Does the island remind anyone else of a Bible story?

[LostPolarBear]

I posted this idea about ten days ago, but it got deleted so I waited until a moderator - thanks, Master X. - said it was okay to go ahead. Anyways, I remember reading an interview somewhere in the General Discussions section, where either JJ Abrams or Damon Lindelof stated that everybody on the plane had been rescheduled/reassigned/bumped so they would be on the flight. I went back through the boards to make sure no one had brought this up before, and I can't seem to find anything, so:

Does the whole 'selection process' remind anyone else of Noah's Ark?

You've got your secluded location, your animals (our heroes included) roaming around in their confinement...

Whether the invisible island is a naturally occurring phenomenon (like a detached iceberg that somehow and has been constantly on the move and constantly changing for however many years) or an engineered occurrance, (check pinnerman's theory) I think the Noah's Ark angle holds some possibilities, and I was wondering if other people might think so too.

I smelled history in the making, so I didn't switch away from Game 7 even for a minute and had to miss tonight's episode.
Non-retractable claws make it too much trouble to work the remote. Plus the show's started going downhill ever since that good-looking fellow with the furry pelt got killed off. Show lost an Emmy right there.

LostPolarBear

[mangomoy]

LostPolarBear:

Your idea is very interesting.

Here's a gruesome idea that springs off yours.

Did the airplane crash because of turbulence and EMP from a neuclear war that happened while they were airborne?

Maybe the LOST folks are the only survivors alive on Earth, and the island is like a Garden of Eden, or as you put it, Noah's Ark? Nobody comes to their rescue because there is nobody else out there.

However, this fails to explain the mysterious presence on the island of the French woman & her dead companions, or the strange polar bear mystery.

[Klang007]

Interesting...so you'd also assume the lost radio signal was due to there being there being no satallites or person on the other side to recieve their call?

As for the french lady...that possibly happened long ago, before your theorized end of mankind.

[angry may queen]

Hmm... I guess it sort-of reminds me of the Noah's Ark story.

But when I recall Noah's Ark, the first aspect of the story that pops into my head is "they brought 2 of every species, male and female." Which is not the case for the inhabitants of that plane.

Also, if you take the opinion that the people on the plane were not really there by their own choosing (Jack had to go get his father and bring him back, Locke was forced to return without going on his Walkabout, Boone had to go get Shannon and force her to come back with him, etc.), then that undermines the Noah's Ark theory because Noah was chosen by God to build the ark and he and his family chose to say yes, and get on there to avoid the destruction.

[Suil Liath]

Noah had warning, a set of instructions and marching orders. These people do not.

This arrangement is more existential than Biblical, despite the Biblican referenced to the first season being the first 40 days of their adventure.

-Kit-

[maxpublic]

If this entire show amounts to nothing more than a retelling of a christian religious myth set in the 21st century I'm going to be very disappointed I wasted my time on it.

Max

[DriftWood]

Where's Mrs. Noah?

[LostPolarBear]

Wow. I lost my whole post when I hit Add Post without filling in the subject line. Live and learn.

I don't think the producers and writers are taking this in such a blase direction as a simple straightforward update of the Judeo-Christian Ark story. On a side note, there are actually many cultures with flood myths in which a creator sends water to wash away 'impurities' in his work or to punish invaders, etc., etc.

I realize that there actually aren't that many direct parallels between Lost and the story of Noah's Ark (each animal having a mate of the opposite sex, God's relaying of construction specs, etc.) - but thank you to whoever it was that pointed out that the first season covers our heroes' first forty days on the island. I didn't know that. Woohoo! Unintended-parallel points for me?

Anyways, when I posted I was thinking more along the lines of a loose connection than a theory, in the way that Stephen King's The Green Mile was a modernized take on the story of Christ and the Wandering Jew, but turned out to explore a variety of different themes. It wasn't THE ISLAND IS NOAH'S ARK. HERE IS WHY. It was more like: 'Hmm...here on Lost we have an island that seems to be - if you take the producers' words and look at it in a certain way - the island seems to be either actively collecting or a receptacle for various creatures and it is keeping them on itself. Now where have I heard something like that before... Maybe someone else will have a clearer idea.'

