.3 The Island as Nowhere

In S01e03 the characters realize that the possibilities to be saved are minimal. SAWYER: But we're stuck in the middle of damn nowhere. The negative connotation of Sawyer‟s line implies

47 the realization of staying there for a longer time than he initially thought. The expression in the middle of damn nowhere denotes his gloomy attitude to the island. Perhaps the pronoun nowhere expresses the idea of geographical insecurity about the location and a general feeling about the situation.

In S02e18 a very interesting situation happens to one of the characters, Hurley. Before getting on the island he spent some time in a mental institution Santa Rosa. There he started seeing an imaginary person, Dave. At the hospital he met a man, Leonard, constantly repeating some numbers, saying that they are cursed. Hurley played a lottery with them and won lot of money, after which many bad accidents happened to him. On the island Hurley meets Dave again.

DAVE: You're still at Santa Rosa, man. You never left the hospital.

HURLEY: That's not possible.

Dave tries to persuade Hurley that he has never left the mental institution, Santa Rosa, and is imagining the island and everything in his head.

DAVE: It's hard, I know, but I mean -- all this? You, me, this island, that peanut butter -- none of it's real, man. None of it's happening. It's all in your head, my friend. The second you closed that window your brain popped a gasket. You went back into your little coma thing. That's where you are right this very second. In your own private Idaho, inside Santa Rosa.

Dave gives a number of arguments – finding peanut butter on the island is quite impossible, none of it is happening. He assures that everything is created by Hurley‟s imagination. Hurley tries to prove Dave wrong, remembering the events that occurred to him during last month, winning the lottery.

HURLEY: No. I had my mom, my friend Johnny -- I won the lottery.

DAVE: Whoa, wow, awesome, dude! What numbers did you play? Leonard's number, right -- from the hospital? What a coincidence.

48 However, Dave is a very smart personage, he turns everything upside down, makes things look silly, impossible and invented. Winning a lottery with numbers of some crazy man – that sounds insane. Hurley does not give up yet and remembers other events, finding the hatch on the island, one of the stations of the Dharma Initiative. There the participants have to press a button every 108 minutes to prevent the release of electro-magnetic power.

HURLEY: The hatch?

DAVE: Bingo! The hatch -- the button that you've got to push every 108 minutes or the world ends. Oh, oh, oh, and what's the code for the button? Oh yeah, the numbers.

Dave continues to be ironic and it results in the fact that Hurley does not know anymore about this strange hatch, why the button has to be pushed and why the world would end if it is not pushed [it is only explained further in the series]. Coincidentally, the numbers to be entered in the Hatch‟s computer, so the world does not end, are the same “cursed” numbers with which

Hurley won the lottery. Now everything starts to look absurd for Hurley and the audience.

Hurley is persistent and does not stop the discussion, now he addresses to his inner self.

HURLEY: But I got better. I changed.

DAVE: Changed? What, are you kidding me? Take a look at yourself. You've been on a deserted island for over 2 months and you haven't dropped 10 pounds. How is that even possible, man?

In his sentence I changed Hurley means first of all his character, his life, and that crashing on the island influenced him; he made friends and became a better person. Dave is being skeptical again, touching upon Hurley‟s Achilles‟ heel, his weight (Hurley is very fat), saying that it is not possible to be for 2 months on a deserted island and not lose any weight! Dave uses irony in a very sophisticated way, that even the audience starts to doubt whether it is all indeed happening.

HURLEY: I just destroyed my stash, and I've been exercising. Libby says it won't happen over night.

49 DAVE: Oh, right, right, right, Libby -- the mega cute blonde chick who magically appeared from the other side of the island. Oh, oh, oh, yeah -- and who just happens to have the hots for you.

Come on, man, let's take a walk.

Hurley eventually mentions Libby, his female friend, one of the survivors whom he likes.

Dave is laughing at him, perhaps because Hurley did not get much female attention before. The whole situation with a beautiful cute blond chick Libby seems unbelievable. Dave just points out that such girl would never like Hurley in a real world.

HURLEY: So this is all just in my brain?

DAVE: Every rock, every tree. Every tree frog. Even me. The real me -- the one they told you was imaginary? He went out the window, man. Right now he's probably bouncing from hot chick to hot chick, unlike me, who's really you, who's got more important things to do.

HURLEY: So I'm making you up?

DAVE: Well, sort of. I'm part of your subconscious, man. All the people on this island are.

Thus, Dave tries to persuade Hurley that he imagined the island and everything on it. But as we know that Dave is Hurley‟s imagination, then we can draw out the reasons of this hallucination. First of all, Hurley tends to have a low self-esteem because of his weight and his earlier mental problems; he does not believe that Libby could fall in love with a guy like him and he underestimates himself. Moreover, the place, the island, is too mysterious to be true, people get healthy again and everybody is changing. The discovery of a strange hatch with a button makes things even more unrealistic. How can there be something like that on a deserted island?

Again, the fact that Hurley comes across with cursed numbers fascinates and scares him. Could that be a coincidence? That is why his subconscious denies what was thought to be reality, the place he seems to be. He doubts whether it is real. The very sophisticated personage Dave complicates everything and makes the events which happened look absurd, irrational, and idiotic.

50 There are irony and skepticism in his words that genially make the audience doubt as well. We do not know anymore whether it is a trick or not, whether the island even exists at all. Thus, it all adds a peculiar characteristic to the island: we are uncertain about the space, is it all imagined by characters, and does it exist? Nevertheless, Hurley convinces himself that the island does exist and that everything on it is really happening. However, the episode ends with a flashback showing Libby in a mental hospital, who is shaking and looks insane. She was never supposed to be in the hospital that way for she used to be a psychologist in reality. This makes the audience doubt again about the reality of the events.

In the episode S04e10 we see a flashback with Hurley back “home” or actually again in a mental institution. Jack is visiting him.

JACK: Why aren't you taking your meds?

HURLEY: 'Cause we're dead. (pause) All of us. (pause) All the Oceanic Six, we're all dead. We never got off that island.

Hurley believes that they are dead, he constantly sees the island, the ocean and dead people from the island; he is getting worse and worse. The imaginary person Dave almost persuaded him that nothing has ever happened to them, that it all occurred only in his imagination.

In the last episodes of the second season we learn Desmond‟s story. He came to the island as a result of a sailing race. His boat was hit by a storm and ran ashore on the island. There he was saving the world for three years by pushing the button in the hatch every 108 minutes. When the survivors of the plane crash intruded the hatch, Desmond decided to flee from the island with his sailboat, which was repaired by then. After two and a half weeks he reached shore again, ironically once more on the island. Jack finds a drunk Desmond in the boat.

51 S02e23-24 JACK: So, before you ran off, I guess you just forgot to mention that you still have a sailboat. Why'd you come back?

DESMOND [laughing]: Do you think I did it on purpose? I was sailing for two and half weeks, bearing due West and making 9 knots. I should have been in Fiji in less than a week. But the first piece of land I saw wasn't Fiji, was it? No. No, it was here -- this, this island. And you know why? Because this is it. This is all there is left. This ocean and this place here. We are stuck in a bloody snow globe. There's no outside world. There's no escape.

In Desmond‟s speech there is one more manner that explains the characteristic of the place: no outside world, there nothing but the island. The outside world does not seem to exist as the characters cannot reach it, and vice versa, the island seems impossible to reach from the outside world. However, Desmond‟s version may be compared to Hurley‟s one – the island and the outside world do exist but in different dimensions. People are not able to travel from one to another.

In S03e13 Sawyer, one of the survivors, meets John Locke‟s father on the island. Though

Locke never had a father until a man named Anthony Cooper found him. They went together hunting and began to bond. One day it turned out that Cooper had a kidney failure and needed a transplant. Locke generously offered his kidney but when he woke up after the operation, Cooper was gone. Locke and Cooper meet again some years later, which resulted in Cooper pushing

Locke out of the window and Locke becoming paralyzed. Now Sawyer meets this man, Anthony

Cooper, on the island.

SAWYER: How did you get here, to the Island?

COOPER: Island? OK. I'm driving down I10 through Tallahassee when bam, somebody slams into the back of my car. I go right into the divider at seventy miles an hour, the next thing I know,

52 the paramedics are strapping me to a gurney, stuffing me into the back of an ambulance and one of them actually smiles at me as he pops the IV in my arm. And then, nothing. Just, black. And the next thing I know I wake up in a dark room tied up, gag in my mouth, and when the door opens, I'm looking up at the same man I threw out a window, John Locke. My dead son.

Apparently, Cooper got on the island after a car accident which presupposed that either he is dead or was kidnapped and brought to the island.

COOPER: He's dead because the plane he was flying on crashed in the Pacific.

SAWYER: Well I got bad news for ya pops, cause I was on that plane with your son. He sure as hell wasn't crippled. And we didn't crash in the Pacific, we crashed here on this Island.

COOPER: You sure it’s an Island?

SAWYER: Well what else is it?

COOPER: Little hot for heaven isn't it?

SAWYER: [Sarcastically] Oh OK, so we're dead?

COOPER: They found your plane on the bottom of the ocean. One minute I'm in a car wreck and the next minute I'm in a pirate ship in the middle of the jungle. If this isn't hell friend, then where are we?

Thus Cooper‟s explanation of the whole situation is that he entered into Hell. For as far as he knows, his son John Locke died in a airplane crash, and seeing him back alive means that Cooper is dead as well. In general, this version is more than just believable: the plane was found on the bottom of the ocean and all the dead bodies were found there. Moreover, there is no explanation for how Cooper got on the island. It looks like he just died. Logically, this must be afterlife.

Other ideas we already mentioned seem to confirm this. First of all, there seems to be no possibility to get out of this place. Secondly, all kinds of very strange things are happening on the island, wherefore rational explanations are hard to find and believe. For example, one of the

53 characters, Jack, meets his dead father, and weird creatures populate the island, like the Others, polar bears, and the mysterious black smoke. In fact, many things point out that this island may not exist in a normal world but just might be some place like hell.

In S04e07 the captain explains why they needed to get to the island, they were actually sent by Mr. Widmore who faked the crash and put an airplane on the bottom of the ocean with 324 dead bodies to prove that everybody is dead and there is nothing to search for.

CAPT. GAULT: A salvage vessel recovered it from the bottom of the ocean. It took a considerable amount of Mr. Widmore's resources to procure it. It was found with the wreckage of the plane, along with all 324 dead passengers. That's not the complete story, as you are well aware, Mr. Jarrah, given the fact that you're standing here, breathing. The wreckage was obviously staged. Now can you imagine what kind of resources and manpower go into pulling off a feat of that magnitude? Faking the recovery of a plane crash? Putting 324 families through a grieving process based on a lie? But what's even more disturbing, where exactly does one come across 324 dead bodies?

The whole story implies how important this island might be that somebody had put an airplane on the bottom of the ocean filled with dead bodies in order to prevent people from finding it. Apparently, the island is of extreme importance to Mr. Widmore who would like to keep it for himself, not letting anyone to know about it. People are getting healthy there, the instruments begin to spin and other weird things happen – but is this, actually, a reason to fake a wreckage? Eventually there are some more characteristics that the audience is not yet aware of.

Hence, in this chapter we saw that some characters doubt the reality of the island and all events happening there. According to Dave, all of it is happening inside of Hurley‟s mind which sounds quite persuasive for the audience. Desmond, on the other hand, considers the island to be

54 real but questions the existence of the outside world. Anthony Cooper, in his turn, believes the island to be hell, the afterlife, as he thinks all the characters must be dead. This last theory, however, is rejected because the wreckage of the airplane is staged. Nevertheless, all these suppositions imply the idea that the island might be fictional, existing only in mind, or in another dimension.

4.1.4 The Island as Destiny

Some characters, especially John Locke, believe the island to change their lives for the better.

Moreover, the island does not look to them as a coincidental place but more like their real destination.

In S01e05 LOCKE: I'm an ordinary man Jack, meat and potatoes, I live in the real world. I'm not a big believer in magic. But this place is different. It's special. The others don't want to talk about it because it scares them. But we all know it. We all feel it. Is your white rabbit a hallucination? Probably. But what if everything that happened here, happened for a reason?

What if this person that you're chasing is really here?

This conversation occurred between John Locke and Jack after Jack saw a hallucination of his dead father with whom he had a complex relation up to his death. A white rabbit is a metaphor

Jack uses to explain that he saw his father on the island. For the first time Locke brings up an idea that this place is special, though he does not possess any evidence (except that after crashing on the island, he could walk again while he used to be paralyzed in a wheelchair till the moment of the crash). Besides, he mentions that everything happened there for a reason. He is not sure yet himself, but as one of the personages most attached to the island, he begins to see things earlier than other characters.

55 In S01e19 the change happens. The survivors, far from being spiritual or believing in the power of the island, realize that crashing on the island is the best possibility to begin a new life.

