The MothThe moth is the obvious symbol of this story, so that's where we shall begin. Both moths and butterflies are of the same family, Lepidoptera. The species, like many insects, goes through several developmental stages, resulting in complete metamorphosis. After an egg is laid, a larva or caterpillar emerges, which may shed its skin several times as it grows. Eventually it enters a pupa or chrysalis stage, cocooned and stewing in its own juices, and dissolving almost utterly. The imago or adult creature emerges, with wings and antennae, ready to reproduce and begin the cycle anew.Lepidoptera are famously symbolic of Psyche, the beautiful mortal woman taken by Eros into Paradise, with only one rule to abide: She dare not see his face. Unable to resist, she lights a flame at their bedside one night, and is so taken by the beauty of her lover that she spills a drop of hot oil on him. He wakens, sadly, and asks why? She answers, "I had to know." Psyche awakens and Paradise is gone.Disconsolate, Psyche makes for a great river to end her misery, but she hears Pan playing his flute, and takes his counsel. She makes for the temple of Venus and dedicates herself to the Goddess, for her only hope of ever seeing Eros again is to become a goddess herself. She is set to impossible tasks, which she impossibly completes - sorting seeds from pebbles, procuring golden fleece, and retrieving water from the source of the River Styx. Her final task is to acquire the beauty cream of the goddess of the Underworld, Persephone. She returns with the beauty cream, but keeps it for herself rather than turning it over to Venus. Psyche opens the cream, and one deadly vapor emerges, ending Psyche's life. The gods decree that she has succeeded by claiming her own power, and Psyche becomes a goddess and weds Eros.In this context, Charlie's transformation from addict to hero is perfunctory. Suffering withdrawal, he enters the cave-in through a long dark tunnel and rescues Jack, the ostensible hero of Lost. Following a ghostly white moth, Charlie finds escape from the caves, emerging through the ground like a newborn. Even before this metamorphosis, Charlie is moth-like. He is like a moth to the flame, self-destructive and unable to resist temptation. He burns out quickly, losing fame and fortune and even his brother, who is more the butterfly to Charlie's moth. As his brother says, Charlie is "a lunatic".In his less destructive incarnation of the moth, Charlie is also drawn not just to the flame, but perhaps to the light of the sun itself, to idolizing the hero. The cave has already been established as the House of the Rising Sun, and Jack is the Rising Sun vis-à-vis his Opening Eye of Horus from the very first shot of the very first episode. This is Jack's cave. Charlie looks up to Jack and wants his approval - we see how distressed he is when Jack indicates that he's not needed. Later, deep in the cave, Charlie is reminded of confession, and asks Jack to play the role of "father", to hear his confession.Lord of the DanceCharlie's travel through the long dark tunnel and final emergence from the ground also indicates that the cave is the Divine Feminine, a nod to Sun's Opening Left Eye of the previous episode. Charlie is reborn, emerging from the womb. His status as "lunatic" is now child of the moon. And let us not forget Charlie's stepping on the beehive, which led us to the whole story of the Cave of Treasures. Through this and his experience of rebirth in the caves, Charlie becomes linked to Christian myths of resurrection. In this context, the cave is also the House of the Rising Son. It is no mistake that after emerging from this apt symbol, neither Charlie nor Jack is as dirty as they were before.The whole episode in the caves reminds me of my own religious pursuits, decidedly Goddess-oriented and wrapped up in the nomenclature of the "nature religion" of Wicca. In Wicca, aside from Goddess worship, the 4 elements are always invoked during ritual. Those elements are Earth, Air, Fire and Water, and all four elements make an appearance in The Moth.The Earth references are by far the most abundant. We have the caves, obviously, and the cave-in. Rocks are also referenced quite a bit - more mundanely towards the rocks that must be removed from the caves, but also in descriptions of Charlie. He is called a "rock god" thrice, and after rescuing Jack he receives kudos from Hurley: "You rock."Air is referenced three times. First, Charlie is exhorted to take a walk by Locke, who suggests that he needs some "fresh air". Next, Sayid describes how the tail section of the plane broke off while they were still in the air. Finally, Charlie and Jack have to make quick time out of the cave-in for as Hurley points out, "They're going to run out of air," a fact of which Jack is acutely