More LOST (Horizon?) Musings

Leading Two Lives



















Another interesting aspect of Lost Horizon is the dual nature
of the hero, Conway. Conway is an interesting combination of
LOST's Jack and Locke. Physically he resembles Jack, not yet 40,
in good health. And like Jack he's had an outwardly golden life,
school success, solid war record, respected in his work, in fact
viewed by his co-worker Mallinson as an outright hero. But
Conway has a much more Locke-like connection to Shangri-La.
He is the first of his group to meet the High Lama (a Jacob of sorts),
to have certain secrets revealed to him and to be told that his
group will not be permitted to leave. This is revealed to Conway
because his spirit connects with the place Shangri-La.

Conway must then lie, at least by omission, to his compatriots
about this fact. He muses:

He [Conway] needed equanimity, if only to accommodate himself
to the double life he was compelled to lead. Thenceforward, with
his fellow exiles, he lived in a world conditioned by the arrival of
porters and a return to India; at all other times the horizon lifted
like a curtain; time expanded and space contracted, and the name
Blue Moon [the mountain framing Shangri-La] took on a symbolic
meaning, as if the future, so delicately plausible, were of a kind
that might happen once in a blue moon only. Sometimes he
wondered which of his two lives were the more real, but the
problem was not pressing; and again he was reminded of the War,
for during heavy bombardments he had had the same
comforting sensation that he had many lives, only one of which
could be claimed by death.

Several things stand out in that passage. First there is the idea
that Conway must hide special knowledge he has been given.
Could Locke have received similar information during his first
"monster" encounter? We still don't know what he saw and how
he survived that, but only a few days later he destroyed the
transceiver and there's his explosion tour to account for as well.
Locke definitely doesn't share everything he knows or thinks
he knows with the rest of the LOSTies, nor does Ben, even with
his own people.

The next thing that hit me was the reference to the shifting of
time and space. I guess Conway is losing his foolishness as he
contemplates his Shangri-La life. Time is definitely extended in
Shangri-La. It seems that both in Shangri-La and on the Island the
inhabitants may no longer be enslaved to time, but what about
space? None of them can leave relatively small spaces. Conway got
it right when he said space contracted in Shangri-La. Is that true
of the Island as well?

Then there is the idea of having more than one life. Clearly the
castaways in both stories have pre- and post-crash lives, and
satisfaction with those lives is a theme that plays out in both stories.

Which leads to my final point. In the end as Conway is poised to
turn his back on his empty life in the "real world," no wife, no kids,
an indifferent career, and to inherit the fullness of life Shangri-La
has opened to him, but he rejects Shangra-La for a woman he loves.
And not only that, the woman has already chosen another man,
not Conway.

No, it is not this woman.















But, Conway shut off that part of his brain and emotions that heard
and understood what Shangri-La had to offer him and "was doomed,
like millions, to flee from wisdom and be a hero." At this point the
Jack in Conway clearly dominates, and as our vision of Future Jack
and Kate shows us the Jack in Jack dominated too.

And what happened to the true believers, the Lockes, the Bens?
Like at the end of Season 3, we don't know in Lost Horizon either.
But maybe Future Jack's desire to return to the Island which matches
Conway's will allow us to find out on the Island, if not in Shangri-La.