Wishing I had a Wizard and Glass To Figure Out LOST

Just like LOST, I'm now more than halfway through Stephen King's Dark Tower series, and I still don't know what's going on. Though I do think I have a better handle on Roland's quest than the quest of Ben or any of the 815ers. Things from book 4 Wizard and Glass that remind of LOST follow.

Guys, Where Are We?

First a brief summary of where we are in our quest for the Dark Tower. Roland, a gunslinger from Gilead has put together a posse of sorts to search for the Dark Tower. That group or ka-tet consists of Eddie, former heroine junkie from 1980s New York, Susannah, a woman who can't walk because she has no legs from 1960s New York, Jake, an 11-year-old boy from 1970s New York, and Oy, a billy-bumbler, a sort of dog from Mid-World. The group is currently riding on a monorail train named Blaine and they are engaged in a riddle contest. If the group wins the contest by stumping Blaine, Blaine will deliver them to Topeka without killing them. If Blaine wins by having all the answers he will kill them all by driving at rapid speed into a wall. Now, on to the interesting, at least to me, things.

Each One of Us . . .

One of the main themes of all these books is the concept of ka, a word that means most simply fate but also includes a notion of sovereignty and inevitability. But that doesn't mean who we are and how we act doesn't matter as Eddie points out to Roland when he tells the dour gunslinger "[y]ou can't help your nature." p. 60

"The gunslinger considered this carefully, and discovered something that was wonderful and awful at the same time: that idea had never occurred to him. Not once in his whole life. That he was a captive of ka--this he had known since earliest childhood. But his nature...his very nature..." p. 60

This concept of both fate and nature surround our LOSTies. Locke feels it is his fate to be on the Island, to protect and serve it, but he can't get past his giant patsy nature. Jack has known since childhood that he has to learn to let it go, but he can't.

This passage and Roland's view of ka particularly reminds me of Season 1 "a sacrifice the Island demanded" Locke:

"So [Roland] had done [made a choice], believing in his youthful arrogance that everything would turn out all right for no other reason--yes, at bottom he had believed this--than that he was he, and ka must serve his love." p. 429

Guys, When Are We?

Time and its unreliability, alternate worlds with both alternate wheres and whens, and doors to those worlds play a huge role in The Dark Tower series, but the LOST PTB have ruled out alternate worlds as an explanation for the show, so I won't dwell on that too much. But I will mention that this book includes Bermuda Triangle like places called thinnies which are implied to be doors between worlds. Ones appearance is attributed to an earthquake. Some similar opening could exist on the Island due to the volcano we've heard briefly about.

When Did You Ever Tell The Complete Truth?

The bulk of Wizard and Glass is a flashback like the one we in Meet Kevin Johnson. That is it is a flashback narrated by the character himself, so the question of the reliability of the narrator is certainly at issue. Interestingly parts of the flashback that Roland himself could not have participated in were shown to him in the crystal-ball-like glass, but the reliability of the glass's narration should be looked at skeptically as well.

Repeatedly the ball showed Roland and others only what it wanted to them to know in order to get them to act in a certain way, a different way than they might have acted had they had all the facts. Ironically it doesn't lie to them, but it misdirects by omitting key facts and revealing others. 

This selective revelation reminds me of Smokey's encounters with Locke and the dreams on the Island. The LOSTies have been shown some things and they take them to mean they should do one thing, when in fact if they'd had more information they might have done something else entirely. Think Charlie's kidnapping of Aaron.

Ben's refusal to reveal to the LOSTies all he knows acts similarly. As we've debated since the end of Season 3, given what he knows, of course Jack called the boat. No one has told him or shown him anything that would logically make him do otherwise. But as happens with Roland, selective revelation leads to certain actions and later to regret once all the facts are revealed, eh bearded future Jack?

Reliability of memory is also explicitly called out in the book in essentially the notion that it is the winners who write history. Roland and his friends are framed for a crime they didn't commit and Deputy Dave knows it. But as Roland remarks to himself: "It was just part of the frame, and none of these men believed much of it, Dave likely included. Although, Roland supposed, they would come to believe it in later years and tell it to their children and grandchildren as gospel." p. 498 It sounds a lot like Jack telling his O6 story so much that Kate thinks he actually believes it.

Flashes Before Your Eyes

The ability to see the future has been present explicitly in LOST since Season 3 and I believe that Ben has some ability in this as well. In Wizard and Glass we're given a supernatural explanation for a similar ability. It comes in the form of a "glass" which can show you other worlds. There were 13 of these glasses in all, and this particular glass, the pink one, could show you two things, other peoples' secrets as well as some parts of the future.

I know most people don't want to see Ben gazing into a crystal ball, but there is something interesting about using these balls which could come into play in LOST. You can't keep and use these balls all the time because they are alive and hungry. "One begins using em; one ends being used by em." p. 457 Instead of the glass serving you, you serve the glass. The ends and means become tangled.  

I could certainly see something like that happening on LOST. In fact it might explain the true nature of Ben and Jacob's relationship which could have begun by Ben serving Jacob, but clearly seems to be Jacob serving Ben at least until 815 crashed. Maybe something along these lines will lead to Locke's Island downfall as well.  

Some Final Minor Similarities:

In the flashback, 14-year-old Roland and his friends are sent to a backwater community to keep them out of a harm's way. But they describe this time as being sent by their fathers to "meditat[e] in Purgatory." p. 159

Cuthbert is a slingshot specialist.

There are remnants of the past civilization present in Roland's time, and his enemy, Farson is attempting to harness that civilization's weapons to his advantage. There are similar theories out there about Smokey, namely, that he is an older technology that we don't know how to control anymore.

The "wizard" of the book can appear to you as people from your past.

There's a reference to Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, in particular to how much could work could occur in a single night.

The entire last section of the book is a retelling of the scene in The Wizard of Oz where Dorothy's ka-tet encounters the Wizard in the Emerald City. The glass itself and what people see in it are very Wizard of Oz as well.

Roland has very Jack-like father issues. "[His father's voice] was the hardest voice, the one he so often heard in his troubled dreams, the one he so wanted to please and so seldom could." p. 675

And so I'm over halfway to the Tower! Hopefully before LOST ends I'll get there. With 2 incredibly lengthy hiatuses due before that occurs, I have all confidence that I will, but if not "there are always other worlds."