SHANNON: Everyone gets a new life on this island. I'd like to start now. As we see Shannon, a female character, is a capricious young woman who is very selfish. She refused to help other survivors to build a camp, as she hoped to be rescued soon. On the island she crashed with her stepbrother Boone, with whom she had various conflicts and arguments. Her brother offers her a candy but she denies it, saying that she would not stop her diet just because they landed on an island. Her behaviour seems to be quite childish, she continues a “little war” with her brother in spite of the circumstances. Later on she was asked to translate maps from French, so she was working on it with an Arabian man Sayid. First, Shannon felt frustrated about this task but after a while she fell in love with Sayid which led to a relationship. Thus, in her sentence that she wants to start a new life, she implies the refusal from her old selfish self, when she did not care about other people. On the island she begins to change, starts helping people, and begins to care about somebody except herself (Sayid in this case). After her brother‟s death she is suffering greatly.

Within 6 days after her brother‟s death, she dies herself, being shot.

In the second season another spiritual character appears in the series, Mr. Eko. He is also one of the survivors but of a tale section, landed on another part of the island. Eko used to be a drug dealer but after his brother‟s death (who used to be a priest), Eko leaves the country pretending to be a priest as well. On the island he finds the Bible and becomes closer to God. In S02e09

EKO says to John Locke: You may know it as the Old Testament. And it was with that ancient book, not with the gold, that Josiah rebuilt the temple. On the other side of the island we found a place much like this, and in this place we found a book. Surprisingly, this book was the Bible.

Later on, Locke and Eko will build a church on that place.

56 In S02e21 Eko reveals what kind of influence the island had on him.

EKO: This cross was worn by my brother, Yemi. Yemi was a great man, a priest, a man of God.

And because I betrayed him he was shot and died. He was placed on a plane which took off from an airstrip in Nigeria half a world from here. Then, the plane that I was on crashed on this island. And somehow, here, I found my brother again. I found him in the same plane that took off from Nigeria. In the same plane that lies above us now -- that has concealed this place. And I took this cross from around Yemi's neck and put it back on mine, just as it was on the day I first took another man's life. So let me ask you -- how can you say this is meaningless?

Eko questions the meaning of this place, feeling that it is very peculiar. As we see, he met his dead brother on the same island, and, now rethinking his life, becomes religious, following his brother. The cross serves as a sign for his new life, his transformation. Indeed, everything that happens on the island appears to have a strong impact, as for example, the crashing of Eko‟s brother there leads to Eko‟s re-thinking of life.

In S03e08 we learn more about Desmond‟s fate and how he was predicted to come to the island. On the day he wanted to buy a ring to propose to his girlfriend, he was stopped by a strange woman, Ms. Hawking:

MS. HAWKING: Well, I know your name as well as I know that you don't ask Penny to marry you. In fact, you break her heart. Well, breaking her heart is, of course, what drives you in a few short years from now to enter that sailing race -- to prove her father wrong - which brings you to the island where you spend the next 3 years of your life entering numbers into the computer until you are forced to turn that failsafe key. And if you don't do those things, Desmond David Hume, every single one of us is dead. So give me that sodding ring.

57 As it looks, this woman knew exactly what was going to happen. Moreover, she declares that

Desmond‟s crashing on the island was his destiny and that he should follow it, otherwise there would be negative consequences. Thus, Desmond‟s arrival to the island is his fate.

In the third season the viewer learns more about the Others and especially their leader

Benjamin Linus who has a tumour in his spine. He is especially fascinated by Locke‟s attitude towards the island.

In S03e19 BEN: A week ago I couldn't move my toes. But the minute you showed up, I started to feel pins and needles. And this is only the beginning, John. I can't wait to show you what this

Island can do. But unfortunately, you're not ready, John.

LOCKE: Well er, no, I'm ready.

BEN: No, John, you're not. You're still crippled by the memories of the man you used to be before you came to this Island. And you'll never be free, until you release the hold that your father has over you. Why do you think you brought him here?

Ben manipulates Locke, saying that he is not ready yet. To some extent he is right that Locke is still influenced by the man he used to be with a big offense to his father, and just a weak person, but the island changed him, made him stronger and whole, as he puts it himself. Ben sees

Locke‟s potential in revealing the mysteries of the island, that is why he offers him to join the

Others and even later to become their leader.

Later on with the arrival of the scientific team to the island, the survivors got a real chance to return to the outside world, as there was a ship and a little airplane. However, they are doubting whether they need to go back; something they have been waiting for months to happen. Ben is talking to Jack, persuading him that there is nothing to return to.

58 BEN: Let me ask you something, Jack. Why do you wanna leave the Island? What is it that you so desperately want to get back to? You have no one. Your father's dead, your wife left you, moved on with another man. Can you just not wait to get back to the hospital? Get back to fixing things?

In Ben‟s eyes Jack has no reason to go back as all the people he loved are dead or left him. On the island, on the contrary, he has a very social and adventurous life. When already having returned to his normal life, Jack indeed realizes that there is simply nobody for him there anymore. After a while Jack longs to return to the island. He begins to fly with passenger jets above the Pacific Ocean, hoping to crash. He is drinking and becomes depressive.

Some other characters also doubt leaving the island, namely Bernard and his wife Rose:

S04e07 BERNARD: Rose has cancer. She's sick. Dying. Well, at least, she was dying. She says she's better now. She says it's this place. The island. But when the camp split up, I was sure that she'd want to go with Locke. Why would she want to leave the island, and risk getting sick again?

Thus, Rose believes in the healing power of the island and prefers to stay there.

John Locke is the most determined to stay. He is fascinated so much by the island that leaving it is not an option. He even boycotts the scientific team of Naomi who wants to return the survivors of the plane crash.

We can refer here to the humanistic frame of time and space, presented in chapter 2. The human space is home-centered. However, after a long stay on the island, for many characters it became the new center of their lives, their new home. As a result, some of them doubt leaving the island or they long to come back to it again after leaving.

59 Hence, mysterious healing, people rethinking their lives, starting over again cause the personages think that coming to the island was their destiny. Apart from the fact that it is a tremendous psychological experience, the crashing on the island is also something that completely changes their lives through different situations that are connected with their problems and their past (for instance, Jack meeting his father). It makes people whole, healthy, and emotionally strong. Obviously, none of this is accidental but, on the contrary, happening for a reason.

4.1.5 The Personification of the Island

Another way of treating the island is its personification, thinking it to be a creature with its own will.

In S01e05 LOCKE: But I've looked into the eye of this island. And what I saw was beautiful.

This mentioning of the island (the eye of this island) brings up for the first time the idea that it might be more that just a geographical location but itself a personage; a character with its own soul.

Later on in S01e06 LOCKE develops his idea: What I know is that this island might just give you what you're looking for, but you have to give the island something. Again, he spiritualizes the island and presupposes that the island can perform actions itself, as if it would have a free will.

Later in S01e19 Locke seriously considers the island to be a creature, LOCKE : Then the island will tell us what to do.

LOCKE: The island will send us a sign.

BOONE [sarcastically]: The island will send us a sign.

60 LOCKE: All that's happening now is our faith is being tested - our commitment. But we will open it. The island will show us how.

He uses several time verbs which can be applied to living creatures: the island will tell us what to do, will send us a sign, will show us how. Apparently, he does not treat the island anymore in a “normal” way like a place but instead like something wise, having a soul and mind, able to show signs and directions when people are lost in the situation or their lives. However, only Locke is under the spiritual influence of the island. He sees what others cannot see, he feels that there is much more in this place. And it can be easily explained – John Locke was the first to experience the magic powers of the island: he crashed there in a wheelchair, unable to walk.

Right after the crash he realized that he could walk again. He believes that special features of the island made him walk, that the island changed him. In S01e19 LOCKE says: It doesn't matter anymore. But, but, this island, it changed me. It made me whole. Now it's trying to take it back and I don't know why. But it wants me to follow what I saw. Nevertheless, the island plays tricks: in that same episode John Locke had problems walking and, as he explains it, his faith is being tested. But he feels he should follow what he believes in, what he saw.

One more personification‟s of the island is mentioning or Eko‟s death in S03e08.

LOCKE: Eko is dead.

SAYID: We found his body in the jungle -- buried him yesterday.

CHARLIE: How did he die?

LOCKE: The island killed him.

Though it is not known exactly how Eko died, we see a black smoke severely beating him to death, but the explanation for the actions does not follow. According to Locke, the black smoke or the Monster can be the island itself.

61 In the episode thirteen of the fourth season Locke is still trying to persuade Jack not to leave the island:

S04e13 LOCKE: I want you to reconsider leaving the Island, Jack. I would like you to stay.

JACK: You'd like me to stay?

LOCKE: But you're not supposed to go home.

JACK: (shouts angrily) And what am I supposed to do? (continues in a sarcastic tone) Oh, I think

I remember. What was it that you said on the way out to the hatch? That crashing here was our destiny?

LOCKE: You know, Jack. You know that you're here for a reason. You know it. And if you leave... this place... that knowledge is gonna eat you alive from the inside out... until you decide to come back.

Locke affirms that it was their destiny to crash on the island and Jack cannot leave just like that. Moreover, as it was mentioned earlier, he has no one to go back to. The island will not let him go. And indeed, when having returned back, he is suffering from depression and dreaming of coming back.

Before he leaves, Locke asks him to lie about everything that happened, so that nobody will find the island, to lie that there are no other survivors (the ones that would not like to come back). Jack takes this idea in a sarcastic way:

JACK: It's an island, John. No one needs to protect it!

LOCKE: It's not an island... it's a place where miracles happen.

For Locke the island is not just an island, he again personifies it, considering it to be a creature that has to be protected from the outside world.

Then finally in the last episode of the fourth season we see a scene when Jack regrets coming back.

62 JACK: He told me... that after I left the Island... some very bad things happened... and he told me that it was my fault... for leaving... and he said that I had to come back.

BEN: Yes, I heard that you've been flying on passenger planes... hoping that you'd crash. (pause)

It's dark, Jack, very dark.

JACK: Why are you here?

BEN: I'm here to tell you that the Island won't let you come alone.

Ben visits Jack, inviting him to go back to the island but with one condition, that he will bring all the other survivors with him as well. In his speech Ben personifies the island, giving the island a will and responsibility.

The personification of the island can be traced mostly in John Locke‟s speech. However, he is not the only one who considers the island to be a creature with its own desires.

In general, the island is a very mystical place, difficult to locate geographically and to be reached from the outside world. First of all, characters begin to realize that it might not be that safe, as there are other people on this island, they are facing different kinds of dangers. However, they were not scared, hoping to be rescued soon. But as it does not occur they have to adjust themselves to the situation.

Locke notices first that this is a very different, special place. Obviously, his sudden ability to walk after months of being paralyzed made him believe in miracles. After a while other people begin to notice that it is indeed a very strange place, where people are being healed, having hallucinations, and even meeting dead relatives. The island becomes a place where the characters can restart their lives and turn over a new leaf. Being extremely spiritual, Locke believes everything is happening for a reason and that the plane crash was their destiny. He personifies

63 the island, constantly talking about it as if it was a living creature, that it has to be protected or that it will not let other people go back.

However, the reality that these events are happening seems to be doubtful. In Hurley‟s conversation with his imaginary friend Dave, Dave proves everything to be fake, simply

Hurley‟s imagination. Even the audience starts to doubt as there are indeed many weird things occurring on the island. Another proposed theory is that the survivors of the plane crash are not survivors at all because the island is hell and everybody is simply dead. Anthony Cooper believes it to be true, as he considered himself to be dead, and meeting his dead son only confirms the idea that he is in hell. Desmond somehow shares both theories: he does not believe that there is an outside world and that they will ever get away from the island.

Later on Cooper‟s theory was proved wrong by discovering that Mr. Widmore specially arranged a fake plane with all dead bodies to put on the bottom of the ocean, so that nobody would search for the survivors, and accordingly, nobody will ever find the island. His attempts to hide the island confirms its peculiarity and special characteristics. The whole research organization (Dharma Initiative) was sent to the island some years ago to investigate its mysterious features. And finally, in the last episode of the fourth season a quite unbelievable thing happens – the island simply disappears.

4.2. The Role of Time in Lost

Time in Lost is obviously interconnected with the place, the island. This connection results in the fact that the location of the characters on the island cuts them from real time and from the outside world. At the same time, the island causes time anomalies, for example, Desmond was going back and forward in time. In the fifth season (which we did not include in this study) the

64 theme of time is more developed, as characters experience time travel and other time-related anomalies.

There are different indications of time in the series. One has been already mentioned before. It takes place in S01e06 when Michael tells Jin: Time does not matter on a damn island, proving the idea of the characters to be absolutely cut from the outside world in the matter of time.

In s03e02 in his conversation to Jack, Ben tries to prove that they have contact with the outside world:

BEN: Your flight crashed on September 22nd, 2004. Today is November 29th. That means you've been on our island for 69 days. Yes, we do have contact with the outside world, Jack. That's how we know that during those 69 days your fellow Americans re-elected George W. Bush;

Christopher Reeve has passed away; the Boston Red Sox won the World Series.

Apparently, the Others have a perfect sense of time and what is going on outside of the island.

Actually, if we look at their life, they live in houses that are not much different from a normal place, and they have clear communication with the rest of the world.

