Desmond's Seed and the Quest for the Answers to the Universe.
Yeah, you read that right.
I propose that Desmond's son, Charlie Hume, will be the barer of "light and truth", effectively exposing all secrets as well as allowing the creation of new ones in the future --which gives LOST its power of continually .... and here's why:
The Book: Haroun and the Sea of Stories - Salman Rushdie
*Interesting to note, Rushdie dedicated this book to his son, Zafar Rushdie, from whom he was separated for some time. I found it intriguing that Desmond would be carrying such a book. How long has he been away from Charlie? I'm not entirely convinced that Charlie doesn't exist yet, meaning in Desmond's memories. If Desmond is privy to more than just now, he may long for the day he is "reunited" with his future son.
So here's the deal with the book:
Haroun lives in the country of Alifbay, in a city so sad its inhabitants have forgotten its name. In spite of the permeating sadness, Haroun's father, Rashid, is extraordinarily cheerful. Rashid is a renowned storyteller. He knows so many stories and tells them so brilliantly that he is known as the "Ocean of Notions" and the "Shah of Blah."
One disastrous day, Rashid's storytelling dries up. Desperate to help his father, Haroun finds his way to Kahani, Earth's second moon kept invisible by a PTCTE --Process Too Complicated To Explain. Kahani is home to the Ocean of the Streams of Story, the source for all storytellers who subscribe, via a P2C2E, of course. The process is controlled by the Walrus, Grand Comptroller of Gup, a land of perpetual sunshine.
And it made me think, what if Charlie is like Haroun? Not Desmond mimicking Rashid's character, but just the importance of the child.
A lot of recognizable LOST stuff in this...
The larger part of the plot occurs on a fictional satellite of the Earth's, named Kahani, whose orbit is controlled by "Processes Too Complicated To Explain". These processes enable it to fly over every single point on Earth.
Kahani itself consists of a massive Ocean which itself is composed of an infinity of stories, each story taking the form of a current or stream of a unique color. The colors, therefore, encompass the whole visible spectrum and extend beyond into spectra that are not known to exist. Various islands and a continent are also shown on the moon. The name "Kahani" itself means "Story" in Urdu and Hindi, and is ultimately revealed to be the name of the sad city; a revelation that removes the sadness from the city's people.
Secrets, lies, stories, misinformation, fantasy, illusions, dreams, manifistations, language, comunication, even names...... all important themes in this book. Light vs Dark plays a role here too.
Ok, so we have armies of people dedicated to silencing information (stories) and we have politicians who are power hungry, we have travel to ... you know what? Anyone can go read about this themselves, and I urge you to do so Haroun_and_the_Sea_of_Stories
I've pulled out several things I felt mirrored themes or characters, tagged to prevent headaches. You're welcome. (but really it's just an insane amount of reading and added only for those who find him or herself interested enough to lean in a bit and fall completely down the rabbit hole. I'm here at the bottom so please remember to bring some rope.)
Spoiler: Characters:
Haroun: The main character/central consciousness of the story. A young, curious, courageous, outspoken child. He is said to suffer throughout most of the story from a form of attention-deficit disorder, under whose influence he is unable to concentrate his attention for a longer measurement of time than eleven minutes, but overcomes it at the climax and does not suffer from it again.
Rashid: Haroun's father, also known as the Shah of Blah and the Ocean of Notions for his ability to create fascinating stories impromptu. Rashid is a professional storyteller who is sometimes hired by corrupt politicians to persuade constituents that they should be re-elected. His attachment to his wife and to his practice of storytelling are probably his greatest psychological weaknesses; when either is lost, he becomes depressed and loses the other. To recover the latter, he travels to Kahani by a means known as 'Rapture', by which he is able to travel inside his dreams and wake up in the world the dream has created. This method consists of consuming "moonberries, comet's tails, planet rings, [and] primordial soup". Having reached Kahani, he alerts the Guppees to the location of their Princess Batcheat and later joins their army to recapture her from the Chupwalas who have captured her.