aware.Fire is in play in two ways. First, Sayid's plan of synchronizing the antennas depends on using fireworks to signal each other. They are to fire off the rockets at five o'clock. A better invocation of fire comes at the end of the episode, when Charlie throws the last of his drugs into the campfire.Finally, water plays a small role as well. When Jack first sees Charlie in withdrawal, he thinks Charlie is dehydrated, and implores him to go drink some water. Later, Charlie brings a bottle of water to Jack trapped in the caves. They drink the water while Charlie recollects his faith and time spent in confession booths.Who's in Charge?Water gets another cameo: Again we see Sawyer reading Watership Down, a text which continues to drive Lost. This time its appearance foreshadows the cave-in itself, an event that happens late in the rabbit story to their new warren, The Honeycomb. The cave-in at Watership Down brings out the best in many of the rabbits, providing opportunity for heroism and leadership, and so too does the cave-in in Lost.We continue to see all kinds of leadership being exercised. Locke takes on the role of mentor yet again, shepherding Charlie through his metamorphosis. Michael takes on the role of foreman, directing the clearing of rocks at the cave and establishing the tunnel to Jack, thanks to his 8 years of experience in construction. Jack of course is continuing to lead the people to the caves, securing additional supplies from the beach without inconveniencing the people holding out for rescue. Sayid leads yet another small group in his efforts to track down the source of the Frenchwoman's transmission.An interesting allusion is drawn with Sayid. He is nicknamed Mohammed by Sawyer, and of course it's no accident. Mohammed was the creator of Islam, the principal religion of the Middle East. Mohammed's inspirations and prophesies came during his long stays in a cave (naturally) where he had retreated from his dissatisfying life in Mecca. At the age of 40, he prosyletized his new religion until his death nearly 23 years later, converting most of the Middle East.One of the principal rituals of Islam is known as Salat, where five times a day the dedicant supplicates himself to Allah. The prayers and prostrations are performed facing the city of Mecca, wherein lies the Kaaba, a large cube-like building surrounded by a mosque. The eastern corner of the Kaaba is the Rukn-al-Aswad, likely a meteorite known also as the Black Stone - its very blackness is said to be due to all the sins of the ages that it has absorbed. Sayid, a Muslim, is looking for a "source" which transmits a message about a "black rock."It's really too bad that he's whacked by a very large stick before he can finish his triangulation. Of course, it's another mystery for us. Who whacked Sayid?Listen (To What the Flower People Say)Other secrets of this episode are barely visible, or rather, barely audible. First, though, a note about the theme of music in this episode. Charlie's band, DriveShaft, is based on an actual band from England called Oasis. (Suggesting that the Island is an oasis? But I digress.) DriveShaft's big song, You All Everybody, is styled in the same musical style as many of the hit songs produced by Oasis. Furthermore, Oasis featured a pair of brothers who struggled with each other publicly, and one of those brothers was name Liam. Finally, the beginning of the episode opens on an Opening Eye, but on one of the "eyes" on Charlie's guitar, which he struggles to play well. Oh, and one last note: Jack calls himself a "broken record" for constantly saying that the caves are safer than the beach.Anyways, if we listen carefully, we'll pick up on another literary reference hinted at in the dialog:Kate: What we're doing... chasing some phantom distress signal... what are the odds of this working?Sayid: No worse than the odds of us surviving that plane crash.Kate: People survive plane crashes all the time.Sayid: Not like this one. The tail section broke off when we were still in the air. Our section cart wheeled through the jungle and yet we escaped with nothing but a few scrapes. How do you explain that?Kate: Blind dumb luck?Sayid: No one's that lucky. We shouldn't have survived.Kate: Sorry Sayid, some things just happen, no rhyme, no reason.Have you pieced it together? Perhaps another hint will help, from Charlie in the caves:Charlie: This place, it reminds me of confession, those little claustrophobic booths.It's a sly and understated reference to The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster, and one my own favorite childhood books. The story is about a very bored young boy named Milo, who finds in his bedroom one rainy day a tollbooth which beckons him to the Lands Beyond. He befriends a dog with a watch for a body named Tock and a