At the same time, a number of strange things happen there in concern with the time. Richard

Alpert, one of the Others, tells Juliet about time in s03e16 when she was planning to come to work on the island.

RICHARD: You're gonna be amazed at how time flies once you're there.

He means to give her support that six planned months would fly by much faster than she thinks but at the same time he implies that she would be on this island for much longer than she thinks. Another implication might be about Richard himself. As we see him throughout different time periods, he remains completely the same, not getting older, and not changing. Obviously, for him time flows much faster than for other characters.

65 Another interesting characteristic about their time is that personages seem to experience time in a different order on the island than on a freighter close to the island. As they compared it later, some things happened earlier on the island, while on the freighter the order of events was reversed which leads to believe that the island has indeed a different flow of time than the rest of the world.

As for Desmond, in S04e05 he experiences strange things. We see him in a helicopter with other characters while suddenly the camera switches to him in a military camp. Initially, one may think it is simply a flashback:

SERGEANT: What's the matter, Hume? Did you not hear me?

DESMOND: I'm sorry, sir. I was...I was having a dream, sir.

SERGEANT: You were having a dream, were you? And what were you dreaming about, that it took you so sodding long to get to your mark?

DESMOND: I was in a helicopter, sir. And there was a storm, sir. And I don't remember the rest, sir.

For Desmond events also seem to be complicated, he thinks his present to be only a dream, while being in the army looks real.

SOLDIER 2: (to Desmond) I hope your dream was worth this, mate.

DESMOND: Sorry brotha. It's just that, I've never had a dream so vivid. It was like I was actually there.

At the same time he realizes that it was an extraordinary dream, or perhaps not even a dream at all.

SAYID: What are you doing? Desmond! Are you alright?

DESMOND: Who are you? How do you know my name?!

66 After a strange dream or vision he came back to the helicopter but he continues to experience problems with his memory and does not recognize people around him.

DESMOND: No, this is wrong! I'm not supposed to be –

[DESMOND suddenly appears in the rain, standing up while the rest of his regiment is doing crunches.]

DESMOND: -here!

BILLY: What the hell's the matter with you, Des?

DESMOND: If I told you, you'd think I was crazy.

BILLY: I already know you're crazy.

DESMOND: This morning, when I was in the yard doing crunches, I left.

BILLY: What do you mean you left?

DESMOND: I was on a boat. And then I was back here...right where I started.

Desmond begins to realize that he is neither hallucinating nor dreaming but somehow switching between two places, far from each other not only spatially but also temporally. The changes between places occur more frequently, he is not able to control them. One of the scientists, Daniel Faraday who is currently staying on the island, calls him trying to help, as he knows what is going on.

DAN: Desmond! Desmond, my name is Daniel Faraday. We met yesterday before you took off.

But I'm guessing you don't remember that. Am I right?

DESMOND: Took off? What?

DAN: Desmond, we don't have long to talk so I need you to tell me what year you think it is.

DESMOND: What do you mean, what year do I think it -- it's 1996!

DAN: Alright, Desmond, Desmond look, you gotta tell me...where are you?

DESMOND: Um...um...I'm in some kind of sick bay...

67 DAN: No, no, no, no. Not right now, Desmond. Where are you supposed to be. Where are you in

1996?

DESMOND: Uh, Camp Milla, it's a ...Royal Scots Regiment, it's just north of Glasgow.

DAN: When it happens again, Desmond, I need you to get on a train. Get on a train and go to

Oxford, Oxford University, Queens College Physics Department. Alright?

DESMOND: What, why?

DAN: Because I need you to find me.

Daniel has perfectly figured out what happened with Desmond: he was switching between different times. Desmond proves it by saying that his present is 1996 while it is actually 2004.

Daniel decides to use this situation and make Desmond go and see Daniel in the past.

DESMOND: Um, sorry. Are you Daniel Faraday?

DAN: And you are?

DESMOND: Um...sorry, I'm Desmond Hume, and um...I was told I could find you here. I think

I've...just been to the future.

DAN: ...the future?

DESMOND: Yes. Uh, I spoke to you there, you told me to come here, to Oxford, to find you, you said you'd help me.

Hence, Desmond actually visits Daniel in the past which proves that he has been traveling through time for they have never met before. From the beginning, Daniel does not believe that

Desmond came from the future but later he was persuaded by some things that he was told.

However, the reason why Desmond came to see Daniel was simply to save himself. And indeed,

Daniel had a solution. He said that something familiar, the so-called constant, has to be found, as

Desmond has forgotten everything what was going on in the future, there could be no constant.

68 DAN: Something familiar in both times. All this, see this is variables, it's random, it's chaotic.

Every equation needs stability, something known. It's called a constant. Desmond, you have no constant. When you go to the future, nothing there is familiar. So if you want to stop this, then you need to find something there...something that you really, really care about....that also exists back here, in 1996.

DESMOND: This constant...can it be a person?

Nevertheless, he still remembers somebody, even in the future - the love of his life, Penelope.

Thus, he called her and it saved him, the seizures and switching between the future and the past stopped.

This whole episode implies an unusual structure of time: one which can be moved or switched from one moment to another. Significantly, this type of time travel was caused by the special features of the island, precisely, by going from the island to the outside world. In the fifth season

Faraday explains that the island can be thought of as a record of a spinning on a turntable, and that this record is spinning. This would probably cause people going back and forward in time.

It is remarkable that the time anomaly Desmond was experiencing resembles the way flashbacks and flash-forwards are used in Lost.

To conclude, the theme of time is very significant in Lost for several reasons. First of all, the characters on the island are cut off from the real world, as well as from real time. Though they count days they do not belong to the real flow of time. Moreover, they do not know the exact location of the island, as well as the time difference with other countries, hence, they are unable to tell the precise time. Secondly, the island seems to show strange possibilities of time traveling, which were not revealed yet in the fourth season but are still mentioned. In one of the episodes,

Desmond finds himself to be changing from one year into another, replacing in his mind.

69 Obviously, the island has very peculiar characteristics that influence the flow and the perception of time.

4. 3 Formal realization of flashbacks and flash-forwards

In literature and film a flashback is an often used device, a scene showing events that already took place, taking the audience back to the past. Flashbacks play a major role in Lost by revealing its characters, filling in the story or explaining some events. Each character was featured in flashbacks, especially in the first and the second seasons.

A flash-forward is a less widely used technique in the literature and film. It happens when a narrative is interrupted by a scene presenting the future, expected or projected events. The first flash-forward in Lost was introduced at the end of the third season and widely used in seasons four and five.

4.3.1 Visual realization of flashback and flash-forwards

4.3.1.1 Place

One of the visual realizations of flashbacks and flash-forwards is the change of setting. We can say that the general visual representation of place in flashbacks and flash-forwards is showing another space: cities, offices, houses, a hospital, airports – everything, except the beach, the caves, or the jungle of the island where the characters are situated in present time. For example, in S01e04 the camera shows Locke on the island, talking to another character, then the action switches to the ringing phone and Locke takes it. He is sitting at the office, working.

Sometimes, the change of setting implies a change of colour. The flashbacks in S01e09 show

70 Sayid serving in the Iraqi army. Those scenes are filmed with a yellow colour filter, strengthening the dessert-like character of the environment.

Some flashbacks and flash-forwards, however, show a setting similar to the one of the island.

The environment in a flash-forward of S04e03 is reminiscent of the fields of the island which

Hurley changed into a golf terrain. Sayid is playing golf when a dialogue begins with one of the personages and Sayid introduces himself as the one of The Oceanic Six. This is how the six characters who returned from the island are called in the media.

The opposite is also possible: some places on the island resemble those of the normal world.

For example, the introductory scene in S02e01, that shows Desmond for the very first time, takes place in the hatch, an underground station of Dharma Initiative. Here we see an environment we would not expect on the island, consisting of a bedroom and an office with a computer.

Nevertheless, it does not resemble a flashback or flash-forward. Anyway, in most cases the setting gives a good idea when a scene takes place on the island in present time.

On the other hand, the distinction between flashbacks and flash-forwards becomes more difficult. The first flash-forwards appear in the last episode of the third season. From the beginning, Jack‟s being in the hospital, the audience simply takes it as a flashback until we see

Kate talking to him at the end of the episode in a strange setting, in a city. As Jack and Kate first met on the island, we realize it is not a flashback but a flash-forward where the characters meet after having returned from the island.

Thus, place is not a major device for distinction between flashbacks and flash-forwards. But there are other visual devices that do help the audience.

4.3.1.2 The characters’ appearance

71 Often, the way characters look gives evidence for a flashback or flash-forward. First of all, their clothes might provide this information. Army costumes, dresses with high heels, hospital clothes, and expensive suits are not worn by the survivors on the island but they appear often in flashbacks and flash-forwards. A differentiation between flashbacks and flash-forwards is, however, again not always obvious using this criterion.

Secondly, sometimes the personages‟ hairstyle tells which time they are in. On the island,

Locke shaves himself bald, though he used to have hair before the crash. When a bald Locke is seen of the island, we therefore easily realize we are dealing with a flash-forward. In one episode‟s flashbacks the blonde Claire was seen with black coloured hair, an indication of her puberty or young adolescence. In S04e05 one understands that we deal with the past when we see that Desmond looks different, as he has a short hair, while normally his hair is quite long. He is in the army, hence, it must be some time ago when he was younger.

Thirdly, facial features might differ in flashbacks or flash-forwards. In the first flash-forward of Jack and Kate, described in previous section, Jack‟s large beard and Kate‟s unusual make-up tattle they are not in present time. Once known that it regards a flash-forward, we easily associate in later episodes their new facial appearances with the future.

4.3.1.3 Other visual devices

In the fourth season Hurley is taken to the police and interrogated for a petty crime he committed in a shop. When a policeman leaves him alone in the room, Hurley has a hallucination. From the transcript: Hurley sits passively, and observes the video of him in the store, where he jumps in fear and rushes out of the place in sheer panic. He looks at the mirror in the interview room, which he then sees as an underwater window. A hooded man swims to the window, and touches the glass, which immediately smashes. As water splashes his feet and pours

72 in quickly, Hurley runs for the door. The visual representation of the island comes to Hurley even in the police station, thus, it must be a flash-forward, the time when everybody came back from the island. Hurley begins to have severe mental problems, seeing dead people or the ocean, the water, everything, connected to the island. We see Charlie, visiting him in a mental institution, which definitely points out that we deal with a flash-forward, the future, as Charlie and Hurley never knew each other before crashing on the island.

Another visual device, indicating the past in this case, is the newspaper with the article about the crash of the Oceanic flight. Charlotte, one of the crew members that will be sent to the island within the scientific expedition, is reading the article in French that Oceanic 815 was found, all passengers are dead. In the scenes about the present, Charlotte is already on the island. Thus, the audience realizes that the article is a part of a flashback.

4.3.1.4 Characters’ meetings

One more visual device we can enumerate here is the characters meeting each other “after the island”. Most of them never knew each other before, and if they actually do meet each other in an episode, somewhere outside the island, it must be the flash-forward or the future. Some characters, however, encountered each other in the past, though those meetings were mostly occasional and short.

We already mentioned some examples above: the very first flash-forward where Jack and

Kate meet in the city and Hurley‟s hallucination when Charlie is visiting him. The latter will be discussed now.

CHARLIE: Hey man. Don't run. Hurley. Just, just, sit down. I wanna talk to you. Come on.

Don't do what you did in the store. Ok? There's no need to freak out.

73 HURLEY: No need to freak out? I'm trying to buy some jerky and a slushy, and suddenly you're standing over there by the Ho Hos. You're dead, what do you expect me to do?

CHARLIE: Can we just sit down?

HURLEY: I may be in a mental hospital, but I know you're dead and I'm not having an imaginary conversation with you.

Both meeting each other brings the idea that it is the future, a flash-forward because they have never met before the island. In spite of the fact that Hurley has been in the mental institution before, this time the presence of Charlie, who is supposed to be dead, implies that we deal with the flash-forward and not a flash-back.

Also some other meetings of characters indicate flash-forwards: Hurley meets Jack when he comes to visit him in a mental institution, Jack is dating Kate, Hurley goes to Korea to visit Sun, and Ben in Tunisia sees Sayid on TV when Sayid‟s girlfriend was murdered.

4.3.2 Plot Structure

The difference between flashbacks and flash-forwards can also be shown on the plot level.

For instance in S04e04 Kate Austin is facing the court for the murder of her father. As we know from the previous episodes, she killed her father and was arrested but the court hearing did not take place. When taken to the court, Kate is photographed by many journalists, which signifies that she was famous then, after the crash and return of the Oceanic Six, six characters that came back from the island. Thus we deal with a flash-forward here.

In the S04e06 Juliet recalls her first meetings with Goodwin on the island. Later on, as we know from the plot, they became lovers, secretly from everybody, especially from Goodwin‟s wife. But it turned out that his wife and some other people, including Ben, knew about this affair.