Soraya: Rashid's wife, who tires of his imagination and leaves him for the dull and dreary Mr. Sengupta, a neighbor. That she is becoming alienated from Rashid is implied early on, where she is said to have abandoned her daily songs. At the end, she has returned to Rashid, having become disgusted by Mr. Sengupta's obnoxious behavior and revived her affection for her husband and son. Upon her return, the depression overwhelming Rashid and the unusual syndrome manifested by Haroun both dissolve and do not reappear. Her name is probably Persian in origin.
Mr. Sengupta: The dreary man who is Haroun's neighbor, and who elopes with Soraya. As a rule, Mr. Sengupta despises imagination and stories, which sets the stage for his later appearance on Kahani as antagonist Khattam-Shud, to whom he is evidently identical. Khattam-Shud's defeat seems to correspond with Soraya's desertion of Mr. Sengupta, who does not appear again in person. His name is a contraction of "Sen Gupta", a legitimate Indian name.
Miss Oneeta: Mr. Sengupta's wife.
Mr. Butt: The mail courier, a reckless driver who, when requested to provide transport for Haroun and Rashid (who is expected to speak at an election of public officers), ignores all other demands so as to take them to their destination before dusk. He is implied to be the counterpart of the Hoopoe, who also serves as Haroun's transportation.
Snooty Buttoo: A corrupt politician who hires Rashid to convince constituents that he (Buttoo) should be re-elected. Buttoo is a class-conscious, pompous, arrogant, self-assured, insincere, callous person whose chief hold over his constituents is that he has been re-elected before. To persuade Rashid to sympathize with him, he places both Rashid and Haroun on a luxurious houseboat called The Arabian Nights Plus One, where they spend the night. When Buttoo learns that Soraya has deserted Rashid, he dismisses Rashid's misery, remarking that "there are plenty more fish in the sea", as if to indicate that in Soraya's absence Rashid may find another companion. Buttoo is ultimately deposed and banished from the valley wherein he is trying to be re-elected when the people thereof are inspired to take action against him by Rashid's recitation of Haroun's story. The name "Buttoo" means "little child" in Hindi, and is probably given to this character as an act of contempt.
Butt the Hoopoe: A machine [...]revealed to possess a mechanical brain which is capable of almost all known mental feats, including telepathy. [...] At his introduction, he is described as "the bird that leads all other birds through many dangerous places to their ultimate goal".
Iff: A "water genie" from Kahani who accompanies Haroun in Kahani. Iff's task is to control Rashid's supply of imagination, which appears in the form of waters transmitted to Rashid via an invisible faucet by a means that is never revealed, but which is called a "Process Too Complicated To Explain". Iff himself is a benevolent character having a blue moustache and beard; an effusive, somewhat cantankerous personality; and a habit of speaking in lists of synonyms. His name, like that of Butt the Hoopoe, is derived from the saying "if and but". During the denouement, he has been placed in command of the other Water Genies, who perform tasks similar to his throughout the world.
Prince Bolo: A possible parody of the archetypal awe-inspiring hero or Prince Charming, Bolo is the fiancée of Princess Batcheat (see below) and the only person to believe that she is a beauty. Bolo is a reckless, slightly stupid, melodramatic figure who is nominally the leader of the charge to rescue the captured Batcheat from Chup, but who wields little authority; who is prone to becoming excited at the least provocation; who is obsessed with rescuing Batcheat, so that all other things appear to him as of little significance; who frequently draws his sword when it is unwise to fight; who extends diplomatic immunity to an assassin bent on killing him; and who gives the impression to readers of being somewhat out of harmony with the realities of his situations. His name is the imperative form of the verb bolna, and therefore means "Speak!".
