If you haven't heard of a book by Flann O'Brien titled 'The Third Policeman', there's a good chance you'll want to know more about it after tonight's episode of Lost. O'Brien's book, a "comic novel about time, death and existence" (Amazon quote), will reportedly be a prominent item in the episode. The book features bizarre people and locations, one that may sound familiar: a vast, underground chamber called "Eternity." There's a Boston Globe article with a spoilery look into the book's ending, which once again lends some support to one of the Lost endgame theories.Lost and The Third Policeman
If you haven't heard of a book by Flann O'Brien titled 'The Third Policeman', there's a good chance you'll want to know more about it after tonight's episode of Lost. O'Brien's book, a "comic novel about time, death and existence" (Amazon quote), will reportedly be a prominent item in the episode. The book features bizarre people and locations, one that may sound familiar: a vast, underground chamber called "Eternity." There's a Boston Globe article with a spoilery look into the book's ending, which once again lends some support to one of the Lost endgame theories.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
10-05-2005 @ 3:15PM
Adam Rakunas said...
FYI: the link to the Wikipedia entry is broken.
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10-05-2005 @ 3:19PM
Keith McDuffee said...
Thanks! Fixed it.
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10-05-2005 @ 5:07PM
Marion Paige said...
Not to beat a dead horse, but, a "Jacob's Ladder Ending" is compatible with the Writers saying the survivors are not dead nor in purgatory. In Jacob's Ladder, Jacob was neither dead nor in purgatory, he was alive and dreaming that he had survived Vietnam and that he made it home.
In other words, the survivors are NOT dead yet, they, or at least one of them, is in the process of dying. This then would lead to the question of WHOSE DREAM are we seeing? I have to vote for Matthew Fox being the dreamer. But, get this, what if the dream is the dream of the wife of Matthew Fox' character, the woman who was in the car accident? Doesn't it make perfect sense that a paralyzed woman would dream that she was able to walk again and that he married the doctor who made it happen?
It would be so perfect if the dream is that of the ex-wife/car victim, this would again make the writers correct in saying that the survivors are not dead. The survivors would not be dead because they never were on the plane in the first place.
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10-05-2005 @ 11:59PM
Ken said...
Along the lines of a plotline borrowed from another movie, would be 1965's "Dr Terror's House of Horrors" starring Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and Donald Sutherland (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059125/).
I saw this movie back as a kid on tv and bought the video years later because I liked the old Hammer horror flicks. Anyway, the scenario, from IMDB is:
Five strangers board a train and are joined by a mysterious fortune teller who offers to read their Tarot cards. Five separate stories unfold.
Substitute plane for train, and increase the 5, make Locke the fortune teller.... without going too much into Dr Terror, it goes along the purgatory route. I thought of it during Season 1 and since it is not well known, thought I would toss it into the mix. Another one similar would be 1945's "Dead of Night" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0037635/) with a similar LOST feel to it.
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10-06-2005 @ 12:01AM
Seth said...
The Turn of the Screw also gets some mention in this episode. Both books feature unnamed narrators and some very fantastical elements/storylines.
More here: http://www.mostlymuppet.com/archives/2005/10/05/lost-the-third-policeman-and-the-turn-of-the-screw/
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10-06-2005 @ 5:35PM
Elizabeth McKinstry said...
Umm, no book was in evidence. Or did I miss it?
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10-06-2005 @ 12:30PM
kajira said...
The Third Policeman was no where on this show! What's up wit dat? And it's not yet been addressed on TV Squad!!
What's up???
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10-06-2005 @ 12:37PM
Travis said...
Umm, hello...!!!??? Weren't you paying attention last night? When Desmund figure that there was no hope for repair the PC and started to gather belongs to get out of the hatch, the camera panned by and showed about 2/3 of the "The Third Polioceman" book. Watch it again. You'll see it.
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10-06-2005 @ 12:37PM
Keith McDuffee said...
It was there, but it's hardly enough to dedicate a post about. It was in a quick scene when Desmond was quickly grabbing stuff for his island overnight bag. You can see the cover just like the image above, and the book is clearly opened as if he as recently reading it.
Yes, I'm disappointed and a bit miffed that the publishers of the book made it sound like it was a HUGE part of the story. Now they're laughing all the way to the bank.
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10-08-2005 @ 1:16AM
Quentin Charles said...
Keith--I think you're missing the point of Third Policeman and how Lost functions as a show. A lot of vital clues are shown on screen for a second, and left to the viewers to figure out why it was there.
Having read the Third Policeman after hearing about its connection to Lost, I think it's obvious why the book was on there--and it is important to the plot!
Notice that the book was open on the bed. From rewatching this, I believe the book was open to a scene in which one of the policeman show the narrator a series of nested boxes. (That publishing guy mentioned something about this in the Boston Globe article.) I can't explain this fully, but I believe that based on the video and what we learned from Desmond, the hatch is one of 6 experimental labs on the island dealing with different sciences: meteorology, parapsychology, psychology, biology, and sociology.
Obviously, putting the Third Policeman together with this information, the hatch is one lab (psychology?) inside of another lab--the island--where a social experiment re: utopian societies is being played out. There may be more boxes/labs!
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10-12-2005 @ 12:39PM
Megan said...
Apparently there's something to be seen in the first words of pages (you guessed it) 4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42. I don't know what it is, as my local library has a very old (but not first edition) copy, but I hear it's something to check out.
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