The Unanswered Quandaries of “Lost”

Good day, friends! I trust you are all doing well this fine Monday.

Enough small talk, time to the topic at hand: Lost. That’s right, after a year-and-a-half, my wife and I have managed to watch the whole series straight through. For those of you who aren’t aware of the show or who don’t have television, Lost is a series by J.J. Abrams – a man famous for never answering the questions he raises – featuring a group of plane crash survivors who find themselves stranded on a bizarre island. The show touches on everything from polar bears to time travel, from psychic phenomena to the ultimate battle between good and evil, broken up in the middle with international government research and experimentation. Indeed, the series covers a lot of ground.

Now while watching the show, my wife and I recorded our questions after every episode. By the end of the series, we’d reached 246 questions, but only 172 of them were answered. So with that in mind, here are the 74 questions that are never answered in Lost! If you happen to know the answers to any of these, or if there are any unanswered questions left, please comment and let me know!

The Unanswered Questions (in the order they arose)

1. Did Jack sink the putt on Hurley’s golf course?
2. How/why are the numbers cursed?
3. How did Walt know about the Hatch?
4. Why didn’t Walt want Locke to open the Hatch?
5. Why did Walt change his mind about staying on the island?
6. Why did the Others want Walt?
7. Why did Shannon have visions of Walt?
8. Why did Walt keep appearing to people?
9. Why was there a glass eye, Bible and blanket in the shelter on the other side of the island?
10. What was Nathan (a survivor from the other half of the plane) doing for two hours that it made the other survivors suspicious of him?
11. Was it really Walt on the computer talking to Michael, and if so, how was he doing it?
12. What was the deal with the black horse Kate kept seeing?
13. Why didn’t Smokey (the smoke monster) attack Mr. Eko in their first encounter?
14. What did Charlie have to save Aaron from that he was trying to “baptize him”?
15. What were the strange hieroglyphs and symbols that appeared when Locke mistyped the numbers into the terminal? (special note: those symbols were at the Temple as well)
16. What was Libby’s backstory? (this was my most irksome question)
17. Why was the location of the Pearl indicated by a salted question mark?
18. Why did the Others draw Michael’s blood?
19. How could the island heal everyone?
20. Why was there a 4-toed statue, of which only the foot was left by the time the series began?
21. Why did Desmond go to prison?
22. Did Jae (Sun’s secret lover) kill himself or was he murdered after Jin left?
23. How did Locke, Desmond and Mr. Eko survive the Hatch imploding?
24. Why did Smokey kill Mr. Eko on their second encounter?
25. What happened to Kate’s husband after she left him for dead?
26. Why did the universe want Charlie to die?
27. What was the Magic Box?
28. How did Locke’s dad end up on the island? (refer to question #27)
29. Why wasn’t the island healing Ben?
30. Why did women who got pregnant on the island always die?
31. What was Daniel and Charlotte’s memory card trick?
32. What happened to Ben’s childhood sweetheart?
33. What was Sun’s scheme with Widmore?
34. Why did the Others not travel through time?
35. What was the deal with the Others? History, belief, politics, behaviors?
36. Whose canoe did Sawyer and co. claim from the beach while traveling through time?
37. What’s the history of the island and the ruins?
38. Why did Daniella’s people try to kill her after they came into contact with Smokey?
39. Why did (dead) Locke need Jack’s dad’s shoes?
40. Why did the Oceanic 6 vanish from the plane on their return flight to the island?
41. Why were Ben and Widmore separately helping Locke to try and gather the Oceanic 6?
42. What was up with Walt’s dream of John?
43. Why didn’t Walt and Aaron have to go back to the island with the rest?
44. What’s the story of the new plane survivors (Lapidus and co.)?
45. Why did the “Hostiles” break the truce with the Dharma Initiative?
46. How could Richard Alpert cross the pylons unharmed?
47. Why did Sun, Ben and Lapidus appear thirty years after the others when time traveling?
48. Why wasn’t Sayid going along with any of Sawyer’s schemes after being captured by the Dharma Initiative in the past?
49. Why did Widmore want Rousseau killed (in the past)?
50. What happened to young Ben after being taken in by the Others/Hostiles?
51. How did Daniel’s mom always know the future?
52. How would a Hydrogen Bomb detonation dissipate the island’s mysterious energy?
53. Why was Jacob randomly visiting everyone?
54. What “lies in the shadow of the statue”?
55. Where was Smokey’s new home? Did he have one?
56. Why was the island underwater in the new timeline?
57. Why was Sayid behaving so bizarrely at the Temple?
58. What is the black powder that Smokey can’t cross?
59. How does Smokey “claim people”?
60. How did the two timelines relate to each other? Was the new timeline just purgatory?
61. Why did Jack suddenly have a son in the new timeline? If it’s just purgatory, why would he have a son at all there?
62. What did Widmore want Desmond to do on the island?
63. Why did New Desmond want the passenger manifest?
64. Why was Daniel’s mom, Eloise, so cryptic and strange?
65. Why did Sayid kidnap Desmond?
66. Why did Desmond run over Locke in the new timeline?
67. Why did Smokey throw Desmond down a well?
68. Why did Michael’s ghost say not to blow up the plane?
69. Why were Widmore’s people betraying Sawyer and his people?
70. Why did Smokey want Desmond killed?
71. Why did Jack want to stay on the island?
72. Why did Smokey try to kill the candidates?
73. Why did Widmore rig the plane to explode?
74. What’s the Source?