Princess Batcheat: A damsel in distress. Batcheat is the daughter of King Chattergy, ruler of Gup, and the fiancée of Prince Bolo, whose affiliations are unknown. She is somewhat foolish; romantic; reckless; and completely infatuated with Bolo, who is the only person to think her beautiful; all other characters have low opinions of her nose, teeth, and singing voice. Most references (including, in one passage, those of the narration) to any of these conform to this pattern: "... that nose, those teeth — but there's no need to go into that". The narrator evidently follows his own advice, for no graphic description is given of Batcheat's face at all. Her name is pronounced "Baat-cheet" and is translated as "chit-chat". When she is captured by Chupwalas during an excursion to the border between Gup and Chup, they plot to sew her mouth shut and rename her Khamosh, meaning "silent", but never carry this out.
General Kitab: Literally "General Book". General Kitab is the commander of the Guppee 'Library', which functions in peacetime as a system of aides and in war as an army. It consists of a multitude of Pages, each of which is a thin person clad in an oversized sheet of paper bearing part of a story. The Pages are organized into divisions called 'Chapters', which are themselves organized into 'Volumes', each of which is led by a Page called the 'Title'. The General, in turn, leads the Titles, participates in every debate regarding the worth of the cause on which the army has embarked, and frequently foments such debates on purpose to resolve all conflict of interest or opinion. The whole army, therefore, takes part in every campaign of a gigantic Rogerian argument, whose sole aim is to produce conciliation and eventual unity among the Pages. Because Guppee laws permit an unlimited freedom of speech, these debates are unrestrained to an extent that would (as Haroun remarks) be considered insubordination in the reader's real world. General Kitab himself is often flustered and embarrassed by Prince Bolo's impetuosity, to which he responds by using colorful language and attempting to rectify a damaged situation.
King Chattergy: Princess Batcheat's father and Prince Bolo's father-in-law, a symbolic figure who forms the nominal head of Gup's government but has little real power. He is given very little role in most of the story. The Wall dividing Gup from Chup is named after him, although he is stated to have had no involvement with its creation. His name is a legitimate name in India, though usually spelt Chatterjee.
Blabbermouth: A Page of the Library of Gup. Blabbermouth is a talkative, ill-tempered, contemptuous, stubborn, unscrupulous, quarrelsome girl who despises Princess Batcheat, disguises herself as a boy, and is skilled at the art of juggling, which Haroun compares to storytelling. Blabbermouth joins the army of Gup to march on Chup, but is later exposed as a girl and expelled from the army by Bolo. She then becomes aide to Mudra, an ally of the Guppees, with whom she is implied to be infatuated. Haroun is said to have a soft spot for her, but never confesses it. He is, however, extremely pleased after she kisses him.
Mudra: Second-in-command to Khattam-Shud, who becomes disgruntled with his master's policies and defects to the Guppee side. His shadow, like the shadows of each and every person in Chup, can behave independently of himself and is therefore his sidekick. Mudra himself is an able warrior skilled in the art of hand-to-hand combat. He is described as having green paint and exaggerated features covering his face; as being clad in bulky armor that increases his appearance of size; and as having eyes that are white at the pupil, grey at the iris, and black at upon the larger surface of the eyeball. Such eyes are common to all Chupwalas, and are entirely blind in bright light, being given their vision by the reflection of darkness from objects. Mudra is nearly mute, being able only to communicate his own name and the fact that he "speaks" by means of Abhinaya, a type of sign language used in classical Indian dance. His own name is said in the appendix to be the generic term for all signs used in this language. After the climax, Mudra becomes President of Chup. The question of whether or not he reciprocates Blabbermouth's infatuation is never answered.