As Ben was in love with Juliet, he used the first possibility to get rid of Goodwin. When the

74 plane crashed, Ben sent Goodwin to inspect the tail section survivors and to pretend that he was one of them. Apparently, at some point the real survivors realized that he was not on the plane and killed him. In the current “present” of the episode Goodwin is dead already, that is what indicated that it is a flashback.

Another example is presented in the S04e07 where Sun is having a baby. As one knows from the plot, Sun became pregnant on the island which was a miracle as she could not get pregnant before. They even went to the fertility specialists to test whether they are able to have children.

Hence, her delivering of a baby could happen only in the future, as she has never been pregnant before, thus we deal with a flash-forward. In the same episode Hurley arrives to Korea to see Sun and they visit her husband Jin‟s grave, who died on the island. Definitely it is a flash-forward as the events are shown that happen after their return from the island.

Another detail signifying flashbacks is seeing the characters young, as children. In S04e11 a baby is born who turned out to be little John Locke. Later on in the same episode John Locke appears as an adult, in a wheelchair. As we know from the plot, he was in a wheelchair before crashing on the island, and it definitely indicates that it is the past.

In S04e12 we see John Locke laying in a coffin, being presented as Jeremy Bentham. In the present of the episode John is still alive which points out that it is a flash-forward. Moreover, it is not explained why he has another name, Jeremy Bentham, which presupposed that a range of other events is going to happen before his death.

4.3.3 Verbal Representation of Flashbacks and Flash-forwards

However, the most important and the easiest way to distinguish between flashbacks and flash- forwards is a verbal one, through the dialogues between the characters. For example, in the flash-

75 forwards the personages mostly mention their stay on the island or something related to their past there, sometimes with exact time markers.

For instance, in S04e01 when Hurley was arrested for a petty crime, he was trying to protect himself by shouting that he was famous – that he was one of the Oceanic Six.

HURLEY: Stop! Don't you know who I am? Stop, wait, don't you know who I am? I'm one of the

Oceanic six! I'm one of the Oceanic six!!!

Obviously, it indicates that we are dealing with the flash-forward. Later on, in his interrogation with a policeman, it turned out that the detective knew somebody from the plane.

DETECTIVE: I knew somebody on your plane.

HURLEY: Really?

DETECTIVE: Her name was Ana Lucia Cortez. She was my partner before I made detective.

Dark hair. Gorgeous. Maybe you knew her? Maybe you met her on the plane? Before it took off?

HURLEY: Sorry, never met her.

Actually, Hurley did know Ana Lucia but as they decided to lie about their stay on the island, so he answered that he had never met her. Thus, because of this little talk and mentioning of the plane, the audience realizes that it is a flash-forward, as it takes place after the events on the island.

In the same episode Jack and Hurley meet, apart from the fact that they meet each other, also their conversation plays a significant role.

HURLEY: I don't think we did the right thing, Jack. I think it wants us to come back.

JACK: Hurley.

HURLEY: And it’s going to do everything it can...

Hurley is talking about the island in a personified way, that it wants them to come back.

Naturally, he does not call it the island but it is clear and it also makes us realize that we are

76 seeing a flash-forward. In the same episode an unknown man visits Hurley in a mental institution. Again, by the setting we cannot judge whether it is the past or the future. But when a visitor begins the conversation with Hurley, we understand that it is a flash-forward, as he is mentioning Oceanic Airlines.

VISITOR: Mr Reyes. Hello. My name is Matthew Abaddon. I'm an attorney for Oceanic Airlines.

Can we talk for a few minutes?

Then after the visitor poses a question that only he and Hurley will understand, it becomes even clearer that they are in the future.

MATTHEW: Are they still alive?

HURLEY: (Pauses) What?

MATTHEW: You heard me.

The fact that he asked a question about other survivors who did not leave the island implies that this is a flash-forward, happening after Hurley left the island.

In S04e02 Daniel Faraday cries while watching TV.

WOMAN 1: So what happened, they find that missing plane? Dan? Dan? Dan, why are you so upset?

DAN: I don't know.

On the television they showed that a missing plane was found, Oceanic 815, and all passengers were dead. Daniel was crying because of that for an unknown reason. In the present time Daniel is on the island, long after the wreckage of the plane was found, thus, we see a flashback. In the same episode there is a range of other flashbacks where we see how members of the scientific team found out about the plane. Miles was sitting in a car, listening to the radio.

77 CAR RADIO: ...Oceanic 815, it can only be described as the worst case scenario. With the plane accounted for, and a salvage mission unlikely, authorities are confirming all three hundred and twenty-four passengers dead.

Naomi is talking with a man who offers her to go to this scientific expedition to the island. he asks about possible survivors.

NAOMI: What if we find survivors from 815?

MATTHEW: There were no survivors.

NAOMI: I know, but what if there are survivors...

MATTHEW: There were no survivors of Oceanic 815. Don't ask questions, just do what you were hired for. Every member of this team was selected for a specific purpose, everything relies on you, getting them in, getting them out, and preventing anyone from getting killed.

Those conversations and in particular the mentioning of the Oceanic 815 indicates that those are flashbacks, of some weeks before the scientific crew came to the island.

In the episode S04e04 Kate faces the court for the murder of her father when Jack comes in and presents himself as the witness for the defense. Kate‟s lawyer asks him how he met Kate.

DUNCAN: Dr. Shephard. Could you please tell the ladies and gentlemen of the jury, if there are any of you who don't read the newspapers or the internet or watch television, how you met the defendant?

JACK: Um..on September 22, 2004, Kate (sighs, smiling) --Ms. Austen and I were both passengers on Oceanic Flight 815, which crash-landed on an island in the South Pacific.

From his words it becomes clear that we are dealing with a flash-forward as he describes past events.

78 In the S04e06 Juliet is talking to the psychologist, she is on the island, that is why the audience may doubt whether it is the past, the present or the future. Then Tom comes in and interrupts the session.

TOM: Harper, I'm sorry for the interruption. I know you don't like me busting in, but Ben would like to see the doc.

HARPER: Uh... She's all yours, Tom. It was nice talking to you, Juliet. Welcome to the Island.

From Harper‟s last words we figure out that it was the time when Juliet just arrived to the island, thus, it is a flashback.

Episode S04e07 is peculiar in nature as it mixes flashbacks and flash-forwards almost in the same situation and it becomes difficult to distinguish whether it is the past or the future. Sun and her husband Jin are shown, both in Korea. Sun is in pain, obviously having contractions, takes the phone and dials the emergency. From the first glance it looks like a flash-forward, and it indeed is, because she got pregnant on the island, and is now almost delivering a baby.

WOMAN ON THE PHONE: (in Korean) Emergency services.

SUN: (in Korean) I need an ambulance.

WOMAN ON THE PHONE: (in Korean) What seems to be the problem?

SUN: (in Korean) I'm pregnant, and I think something's wrong.

In the following scenes in the hospital she is calling her husband, shouting his name and refusing to deliver a baby until he comes. At the same time we see a scene with her husband Jin, rushing to the toy store, saying on the phone that he will be in the hospital soon. Then he buys a panda in the shop.

STORE OWNER: (in Korean) Would you like it gift wrapped?

JIN: (in Korean) No, I have to get to the hospital. How much is it?

79 STORE OWNER: (in Korean) Fifty thousand won. Maternity ward?

JIN: (in Korean) Yes.

STORE OWNER: (in Korean) Why didn't you say so? You must be very happy... Boy or a girl?

JIN: (in Korean) I... I don't know yet.

Naturally, the audience presupposes that Jin is buying a panda for his baby and rushing to the hospital to see his wife. But then from the next scene the dialogue with a nurse makes the situation clear.

NURSE: (in Korean) Leaving so soon?

JIN: (in Korean) It wasn't my baby.

NURSE: (in Korean) Well, maybe someday...

JIN: (in Korean) Don't rush me. I've only been married two months.

But apparently it was the baby of his boss, and the scene takes place in the past, when they have been only married for 2 months, and Sun has not been pregnant yet. Later on in the same episode Sun and Hurley go to the cemetery to visit Jin‟s grave where Sun tells about her delivery.

SUN: (in Korean) Jin... You were right. It's a girl. The delivery was hard on me... The doctor said I was calling out for you... I wish you could've been there. Jin... She's beautiful. Ji Yeon. I named her just like you wanted. I miss you so much. I miss you so much.

Hence, two similar situations were combined to create the effect that Jin was still alive being happy about the birth of his baby. Very skillful elements, such as hospital, looking the same, Jin hurrying to the hospital as if the baby is very important to him, Sun calling for Jin who is normally dead, make us believe that both situations take place simultaneously. However, at the end of the episode the audience remains disappointed as they find out that Jin is dead and cannot share the joy of his baby‟s birth.

80 In the S04e08 Michael‟s mother reproaches him.

MICHAEL'S MOTHER: I thought you were dead. They said your plane crashed in the middle of the ocean, but you show up here fine and dandy, only I can't tell anybody about you or Walt, can't call you by your real names. He barely talks to me, but he does wake up screamin' in the middle of the night, and I'm the one that's got to tell him it's gonna be okay. So until you can explain to me where you were for over two months and what happened... you gave up your rights.

From her words we realize that it is a flash-forward, and Michael just got back from the island. He is trying to keep it as a secret by hiding his real name. His son Walt also reacts in a strange way, having nightmares and screaming at night. However, in spite of hiding and using strange names, Tom from the Others still managed to find Michael. Tom was trying to persuade

Michael to join the scientific expedition to the island to be their spy there. He begins his dialogue with the following sentence:

TOM: Manhattan, huh? We let you leave one island, you just go to another one.

It implies irony and at the same time appears to be a temporal marker, explaining the order of events. Hence, Michael has left the island and now is living on Manhattan.

In S04e11 we see little John Locke, who just was born, his mother came to see him. Perhaps, the audience is not sure, whether it is indeed John Locke or some other boy, named John, until the nurse makes a reference to Mrs. Locke, grandmother of John Locke. This is how the audience figures out that it is indeed Locke.

NURSE: Hi, Emily. Mrs. Locke, it's good to see you.

MRS. LOCKE: How is he?

81 NURSE: He's amazing. He's the youngest preemie to ever survive in this hospital. He's had infections, pneumonia, you name it. And every time, he knocked them out. He is a fighter, your little John.

Obviously, this is a flashback to John‟s childhood or, to be more exact, his first months. The nurse enumerates different diseases that he had during his stay in hospital but he fought him all, she refers to him as a fighter which will indeed influence his character in the future.

In the same episode, an unknown person visits John while he is in a wheelchair. This visual representation of him in a wheelchair signifies the scene to be a flashback. But the conversation situates this scene in a right temporal order.

ABADDON: You know what you need, Mr. Locke? You need to go on a walkabout.

LOCKE: Wha--what's a walkabout?

ABADDON: It's a journey of self-discovery. You go out into the Australian Outback with nothing more than a knife and your wits.

LOCKE: I can't "walkabout" anything. In case you haven't noticed, I'm a cripple.

Because of the dialogue we can easily situate this scene. It took place when John Locke just recovered from falling out of the window, still staying at hospital. The appearance of this man who offered him to go on a walkabout inspired him so much, that he was thinking about it for a long time. He eventually signed up and specially went to Australia where he was denied because of his disability to walk. On his way back home from Australia he crashes on the island where actually his dreams about walkabouts come true.

In s04e12 the press-conference is called with the survivors from Oceanic 815 where the whole story is revealed, partly based on lies.

82 MS. DECKER: Based on the location of the wreckage, our best estimate of the crash site is...

(click) here. From there, the survivors were carried by the ocean's current to... (click) here--an uninhabited island in the Lesser Sunda Islands known as Membata. As you've all read in your briefing books, on day 103... (click) a typhoon washed up the remnants of an Indonesian fishing boat, including basic supplies and a survival raft. On day 108, the remaining six survivors, including Ms. Austen's baby which she gave birth to on the island of Membata, used this raft to journey here-- (click) an island called Sumba. They then came ashore near a village called

Manukangga. This photo was taken by the local fisherman who found them. Once it was discovered who they were, they were transported to Honolulu by the U.S. Coast Guard. As you can imagine, this has been an extraordinarily trying experience. They have, however, agreed to answer a few questions. So, ladies and gentlemen, the survivors of Oceanic 8-1-5.

The whole speech implies not only the fact that we are dealing with a flash-forward but also builds a consequent temporal order of the events. In spite of the fact, that the survivors normally crashed on a different island, the temporality does correspond to reality, at least of the normal world. The characters spent 108 days on the island in general, according to the time in the outside world. But we do not know if the characters followed the count of days themselves on the island. First couple of weeks it was explicitly mentioned but it is not known whether everybody was aware of exact amount of days spent on the island. As we know from section 4.2, time on the island can differ from time in the outside world.

On the same press-conference one of journalists asks Jack a question about his future, his plans, he especially stresses the accent on the fact that Jack is home now. But as Jack does not yet comprehend the situation in a sober way, he simply gives a vague answer.

ARABIC REPORTER: Mr Shephard, now that you are home, what are your plans?