dandy blowhard insect name The Humbug, and they become his companions in a heroic quest to rescue the princesses Rhyme and Reason from a castle in the air and return them to the Lands Beyond. They encounter all manner of strange characters: a conductor named Chroma who puts color in the world everyday; a boy named Alec Bings who sees through things and grows down rather than up; a Doctor Dischord who collects and creates new sounds with hispet smoke monster, The Awful Dynne;a King named Azaz who make meals out of words; a Mathemagician who minds and mines numbers.The encounter with the Mathemagician is particularly interesting. While touring the subterranean passages where numbers are dug out of the rock, the Mathemagician introduces Milo to "Subtraction Soup". This delicacy is only to be eaten when full, for it makes one hungrier the more one eats. Eat too much and soon you'll be nothing. This is a pretty good description of what it's like to be a heroin addict - the more you take, the more you want, and you can never have enough. Keep at it long enough and you waste away. Anyways, the Phantom Tollbooth derives much of its charm through its playing with numbers and words, and The Moth makes much use of numbers and wordplay.The number 3 comes up several times. Sayid forms a group of 3 people to set off 3 bottle rockets to time the powering up of 3 antennas in order to triangulate the source of the French transmission. In conjunction, Locke tells Charlie that he must ask for his drugs 3 times before he will give them back, and sure enough Charlie asks for his drugs 3 times. Charlie counts to three before re-setting Jack's dislocated shoulder. The number 5 also comes into play. Sayid's plan is to happen at 5 o'clock, which is repeated 3 times. (Charlie's brother Liam, in one of the flashbacks, tells a groupie to come back in 5 minutes.) The number 3 and the number 5 are repeated four times apiece.The number 8 comes up three times. The first time, Kate reminds Jack that they crashed 8 days ago. The second time, Michael says he has 8 years of construction work. The third time, when Charlie tries to convince the now-sober Liam to come back to the band, it's for an 8 week tour as an opening act.More interesting is the wordplay in this episode. Several words are repeated, and others are played against each other in a form of dualism or mirroring.Digging for GoldSawyer: Heard the doctor was vacating the premises. Thought I'd best lay claims to my new digs before somebody else did.Michael: We dig in here so the wall doesn't collapse.Locke: You see this little hole? This moth's just about to emerge. It's in there right now, struggling, it's digging it's way through the thick hide of the cocoon.Sawyer: So, he's a doctor, right? Yeah, the ladies dig the doctors.Kate: Why is nobody digging?Digging is featured prominently in this episode. A moth digs itself out of a cocoon, and Charlie digs himself out of a cave. Sawyer says the ladies dig doctors, and later the camp must dig a doctor out of a cave. The caves are a new home for many survivors, and Sawyer calls his new home "digs" - which used to be Jack's home until he moved to the caves. And I am digging for meaning and insight in the text of this episode, quite literally digging through transcripts. It's all quite satisfying, this digging. Oh, and don't forget... last episode, Kate refused to move to the caves - she didn't want to dig in.Feeling UsedJack: I packed everything I thought might be useful here without leaving the others shorthanded...Charlie: You just treat me like I'm some bloody child. Like I'm some useless joke.Liam: Face it, if you're not in this band, what the bloody hell use are you?Charlie: Yeah, you thinking I'm useless, and a junkie to boot.Jack: Useless? You're not useless. That took a lot of guts getting in here and trying to rescue me.Charlie is of course a drug user, and he has issues of feeling useful or useless. Charlie's issues spill out of him like the "useful" things Jack has packed from the beach spill out of the suitcase. This encounter with Jack early in the episode reminds Charlie of his days with Liam, and how Liam made Charlie to feel useless, after he is done using him to become a rock and roll god. No wonder Charlie, in his withdrawal delirium, mistakes Jack for his brother. The theme is echoed in the brief scenes with Shannon, where she's implored by her brother Boone to take over the bottle-rocket and antenna duties while he goes to help at the caves. Shannon has already demonstrated that she has issues of her own about feeling useless, which we saw a few episodes back when she uses Charlie to catch her some fish, effectively making Charlie her bait. This theme comes full circle when a boar chases down Charlie, only to get caught in one of Locke's nets. Locke says to