as sung by The AnimalsThere is a house in New OrleansThey call the Rising SunAnd it's been the ruin of many a poor boyAnd God I know I'm oneMy mother was a tailorShe sewed my new bluejeansMy father was a gamblin' manDown in New OrleansNow the only thing a gambler needsIs a suitcase and trunkAnd the only time he's satisfiedIs when he's on a drunkOh mother tell your childrenNot to do what I have doneSpend your lives in sin and miseryIn the House of the Rising SunWell, I got one foot on the platformThe other foot on the trainI'm goin' back to New OrleansTo wear that ball and chainWell, there is a house in New OrleansThey call the Rising SunAnd it's been the ruin of many a poor boyAnd God I know I'm oneas sung by Nina SimoneThere is a house in New OrleansThey call it the Rising Sun.And it's been the ruin of many a poor girl,And me, oh God, I'm one.If I had only listen to what my mamma saidI'd be at home todayBut being so young and foolish, my LordLet a gambler lead me astray.Now my mother is a tailorShe sews new blue jeansAnd my sweetheart is a drunkard, LordDrinks down in New Orleans.Now the only thing a gambler man needsIs a suitcase and the trunkAnd the only time he's satisfiedLong is when he's on a drunk.Somebody go get my baby sisterTell her to do never to do what I have doneBut shun that house in New OrleansThey call it the Rising Sun.Well, I'm going back to New OrleansMy race is almost wonYes I'm going backTo spend my life beneath the Rising Sun.
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(Date Posted:06/17/2007 19:21:02)
The House of the Rising Sun is a folk ballad of indeterminate origin, and is most popularly known from the hit version produced by The Animals in the early Sixties. Quite likely the melody comes from a traditional English ballad; folklorist Alan Lomax (whose explanation for the origin of the song is considered the most plausible among many in academia) posits that the extant lyrics were composed by a pair of Kentuckians, Georgia Turner and Bert Martin. The oldest recording of the song dates to 1934, by a Clarence Ashley, who claims he learned the song from his grandfather. This song has a history to it.
The phrase "House of the Rising Sun" is a euphemism for either a brothel or a prison. It may even refer to a real house in New Orleans, possibly a short-lived hotel on Conti Street in the French Quarter from the 1820's which used advertising with euphemistic reference to prostitution, or perhaps a building on the riverfront of the uptown Carrollton neighborhood owned by the Social Aid and Pleasure Club - one of the many krewes which now maintain the yearly Mardi Gras rituals which precede Lent. Neither building now exists. Folk singer Dave van Ronk (whose version of the song led to Bob Dylan "borrowing" the arrangement, which was subsequently "borrowed" by The Animals) claimed in his autobiography that he had seen pictures of the old New Orleans Prison for women, the entrance to which was decorated with a rising sun design. He considered this proof that the House of the Rising Sun had been a nickname for the prison.
Even the gender of the singer can change. Earlier versions of the song are often sung from the female perspective, a woman who followed a drunk or a gambler to New Orleans and became a prostitute in the House of the Rising Sun, or an inmate in a prison of the same name. From the male perspective, the song warns of the dangers of drinking and gambling, where the Rising Sun may be the house of debauchery where he loses himself.
It's a song that has more ambiguity and texture to it than appears at first, not unlike this episode of Lost, or indeed the whole series. Those stones Jack found may be black and white, but the show itself revels in ambiguity. We still have no idea why the plane crashed - broke apart in midair, actually - we don't know why Locke was in a wheelchair, what Kate did, what happened to the Frenchwoman, nor how that poor pilot ended up bloody and broken up a tree. We are faced with ambiguity in trying to establish a framework for understanding the events presented to us. With every unfolding wrinkle, the complexity only increases.
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(Date Posted:06/17/2007 19:26:46)
One thing that's clear in this episode is the theme of imprisonment. The Marshal's handcuffs make a quick entrance, and pretty soon Jin is secured to the fuselage after his attack on Michael, and he's left out in the sun for the whole day. The cuffs, formerly a part of Kate's apparel, are just the tip of the iceberg.
Through her flashbacks, we discover that Sun has been under the thumb of her father likely her whole life. From her educated, sophisticated and chic demeanor, Sun is used to maintaining a high standard of living. Her love for Jin complicates things for her. This guy is so far down the food chain that he has to waiter one of her father's events just to engage in a secret rendezvous. Sun is blind to the possibility of escaping her father's influence by, shall we say, living more frugally. Instead her bondage deepens as her husband becomes just another tool in the hands of the man who has such a tight hold on her.