83 JACK: I haven't really thought too much about it, uh -- my father died in Sydney, I was bringing him home for the funeral when the plane crashed. Even though the body is... -- I'd like to put him to rest.

The pause in his speech implies that the body is still missing. There was no funeral yet, as we understand from Jack‟s answer, so the press-conference must have taken place a few days after the return of the six survivors.

In S04e13 Kate and Jack are meeting each other when Jack tries to persuade Kate to go back to the island. It is clear that this scene is a flash-forward but next to that Kate provides another time marker, so that the audience can know how much time has passed after their return.

KATE: I've spent the last three years trying to forget all the horrible things that happened on the day that we left. How dare you ask me to go back?

Hence, one figures out that it has been three years since they came back from the island.

In the same episode Jack comes to the funeral of John Locke where he meets Ben.

BEN: Sorry. Didn't mean to scare you. Did he tell you that I was off the island?

JACK: (Exhales deeply) Yes, he did.

BEN: When did you speak to him?

JACK: (Inhales deeply) About a month ago.

We already know that it is a flash-forward as the scene takes place close to the John Locke‟s coffin but Jack makes a more exact time orientation, saying that he saw John Locke one month before his death.

In general, flashbacks and flash-forwards become the main device of Lost. For the most part they are represented in a visual, narrative or a verbal way. The most obvious visual device is the

84 setting. As the action mostly takes place on the island, a setting different from it (city, for example) points out that we are dealing with a flashback or a flash-forward. Secondly, the appearance of the characters gives information about temporality. Thirdly, some other visual devices can denote to flashbacks or flash-forwards (for instance, Hurley constantly sees the ocean and other things, reminding him of the island). Naturally, another notification for flash- forwards is characters meeting each other “after the island” in a normal life.

From narrative devices, the plot structure is the most important one to distinguish between flashbacks and flash-forwards. Knowing the plot, the audience can presuppose which events have already taken place and thus belong to the past, and which situations will occur in the future.

Finally, verbal devices (the characters mentioning past events, conversations about the island, etc.) is the easiest way to distinguish between flashbacks and flash-forwards.

In the next chapter we will examine the functions of flashbacks and flash-forwards.

4.4 Functions of Flashbacks and Flash-forwards

Mostly flashbacks and flash-forwards are used in connection with the characters in 3 main functions: 1) to characterize a personage and to explain his current behaviour, 2) to expand the theme of time and space, and 3) to intrigue the audience.

In this chapter we will consider five main personages and see how flashbacks and flash- forwards function in relation to them by explaining their features. As it was already mentioned, most characters are believed to have crashed on the island not only because they accidentally turned out to be on the plane flying above the Pacific Ocean, but because they needed to figure out for themselves who they are and what they should do with their life. The island and the

85 situation of the crash gives the perfect opportunity for a moral growth and evolution. Finally, we will see how flashbacks and flash-forwards function in Lost in general.

4.4.1 Jack Shephard

Jack is a spinal surgeon, he was flying back from Australia repatriating his father‟s body. In the flashback of S01e05 Jack‟s mother persuades him to bring his father Christian back from

Australia (when he was still alive). Apparently, before Christian (Jack‟s father) left there, they had a serious fight.

MARGO: Jack, please you know how he gets — he doesn't — he won't take care of himself. You have to go after him.

JACK: I'm sorry. I can't.

MARGO: "I can't?" You don't get to say "I can't." Not after what you did. Bring your father home, Jack.

JACK: Where is he?

MARGO: Australia.

That is why his mother tries to convince Jack to take her husband back, as Jack had issues with his father. The sentence Not after what you did implies that Jack might be partly guilty in his father‟s departure. In the same episode, already in Australia, Jack is taken to the morgue to identify his father‟s body.

MEDICAL EXAMINER: The police found him in an alley in Queens Cross. Now, a screen showed a blood alcohol content, which for a man of his size, probably brought on myocardial infarction - a sizable, and fatal heart-attack.

JACK: [crying] That's him.

86 Eventually, Jack arrived too late and his father was already dead. Hence, their issues remained unsolved.

In other episodes the audience learns more about father-son matters. For example, in S01e11

Jack failed a surgery because of his father. He still tried to save the patient.

JACK: Come on, baby, come back. Come back. Come on, baby, come on. Come on now. You can do this. Come on. Come on.

CHRISTIAN SHEPHARD: Call it, Jack. It's over, call it.

His father is reluctant to continue and rather admits that the person is dead. Partly what is taking place is Christian‟s fault, as he was invited to have surgery but was then replaced by Jack as he had been drinking before the surgery. Jack could not forgive him for that.

JACK: You made a mistake.

CHRISTIAN SHEPHARD: Are you lecturing me? You tell me, if you were upstairs, and I was in a restaurant having lunch, then why did they call me?

JACK: How many drinks did you have at lunch, dad?

Jack was reproaching his father for drinking, especially when there was a possibility to conduct an operation. However, as we will see further, Jack later makes the same mistake, begins drinking heavily and becomes an alcoholic.

Christian explains his toughness and relationship with his son in such a way that he wished only good for Jack.

CHRISTIAN SHEPHARD: I know I have been hard on you, but that is how you make a soft metal into steel. That is why you are the most gifted young surgeon in this city. And this, this is a career that is all about the greater good. I've had to sacrifice certain aspects of my relationship with you so that hundreds and thousands of patients will live because of your extraordinary skills.

87 Evidently, Christian had to sacrifice normal paternal feelings in order to make Jack tougher, to help him become a very professional surgeon. Nevertheless, this was not the most important thing for Jack. In spite of the fact that he adored his career and spent much time in the hospital, seeing his personal relations fail made him suffer greatly. First of all, the relationship with his father made a huge impact on him. That is why the flashbacks are used in this case: to demonstrate Jack‟s issues with his father. Even on the island, he meets his dead father again alive, he cannot escape him. In some way the island forces him to deal with these issues that he always refused to face.

Secondly, what affects him greatly is the divorce and failed relationship with his ex-wife

Sarah. On their wedding in a flashback of S01e20, Sarah tells a story how they met each other.

She was his patient with a broken spine and with a small chance for recovery, but in spite of all that, Jack managed to fix her.

SARAH: A little over two years ago, I blew a tire out - flipped over the center divider into oncoming traffic, and was hit head-on by an SUV. My back was broken. They all said it was irreparable. And then there was Jack. And he promised he would fix me, because that's the kind of guy he is. Because you are the most committed man I have ever known - because you fixed me,

I will dance at our wedding. To Jack, my hero, Jack.

Jack did not prepare a vow back but paraphrased his bride‟s words.

JACK: …And last night, Sarah, when you were talking about the accident - you got it all wrong.

I didn't fix you. You fixed me.

The general theme of fixing becomes very important in relation to Jack. Perhaps, he became a doctor because of the need to fix things. He constantly tries to fix his patient, as well as all other things around. Finally, his wife leaves him of his too tense work schedule, blaming him for always wanting to fix things. In S02e11:

88 JACK: Sarah, I mean, we don't even talk anymore. I hate what's happening to us and I promise you that things are going to be different. I'm going to, I'm going to work less. I'm going to be here for you. Okay? I'm going to fix this. We're going to go back to the way things were. I'm going to fix this. I'm going to fix this.

SARAH: Jack. Jack, I'm leaving you.

JACK: What?

SARAH: You, you will always need something to fix. Goodbye.

When Jack comes to the island he is the one fixing, being the only doctor there. Finally, he can do what he likes – he fixes wounds, injuries, helps Claire deliver her baby, and generally learns to take responsibility and to keep the group together, becoming an unofficial leader of the survivors.

To conclude, Jack‟s flashbacks help to create a more complete image of him, portraying the parental issues he used to have with his father. He literally crashed on the island because of his father, as he went to Australia to bring him back home. On the island he finds the job that fits him best. He constantly has to fix things as a doctor. Flashbacks serve as a way to unfold a personage‟s characteristics.

4.4.2 Kate Austen

Kate is another principal character of the series. Flashbacks and flash-forwards are quite important in her case, as they show what kind of person she used to be before the island. She was in a custody of a U.S. Marshall when she crashed on the island. In the flashbacks of S01e03, we discover how she ended up in this situation. Kate is in Australia, working on a farm under a false pretence. However, the man she has been working for discovers that she is a fugitive and hands her to the police.

89 KATE: How long have you known?

RAY: Couple of days. I saw your picture in the post office. I guess they knew you were Down

Under.

KATE: Why?

RAY: The reward's 23,000 dollars. I told you when I met you, I've got a hell of a mortgage. If it makes you feel any better, it was a hard decision, Annie.

She introduced herself as Annie, a fake name, because she was wanted by the officials. Kate has no vast identity, as seen in many flashbacks. In S01e12 when robbing a bank, she had changed her hair colour. Monica, Lucy, and Annie are the names that she used to introduce herself. In S03e06 she even married a policeman who did not know her real name. Obviously,

Kate has identity issues. She is lost and tries to find herself by destroying things, in opposition to

Jack who constantly wants to fix things. In S02e09 we learn about her main crime: killing her father by making his house explode, in hope to restore her relationship with her mother. Her crimes, however, only bring her further from what she wants and from who she really is. Her issues remain unresolved until she arrives on the island. There, surprisingly, she uses her real name, Kate, and she shows her real self, accepting her own personality.

Thus, flashbacks are important in Kate‟s case as her criminal past is portrayed. She used to lie, rob, steal, and betray people. The island gives her a chance to start over again, to get rid of her identity issues and become who she really is. In S01e03 she washes her hair colour in the shower, washes away her old criminal identity, wanting to come clean.

Surprisingly, on the island we do not trace any characteristics of her “old” self: she changes completely, becomes a new person. Other characters see her as a kind and trustable friend, always ready to help. Ironically, unanimously she was chosen the one to carry a gun on the island while actually having been a fugitive and a criminal. It implies that people really trust her

90 there. In the flash-forwards we see that the changes that happened to her on the island do not stop back in the normal life. She takes care of Claire‟s son as if he is her own child. Nevertheless – it has to be said – her life here again is based on a lie: she pretends to be the biological mother of the baby. However, it becomes difficult to imagine that this woman was capable of murder and violence. This explains why she wins the trial for her father‟s murder. Though she committed a horrible crime, the jury realizes that it was the “old” her who did this, and now she turned into a different person, a much better one.

In general, flashbacks and flash-forwards help us see the evolution of her character: the person she used to be and the person she grew up to. Having problems with her identity in the past, on the island Kate finds her real self and develops it.

4.4.3 James “Sawyer” Ford

Another significant character of the series is James Ford. Mostly people call him by his nickname “Sawyer”, which he adopted from another man - Tom Sawyer. That man had a relationship with his mother which led to James‟ father to kill his mother and commit suicide.

Thus, James became an orphan at the age of 8. The adoption of this pseudonym might have different reasons. First of all, he takes the name of the enemy, the man who ruined his family, and changed his life completely. Taking his name, James partly takes his identity as well and becomes cruel and violent. Another interpretation of this nickname is connected with the book by Mark Twain, “Tom Sawyer”. James often reads classic novels, as we see in the series, and thus might have also read this one. The book tells a story about an orphan boy who is constantly misbehaving and playing tricks on people, a part of James which is absolutely revealed on the island. He constantly interferes with other people and plays with their things: for example, he hides the medicine of a sick girl.

91 Another distinguishing feature of James is the use of nicknames for other characters.

Sometimes those nicknames reflect some physical feature of the personage, for example, he calls

Kate “Freckles.” But often the nicknames allude to famous figures, for instance, he calls the scientist Daniel Faraday H. Wells, obviously implying the connection between a famous writer of

The Time Machine and a scientist who was also concerned with time travel. Many nicknames have references to popular movies or actors. For instance, James calls a Korean man Bruce, obviously in reference to Bruce Lee. Another time he addresses him as Crouching Tiger, Hidden

Dragon, making an allusion to the Chinese movie with the same title. The whole range of nicknames for different people shows James‟ sense of humor, irony, and his broad knowledge.

In James‟ case flashbacks and flash-forwards are mostly used to explain his character, and the nature of his actions.

In S01e16 the audience sees the tragedy that happened to him in his childhood. His mother asks him to hide under the bed when a fight between her and his father is about to start. In this way James witnesses his father killing his mother and committing suicide thereafter.

MARY: Wake up. He's here. C'mon. Got to get you up. He'll think you're still with your grandparents, okay? Get under the bed. Let's go. Okay. Listen to mommy, this is really important. Get under the bed, don't make a sound. Don't come out, no matter what happens.

Don't come out, okay?

[Sound of the door breaking.]

MARY: What the hell is wrong with you? I'm calling the police, get out of here. What are you doing? What the hell are you doing with a gun, get out of...

[Sound of gunshot and her body falling to the floor. Shot of Sawyer under the bed, and his POV watching his father's boots walk into the room. The father sits on the bed and we hear the sound of him shooting himself.]

92 This tragic moment changes James‟ life completely, he is left alone to deal with his fear and loss. Having grown up, he will search for a man called Sawyer to avenge his broken life.

Contaminated with anger he kills the wrong person.

