Are the Lost Survivors Pawns in a Chess Game?

A post from last season:

ABC's metaphysical thriller Lost makes no secret that it's influenced by such literary sources as Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman and Philip K. Dick's Valis. We see some Lost characters, such as Ben reading Valis, reading these novels and it is apparent that the Lost writers are teasing us with clues about the metaphysical components that make up the Lost world.

The influence of Philip K. Dick became even more important last night when watching Episode Nine, Season Four's "The Shape of Things to Come," it occurred to me that Ben Linus and his arch rival Charles Widmore are playing some kind of game with set rules and that Widmore broke the rules when he killed Linus' daughter, making Linus change his game. Linus also referred to his daughter, about to be killed by one of Widmore's minions, as a "pawn." What's interesting about all this is that Philip K. Dick envisioned human beings as being pawns in a chess game going on in the minds of two Other Beings.

Lost appears to be matching Linus' chess skills against Widmore's. I wouldn't bet my life on it, though. It's not unusual for the Lost writers to make us feel like we know where we're going only to find ourselves going in the opposite direction--just like the Lost survivors.

A post from last season:

ABC's metaphysical thriller Lost makes no secret that it's influenced by such literary sources as Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman and Philip K. Dick's Valis. We see some Lost characters, such as Ben reading Valis, reading these novels and it is apparent that the Lost writers are teasing us with clues about the metaphysical components that make up the Lost world.

The influence of Philip K. Dick became even more important last night when watching Episode Nine, Season Four's "The Shape of Things to Come," it occurred to me that Ben Linus and his arch rival Charles Widmore are playing some kind of game with set rules and that Widmore broke the rules when he killed Linus' daughter, making Linus change his game. Linus also referred to his daughter, about to be killed by one of Widmore's minions, as a "pawn." What's interesting about all this is that Philip K. Dick envisioned human beings as being pawns in a chess game going on in the minds of two Other Beings.

Lost appears to be matching Linus' chess skills against Widmore's. I wouldn't bet my life on it, though. It's not unusual for the Lost writers to make us feel like we know where we're going only to find ourselves going in the opposite direction--just like the Lost survivors.

Comments

[Jesse Menn]

I'll be honest up front here: I don't watch "Lost" but my gal does, and I haven't read Dick. I _have_, however, done my time with Mr. O'Brien aka Brian O'Nolan aka Myles na gCopaleen aka whoknowswhatelse (and I wish I had the goddamn free time to finish "At Swim Two Birds"). From my limited experience with Lost, I don't see how you're making the connection to The Third Policeman. Care to expand? Or tell me to shuttup and go watch the show and then recomment.

[Jeffrey McMahon]

Third Policeman is about a man trapped in hell who attempts feebly to conform to the stipulations of adverse forces, but he finds himself descending deeper and deeper into his Inferno.

Lost follows the same motif. The people get more and more lost.

[Jesse Menn]

I would have mentioned Nabokov's "Luzhin Defense" before The Third Policeman, personally. There's a hell of a lot more going on in Third Policeman than the main character's realization of his own death and place in Hell.

[Jeffrey McMahon]

I didn't mean to reduce TP to such an absurd simplicity, but since the novel shows up in Lost with one of the characters, Desmond or some other, reading it, it's clear that the writers were inspired by that insane masterpiece.

[Jesse Menn]

I stand highly corrected. I'm stuck reading Virginia Woolf right now for my Bloomsbury class... I took it because I love the professor to death, but holy shit the material makes me want to puke. What a bunch of elitist pricks..

[Jeffrey McMahon]

I hope you escape academia with everything intact. But, who knows? Perhaps you needed to cloister yourself for a while. I know I did.