Khattam-Shud: The villain of the story, whose name means "completely finished". He represents silence, and is therefore said to be invoked at the termination of every story told. As a character, he is the "Prince of Silence and the Foe of Speech" feared by most Guppees. He is the ruler of Chup, the Kahanian counterpart of Mr. Sengupta, and the founder of a religion whose supreme commandment is abstinence from speech. By the time the story begins, he has intensified his war against Gup and is conducting an operation by which he intends to block the source from which all stories are born, which is located at Kahani's south pole. To conduct this operation while simultaneously organizing the war against Gup, he has changed his shadow into an autonomous replica of himself, done the same to several of his assistants, and created a massive ark out of shadow, where his shadow-men synthesize "anti-stories" by which to ruin all the stories ever composed and construct a plug by which to clog the Source of Stories below the ship. These things are all ultimately destroyed when Haroun uses a substance called "wishwater" to turn Kahani around, so that Chup is illuminated by sunlight. The shadow-men, their ship, and all their equipment dissolve into oblivion, while the plug (which is solid) lands at the bottom of the ocean beside the Source of Stories, which then continues unblocked. The corporeal Khattam-Shud is destroyed when Chup Citadel, which is made of black ice, melts in the sunlight; during the dissolution of the citadel, the gigantic ice statue representing Khattam-Shud's religion collapses onto the religion's founder, crushing him.
Bezaban: Literally "without a tongue", this is the name of the ice statue located atop the Citadel of Chup, where it symbolizes Khattam-Shud's power. It is used as an object of worship by the Cult of Silence. Later, Bezaban is melted and collapses onto Khattam-Shud, killing him under its weight.
The Eggheads: Originally a derogative name for an enthusiast in some subject, the term here describes the technicians of Kahani, who are white-coated, completely bald, enthusiastic, cheerful, and intelligent. The Eggheads of Gup City are said to be the inventors of all "Processes Too Complicated To Explain", by which impossible feats such as Kahani's bizarre orbit, the creation of artificial happy endings for stories, and the transmission of "story water" to Earthly storytellers are easily accomplished. They are quite in awe of their superintendent, the Walrus, for his possession of a moustache.
Walrus: The superintendent of the Eggheads, distinguished from them by his possession of a small moustache which gives him his name.
Plentimaw Fish: Large, sharklike Angelfish living in the waters near Gup, which is built on several islands. The name is derived from their multiplicity of mouths, through which they constantly ingest the stories conveyed by the waters. Inside their bodies, the stories are then mixed, producing new stories that join the canon of all the stories ever told. It is never suggested that the stories they ingest are destroyed or weakened. A typical Plentimaw Fish is extremely talkative through all of its mouths, though pollution in the Sea of Stories can cause it to speak through only one at a time. Plentimaw Fish mate for life and always travel in pairs, which then speak in rhyme. The name is also used to assonate with Buttoo's statement that "there are plenty more fish in the sea", whereas the angelfish-like physique of the two recalls to Haroun's mind (and therefore to the reader's) Rashid's reply that "[one] must go a long, long way to find an Angel Fish", which Haroun can be said to have done by traveling to Kahani. The two Plentimaw Fish present in the story, Goopy and Bagha, travel with Haroun, Iff, Butt, and Mali (see below) to the Source of Stories, but are overwhelmed by the pollution and must stay behind the others. After the climax, they are appointed leaders of their species.
Mali: A 'Floating Gardener' composed of interwoven flowering vines and water plants that behave as a single organism. He is one of many, whose task is to prevent stories from becoming irretrievably convoluted and to cut away weeds that grow on the Ocean's surface. Floating Gardeners are divided into a hierarchy of classes, of which Mali belongs to the First Class; presumably the highest. At the denouement, he is made Head Floating Gardener. Mali, and presumably other Floating Gardners, is virtually invulnerable, being able to withstand any and all attacks made against him by the Chupwalas. Though normally taciturn by human standards, he is shown singing rhymes when defying the attacks, exemplified by the following:
"You can chop a flower-bush,
You can chop a tree,
You can chop liver, but
You can't chop me!
You can chop and change,
You can chop in ka-ra-tee,
You can chop suey, but
You can't chop me!".