SAWYER: Sawyer. [He shoots Duckett.] I've got a letter for you. [reads] "Dear Mr. Sawyer..."

DUCKETT: Who?

SAWYER: You used to go by the name of Sawyer.

DUCKETT: What the hell are you talking about?

Obviously, it was too late to correct this mistake by saving the man. However, he does not regret it but follows his aim to find the right Sawyer. Probably he hopes that finding that man and killing him will free James from what he has become. In S01e23 it is displayed what sort of person he used to be.

CALDERWOOD: You think this is funny, James? James Ford, assault, wire fraud, identity theft, bank fraud, telemarketing fraud...

SAWYER: This going some place?

CALDERWOOD: You're a blight, a stain, a scavenger. You're a conman who prays on the weak and the needy. Tell me something, James, how do you live with yourself?

SAWYER: I do just fine.

CALDERWOOD: Do you? You're not even worth what it would cost us to incarcerate you.

Which is why you're being deported. Your plane leaves this afternoon. And, James, you'll better never setting foot in Australia again.

SAWYER: Don't you worry, I ain't ever coming back here.

Apparently, James had issues with morality, he does not see what has become of him and feels himself to be absolutely normal. The policeman uses strong words to describe his character

93 - a blight, a stain, a scavenger, somebody who is a parasite to other people. It seems that he has absolutely no concern and no feelings about his mental state, he has no regrets for his deeds.

However, on the island James opens another side of his personality to the audience – he is one of the few characters who reads books. It is quite often that we see James with a book in his hands, reading it. He seems an intelligent man as he often makes references to different novels, even quotes them.

One of the allusions he made refers to the book Lord of the Flies by William Golden where a group of children who have crashed on the island try to survive. At some point the evil nature of those children comes through and they begin to murder each other. The allusion was: Folks down on the beach might have been doctors and accountants a month ago, but it's Lord of the Flies time now. In fact, the connection of Lost with Lord of the Flies is especially significant as major themes are more or less the same. Among of them there are such motifs as people crashing on the island, the motif of survival, competition for leadership between two characters (Jack and

John Locke in Lost), and the issue of staying human, the issue of morality. James‟ allusion projects on the possible end of the series – everybody turns evil, characters killing each other, and struggle for survival shadows moral aspects. Indeed, some things happening on the island resemble the behavior of children from Lord of the Flies but it does not reach its height.

Moreover, James‟ phrase also implies that before crashing on the island they were all in some function, doing their job, being somebody. Now that they are on the island, they simply have to be who they really are, it does not matter anymore what kind of job they did or even who they used to be. What matters is who they are now.

Thus, the island reveals an intelligent and emotional side of James and puts away the mask of cruelty and carelessness. Actually, he crashed on the island in the first place because of it,

94 because they deported him (You're not even worth what it would cost us to incarcerate you.

Which is why you're being deported).

At the same time the cruelty is mostly displayed as a protective reaction, and in flashbacks this explains his abnormal violence and fear to bond. He does not want to show his feelings, being ruthless instead. In S03e04 when he finds out he has a daughter, he chose to react as if he does not care at all.

SAWYER: What's this?

CASSIDY: This is your daughter.

SAWYER: What do you want?

CASSIDY: Well, first I wanted you to know.

SAWYER: Then what? You think I'm going to take one look at this picture and turn into Father

Knows Best?

CASSIDY: We're living in this little place in Albuquerque. It's near the University...

SAWYER: Why are you telling me this?

CASSIDY: I just thought you could write her a letter. Her name's Clementine.

SAWYER: What the hell am I going to write, "Dear Goo-goo, Ga-ga?" She's a baby. She ain't mine.

CASSIDY: Sawyer, she is....

SAWYER: I ain't got no daughter.

As we see, he completely neglects his parental feelings and any emotions. Nevertheless, later on he opens a bank account in Clementine‟s name in which he deposits a large sum of money.

On the island when Kate was going back, he asks her to visit his daughter. Hence, his lack of emotion is only artificial, deep inside he does care about his daughter and other people around.

James is afraid of bonding and showing his emotions in public.

95 In this case flashbacks help to explain the nature of his behavior - his coldness. Because of the tragedy in his family James became who he is, and that allows the audience not to judge him too hard for his actions, as well as to able to see his emotional evolution. The island gives him a possibility to bond again, he becomes close with Kate, and finally learns to show his feelings. In the fifth season we even see an emotionally and morally grown-up Sawyer. Thus, also for him we can concluded that flashbacks contribute to portray his personal evolution on the island.

4.4.4 Hugo “Hurley” Reyes

One of the most interesting and mystical characters is Hurley or Hugo. Some years ago

Hurley suffered a traumatic incident which dramatically influenced his life. He was on a deck with 23 people while normally it was maximally meant for 8 people, as a result the deck collapsed and passengers died. Hurley constantly blamed himself for this accident as he believed himself to be too fat and the reason of the whole collapse. Gaining weight was in the first place his reaction on his father‟s leaving while Hurley was still a child. Hurley dealt with his problems by eating. The traumatic experience with a deck resulted in his depression and stay in a mental hospital where he was seeing an imaginary person.

In S02e18 during a conversation with a doctor, Hurley was made to talk about quite an unpleasant issue for him – his weight. He never really admits that he is comfortable the way he looks but at the same time he does not make any effort to change himself. Instead of exercising or taking any measures, he develops a split personality, seeing an imaginary friend Dave who reveals the worst side of his character, making him eat even more.

DR. BROOKS: I notice that you didn't say anything about the way you look. Are you comfortable with your appearance?

HURLEY: It's not like... I can't really do anything about it, right?

96 HURLEY: Dave's right about you. You know, you're nothing but a quack.

DR. BROOKS: Dave doesn't want you to lose weight, does he?

HURLEY: You know, Dave cares about me. He's my friend.

[Brooks gets the Polaroid out of Hurley's file.]

DR. BROOKS: It may upset you. This is the photo I took for the bulletin board.

DR. BROOKS: Dave isn't your friend, Hugo, because Dave doesn't exist.

Ironically, on the island Hurley is put in charge of food as other people do not know he suffers from an eating disorder. Probably, it is the way to check him, to test whether he will try to control his eating habits or will develop an even more serious form of eating disorder. In the beginning he eats everything without thinking but later on, meeting the psychologist Libby, he tries to control his eating habits.

As we have discussed in section 4.3, Hurley suffers from severe hallucinations once more after leaving the island in flash-forwards. He develops a mental breakdown, causing the idea that he has to return to the island.

In one of the flashbacks of S01e18 Hurley won an incredible sum of money in a lottery.

MARY JO: …with mega number 42. And that makes tonight's mega-lotto-jackpot 4 8 15 16 23.

With the mega number 42. Whoever has those numbers has won, or will share, in a near record jackpot.

Naturally, Hurley was amazed and could not believe it. At that time he used to work at a fast- food restaurant, selling chicken, and winning the lottery was supposed to change his life completely, as he would not have to work anymore. And it indeed did change his life, as we will discuss further. But the strange thing was the numbers with which he won the lottery.

REPORTER: How'd you come up with the winning numbers, any significance?

HURLEY: Oh, they just, uh, sort of came to me.

97 In reality, those numbers were not coincidence but Hurley took them from one of patients of mental hospital where he stayed some time ago. However, the money did not bring him much happiness but the opposite: his grandfather died, a new house he bought to his mother was set on fire, Hurley was mistakenly arrested for a drug deal. In a private conversation with his financial advisor, Hurley confesses the curse.

HURLEY: You know, ever since I won the lottery it's like we've had nothing but bad luck. Like, I don't know, like the money's cursed or something.

KEN: Hugo, you are not the first lottery winner to believe the money's brought them nothing but trouble. It's all in your head.

HURLEY: That's it. It's not the money, it's the numbers. The numbers are cursed. Dude, don't look at me like that, I'm not crazy. This is real.

The financial advisor was not surprised by Hurley‟s fear as many people who won the lottery tend to be afraid that the money will bring them only bad things. However, in this case Hurley was concerned not with the money but with the numbers he played to win the lottery. He believed them to be cursed and specially went back to his medical institution to see the man from whom he got the numbers.

HUGO: Hi, Lenny. Remember me? Hugo. Hurley. Well I was just, you know, in the neighborhood, and uh -- look, Lenny, I've got to know, what do the numbers mean?

LENNY: 4 8 15 16 23 42...

HURLEY: C'mon, Lenny, give me something. Anything. Where'd you get the numbers? Is that why you're here, Lenny? Is it because of the numbers? Did they do something to you? Because I think they did something to me. I think they turned me into a jinx -- bad news to everyone around me. And when I tell people I think I'm the cause they, they, they look at me like I'm nuts. They don't believe me. But I know, ever since I won the lottery with those numbers.

98 LENNY: You used those numbers to play the lottery?

HURLEY: Uh, -- yeah.

LENNY: Ah, you shouldn't have used those numbers.

HURLEY: Why not?

LENNY: It doesn't stop. You've got to get away from those numbers. You've got to get far, far away.

Hence, Lenny believes the numbers to be cursed, bringing unhappiness. Nobody understands

Hurley‟s problems except for Lenny as he lost his mind in some way because of those numbers.

Later Hurley visits Lenny‟s wife to see where those numbers came from.

HURLEY: Yes, the numbers, exactly. Do you know anything about them?

MARTHA: Sam and Leonard were stationed at a listening post monitoring long wave transmissions out of the Pacific. Boring job. Sam hated it, nothing to do but listen to static night after night. Until one night, about 16 years ago, there's something in the static, a voice comes through, a voice repeating those numbers over and over again.

Thus, the origin of the numbers is utterly mysterious. They came from the Pacific Ocean, a place where the island is supposed to be situated. Revealing the mystery of them, Hurley tries to talk to people but gets no comprehension from anyone. Until Rousseau, a French woman living on the island for sixteen years, admits that their crew received the transmission with those numbers that later resulted in their crash on the island. Hurley also notices those numbers to be a serial code of one of the Dharma Initiative stations, a scientific organization that researched island‟s special characteristics. Moreover, the survivors find a Hatch where they have to type in the same numbers to release electromagnetic pressure. In general, flashbacks and flash-forwards serve here for creating a mystery with numbers, unfolding and complicating it at the same time.

99 Hurley is so obsessed with the numbers that he even blames himself for the plane crash, thinking it was caused by his bad luck.

In this case, flashbacks are used to reveal Hurley‟s personality, show his mental problems and how he manages to deal with them on the island. In the flash-forwards, however, Hurley is facing psychological problems again, longing to return to the island. On the other hand, the story with the numbers is used to intrigue the audience and create a mystery. These numbers which sometimes occur on or around the island, already played an important role in Hurley‟s past, causing bad luck all around him. Hurley believes that this bad luck also caused the plane crash.

Thus, his flashbacks create the idea that he was destined to crash on the island.

4.4.5 John Locke

The most important and fascinating character of the show, who has a deep spiritual connection with the island, is John Locke. Before crashing on the island he was paralyzed, living in a wheelchair, but the moment they crashed, he could immediately walk again. That led him to believe in special powers of the place, as we have already discussed in section 4.1. John Locke considers everything happening on the island to be his destiny.

It is significant that a number of personages have names of famous philosophers, such as John

Locke, Mikhail Bakunin, and Edmund Burke. When John Locke returns from the island, in order to be anonymous, he takes a false name Jeremy Bentham, another philosopher. The choice of

John Locke‟s name is definitely not accidental. In general, the character in some way follows ideas of the philosopher John Locke who values both nature and civilization. The character is deeply connected with the nature of the island. He tries to listen to it and to see more than there could be seen. A famous theory, developed by the philosopher John Locke, is a concept of

Tabula Rasa, explaining a human mind to be brand new when born. The same concept can be

100 applied to the characters on the island who can start over, begin a new life where nobody knows anything about them. In S01e17 John Locke formulates it to one of the characters: “Everyone gets a new life on this island, Shannon. Maybe it's time you start yours”.

Even before crashing on the island, the concept of Tabula Rasa played an important role in

Locke‟s life. In the flashbacks of S01e04, we find this idea in his ambition to go on a walkabout.

RANDY: Well, tell me, what's a Walkabout? [reading from a brochure]: "Experience the dream journeys of the fabled Australian Outback."

LOCKE: You have no right taking that off my desk.

RANDY: So, you wander around hunting and gathering food, right? On foot?

LOCKE: Not that you would understand, but a Walkabout is a journey of spiritual renewal, where one derives strength from the earth. And becomes inseparable from it. I have vacation days, I'm going, Randy. I've already made a reservation.

RANDY: What is it with you Locke? Why do you torture yourself? I mean, imagining you're some hunter? Walkabouts? Wake up, you can't do any of that.

LOCKE: Norman Croucher.

RANDY: What? Norman what?

LOCKE: Norman Croucher. Norman Croucher, double amputee, no legs. He climbed to the top of Mt. Everest. Why? It was his destiny.

RANDY: That's what you think you've got, old man? Destiny?

LOCKE: Just don't tell me what I can't do.

