Seeing Red & Life "Through the Looking Glass": PART 2 by Adian McDonald

Before I begin, I want to give credit and thanks to ‘Shide’, who motivated me to return to writing about the color Red. Shide read my first post concerning the color Red titled “Seeing Red and Ponderings on Life ‘Through the Looking Glass’”, which I strongly urge anyone read before continuing with this post, which is very much a sequel to it.

In brief, the earlier post, part one, concerned the color Red and its possible significance on LOST, in addition to the “through the looking glass” motif that, I feel, resonates most strongly with Jack’s development, but can also be seen with other characters. The post below continues with this, but expands it to some of the other characters.

Part one is available here:
http://theoriesonlost.blogspot.com/2010/03/seeing-red-laxs-life-through-looking.html

And now Part Two….

Seeing Red in “Recon”:

In “Recon”, we do not see the color Red with the same frequency, arguably significance, as we do with Jack or Desmond (see part one linked too above), but it still has some overt appearances. Sawyer has a date with Charlotte, the Red headed archeologist who Rose fittingly once referred to as “Red.” For her date with Sawyer, Charlotte is wearing a Red dress, Sawyer is wearing a Red shirt and they are enjoying a glass of Red wine. Lovely.

If we associate Red with time travel, which I am not sure it should be limited to, but if we do—then Charlotte being a redhead makes sense. She was born (was she? Certainly raised from an early age) on the Island, which, of course, has time traveling properties.

Time traveling guru Daniel Faraday is struck by Charlotte as a beautiful redheaded little girl playing in the lawns of Dharmaville circa 1974. When Daniel sees her, it’s as if time slows down (certainly the camera did) as he watches her play—running in slow motion and wearing a red dress. Of course Daniel is moved by this experience especially since an adult Charlotte had just died in his arms a short time prior, with red blood smeared on her face. Charlotte was the only one of the jumping time travelers in the small group to lose their life because of the time jumps.

Now if Red is meant to express or signal change, as I am more inclined to think, then Charlotte’s death (the death of Red so to speak) is significant because it is one of, perhaps the biggest, reason Daniel becomes obsessed with time travel—spending three more years at Dharma HQ in Michigan studying it—in an attempt to change the past to save Charlotte’s life. And in a sense, it seems to have worked—only Charlotte in LA X is not with Daniel but rather on a date with Sawyer.

Seeing Red in “The Package”:

In “The Package”, the episodes title itself refers (at least in part, as it could have many meanings) to Desmond, who Widmore calls the package. Desmond, as I discuss in the earlier post (see link above) has literally found himself dripping with Red in the past (no pun intended). Desmond, of course, is associated with time travel and change (though the issue of whether Desmond has affected any change by time travel is debatable-I think he has though). If only Desmond had been wearing a Red shirt when taken off the sub.

Red shows up in some very subtle ways, so subtle I question whether its of any significance. Be that as it may, here are the small spots I noticed Red…

The Red notebook the airport guard hands to Jin, which seemed like it could have been a passport. However, upon checking into the hotel, Sun is the one with the red notebook, which means it could be another passport, Sun’s passport (used as ID to check in) or some sort of travel organizer commonly sold in skymall magazines. I am inclined to think it was some type of travel organizer, because South Korean passports are green in color—not Red.

On the beach, Miles and Frank are playing cards and we see Miles’ hand of cards, which of course included cards of Red (and black for that matter each with white backgrounds). You can see why I am somewhat inclined to dismiss this sort of detail…its so discreet—more coincidence than anything. Just as the lamps in Suns hotel room are also Red, perhaps not significant yet either…

But Red keeps popping up in other small and brief…but not dismissible places. Just as we see Sun bump her head on the island running from Smokie, in the LA X sideways flash we see Jin brought to Keamy’s restaurant with an injury to his head, like Sun, and bleeding Red blood. While held in Room 23, Jin is questioned by geophysicist Zoe, who is looking for electromagnetic pockets on the island. Those pockets, of course, are linked to time travel and the very maps Zoe is using to locate them are marked with Red ink by Jin’s own hand back in 1970’s, when he was back in time as a member of Dharma.

When Jin activates the film in Room 23, one of the images contains the words “Everything Changes”, words that appear over the image of an wood burning stove which is largely painted in Red. This supports my idea that Red is more akin to change than just time travel. Even the chair in Room 23, the cushions at least, seemed to be Red (but I am not 100% on this, anyone else notice?).