Charlie, "You make excellent bait."Needful ThingsCharlie: Did you hear what I said? I want my drugs back. I need them.Jack: Charlie, I got it. Go take care of yourself, man. We don't need you right now.Boone: I think we need someone smaller.Jack: I need your help in this man.Michael: Hey Kate, you need to take a break.Charlie is driven by the desire to feel needed, to belong in an important way. When he is told by his brother Liam that he is no longer needed in the band, he turns to drugs, which become his overpowering need. Jack only needs Charlie once he's in trouble, pinned underneath a rock with a dislocated shoulder. Earlier he was told that we wasn't needed, that he should instead go drink some water to avoid dehydration. Kate is later told by someone else that she "needs" to take a break.Giving and TakingKate: Living like a parasite. Always taking, never giving.Priest: Well, we all have our temptations, but giving in to them, that's your choice.Charlie: I'm glad I could oblige. Now give me my bloody drugs.Jack: Charlie, I got it. Go take care of yourself, manJack: Sit down. Let me take a look at you man.Sawyer: Hell, give me a couple of band aids, a bottle of peroxide, I could run this island too.Liam: I'm just a clown with a pretty face that sings them. And you want to take away my chance to be somebody?Jack: Take my hand...Jack: I wouldn't have taken you for a religious man.Charlie: I used to be. Hey, you want to hear my confession? Might take a while.Charlie gives in to temptation time and time again. He gives in to becoming a rock god, he gives in to girls, and he gives in to drugs. Charlie caves in all the time. And when Charlie gives in, he's taking. He's taking drugs and taking chances. When Jack is taking, he's actually giving. Jack takes responsibility, he takes a leadership role, and in doing so he gives to his community, he gives his services. Sawyer, like Kate suggests, just takes and doesn't give. Locke, on the other hand, is giving more than taking. Yes, he takes Charlie's drugs, but he doesn't keep them. He gives them back. More important, Locke gives Charlie a choice, an opportunity to quit using of his own free will rather than waiting until it becomes fate.Priest: As we live our lives it's really nothing but a series of choices, isn't it?Charlie: Well, then, I've made my choice. I have to quit the band.Locke: If I did that you wouldn't have a choice, Charlie. And having choices, making decisions based on more than instinct is the only thing that separates you, from him.Charlie: I've made my choice. [Charlie tosses his drugs in the fire.]In looking at Charlie's choices, we see that the band and the drugs are just two sides of the same coin for him. It's the band that gets him into drugs, but more than that, it seems that both the band and the drugs are just avenues for Charlie to avoid his feelings of uselessness, rather than addressing head-on his desire to feel needed.More MirroringA lot of other words are presented which show two sides of the same coin; that is, we see a lot of words and ideas which mirror each other. Take strength and weakness, for example. Locke says that if he helped the moth emerge from its cocoon it would be too weak to survive, and that struggle is nature's way of conferring strength. Sawyer says Jack makes Kate weak in the loins; Jack suggests that some anti-anxiety medicine is too strong for Charlie's headache.Charlie calls Liam his "big brother", and Liam wants a shot at "the big time". Michael says they can't make the tunnel any bigger, and Sawyer says the difference between him and Jack "ain't that big." Kate sees Jack looking at her mug shot, and quips that she can take better pictures than that, and "smaller, too, if you want something for your wallet." Boone says they need someone smaller to fit through the tunnel.Sun says that it's too hot to wear something more discreet. Walt says that it would be cool to live at the caves. Charlie complains that it's "the heat" - the following of groupies - that tempts him. Liam says one of the groupies is cool.Michael says they have to go slow in removing the rocks from the cave-in. Charlie says the cave-in "happened so fast."Sawyer refers to the good doctor as "Saint Jack", but Jack disagrees: "I'm no saint," he avers. This is also a neat reference to another book, Saint Jack, by Paul Theroux. It's about an American pimp in the early 70's working the streets of Singapore, which is a city that encompasses an entire island. He's always making "bad" choices, but he redeems himself in the end.As we've seen before, mirroring and dualism are key themes in Lost. We've seeing cowardice played against heroism, fate and destiny and blink luck played against free will and making choices, a cave which is both a tomb and a womb, and of course the wonderful bits