Jin becomes lost in the employ of Sun's father. He was so charming and romatantic at first! He brought pretty white flowers and secret napkins in his courtship of Sun. He's willing to do whatever it takes to be with her, but he did not understand what he would have to do to gain her father's permission. Tethered by cell phone, the violence Jin performs jades him. He sounds like a slave when he says, "I do whatever he tells me. I do it for us." Sun and her lifestyle are quite a ball-and-chain for Jin. Really, he should be quite used to the feeling of being handcuffed to a fuselage in the hot sun on a lost beach.
The watch that Jin is supposed to deliver for Sun's father is another symbol of just how cuffed Jin is. Because of that watch, Jin beats up Michael to such an extent that he has to be arrested in the first place. He is still possessed by the violence that became a part of his life as someone's henchman, and still more possessed by the idea that he has some sort of honor to uphold in that twisted relationship.
Michael notices that even having a watch doesn't make sense in their situation: "Look, I get it. Hmm, right? It's the watch. Mine broke. I found this in the wreckage, and I figured, hey, why let a $20,000 dollar watch go to waste? Which is ridiculous since time doesn't matter on a damn island!" Many characters have watches besides Michael and Jin. We've seen Sayid and Hurley wearing watches at different times (Hurley's is covered with sand in his hand in that bracing opening scene from the first episode.) Locke wears his on his left hand and on the inside of his wrist; Charlie wears his watch on the right. In contrast, Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Walt don't wear watches at all. Sun has a watch, though it's plain in comparison to the expensive gold watch we see in her flashbacks. I personally detest wearing a wristwatch, feeling handcuffed to the clock.
Another form of bondage is shown, namely Charlie's addiction to heroin. His stash is running low, and every time he tries to get away for his fix, someone wanders by to spoil his privacy. Locke in particular vexes him, but then Locke is observant and has figured out what Charlie is up to. He finds the one thing that Charlie might want more than drugs - his guitar - and uses that as leverage to get Charlie to quit while he still has a choice in the matter. Interestingly, Locke proposes an exchange for Charlie to make. To get something from the Island, he claims, Charlie must give it something first. Give the Island his drugs, and the Island will give him his guitar. It's been 8 days since Charlie's played his guitar. Charlie makes his sacrifice, and in making this choice exercises free will and breaks his chains.
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(Date Posted:06/17/2007 19:27:32)
Gift-giving is well known to Sun. In all but the 4th of her six flashbacks, she receives a gift from Jin. First it's a white flower, then a diamond ring, then a new puppy (a Sharpei). As she prepares to leave her husband, she gets a home makeover, and finally in the airport she gets another white flower, which reminds her of the love she shares with Jin.
Sun does end up giving back to Jin, though. It's quite a sacrifice for her, and an ironic one at that. In order to leave her husband and family by escaping to America, Sun learns English. This is kept secret, of course (and it wouldn't be Lost without secrets!) English is the key to her escape, but in the end she is bound by love. Going against the instructions of her home decorator and secret confidant, 11:15 comes and goes and Sun finds herself unable to leave the airport and get in the car sitting outside in front of a bus (which just happens to have a yellow rabbit on its side.) Is it a coincidence that that during this scene, our other character with daddy issues is pleading with the ticket agent to let him take his dead father's corpse to Los Angeles?
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(Date Posted:06/17/2007 19:29:00)
Sun's secret can't stay hidden, despite her best efforts. Imagine, all this time, she's been listening to everyone's conversations on the Island and actually understanding them, contrary to public opinion. What was once conceived as her ticket to a clean slate, a new life out from under the thumbs of men, must be used to free her husband instead. Sun outs herself to Michael, much to his shock and surprise. She convinces him to give the watch back to Jin. Through English, Sun ends up perpetuating her relationship with Jin rather than ending it.
Language and ethnicity is certainly an issue for Sun and Jin, and especially for Jin now that we know Sun does understand the people around her. Jin is not so lucky, for his lack of English estranges him from the rest of the group, an extra layer of being lost on a lost island. This is heightened for us, the audience, through the judicious use of subtitling. When Jin and Sun speak Korean with each other, with people who understand them, we are privy to these conversations as well through the subtitling. When Jin or Sun speak Korean and someone doesn't understand them, we are given the same position by the lack of subtitling. It really is a very clever conceit of the show. Our lack of knowledge of the Far East is further exposed by funny comments from the like of Hurley, who refers to them as Chinese, or even from the title of the episode - Japan is known as the land of the Rising Sun.