That Jin was in Room 23 also may be significant with the red and/or change theory. 23, of course is Jack’s number—Jack is, in my opinion, the character most changed from the man we met in season one. Honestly, could anyone have ever seen S1 Jack, hardcore ‘man of science’, sitting in the hold of the ‘Black Rock’ with Richard Alpert asking if the ageless wonder wanted to try another stick of dynamite after the first stick failed to blow them both to oblivion? And I thought Jack was a cylon (whoops, wrong show)! Jack, 23, change, and then, in Room 23, one of the images Jin sees—one of the messages on the screen—was “We are the causes of our own suffering”, this in addition to “everything changes.” Indeed, Jack was the cause of much of his own suffering. Was Christian really such a bad father in the end, or was Jack unable to see he had already proved himself to Christian, who once called Jack the most gifted young surgeon in Los Angeles? Jack cau! sed his own suffering when it came to substance abuse. Jack may have caused his own suffering from a bad appendix by refusing to ‘let go’ while on the island by holding to his firm belief in science. Just some thoughts, now back to Red…

When Jin meets Widmore, he is handed a camera with pictures of his daughter who he has never met or even seen. And in the first picture Jin sees on that camera, his daughter is wearing a Red dress.

Finally we have the tomato. First Jack merely asks a distraught Sun how the tomatoes were doing, but we don’t actually see any—they are all dead Sun claimed. But this mere reference to Red was precursor to arguably the most prominent use of the color in the episode. As we know, Jack (now seemingly skilled at making emotional connections and brimming with empathy) tells Sun he returned to her garden and produces a perfect Red tomato he found there, no one told it that it was supposed to die he says. And while still marveling at her Red tomato, Sun is finally convinced (a change?) by Jack to trust and follow him over Smokie. And I must admit that I strongly suspected Sun would go with Smokie at the start of the season—she was just such a ruthless business woman in her Oceanic 6 life.

And it should be mentioned that the Red tomato, as mentioned, was found by Jack, who (as with Desmond) is often associated with Red in other places (see earlier post).

Reflections and Life “Through the Looking Glass”:

I discuss this idea at length in the first ‘looking glass’ post, which focused entirely on Jack and some on Desmond. This was, of course, appropriate since Jack’s stories are in many ways associated with “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” and Lewis Carroll’s follow up, “Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There.” And just as Jack looked into a looking glass (be it the pond in front of the temple, the 815 bathroom mirror, his LA X bathroom mirror or the mirrors in Jacob’s lighthouse), so too have other LA X characters. And just as each peer into the looking glass for Jack had meaning (seeing red on his neck, noticing his appendix, seeing his childhood home--meaning of change perhaps ), the others have had similar experiences.

In “What Kate Did”, Kate looks into the mirror of the body shop just as she discovers the contents of Claire’s bag, toys and supplies for soon to be born Aaron (including the same black and white killer whale Aaron had when living with O6 Kate). This glimpse into the mirror, into the looking glass, caused Kate to (for a time) stop running and return to lend Claire aid and return Aaron’s belongings. And is this Kate’s arc? Is this the growth she must experience—to stop running? I think it is.

In “The Substitute”, Locke looks into his own looking glass mirror while in the bathroom of the home he shares with Helen. And while before the looking glass, Locke is holding Jack’s card in one hand and a phone in the other. For Locke, the question often before him was should he keep looking for his place or purpose in the world or just let life unfold. Just as a forced attempt at transcendence by going on a walkabout did not give Locke what he was looking for, perhaps he felt going through a questionable (in his mind at least) surgical undertaking with Dr. Shepherd was just not worth the effort. Locke, it seems, had learned to stop looking—learned to let go.

In “Recon”, Sawyer looks into the looking glass after Miles confronts him with knowledge of his secret trip to Australia, which Miles would later learn was so Sawyer could kill Anthony Cooper. Thus Sawyer is filled with deep rage looking into the looking glass, dwelling on the issue before him—should he avenge his parent’s death or not? And Sawyer then strikes the mirror, because who can deal with that emotional baggage? Not me.

And then we have Sun, who looked into her hotel mirror in “The Package” just before she opened it for a knocking Keamy and Omar. Sun’s look in the mirror was more than just to check her hair…it was a deliberate pause…I could see her mind spinning “what am I doing” I could hear her thinking. She had just spent the night with Jin, who was now having to hide in the bathroom to keep their relationship a secret. I am sure there is more significance or other directions one could expand on for Sun’s glimpse into the looking glass…but I am out of steam and just don’t like her or Jin enough to dwell on it. Jin & Sun lovers, take it away please.

I quickly scanned through Sayid’s “Sundown” and Ben’s “Dr. Linus” to see if they had their own looking glass moments. I did not see any, but I was rushed. If anybody else caught this, please enlighten me and provide the context.

Thank you for reading. I greatly appreciate comments and try to respond to each one. If you liked this post and/or my other posts on Dark UFO, I invite you to visit my own LOST blog, where I post more conversational and personal versions of these same posts, as well as several smaller posts that do not merit a theory post on Dark UFO. The link is: http://lost-looking-glass.blogspot.com