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Pretty much the main theme to me had to do with “naming”—who gets to define the self? Is it the individual alone? Is it the community? Or is it a process between individual/community, self/other?

— jazprof

Hey for those of you who don’t know what “Group 1” means—last summer some people on the board started going back episode by episode nad writing up analyses of them. If you want to go back and look at old ones, just do a search on “Group 1.” I did some on S4, but the last S3 one I did was “Flashes.” So this is the follow-up to that one. Anyone who wants to do a write up is welcome to do so. The next one would be “Tricia Tanaka.”

Had a hard time returning to doing the Group1s for time reasons, but also because “Stranger in a Strange Land” was a letdown of an episode (too plot driven) for me. Even rewatching it I didn’t think I’d have a lot to say, but then I had a kind of “aha” moment thinking about what Tom says to Jack about people living in glass houses not throwing stones, which connected up to Alex (“Sally Slingshot”) who actually does throw a stone in the episode (taking out the surveillance camera), and then also Alex’s innocence was on my mind because of reading ProfOzone’s recent Season 4 summary and thoughts about what rule might have changed with Alex getting killed.

Just to spell out the thought process there: In the scene between Jack and Tom, Jack is drawing a distinction between himself and the others, basically saying that he is a good guy and they are the bad guys. Tom’s reply is that people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. Interesting that he doesn’t say “Let he who is without sin…” as that would have carried a similar message. Using “glass houses” though draws in the surveillance component. As one of the themes of the episode has to do with whether Jack is connected or alone—this scene suggests that his attempt to define himself as separate based on his goodness and the villainy of the others (the heroic definition)—has failed and will continue to fail. However, there is a stone-thrower—Alex. Her death in S4 is defined as a change of rules. Well, interesting that changing the rules is also mentioned in this episode. When Isabel receives the message from Ben regarding Juliet’s sentence she says: “Ben has commuted Juliet’s sentence. Execution is off the table. He says the rules don’t apply. He has, however, ordered her to be marked.” Is this what Widmore meant when he implied that Ben was responsible for Alex’s death? He changed the rules by sparing Juliet’s life. And in fact perhaps spared her from future harm (if the mark is like the mark of Cain). And sparing the life of one who was guilty resulted in the sacrifice of one who was innocent?

For the rest of the episode let me outline the main points and then I’ll go through how I see them coming up specifically:

1) Pretty much the main theme to me had to do with “naming”—who gets to define the self? Is it the individual alone? Is it the community? Or is it a process between individual/community, self/other? This primarily focused on Jack. A subset of this theme—what is heroism? Is it the act of one alone? Or does that definition, that denial of connection, result in unforeseen consequences (because no one is in fact acting alone)? 2) Two opposing forces at work defining people’s actions and selves, the transcendent/spiritual and the deadly/physical.

Opening scene—Sawyer asks Kate what she thinks “Captain Bunny-Killer” would do to them if they went back. Karl replies “Kill you.” And adds “God loves you as he loved Jacob.” This sets up those two forces. Ben is the Bunny-Killer and they are the Bunnies. Association with holes underground—with Hades (land of the dead). Think this is Ben’s main realm—he’s both the Bunny-Killer and the Rabbit-Trickster figure—lots of hidey holes and escape routes below ground. On the other hand there is God’s love which is directed to them as it was to Jacob. Jacob as father of the 12 tribes of Israel (the Others perhaps being the Lost Tribes). This connects to the first point—they can define themselves through fear of death—isolation—“Jack’s on his own.” Or they can define themselves through love—a relation between self and other. Self as member of a tribe.

Flashback—the Thai boy only knows one phrase in English “Doctor Jack.” Jack, the stranger in a strange land is named. I don’t know why I never thought of this before but “Jack”—it’s a device for fixing things by lifting them up.

Kite flying—I’d really like someone to do a little YouTube of this scene in which Achara, helping Jack to fly the kite, speaks in Desmond’s voice: “Och Aye, yeh hev ta lift it up brutha!”

A lot of associations of Jack with birds and flying. The kite shaped like a bird. The tattoo literally says: “Eagles high, cleaving sky.” Christian told Jack he didn’t have what it takes to be a hero—that when knocked down he should stay down. Achara says “I have no interest in your father.” Her name means “Mark of Dharma” (which may be what wound up on Juliet’s back). What were Christian’s motives in telling Jack to stay down? Was he in fact trying to save him from all the consequences that being a hero, being one who is “among them” but not “one of them” entails? Moses after all died before the tribes crossed the river Jordan.

Now this gets into the problem with Jack’s self-definition as the loner hero—imagining that he can fix everything, or take on responsibility for everything. Ben played on that by allowing him to see Kate and Sawyer together. And so he acted as the self-sacrificing hero to save them. But in this episode, we see that he in fact didn’t act alone. Juliet had to help him and is now paying for her involvement. Similarly in the flashback, Jack insists on being tattooed and when Achara warns him that there will be consequences, he waves this off—“There always are”—assuming the consequences only affect him. But what price does Achara have to pay?

To see oneself as the lone hero—the “special” one? The one with a gift? The chosen one? There sure are a lot of people vying for that position on this show.

Isabel, The Sherriff—the name Isabel=gift of God, so she seems to represent both the transcendent and the deadly. Also the naming by the community. She reads Jack. Jack in a glass house. Jack “watched” by Cindy and the kids. Jack saved from being watched by Alex’s innocence. Jack rejects her reading at the end—she knows what it “says” but that’s not what it “means.” The Law, the Book of Law (did Isabel get the job cause Locke didn’t pick the Book of Law when Richard offered it?)—one idea of how words work—that the words are absolute and unchanging in meaning, they follow laws. An eye for an eye—that is one eye is absolutely equivalent to another. All people are alike before the law. And so of course the Sherriff would know what they mean. And the Sherriff defines who a person is. But that’s not actually how language works—it’s always a process and meanings shift.

Another model for naming is the one described by Karl and then summarized by Sawyer: “I’ve been with a lot of girls — some of them worth the trouble, some not. Every now and again there’s one — one you name dumb stars with.”

“Worth the trouble”—Juliet is in trouble because of Jack. He gives up his loner status and bonds with Juliet despite the fact that Ben contends that “She’s one of us” and Jack begins the episode making a sharp us/them distinction. At the end he’s asserting to Juliet that they will make Ben keep his word by acting “together.” And just as Jack is bonding with Juliet, Sawyer is bonding with Karl—through empathy, through seeing the self in the other.

One last thought on this dynamic—Sawyer asserts to Kate that she slept with him not out of love (the transcendent) but because she thought he was a dead man (in fact a “marked man”). Trying to overcome death/isolation in this way is a failure. She tries to “save” him through romance/sexuality, just as Jack tries to save her. Both I think lead only to further isolation. And though they look very dissimilar from what Isabel is doing (romantic narrative vs, vengeance narrative) they both are examples of attempting to control the power of definition/representation. But definition actually seems to be working in a non-absolute way (it can shift through time) and emerges between people through the passage of time. That is, it is con-sequential.

Key characters

Short Name	Full Name	Episodes	Theories
Jack	Jack Shephard	1.1, 1.5, 2.11, 1.11, 1.16, 1.20, 3.9, 3.22, 3.1, 4.10, 4.12, & 3” href=”/episodes/theres-no-place-home-parts-2-3/”>4.13	1451

Key episodes

#	Title	Aired	Central character	Theories
3.9	Stranger in a Strange Land	2-21-2007	Jack	126

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