LOST: my interpretation

****SPOILERS*****

So yeah, this is a photo blog. But more importantly, it's things that have impact in my life. It's 1 a.m. and I just finished a 6 hour long lost event. I also spent 6 years of my life on this show. These are my thoughts.

First, Alan Mykitta had the initial perception of most of this, so he is the insightful one.

Going into tonight, I didn't think there would actually be a "big reveal." I thought we were way past that. Even when the show ended, I thought it was confusing. Now, I think I was wrong.

All along, I wanted the writers to tell us that the Man in Black was Esau (As in the biblical "Jacob and Esau"). In the penultimate episode, we still never got a name. I believe the writers respected us so much, they knew WE KNEW he was Esau--so why belittle us by actually saying the name.

So we know about Jacob already, but what about some details we have forgotten? How about that strangely placed Ladder where "Locke" died. Thank you Alan Mykitta--Jacob's Ladder.

Biblically, Jacob's Ladder is a ladder to heaven, described in the Book of Genesis, which the biblical patriarch Jacob envisions during his flight from his brother Esau.

"Jacob left Beersheba, and went toward Haran. He came to the place and stayed there that night, because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place to sleep. And he dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven; and behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it! And behold, the Lord stood above it [or "beside him"] and said, "I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your descendants; and your descendants shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and by you and your descendants shall all the families of the earth bless themselves. Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done that of which I have spoken to you." Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, "Surely the Lord is in this place; and I did not know it." And he was afraid, and said, "This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven."

And now, a more recent interpretation of Jacob's Ladder, the Vietnam movie (with the very same name) starring Tim Robbins. To make a long story short, the movie begins with a battle where our hero is bayonetted. The story that unfolds shifts between the war and the future (an all too familiar flash-forward, sideways, back, etc.) The movie ends with the same character in triage from the opening-scene-wound. The entire movie was a hallucination/life flashing before his eyes. Nothing actually took place between his wound, and being placed on a stretcher.

A recent info leak from the set had a production location as "INT: Cavern/Jack in Hell." In the film, a character quotes an old Christian Philosopher "the only thing that burns in Hell is the part of you that won't let go of life, your memories, your attachments. They burn them all away. But they're not punishing you,' he said. 'They're freeing your soul. So, if you're frightened of dying and... you're holding on, you'll see devils tearing your life away. But if you've made your peace, then the devils are really angels, freeing you from the earth.'"

Our epic journey was a cataclysmic plane crash ending with our Hero opening and closing his eyes in the same location and same manner. What was the reality, everything on the island? The flash-sideways? Both? Did Jack every get up from that bamboo field, or did any of it actually happen? All we know is that only some of our characters made it to heaven.