It seems to me like most of these questions – or at least the most important ones – can be answered with a simple history of the island. I was particularly confused by the seemingly conflicting and shifting behaviors of Smokey and Jacob, so a better description of everything with them (their abilities, rules and limitations) would suffice.

So here is one closing question, to which you may choose to respond: what do you think is the proper interpretation of reality in Lost? Was the island real? Was the new timeline real? Was the Source God? Or was it simply strange energy? Share your thoughts, and thanks for reading!

Until next time, friends…

The Craft of Writing, Part Five: Information

Hello, hello, hello, hello! I hope your Valentine’s Day went well. Whether with a romantic partner-in-crime or alone with God, I’ve recently heard a number of my wise friends say that what matters most is that you foster the prime relationships you have – both with God and your fellow man. I have to wholeheartedly agree.

Today we’re crossing into the second half of our series about the craft of writing. So far we’ve covered plot, character development, setting and pacing. Now, continuing on the notion of pacing is a factor to which it is intimately tied: the dissemination of information. What do I mean by this? By “dissemination of information,” I mean the revealing of mysteries, the answering of questions or the introduction of something new to the story. Essentially, it’s adding a bit of novelty.

Suppose, for example, you’re writing a story in which your protagonist unveils and ultimately foils a grand conspiracy. You can’t simply reveal the whole conspiracy in your first chapter, or else you’d have nothing left to reveal in the rest of the tale. But if you wait until the second-to-last chapter to reveal all that information, then with what have you filled up all of the previous chapters? What you need to do is space the information out, spreading it like butter over the toast of your novel. This is most preferable for two complementary reasons:

1. By spacing out the information, you’re contributing to the proper pacing that you worked hard to establish according to last week’s post. If you go too long without revealing information, your story may soon grow boring. And if you give away everything at the start, then you have nothing left to reveal and the rest of your book (until the climax) will be similarly boring. What works best is establishing a steady rate of revelation: a little bit here, a little bit there, some more here, some new facts there. And eventually, these little bits of information will begin to form something new underlying your story, something rich and developed. Your readers will feel like detectives, better able to identify with your protagonist as they put the information together along with him (or her).
2. But you also want to add breaks. If every chapter reveals truckloads of new information, then your reader can quickly become overwhelmed and lost in all of the novelty. My recommendation is similar to that of the pacing: after every high-speed place, after every information dump, take a break and allow the reader to catch their breath. Let them process the information for a bit before you throw something new into the mix. You don’t want to pull a Matrix Reloaded and wait until one of the last parts of the tale to unload everything, or it will be too much for the audience to take in at a time (I still have no idea what The Architect was saying in that scene). Let the audience take the information in little spurts, or at a slow and steady rate, but not too slow, or you’ll lose their interest.

Now you may, unfortunately, run into a pinched point where you have no choice but to reveal a large amount of information in a short amount of time. It’s understandable, it happens to me from time to time. If you have exhausted all other options and find yourself facing this conundrum, my advice is to try and be as careful and clever as possible. While writing Torjen II: The Search for Andross, I arrived at a chapter where I was forced to introduce over a dozen new characters who were to have an intense discussion. The best I could do in that scenario was to make each as unique as possible so that the reader could keep them separate, then focus predominantly on only a few of them. I had a similar issue in my most recent work, The Choice of Anonymity, in which the ultimate explanation was revealed in one chapter. To balance this, I added foreshadowing in order to set this up, and then I still held a few key bits of information on reserve so as to keep the reader engaged. The foreshadowing worked like a charm, allowing for the revealed information to read more like a linking of facts than a wholesale revelation of them.

So the basic rule of thumb is to tie in the revealing of new information with the pacing you’ve already constructed. That adds some consistency to your book, as well as depth. But as a final note, let me point out that in the end of your work, all of the most important information must be explained. That’s my personal pet peeve in writing, when mysteries are established and then left unsolved. I mean, sure, you don’t have to explain whether or not one character followed through on their resolution to quit smoking or if another character ultimately conquered her fear of flying. But the big, crucial information that forms the core plot of your work must be answered.

However, it doesn’t necessarily have to be answered in this book. Suppose you’re writing a trilogy, or a series, or a grouping of works that interrelate but don’t form a linear series. If, over the course of your stories or books (notice the plurality there), those things will eventually be answered, then you may withhold key pieces of information to be made clear later. Again returning to The Choice of Anonymity, I leave the ultimate fate of all but my protagonist unknown, but the reason for this is that there will be two follow-up novels in this trilogy, and their fates will be made known there.

So if you’re going to establish a mystery, or some unresolved question, please ignore the tendency of the highly-talented and fascinating writer/director J.J. Abrams, who chooses to leave his mysteries unresolved. Let it be known, my friends. Let it be known.

Until next time, friends…

Stay tuned for my next blog post, in which I’ll discuss the deeper relationship between the protagonist and antagonist!

The Greatest Commandment Part Two: Mind

Hello, and good day to you! It is my pleasure to present to you part two of our series on the Greatest Commandment (Mark 12:30). In this one, Andrew Cala discusses what it means to properly love the Lord our God with all of our minds. I hope you enjoy it.

I hope that you, too, will use your minds to continue serving God.

Until next time, friends…

Stay tuned for my next blog post, in which we will explore the command to love the Lord with all of our hearts!