of "compare and contrast" hidden within and between our characters.Mirror Twins, EverywhereBy now I'm sure you've spotted the mirror-twinning in this episode, between Charlie and his brother Liam. At the beginning of their story, we see that Charlie is struggling with his faith, but he's clean, unlike his brother. Charlie is the songwriter, and Liam is "the pretty face." Charlie is becoming aware of what price he might have to pay to become "a rock god", and expresses his reservations: "Liam, it's not about you. It's... I love the band. It's not who I am. Sometimes I just get lost in it." Liam will not be deterred, and talks Charlie into going down this road by feeding his ego: "We can't do this without you. You are bloody Driveshaft."But Liam's depravity deepens. His drug use increases, he's the target of the "you rock" phrase from some groupie, and he begins to marginalize Charlie with stunts like taking over singing the popular chorus to their big hit, "You All Everybody." Liam makes an about face, and claims Driveshaft as his own.Charlie: Liam, you're killing yourself with this junk. You're destroying Driveshaft.Liam: I am Driveshaft. Nobody even knows who the sodding bass player is.Charlie looks in the mirror, and recognizing that he is lost, starts into his own drug use. This is the second time we've seen Charlie using while looking in the mirror, and we've seen Liam using drugs in the mirror as well. Their roles flip in the last flashback. Charlie is now the user, and Liam is clean. Charlie needs Liam's help to make the band work, but Liam refuses. This is all quite ironic, for Liam claims throughout the episode that he's "looking out" for Charlie, when in fact he's never looking out for Charlie but looking out for himself. Unlike Charlie, Liam will not sacrifice himself for his brother.It's no wonder, then, that Charlie begins to confuse Jack with Liam, for as he suffers through withdrawal Jack invokes words that Charlie has associated with his brother:Charlie: You just treat me like I'm some bloody child. Like I'm some useless joke.Jack: What are you talking about?Charlie: Charlie's not good enough to do this, Charlie's just in the way. Put Charlie onto that.Jack: Sit down. Let me take a look at you man.Charlie: Oh, you're going to look out for me, yeah. We'll look out for each other, that's how it is? I'm not interested.Jack: Charlie, just calm down, alright. You're not yourself.Charlie: You don't know me. I'm a bloody rock god.Charlie and Jack are also on mirror trajectories. In the Pilot episode, Jack goes back to save Charlie as they are running away from whatever it was that killed the pilot. Charlie doesn't reciprocate when Kate makes to go back after Jack moments later. Now, Jack is the one who needs rescuing, and Charlie actually comes through. In doing so, Charlie's position with Jack changes. First he's not needed, but now Jack recognizes that Charlie is not useless, that he has "guts". And do take note that Jack always calls Charlie "man":Jack: Go take care of yourself, man.Jack: Sit down. Let me take a look at you man.Jack: I need your help in this man.Jack: I wouldn't have taken you for a religious man.This is in contrast to Charlie's own perception of himself as a child, as a "baby brother", even as a son. In the last episode, Locke calls Charlie "son", and in this episode the priest calls Charlie "son". But when he asks Jack to perform a "fatherly" role by hearing his confession, Jack balks. (Interestingly, Jack twins a bit of Charlie's transference when he asks Charlie if the withdrawal symptoms have included "hallucinations" - Jack would very much like to believe that he himself was hallucinating when he saw his dead father leading him to the caves.)The man who really does play "father" to Charlie is Locke. Locke is the one who's paid the most attention to Charlie, for he is the first to recognize that Charlie's a junkie who's running out of junk. Locke is the one who sets boundaries with Charlie, refusing to give him his drugs back without learning some lessons first. Locke is the one who plays mentor to Charlie, by teaching him about The Moth. Locke is the one who displays pride in Charlie's choice to quite, exclaiming, "I'm proud of you Charlie. Always knew you could do it."Their roles are truly opposite each other, mentor and pupil, father and son. Locke is the one who was denied a Walkabout, only to have a walkabout that really hit home; Charlie is always trying to "walk away" from the band, and eventually "walks away" from his brother in the last flashback. Locke and Charlie are both cripples - Locke from his paralysis, Charlie from his addiction. Both of their episodes end with them burning their symbols of going nowhere - Locke's wheelchair in the fire of the fuselage, and Charlie's heroin in the cave campfire.