Loading ...In “The Substitute” we finally get to see The List, a source for all of the speculation about a grand scheme. Presumably, Jacob has acted as the god of Fate for all of the chosen castaways. He spun their threads, measured them out, wove them together and, most likely, decides when each thread of life gets snipped. He is the Moirae of Greek Mythology, the team of three Fates who determine each human destiny (which, in essence, might make him a trinity—but that’s a theory for another day). But how powerful was he? Did he really control their lives or did they make their own decisions? Recall that Jacob explicitly acknowledged their free will, as we saw in “The Incident” when he told Hurley that he had a choice about getting on the plane. Just before Jacob is murdered, he told Ben the same thing—“you have a choice.”
Among other things, Lost is an allegorical study of the tension between fate and free will, questioning whether human beings control their own destinies or if there are forces that determine, or have already pre-determined, their paths. In simplistic terms, the debate between free will and fate goes something like this: either there is a pre-destined purpose for each human being and everything happens for a reason, or there is no cosmic plan, things happen arbitrarily and purpose is crafted by the individual. On the one hand, individual choices affect outcome; on the other, something or someone exterior to the individual has planned the outcome and already knows the choices he or she will make to arrive at a particular “destined-nation.”
Many examples from Lost, including Desmond’s story, have offered viewers a fine balance of these two opposing concepts. Though it sometimes seems that Daniel Faraday’s comments (“whatever happened, happened” but “any one of us can die”) contradict one another, they actually provide an interesting and complex answer to this philosophical conundrum. Using a combination of Lost’s complicated narrative and the messages implicit in its many literary references, I have created a theory: There exists a general sketch of a cosmic plan for everything, what Stephen Hawking might call a “grand unifying” design. But this sketch is only a guide, like the outline of an essay; the individual parts are moveable and the details, malleable. There is a purpose in store for those who choose to embrace it and such a thing as a “best case” destiny. Individuals are responsible for their actions and decisions, but they are pushed in the right direction by outside forces (Remember Jacob’s mysterious appearance at Jack and Christian’s hospital. He tells Jack, “It just needed a little push,” referring to the Apollo candy bar but with the implication that the “push” is actually what Jack needed). Like the traveling companions in Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, one must discover her purpose as she creates it (or one must create as she discovers). The journey is the thing. Like the main protagonist in James Hilton’s Lost Horizon believes, individuals must know when to act and when to be acted upon. The universe might be able to course correct, but not without the decisions that are made through the power of self-determination.
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