For a man in a wheelchair, the whole dialogue would seem to be ridiculous, that is what

Randy, Locke‟s boss thinks. Randy believes that John lives in a fantasy world, dreaming about a journey he would never be able to take. However, when John lands on the island, he proves the improbable possible – he has walkabouts, hunting animals and experiencing nature. Randy

101 shows his arrogance by asking inappropriate questions: So, you wander around hunting and gathering food, right? On foot? His last question, on foot? stresses the fact that John‟s abilities are limited and he is not able to walk at all, especially not in some forest. Nevertheless, John does not let Randy influence him. He uses inversion (Not that you would understand), implying the fact, that no matter how hard he tries to explain, Randy would not understand it anyway as he does not believe in it. Actually, Locke‟s stay on the island is indeed the spiritual renewal (Tabula

Rasa) he is talking about.

To support his ideas, John gives an example of Norman Croucher, a man with amputated legs who climbed the Everest. John Locke strongly believes in destiny and this man serves for him as an ideal to follow. His motto throughout the series is Don’t tell me what I can’t do as we hear from his last sentence in the dialogue above. By his stubbornness and determination he manages to achieve things that seemed to be completely impossible.

This flashback is really significant because it reflects John‟s dreams which indeed come true on the island where he hunts in order to survive and investigates mysterious nature of the island.

This seems to be his fate although to reach it he had to face some obstacles. For example, a travel agent in Australia refused to include him in a bus for a journey:

AGENT: You misrepresented yourself …

LOCKE: I never lied.

AGENT: By omission, Mr. Locke. You neglected to tell us about your condition.

LOCKE: My condition is not an issue. I've lived with it for 4 years. It's never kept me from doing anything.

AGENT: Look, unfortunately it is an issue for our insurance company. I can't keep the bus waiting any longer. It isn't fair to the other people.

102 LOCKE: No. I don't want to go back to Sydney. Look I've been preparing for this for years. Just put me on the bus, right now, I can do this.

AGENT: No, you can't.

LOCKE: Hey, hey, don't you walk away from me. You don't know who you're dealing with. Don't ever tell me what I can't do, ever. This is destiny. This is destiny. This is my destiny. (yelling) I'm supposed to do this, dammit. Don't tell me what I can't do. Don't tell me what I can't...

Hence, Locke strongly believes this spiritual trip to be his destiny, his fate. The idea that other people do not know his possibilities (Don’t tell me what I can’t do) becomes important in the character‟s life, as all the people, seeing him in a wheelchair, automatically judged him to be unable to do many things. However, in spite of everything, John proves to be strong enough, determined to follow his fate.

In s01e19 it was mentioned for the first time that he is special. His mother, who gave him away for adoption at birth, found him to tell it.

EMILY: I want to tell you that you're special, very special. You're part of a design. You do realize that, don't you? That our meeting, me finding you, this is a sign of things to come. Great things.

Later on, many people will tell Locke that he is special – people from the Others, visiting him before crashing on the island, people on the island, seeing his abilities, and many others. This makes the audience believe that everything happening to him might have happened for a reason, that it was meant to be. The characters were supposed to crash on the island. However, not many characters believe in it, most consider their crash to be a mistake, without any meaning. In that way Locke is constantly opposed to rational non-believing Jack.

In flashbacks John is shown to have a number of events that influenced his character. First of all, a man named Anthony Cooper stole his kidney under the pretence of being his biological

103 father. After the kidney transplantation he disappeared from the hospital. John was shocked to find it out.

LOCKE: Where's my father?

NURSE: Who?

LOCKE: We had the transplant together.

NURSE: I didn't know he was your father.

LOCKE: We don't have the same last name. Where is he?

NURSE: Mr. Cooper checked out this afternoon. He went back home. He's under private care.

This betrayal by his supposed parent deeply touched Locke. He went to see Mr. Cooper several times after that, until in s02e03 he finally received an answer.

LOCKE: Why?

COOPER: There is no why. Do you think you're the first person that ever got conned? You needed a father figure and I needed a kidney, and that's what happened. Get over it. And John, don't come back. You're not wanted.

The paternal rejection, the lies of his mother, and the stealing of his kidney overwhelmed

Locke in an incredible way. He continued to follow his father, searching for answers and revenge, which leads to his break up with Helen, his girlfriend, after she has seen John trying to find his father again.

HELEN: How could you? How could you do this to him? We were moving past this.

LOCKE: Helen, wait. Helen, wait, you don't understand. I was going to tell you everything.

HELEN: You lied to me.

LOCKE: No, please, I can explain.

HELEN: You looked me right in the eye and you lied to me. You made your choice, John. You need his love more than mine.

104 As we see, Locke‟s disappointment in his father and search for love were not fulfilled, nor by his girlfriend, nor by his father. After being thrown out of the window by his father, he was literally thrown out of his life – almost dead, in a wheelchair, without anyone to care for him.

Nevertheless, he continued to fight, to fight for his life, and for his dreams. In search for spirituality and the ability to apply his special abilities, Locke comes to the island where he perfectly fits that he even does not want to return to the outside world as much as other characters do. He interprets several events as signs, he listens to what the island might tell him, and he learns all kinds of spiritual things. In some way for other characters he is like a spiritual leader, filling people with hope, new ideas and beliefs.

The flash-forwards, however, depict that John‟s strength and leadership does not manifest itself further after leaving the island. While he almost seemed to be immortal on the island, recovering very fast from his wounds and handicap, we see the total opposite off the island: a dead Locke in a coffin. The audience gets the idea that he does not fit any place on Earth but the island. The fifth season confirms this: from the moment John leaves the island he ends up in a wheelchair again.

Thus, flashbacks and flash-forwards about John Locke mainly serve to picture the difference between Locke on and off the island. Before crashing on the island he was a handicapped man, dreaming about and preparing for more adventure, while the island formed perfect circumstances to give him this adventure and to make him a hero. Leaving the island thereafter, however, resulted in his death. The flashbacks also characterize his personality and his deep emotions, and display his personal problems with his father.

4.4.6 General view on flashbacks and flash-forwards in Lost

105 When we examine the episodes of the first three seasons in a more detailed way, we recognize a pattern. An episode mostly focuses on one character‟s past, showing only flashbacks about this person. Those flashbacks alternate with the present scenes on the island and appear in chronological order, like the present scenes. In one episode, time therefore is centered in both the present and the past and should be considered relative in this way. Analogically, we can argue that space is relative as it shifts between the island, in present time, and the outside world, in past time. All the episodes together, however, only have one timeline and one place in common: those of the island. Thus, time and space are mainly centered on the island and also have an absolute nature. This explains why we call the scenes about the past flashbacks as the audience watches them from the perspective of the events on the island.

The study of flashbacks and flash-forwards about Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Hurley, and John

Locke uncovers some general features of these plot devices. Firstly, flashbacks in all cases help depict the evolution the characters go through by crashing on the island and dealing with different mysteries and dangers presented to them there. This evolution often means a positive emotional growth, where the island serves as an ideal setting to deal with past problems and to think things through. Flash-forwards, however, show that those personal changes do not have to be permanent. For example, Jack, Hurley, Locke, and Sayid end up in situations after leaving the island which are worse than before they crashed on it. Some characters even feel like the island wants them to come back. There seems to be something mysteriously attractive about the island, making the characters whole only as long as they are there.

Secondly, some flashbacks make the audience discover that many survivors of the plane crash already encountered each other in the past or were related to each other in some way. In most cases the characters are unconscious to those connections. For example, Jack and Claire have the same father, Sawyer had a meaningful conversation with this father in an Australian bar shortly

106 before the crash. Hurley owns a box factory in Tustin where Locke worked for and Locke‟s manager Randy in this factory used to be Hurley‟s manager in a fast food restaurant before he won the lottery, Kate met Sawyer‟s ex-lover, and so on. Apart, these hidden connections seem coincidental, but taking them all together, the audience gets the impression that the formation of this group of survivors by the plane crash indeed might be destiny, as Locke believes. The island seems to have made the group whole.

The third feature of flashbacks implies as well that the plane crash must not simply be coincidental. Many elements of the different characters‟ past are encountered on the island where they are not expected at all. The chance that a winner of the lottery would accidentally crash on an island where the world was being saved for several years by entering in a computer the same numbers he won the lottery with is estimated to be extremely small. Nevertheless it happened to

Hurley. Some time before the crash of the Oceanic flight, a Nigerian Beechcraft airplane crash- landed on a cliff of the island. The Beechcraft had taken off in Nigeria to smuggle heroine out of the country. One of the drug smugglers, Mr. Eko, was pushed out the airplane during take off.

Ironically, he happens to crash on the same island, being a passenger of the Oceanic flight. In the wreckage of the Beechcraft he finds the body of his brother he betrayed.

Charlie was a heroine addict when he crashed. The island first seems to have the perfect conditions to kick the habit, as expected, but when Charlie discovers the heroine loaded

Beechcraft temptation strikes again. A similar situation is seen for Sayid, who used to be a torturer in the Iraqi army. He promised himself never to torture again, but he is often asked to by the other survivors on the island, in order to get important information from a victim.

Remarkably, the island seems to have the tendency to confront the survivors with their past in many mysterious ways. Flashbacks serve to emphasize this mysterious ability. The idea rises that the plane crash might be part of a huge, planned beforehand project or an experiment. However,

107 we learn in the series that a release of electromagnetic charge caused the airplane to crash when

Desmond accidentally did not push the button in the hatch on time. Therefore, everything points out that this project may not be organized by people but by the island, the place itself, which would have features that coordinate both time and space. Note the returning personification of the island we already introduced in section 4.1.5.

As tools to give more meaning to the present behavior and situation of a character, flashbacks have an explaining function. On the other hand, they create more intrigues by only providing information about one moment in the past. The audience easily wonders what happened before this moment and in between this moment and the plane crash on the island. When in S01e04 the heroic John Locke on the island appears in a flashback as a disabled wheelchair user working in a box factory, many questions rise. What disabled him and when did this happen? Why can he walk again on the island? How did he learn to throw knives and to hunt? Viewers of the show tend to answer those questions themselves, wondering whether they guessed right. The answers might be given in the next flashback or episode, which keeps the audience focused and willing to continue to watch the show. Flash-forwards have a similar bipolar function, both explaining and questioning events. In this case information is provided about what will happen to the characters and questions rise concerning the future. The very last scene of the fourth season shows the body of Locke in a coffin for the first time. The audience did not expect this at all, as Locke is one of the most important characters of the show and moreover he did not want to leave the island. How could John end like this?

The alternation of flashbacks or flash-forwards with scenes of the present on the island, as described above, occurs with a strong regularity. With this structure, the scriptwriters bring variation for viewers, allowing them enjoy the show more. When, for example, a tensed action scene on the island is followed by a flashback with a peaceful atmosphere, the audience has time

108 to relax for a moment until the action continues on the island. Also flashbacks and flash-forwards give the opportunity to amuse the viewer by introducing new characters, objects, environments, plotlines, and even genres, while the story on the island is rather limited in this way. Variation therefore must be understood in a broad sense of the word. Special attention goes to variations in time experience (see also section 2.4): time on the island goes relatively slow for the audience, average 1.3 days an episode, while flashbacks in particular can shift between several years or decades. Flashbacks hereby function as memories and scenes on the island are those of the present.

Flashbacks and flash-forwards in some cases are used to confuse and surprise the audience by not showing clearly whether it concerns the past or the future. We already mentioned some significant examples. In the first scene of the second season the environment of the hatch

Desmond is living in reminds the outside world, although it is situated on the island. The first flash-forwards are being used only at the end of the third season. By then, the audience is conditioned to think they are flashbacks and no clues are given that some characters already escaped from the island. Not until the last scene where Jack meets Kate off the island, the audience realizes it was tricked. A similar trick was used in S04e07, where the flashbacks of Jin running to the hospital are depicted as belonging with the flash-forwards of Sun delivering a baby (see section 4.3.3).

In section 2.1 we explained that the humanistic frame of time and space considers human time to be directional and human space to be home-centered. For the viewer of Lost, on the contrary, the situation is more complicated. With a flashback of a character, the viewer goes back to the character‟s origin, to his home, and backwards in space and time. When the flashback ends and a scene on the island follows, the viewer is thrown forward in time and space. Thus, time for the viewer is not directional, as it does not begin with the beginning (birth) and does not end with the

109 ending (death), but instead it is home-centered, as it periodically returns to the origin. After a while, however, the survivors of the crash – as well as the viewer – adapt to their new situation and the island may feel as their new home. This feeling is strengthened when flash-forwards are finally used. Then, going forward in time to the outside world is experienced as leaving home and going backwards in time, back to the island, feels like returning home. Mark that the characters who left the island indeed want to return to the island, back home. Time once more is home-centered. Space, on the other hand, is more difficult to categorize. Focusing on one episode, space is home-centered for the viewer, where home can be the outside world or the island. Considering the whole series, space obviously appears island-centered, as the island is the only place all episodes have in common. However, space can also be considered directional, for all characters start their lives off the island while the island is believed to be their destiny (see section 4.1.4). This altered time and space structure might have a surprising effect on the audience. It can help to stress the deviating nature of the island.