Here, "ka-ra-tee" is probably a variant of "karate", a Japanese martial art invented on Okinawa. Mali, while singing, is shown using the vines that make up his body to destroy the Chupwalas' machinery that is used to poison the Ocean. His name literally means "Gardener", as is stated in the appendix.
Spoiler: Places:
The story begins and takes place partly in "a sad city, the saddest of cities, a city so ruinously sad it had forgotten its name", which is located beside "a mournful sea full of glumfish, which were so miserable to eat that they made people belch with melancholy". This city is thickly populated by people, of whom only the lead character Haroun and his parents are ever happy, while in the north of the city are factories wherein sadness is allegedly manufactured and exported. The factories produce air pollution that is only relieved during the monsoon, which also heralds the arrival of pomfret into the nearby waters.
The Dull Lake itself is the location of the Moody Land, a landscape whose weather changes to reflect the emotions of the people currently present in it. It is the place where the lead characters go at the behest of a corrupt politician, and where their adventures begin.
The larger part of the plot occurs on a fictional satellite of the Earth's, named Kahani, whose orbit is controlled by "Processes Too Complicated To Explain". These processes enable it to fly over every single point on Earth.
Kahani itself consists of a massive Ocean which itself is composed of an infinity of stories, each story taking the form of a current or stream of a unique color. The colors, therefore, encompass the whole visible spectrum and extend beyond into spectra that are not known to exist. Various islands and a continent are also shown on the moon. The name "Kahani" itself means "Story" in Urdu and Hindi, and is ultimately revealed to be the name of the sad city; a revelation that removes the sadness from the city's people.
Spoiler: Light/Dark
The Moon Kahani is, throughout most of the plot, divided into two sections equal in size, one of which is kept in perpetual daylight and the other in perpetual darkness. The daylight side is called Gup (meaning "gossip", "nonsense", or "fib" in Hindi) and the night-darkened side is called Chup (meaning "quiet"). Inhabitants of Gup value speech and are called "Guppees", meaning "talkative people", while inhabitants of Chup are stated to have historically valued silence and are called "Chupwalas", meaning "quiet fellows". At the South Pole of Kahani is a spring known as the Source of Stories, from which (according to the premise of the plot) originated all stories ever communicated. The prevention of this spring's blockage therefore forms the climax of the novel's own story.
The use of shadows in Salmin Rushdie's Haroun and the Sea of Stories is complex and intricate. The shadows themselves do not solely represent evil nor do they solely represent good. Although shadows range from many shades of gray, they do not exist in the extremes of light and darkness. Instead, they are combinations of light and dark. Therefore, the duality of shadows in the novel symbolizes the careful balance of good and evil.[s]
And I'll add this too because I fully expect LOST to conclude along similar lines in respect to names of people, places, and things.
Upon their return to Earth, Haroun and Rashid sleep until the morning wherein Rashid is to speak on behalf of Snooty Buttoo. Instead of speaking in praise, however, Rashid recites the story of Haroun's adventure, provoking the audience to depose Buttoo from his position. Rashid and Haroun then return to their home city, where they find that Soraya has discarded Mr. Sengupta in favor of her former life, while the city has ceased to be sad on account of its denizens remembering its name. Thereafter all conflicts are resolved. The novel concludes with an appendix explaining the meaning of each major character's name.
Location: In the hallway, pretending to play chess left-handed. "Why are you smiling?"
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Re: Desmond's Seed and the Quest for the Answers to the Universe.
I've only read one Salman Rushdie novel, Midnight's Children. It was absolutely brilliant. It changed my views on story-telling in general, was a superlative story, and taught me a lot of history in the process. I should really read more of his stuff.
At one point i thought there might be a connection between it and the Lost Monster Kiddos, cuz, well...
Spoiler: Midnight's Children basic plot spoiler
A lot of the characters in the book have, "Special powers."
But now i think not.
Nice post though. I enjoyed reading it.
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Desmond's Seed and the Quest for the Answers to the Universe.
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