Secrets are an allusion to bondage in of themselves. A secret is simply information held in captivity. As we've seen before and again, many of our characters have secrets, some slowly being unearthed. Charlie's secret drug use is exposed, as is Sun's knowledge of English. Kate's prior status as a felon is echoed in her conversation with Jack - she jokes that his tattoos indicate he's a "hard core" spinal surgeon, while Hurley referred to Kate as "hard core" back in Tabula Rasa.
Charlie's other secret, which he's happy to share with anyone who cares, is that he's a rock star. Locke displays some cultural acumen and observance when he reveals to Charlie his knowledge of DriveShaft, going so far as to proffer his opinions on their limited work.
A couple of other echoes from popular culture resonate in this episode through nicknames. Charlie calls Locke "the Great White Hunter," a reference to the "Lost World" genre of literature. The first of the Great White Hunter in this genre was H. Rider Haggard's Allan Quatermain, who first appeared in King Solomon's Mines. The Lost World genre includes Edgar Rice Burrough's The Land That Time Forgot, Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, and even Edgar Wallace's King Kong.
James Hilton's novel Lost Horizon had great popular success in using the genre as a takeoff for popular philosophy and social comment, an introduced the name Shangri-La, which became a popular commonplace for the idea of a Lost World as a paradise. It has a lot of resonances with Lost - airplanes, being stuck somewhere, life-extension, heroism, a place not easily found, myriad references... It's a real treat and I highly recommend it.
This is echoed further with Sayid's nicknames - Omar, courtesy of Sawyer, and Sheriff, courtesy of Michael. This pun evokes Omar Sharif, the famous actor and bridge commentator, who first rose to stardom in the West with his appearance in Lawrence of Arabia, a story of Western hegemony in Africa, a common "great white hunter" theme. The phrase - though often used in parody or jest - came to symbolize the discourse of colonial power and dominance of western colonial powers over other parts of the world before the dismemberment of these powers after World War II.)
Jack's got secrets, that's for sure. He refuses to tell Kate what his tattoos are all about. When asked how he found the cave, he doesn't say anything about his fatherly visions - he attributes it all to "luck." He's reluctant to discuss his feelings for Kate with the nosy Hurley. He doesn't say boo about those black and white stones he finds on Adam and Eve. No one seems to notice that the big wound on his left side, which Kate deftly sewed up in the pilot episode, seems to be completely healed. Finally, Jack maintains the secret of the Frenchwoman's transmission, which Locke doesn't know about yet. Look at the scene where Kate and Jack find the skeletons in the cave. Charlie, who knows about the transmission, is less than surprised: "Oh, so these are the people who were here before us?" Locke looks surprised and curious, while Kate and Jack exchange glances as Charlie stumbles to keep this information less than public.
Kate still has secrets. She still hasn't told Jack what it was that she did. And now it seems it's too late for Jack to find out. Which is really too bad for Jack if you ask me.
Jin has secrets. He does things for Sun's father, but he won't tell Sun what it is that he does. Jin has blood on his clothes and on his hands, which isn't a very good sign if you ask me.
Michael and Walt have secrets, but theirs are different. It's more a matter that they don't know each other. Finally Michael succeeds in establishing legitimate authority with Walt. Michael, the author of Walt's creation, knows that Walt was born on August 24th. Walt doesn't know his father's birthday, and it finally dawns on him to respect this man.
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(Date Posted:06/17/2007 19:30:03)
Respect is hard-won on this Island. These people are, after all, strangers to each other. They like the idea of Jack as their leader, but the first questionable suggestion is immediately contested.
Jack wants to lead the people to the caves, and has many reasons for his position: "Unlimited supply of fresh water; tree canopy keeps the temperature down, shields out the sun; the openings are narrow, easier for protection against predators. We don't need to bring the water to the people. We need to bring the people to the water. I think we could live here." Sayid, the likely second in command on the beach while Jack is away, prefers to keep everyone on the beach. His position is more plain: "Our best hope of survival is in being spotted by a plane or a ship, and for that we need to organize everyone to keep that signal fire burning while others scout the island for supplies. Digging in anywhere else is suicide."
Kate end up in a tugging match between the two, weakly chiming in a comment about the water supply in vague support of Jack's position. She is quite unconvincing, and her face betrays her reluctance throughout the episode. Like the beehive that Charlie steps on, the camp ends up being split. Jack takes a group to the caves, while Sayid maintains a group on the beach in hopes of rescue. Sayid ends up being as stubborn as Jack.
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(Date Posted:06/17/2007 19:30:58)
On the subject of the beehive, Charlie is right to be surprised that it's in the ground.
