Were Claire's Memories Real?
Throughout Episode 2.15, Maternity Leave, Claire has
flashes of memory about her time with Ethan and the Others
at the Medical Station. One of the most coincidental of the
memories is that in the nursery there is a mobile of Oceanic
airplanes just like the ones in Claire's dream before she was
taken by Ethan. Moreover the mobile plays "Catch a Falling
Star," the song she associates with her long-gone father and
which she asks the prospecitve adoptive parents to sing to her
bay-bee.
Now ever since the episode aired I've wondered, how could the
Others know about that mobile and that song? Did Smokey scan
Claire and inform them? Were they the ones trying to adopt
Aaron in Australia? Were they working with Malkin?
Well I think the answer may be much simpler than that, and it's
given to us in the episode. Libby tells Claire:
Claire, what you saw could be combining experiences of what
happened before the crash to the night you were having dreams
here on the island.
So while Claire was remembering things that did happen to her
in The Staff, I think she was also adding in pre-crash memories
and post-crash dreams.
Claire's time with the Others raises other questions as well
which I hope won't just be written off as faulty Claire memories.
First, what were they injecting in Claire? It was a liquid, not
an "implant" unless it's nanobots. :D
Next, why not keep Claire? Both Ethan and Alex state that they
were planning to keep the baby but not Claire. Does Claire's
willingness to give up the baby both pre- and post-crash make
her a "bad" person?
Finally, Alex's rescue of Claire -- Girl Scout goodness or
Ben's manipulation? I guess at a minimum it was Ben anticipated
therefore the implant.
Maternity Leave is one of my favorite episodes for its
on-Island flash and its paying off of things started many, many
episodes before. But there are still things I want to know.
Tuesday, November 06, 2007
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3 comments:
Ummmmm, I'm telling, you said nanobots!!! :o)
These are great questions! And I love the idea that perhaps Ben might have "allowed" Alex to free Claire, so that they could do that whole, "Claire's sick and I can save her" deal with Juliet. Wow.
And it certainly could be that Dr.Libby was right on with her diagnosis of Claire's dreams.
I agree that Claire is probably supplementing her memories with familiar things from her past. I wonder how many of the other strange coincidences we have seen in flashbacks contain inserts of some kind or other.
Also, that's a great question about not keeping Claire. The only reason I can think that they wouldn't want her was to raise Aaron as one of their children, like Alex, who would never know he had a mother from off the island.
I've always (that's hyperbole; always = since I became obsessed) wondered about the reliablity of the flashbacks especially in terms of details. It's hard to know exactly how to read these "memories" in terms of reliablity and also how they motivate the characters in real time. Some times they seem to be direct recountings of the past like the most recent one I watched with Sun telling Jin he was the infertile one. But most times it doesn't really feel like the character is "remembering" as they act on Island or what's more pausing on Island to remember.
The thing about not keeping Claire (or Danielle for that matter) that's really baffling to me is the matter of feeding an infant. I don't believe we've seen any Dharma infant formula, and as a sort of breast feeding fanatic myself, it really bugs me that the Others would eschew that source of nourishment for the infants for a year and then do away with Mom. It's also the reason I have not really feared for Claire's life on-Island either.
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