I didn't bother delving in too deep because I think it's way too early and there haven't been any really meaty hints as to what's going on with the island. But what the hell, speculation is half the reason most of us are here (personally, the other half is those top10 lists by that one poster...can't remember the name. Starts with an A.) Anyways. Speculation ho.

If you decide to run with the whole island as a receptacle idea then you have to wonder, who's doing the collecting? The island itself? God? A crazed real-estate multi-billionaire? Some consortium of nations that has learned the nature of the island and agreed to engage in a nefarious scheme to send 'candidates' to the island in hopes of...what? Maybe they got fed up with all the Survivor bull!@#$ and decided to stage the real thing? But to what purpose.

In a doomsday scenario - like the one someone mentioned where the plane has crashed as a direct result of a nuclear blast - you might assume that the selector was Providence, and once you do that, you get to thinking about the word 'Lost' and all the negative connotations it carries (abandoned, forgotten) versus 'selected' - Passed over - and spared from whatever cataclysmic event that has taken place over the rest of the world. Then you see the characters in the unique predicament of having to establish what they think of as their own microcosm when in fact, their 'microcosm' is the whole #@$%ing enchilada. A few years pass and poof, they reach land and realize they were Saved, not Lost, and oh-look-there's-a-rainbow. I personally don't like the idea of them being the last people on the planet for a couple of reasons - it's way too Twilight-Zone, too sci-fi, and I hope the show rises above either. Plus the quasi-religious tone kind of takes it into mythy-mountain territory and Abrams and Lindelof said no to that.

Then again, what if the island is not just a receptacle but is itself somehow drawing all these critters, storing them for as long as it can or as long as they manage to survive before it goes and restocks. If so, what of the fact that all the other species on the island seem to have outlasted humanity (A la our long since defunct Party of French) If you follow that train of thought then you could end up concluding that humanity up till now has proven itself unworthy - "He killed them all," or whatever the exact quote was - on the island. Is the island is making an impassive judgement, holding up a mirror to mankind and showing it has actually evolved past the point where it was fit for survival? And will our heroes buck the trend, ultimately banding together to stay alive in a for-what-it's-worth tiny redemption of humanity and it's privilege to remain a part of the life on Earth? Sounds crazy. And I doubt this is true.

Hell, you could also go the whole magical-realism route and consider the idea that the island IS Noah's Ark, still adrift after all this time and still trying to fulfill its purpose handed down by God through Noah - and all bets are off, there are no religious undertones since the island is just roaming around and drawing 'specimens' to itself like some holy inventory manager gone haywire over its quota - which, again, I don't think is what's going on. Plus you have to come back to the Abrams/Lindelof implication that a realistic non-fantastical force arranged for those specific people to be on that flight.

If I had to go out on a limb, I'd say that the truth seems more likely to be a combination of everything above - evil schemers, doomsday scenarios, throw in a dash of mystical forces - plus a lot of other things that someone smarter might come up with.

As you can tell, I don't have any specific point A to point B theories connecting the island with Noah's Ark, which is why the original post wasn't longer.

But I feel the idea has some merit... I put it out there wondering whether someone else might find a bit of inspiration in it and come up with something mind-blowing.

This post was originally longer and a bit more coherent, but I have a head-cold and at the moment I can't remember everything that was in it.

And to the person who asked where Mrs. Noah was...she's right here. Well, at least her shoes and belt are. And a femur. They were kind of tough to chew.

LostPolarBear

[mixx31]

How long did Mosses lead his people through the dessert?
Maybe we should be thinking of a different bible story?

[maxpublic]

The whole "Noah's Ark" thing doesn't really make a great deal of sense. If the island is some sort of Ark, it has a habit of eating people. Remember the French? I don't remember Noah's version having that drawback. If it did, we probably wouldn't have the story since Noah wouldn't have survived to tell it to someone.

Perhaps this is the "Nightmare on Elm Street" version of the Ark....

Max

[jobbermanlost]

They wandered the desert for 40 years.