Hornets would be more likely to build a paper nest on the ground than bees, but Locke seems pretty sure that they're bees, not hornets. Let's take Locke at his word, and look into these bees more closely. The first obvious symbolism of the beehive is that it represents the state of the camp, and Charlie's splitting the hive foreshadows Jack splitting up the survivors. Don't forget, the warren built by the rabbits in Watership Down happens to be called The Honeycomb.
The symbolism of the bees goes deeper than a rabbit warren. In the ancient Near East and throughout the Aegean world, bees were seen as a bridge between the natural world and the underworld. Bees were carved on tombs. The Mycenaean Tholos tombs even took the form of beehives. Ancient priestesses were likened to bees. Bees are symbols of industriousness, of sociality, and rebirth.
A myth from the ancient Egyptian city of Heliopolis -- City of the Sun, but known as Annu or Iunu in Egyptian, and which is now located in a suburb of modern Cairo -- is that the sun-god Ra was self-generated, having spontaneously arisen from the primordial Waters of the Nun. After his self-generation, Re began to generate other gods.
In a lesser known tradition, and one that the priests of Heliopolis themselves are said to have taught as part of their allegorical mysteries, states that the goddess Neith was the first deity that emerged from the Waters of the Nun, making her the foremost of the Egyptian Gods. She became Virgin Mother of the Sun by giving birth to Ra, who appeared as a child on the horizon. She granted the power of disseminating Light to Re through the vehicle of the Sun, then in the form of a bee flew off to the place where the city Sais was to be in order to establish her cult and temple there. The Temple of Neith in Sau is traditionally known as the House of the Bee.
The bees also tie into ancient Christian mythology. The fact that the bees are found near a cave in which we find skeletons dubbed Adam and Eve is not coincidental. This is a reference to biblical Apocrypha, works which have been rejected or declared non-canonical by various church authorities.
The particular works referenced here are The Book of the Bee and The Book of the Cave of Treasures, and they serve multiple symbolic purposes. First, they remind us that most myths have many variations, that myths change over time. Lost is a show that likes to take myths and apply them in novel and unexpected ways. The Book of the Bee, written in the 1200s by Bishop Solomon, of Iraq (echoing the Great White Hunter as well as Sayid's place of birth) has many parallels and likely draws from The Book of the Cave of Treasures, written by Ephraim the Syrian in the 4th century. They are related to The Book of Adam and Eve, the collective name of several apocryphal books of their tale.
The whole point of The Book of the Bee and the Cave of Treasures was to trace a direct lineage from Adam through the patriarchs to Christ, while also validating the lineages of Eastern kings. The Cave of Treasures in particular details how after expulsion from Paradise, Adam and Eve end up in a cave where they rebuild their lives. It is there that they have their many progeny, and where they are finally buried. This indicates that the caves that Jack finds have a long and ancient history. The caves also represent a place for new beginnings for Jack and his flock, although a place outside of Paradise.
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(Date Posted:06/17/2007 19:50:15)
Jack finds a couple of stones in a pouch on one of the bodies. The two stones - one white, one black - invoke the theme of black and white again, like we saw in Pilot 2 with Locke explaining Backgammon to Walt (a game of Mesopotamian origin). They represent a sort of dualism, perhaps not unlike the philosophy of Bishop Solomon, who was a Nestorian. The Nestorian philosophy states that Christ was actually two entities or essences - there was Christ the man, and Christ the Holy Spirit, and these two essences did not mingle or merge yet were both present and represented in the life of Christ. Such a philosophy isn't so much dualistic as it seems - the symbol of the Tao might more accurately capture its flavor - two sides to everything, but working in conjunction more than opposition.
All of which is a nice segue into my favorite Lost topic - Mirroring.
This episode uses a lot of mirroring in telling its tale. What we think we know of our characters and the story gets turned inside out. Let's start with Jin. Up until now, Jin has been portrayed quite unsympathetically. He comes across as a domineering ass, ordering Sun around and being quite particular about how she presents herself. But through the flashbacks, we see that this was not always the case. He was originally a sweet romantic who appreciated the value of a simple flower. His problems begin when his sense of honor leads him down a rabbit-hole, by dictating that he get permission from Sun's father to marry her. He ends up being employed as a thug, a mirror opposite of who he is, and beautifully drawn out in the scene where he washes blood from his hands in the bathroom, reflected in a dimly lit mirror while he emotionally pushes away his true love.
Sun, on the other hand, has been portrayed as more the innocent than she actually is. On the Island she wears drab, plain clothes, but we see she is quite familiar with the rich and colorful garb of the well-to-do social debutante of sophistication and intelligence. We see that she is not exactly the dutiful submissive - she was, after all, planning to leave Jin and strike out on her own. She keeps secrets as well as anyone.