Last but not least, flashbacks and flash-forwards in Lost contribute to the returning themes of time and space, described in sections 4.1 and 4.2. Time travel will become a central subject in the fifth season, after the audience, as a matter of fact, already was time traveling in all previous episodes by means of the flashbacks and flash-forwards. Lost not only is about time travel, it is time travel by its plot structure.

In short, flashbacks and flash-forwards in Lost have many functions concerning its content and form. They underline many mysteries about the island the survivors of the plane crash encounter and strengthen the personification of the island. Depicting the characters‟ evolution throughout time, the island is believed to make them whole. Many events seem to be interconnected in both time and space with the main center in the present time on the island.

Flashbacks show the characters already were connected in some hidden ways before they

110 crashed on the island. The group was finally united or made whole by the island. Flashbacks also make clear that the island often confronts people with their past, as if it is testing them.

Next, flashbacks and flash-forwards, as literary techniques, are used in general to keep the audience focused on the show. They have a bipolar function, answering questions and creating new ones at the same time. Viewers tend to answer these questions themselves, wondering whether they are right, and continue watching the show to discover the outcome. Flashbacks and flash-forwards moreover create more degrees of freedom and variation to the viewer by introducing new characters, environments, plotlines, etc. In particular, they open a possibility to vary in the viewer‟s time experience. Sometimes, they are used to confuse the audience by not making clear whether a scene belongs to the past or to the future.

The way flashbacks and flash-forwards are implemented in Lost has consequences to the structure of time and space as experienced by the audience. While normally human time is directional and human space is home-centered, for a viewer of Lost, time is home-centered and space can be considered home-centered, island-centered or even directional. This emphasizes the odd nature of the island. The recurrent themes of time and space have a central position in the show, certainly when the later seasons introduce the concept of time travel. The use of flashbacks and flash-forwards shifting between the island and the outside world complete these themes in a formal way.

4.5 Concluding remarks

Time and space form central themes in Lost what makes it the perfect series to examine the relation between time and space in connection with flashbacks and flash-forwards. The characters of the series crashed on an island from the outside world, lost in time and space.

However, by flashbacks we learn that they were already lost before the crash, though in a

111 metaphorical way: lost in their lives. Ironically, on the island they find their real selves, as they grow stronger morally and emotionally. The island, as the main place in the series, soon becomes a central subject that is given many meanings. Some characters believe it to be an imagined world, while others consider it their destiny and often personify the island, talking about it as if it is a living creature with its own will. The mysterious features of the island, as a timeless place cut off from modern society, later on seem to be closely related to the subject of time. The first four seasons, which are researched in this work, foreshadowed the possibilities to time travel by means of the island‟s features. This idea is further developed and becomes concrete in the fifth season.

The frequent use of flashbacks and flash-forwards in Lost extends the themes of time and space. These plot devices are formally realized in different ways which we categorized in three groups: visually, by plot structure and verbally. Hence, flashbacks and flash-forwards often can be easily differentiated from each other and from the scenes about the present. We researched their multiple functions, considering five characters and their use in general. Flashbacks and flash-forwards stress the mysterious abilities of the island. Namely, they suggest the island might have made the different characters whole, by often confronting them with their past, and might as well be responsible for the formation of the group survivors. Flashbacks and flash-forwards also attract the viewer‟s attention by means of their bipolar function of both explaining and questioning events, by bringing variation, and sometimes by confusing him. Moreover they place the show in an odd frame of time and space, making the audience time travel frequently between past, present, and future. Therefore, they form an excellent bridge between the content and the form of the show, concerning time and space.

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117 Referred episodes

“Pilot: Part 1.” S01e01. Lost: The Complete First Season. J.J. Abrams, Jeffrey Lieber. ABC. 22 Sept. 2004. DVD. Buena Vista Home Entertainment, 2005.

“Pilot: Part 2.” S01e02. Lost: The Complete First Season. J.J. Abrams, Jeffrey Lieber. ABC. 29 Sept. 2004. DVD. Buena Vista Home Entertainment, 2005.

“Tabula Rasa.” S01e03. Lost: The Complete First Season. J.J. Abrams, Jeffrey Lieber. ABC. 6 Oct. 2004. DVD. Buena Vista Home Entertainment, 2005.

“Walkabout.” S01e04. Lost: The Complete First Season. J.J. Abrams, Jeffrey Lieber. ABC. 13 Oct. 2004. DVD. Buena Vista Home Entertainment, 2005.

“White Rabbit.” S01e05. Lost: The Complete First Season. J.J. Abrams, Jeffrey Lieber. ABC. 20 Oct. 2004. DVD. Buena Vista Home Entertainment, 2005.

“House of the Rising Sun.” S01e 06. Lost: The Complete First Season. J.J. Abrams, Jeffrey Lieber. ABC. 27 Oct. 2004. DVD. Buena Vista Home Entertainment, 2005.

“Confidence Man.” S01e08. Lost: The Complete First Season. J.J. Abrams, Jeffrey Lieber. ABC. 10 Nov. 2004. DVD. Buena Vista Home Entertainment, 2005.

“Raised by Another.” S01e10. Lost: The Complete First Season. J.J. Abrams, Jeffrey Lieber. ABC. 1 Dec. 2004. DVD. Buena Vista Home Entertainment, 2005.

“All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues.” S01e11. Lost: The Complete First Season. J.J. Abrams, Jeffrey Lieber. ABC. 8 Dec. 2004. DVD. Buena Vista Home Entertainment, 2005.

“Whatever the Case May Be.” S01e012. Lost: The Complete First Season. J.J. Abrams, Jeffrey Lieber. ABC. 5 Jan. 2005. DVD. Buena Vista Home Entertainment, 2005.

“Hearts and Minds.” S01e13. Lost: The Complete First Season. J.J. Abrams, Jeffrey Lieber. ABC. 12 Jan. 2005. DVD. Buena Vista Home Entertainment, 2005.

“Outlaws.” S01e16. Lost: The Complete First Season. J.J. Abrams, Jeffrey Lieber. ABC. 16 Feb. 2005. DVD. Buena Vista Home Entertainment, 2005.

“…In Translation.” S01e17. Lost: The Complete First Season. J.J. Abrams, Jeffrey Lieber. ABC. 23 Feb. 2005. DVD. Buena Vista Home Entertainment, 2005.

118 “Numbers.” S01e18. Lost: The Complete First Season. J.J. Abrams, Jeffrey Lieber. ABC. 2 Mar. 2005. DVD. Buena Vista Home Entertainment, 2005.

“Deus Ex Machina.” S01e19. Lost: The Complete First Season. J.J. Abrams, Jeffrey Lieber. ABC. 30 March 2005. DVD. Buena Vista Home Entertainment, 2005.

“Do No Harm.” S01e20. Lost: The Complete First Season. J.J. Abrams, Jeffrey Lieber. ABC. 6 Apr. 2005. DVD. Buena Vista Home Entertainment, 2005.

“Born to Run.” S01e22. Lost: The Complete First Season. J.J. Abrams, Jeffrey Lieber. ABC. 11 May 2005. DVD. Buena Vista Home Entertainment, 2005.

“Exodus: Part 1.” S01e23. Lost: The Complete First Season. J.J. Abrams, Jeffrey Lieber. ABC. 18 May 2005. DVD. Buena Vista Home Entertainment, 2005.

“Man of Science, Man of Faith.” S02e01. Lost: The Complete Second Season. J.J. Abrams, Jeffrey Lieber. ABC. 21 Sept. 2005. DVD. Buena Vista Home Entertainment, 2006.

“Orientation.” S02e03. Lost: The Complete Second Season. J.J. Abrams, Jeffrey Lieber. ABC. 5 Oct. 2005. DVD. Buena Vista Home Entertainment, 2006.

“What Kate Did.” S02e09. Lost: The Complete Second Season. J.J. Abrams, Jeffrey Lieber. ABC. 30 Nov. 2005. DVD. Buena Vista Home Entertainment, 2006.

“The Hunting Party.” S02e11. Lost: The Complete Second Season. J.J. Abrams, Jeffrey Lieber. ABC. 18 Jan. 2006. DVD. Buena Vista Home Entertainment, 2006.

“Dave.” S02e18. Lost: The Complete Second Season. J.J. Abrams, Jeffrey Lieber. ABC. 5 Apr. 2006. DVD. Buena Vista Home Entertainment, 2006.

“?” S02e21. Lost: The Complete Second Season. J.J. Abrams, Jeffrey Lieber. ABC. 10 May. 2006. DVD. Buena Vista Home Entertainment, 2006.

“Live Together, Die Alone.” S02e23-24. Lost: The Complete Second Season. J.J. Abrams, Jeffrey Lieber. ABC. 24 May 2006. DVD. Buena Vista Home Entertainment, 2006.

“The Glass Ballerina.” S03e02. Lost: The Complete Third Season. J.J. Abrams, Jeffrey Lieber. ABC. 11 Oct. 2006. DVD. Buena Vista Home Entertainment, 2007.

119 “Every Man for Himself.” S03e04. Lost: The Complete Third Season. J.J. Abrams, Jeffrey Lieber. ABC. 25 Oct. 2006. DVD. Buena Vista Home Entertainment, 2007.

“I do.” S03e06. Lost: The Complete Third Season. J.J. Abrams, Jeffrey Lieber. ABC. 8 Nov. 2006. DVD. Buena Vista Home Entertainment, 2007.

“Flashes Before Your Eyes.” S03e08. Lost: The Complete Third Season. J.J. Abrams, Jeffrey Lieber. ABC. 14 Feb. 2007. DVD. Buena Vista Home Entertainment, 2007.

“The Man from Tallahassee.” S03e13. Lost: The Complete Third Season. J.J. Abrams, Jeffrey Lieber. ABC. 21 March 2007. DVD. Buena Vista Home Entertainment, 2007.

“One of Us.” S03e16. Lost: The Complete Third Season. J.J. Abrams, Jeffrey Lieber. ABC. 11 Apr. 2007. DVD. Buena Vista Home Entertainment, 2007.

“The Brig.” S03e19. Lost: The Complete Third Season. J.J. Abrams, Jeffrey Lieber. ABC. 2 May 2007. DVD. Buena Vista Home Entertainment, 2007.

“The Man Behind the Curtain.” S03e20. Lost: The Complete Third Season. J.J. Abrams, Jeffrey Lieber. ABC. 9 May 2007. DVD. Buena Vista Home Entertainment, 2007.

“Through the Looking Glass.” S03e02-23. Lost: The Complete Third Season. J.J. Abrams, Jeffrey Lieber. ABC. 23 May 2007. DVD. Buena Vista Home Entertainment, 2007.

“The Beginning of the End.” S04e01. Lost: The Complete Fourth Season. J.J. Abrams, Jeffrey Lieber. ABC. 31 Jan. 2008. DVD. Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment, 2008.

“Confirmed Dead.” S04e02. Lost: The Complete Fourth Season. J.J. Abrams, Jeffrey Lieber. ABC. 7 Feb. 2008. DVD. Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment, 2008.

“The Economist.” S04e03. Lost: The Complete Fourth Season. J.J. Abrams, Jeffrey Lieber. ABC. 14 Feb. 2008. DVD. Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment, 2008.

“Eggtown.” S04e04. Lost: The Complete Fourth Season. J.J. Abrams, Jeffrey Lieber. ABC. 21 Feb. 2008. DVD. Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment, 2008.

“The Constant.” S04e05. Lost: The Complete Fourth Season. J.J. Abrams, Jeffrey Lieber. ABC. 28 Feb. 2008. DVD. Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment, 2008.

120 “The Other Woman.” S04e06. Lost: The Complete Fourth Season. J.J. Abrams, Jeffrey Lieber. ABC. 6 March 2008. DVD. Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment, 2008.

“Ji Yeon.” S04e07. Lost: The Complete Fourth Season. J.J. Abrams, Jeffrey Lieber. ABC. 13 March 2008. DVD. Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment, 2008.

“Meet Kevin Johnson.” S04e08. Lost: The Complete Fourth Season. J.J. Abrams, Jeffrey Lieber. ABC. 20 March 2008. DVD. Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment, 2008.

“Something Nice Back Home.” S04e10. Lost: The Complete Fourth Season. J.J. Abrams, Jeffrey Lieber. ABC. 1 May 2008. DVD. Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment, 2008.

“Cabin Fever.” S04e11. Lost: The Complete Fourth Season. J.J. Abrams, Jeffrey Lieber. ABC. 8 May 2008. DVD. Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment, 2008.

“There‟s No Place Like Home: Part 1.” S04e12. Lost: The Complete Fourth Season. J.J. Abrams, Jeffrey Lieber. ABC. 15 May 2008. DVD. Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment, 2008.

“There‟s No Place Like Home: Part 2.” S04e13. Lost: The Complete Fourth Season. J.J. Abrams, Jeffrey Lieber. ABC. 29 May 2008. DVD. Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment, 2008.

121