The symbolism of the sun is even mirrored in this episode. It's titled "Rising Sun", indicated that Sun is on the rise and has been for some time, preparing to become an independent person. But the Rising Sun is also a symbol of compromise or imprisonment, from the song title. And many of the references to the sun in this episode are not kind. Jack likes the caves because they keep the sun out. Sayid plans to leave Jin out in the sun, right after he says he himself is dying of thirst. Jack says that staying on the beach in the sun with no water is suicide. Even the drug addict, Charlie, is referred to as "son" by Locke.
The most interesting mirroring is even more subtle - the mirror twinning of Kate and Sun. We see Kate facing many of the same situations as Sun. Like Sun, Kate is used to getting attention. Charlie makes an offhand remark about her cup size, Sawyer's always hitting on her (doesn't he have just the cutest dimple?) and even Sayid vies for Kate's loyalty. But Jack flips on her. At the beginning of the episode, they flirt while discussing (or not discussing) his tattoos. He shifts when they get to the caves, like he's off in his own world. He wants to settle down, move into the caves, and Kate isn't into this at all. Jack doesn't notice, which bugs Kate even more, as we see in the scene when she thinks he's checking out her body, when he's really thinking about why the caves are so good.
Jack assumes that he and Kate are together, which also bugs Kate. When Jack talks about convincing the camp to move to the caves, he's always saying "we" - assuming himself and Kate. Kate reminds him that he hasn't convinced her yet, but he's not paying attention.
Kate ends up being on the opposite trajectory than Sun. Whereas Sun is considering leaving a man who she ultimately sticks with, Kate is considering sticking with a man that she ultimately abandons. Why is Kate this way? Jack suspects it has something to so with her past, but Kate isn't talking. But we do get some clues. Kate says, "I just can't... dig in..." She says, "I don't want to be Eve." So instead, she will be Lillith, apocryphally known as the real first wife of Adam, made out of the same clay as him, an equal who does not submit, who goes off on her own. The irony is all the more delicious seeing that Kate is played by Evangeline Lily.
The episode's structure reinforces this mirror-twinning. This is the second time an episode has ended with the song on Hurley's discman becoming the soundtrack that we hear. The first episode to do this was Tabula Rasa, Kate's flashback episode. The handcuffs that Kate used to wear are now worn not by Sun but by her husband. Both Tabula Rasa and HOTRS have the phrase "hard-core" - the former in reference to Kate, the latter a reference from Kate. Finally, Tabula Rasa did not begin with Kate's opening eye, unlike the episodes featuring the flashbacks of Jack and Locke. But unlike those opening eyes, both right eyes, this episode's opening eye is Sun's left. The opening right eye is likened to the rising sun, to sky gods and divine masculinity; the opening left eye is likened to the rising moon, to the underworld, to the divine feminine.
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Locke is also shown with a mirror, a shard with which he uses to help him shaving. When the light reflects off his mirror and on to his face, it highlights his right eye, which is closed; the left eye is open and comparatively in shadow. Locke's open eye is associated with shadow.
In Pilot 2, during the Backgammon scene, Locke holds the black piece up to his right eye, and the white piece up to his left eye (and which is twinned in Claire's dream in Raised by Another.) In Walkabout, it's his right eye that's the "opening eye" opening shot.
Whether it's the right eye or the left eye that's "open" for Locke, it's linked to dark instead of light.
Locke is the one who's shown with reverse symbolism - black with the right eye, white with the left eye in Pilot 2, which is repeated in Raised by Another - in Walkabout, it's Locke's right eye which is an opening eye. Whether it's left or right, Locke's "open eye" in season 1 is linked to darkness.
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(Date Posted:06/17/2007 20:14:48)
In the 4th flashback, the one without a gift, we instead get a mirror. Jin comes home, he's got blood on his hands and clothes. He goes into the bathroom and starts washing. Sun follows him in. We get a clear shot of them both in the Mirror. This is the point at which Sun decides to leave - a reversal of a basic character trait we've seen in her, the impulse to stay.
In the 5th flashback, Sun meets with her "interior decorator" and they go to the bedroom. There is a mirror on the dresser, but we barely see it. This is where we learn a really important secret - Sun learned English as part of her plan to leave Jin! Also, this is where Sun is told to repeat the *time* that she's going to leave Jin. Contrast this with Michael's statement that *time* doesn't matter on the Island.
In the 6th flashback, Sun is in the airport, getting ready to leave Jin. In the background, we see the escalators going up and down, and reflections of the escalators going up and down in their glass handrails or in the large sheet glass separating the ticket area from the buses. Sun changes her mind, and stays with Jin.
