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Introduction to the Notebook Michael Hanttula's 'LOST' Notebook
Notes on the Inhabitants of the Island

Damaged Body Parts

  • Marvin Candle
    • (in Dharma Orientation film) is either missing a hand or has a severely damaged arm
  • Ray
    • (the Austrialian who turned in Kate) in had an unusable arm
  • Montand
    • a member of Danielle’s team, lost his arm in the “Dark Territory”
  • Sam Toomey’s Wife
    • When Hurley went to visit the wife of the man that used “the numbers” to count beans, she was missing a leg.
  • Hibbs
    • the guy that conned Sawyer into killing the man he thought was responsible for his parent’s death was missing a finger. (unconfirmed… anyone else notice?)
  • Unknown
    • The glass eye found in the “Arrow Complex” references that somebody on the island might have an eye missing.

Emerging Themes

There are a number of emerging/continuing themes on the show, this list may serve as an overview of these concepts…

  • Black & White
  • Books
    • References to the stories/themes of Books
  • Artwork/Imagery
    • Importance of various works of Art
  • Religious/Philosophical Imagery
  • Similarity to names of Scientists & Philosophers
  • Mythology
    • Names of the Dharma Initiative Complexes and various items around the island references to Greek gods/mythology:
    • Apollo Bars
    • The Complexes relate to the attributes of Apollo (swans, wolves, dolphins, bows and arrows, a laurel crown, the cithara (or lyre) and plectrum.)
    • The Hanso Foundation site offers interaction with a character named ‘Persephone’ (a Greek goddess, “she who destroys sound,” Queen of the Underworld)
  • Forgetfulness
    • Ana Lucia made a comment that the “Survivors of Flight #815” are forgetting what happened to them (in regards to why they would need to form an “army”)
    • The Survivors of Flight #815 keep mixing up Scott & Steve (forgetting which one is dead)
    • But, there’s also a general sense that the islanders don’t spend too much time thinking about the events that transpire on the island (the monster comes & goes; people are taken, etc. and there is usually very little discussion about these things)
  • Good vs. Evil
    • A lot has been discussed about the core nature of various characters (Jack, Locke, Sawyer, Kate, etc.) as well as entire groups (for example, ‘The Others’ are usually thought to be “evil,” but they consider themselves “good.”)
  • Daddy Issues
    • Many characters on the island have (or have had) issues with their father.
    • Jack: his father was a tough-loving alcoholic, whose drinking affected his medical practice (in which Jack has to intervene)
    • Kate: hated her father and, eventually, killed him (leading to her life on the run)
    • Locke: his father abandoned him, became reacquinted with him; douped him out of a kidney; then abandoned him again.
    • Sawyer: His father killed his mother then himself in front of Sawyer (when he was young)
    • Jin: Had issues with his own father (embarassment of his blue collar trade) and with his wife’s father (who had him perform questionable & violent services while in his employ)
    • Sun: upset with the questionable & violent nature of her father’s work.
    • Michael & Walt: Walt only recently discovered that Michael is his father.
    • Charlie: his father did not seem very supportive of him (or his career in music) in one of Charlie’s flashbacks.
    • Aaron: we don’t know who Aaron’s father is, but we do know he abandoned Claire & the unborn Aaron
    • Shannon: one of the earliest flashbacks of Shannon’s revealed the death of her father (which seemed to prompt a change in her behavior/psyche)
    • Hurley: As far as we can tell, Hurley’s father is non-existent (where the rest of his family members seem to be very important to him). But, since has yet to manifest itself as an “issue” for him.
  • Salvation
    • Many of the characters seem to be concerned with salvation on the island, care to add to this list?
    • Eko has taken on the role of a priest on the island, even though he was only one “on paper” off the island
    • Eko has noted that “there are many ways one can be saved”
    • Many characters (Sayid, Ana Lucia, Henry Gale) refer to themselves as “dead already”
    • Charlie’s destruction of his heroin stash could be a form of salvation (considering he’s an addict & all…)
    • Charlie went to great lengths to try & baptize Aaron (the task was eventually performed by Mr. Eko, at which point he also baptized Aaron’s mother Claire)
  • Reincarnation/Missing Bodies
    • Bodies of the deceased seem to disappear from the places in which they were left.
    • Later, individuals connected to the deceased have visions of them (alive) on the island.
    • Thus far, only applies to people who have died off of the island
    • Missing bodies include: Jack’s Father (missing from his coffin) & Mr. Eko’s brother (although Eko originally found his brother’s body in the drug-smuggling plane in which he died, when Eko returned to find the plane, his brother’s body was missing)
  • **LIST JUST BEGUN** Please submit your own to add to this list

Hanso Foundation

Things to be sure to do when considering the Hanso Foundation

  • Call the Hanso Foundation: 1-877-HANSORG (426-7674). Try various extensions. Call a few times. Try the same extensions a couple times.
  • Visit TheHansoFoundation.org: sign-up for the newsletter; send Joop a message.

Information on Show-related Websites

  • The Ocean Air Flight 815 Seating Chart
    • Oceanic-Air.com has these hidden messages posted on the homepage:If anyone should find this message, please get word to Sandra Rafflethorpe of Palm Avenue in Lewiston, Idaho that her sister, Sally is alive and stranded on an island somewhere in the South Pacific. Please send help soon. Things are bad. And they’re getting worse…
      SallyRobert D. West, of Santa Barbara, California, USA survived a horrific plane crash and is stranded on an island somewhere Northeast of Australia and Southwest of Hawaii. In the event that I am never found, please forward word of my fate to parents, Mr. and Mrs. John West, of Tucson Arizona. Thank you.
      Rober
      t
  • The Hanso Foundation
  • Sublymonal.com

Location of the Island

  • “1000 miles off course” from Sydney to Los Angeles, the plane turned to head for Fiji
  • 6 hours into the flight

References to Black & White

  • Various Uses & References to Black & White within the world of LOST:
    • Playing of Backgammon, Locke holds up the backgammon pieces for Walt and states: “two players, two sides, one is light, one is dark.”
    • Stones on the bodies found in the cave, in a pouch.
      One black stone, one white stone.
    • When Claire has her nightmarish visions/dreams,
      one is of Locke with one white eye & one black eye
    • The glasses made for Sawyer are a fusing of two
      frames: one white & one black
    • The plume/tower of smoke that supposedly signals that “the others” are coming is black. (The same tower of smoke went up before “the others” took Danielle’s daughter Alex.)
    • The “monster” is, apparently, a wisp of black smoke
    • The polar bear was white (and, just for the record: polar bears have black skin)
    • Jack’s suit in the first episode was black & white
    • Charlie’s shoes (Vans?) that he hid his drugs in had a black & white checkerboard pattern.
    • Jack chooses “standard black” as the thread color for his stitches.
    • In the first episode, Jack passes a white shoe hanging from a tree (yes, I know this one’s a bit of a stretch)… with a black lining.
    • The horse the Kate sees in the jungle is black
    • The rocks that Bernard was using to make an “SOS” sign on the beach were black.
    • The Dharma Initiative logo has black graphics over a white background
    • NOTE: A lot of people have written in about Rose & Bernard… but neither is actually black or white.

Repetition of Names

  • Certain names seem to be repeated across various characters
  • Danielle
    • Rousseau’s first name;
    • the name of the girl that died during an operation performed by Jack’s father (while he was drunk)
  • Brian
    • name of Walt’s step-father
    • name of Shannon’s boyfriend in Australia
  • Thomas
    • name of Claire’s boyfriend
    • name of Kate’s childhood friend
  • Rutherford
    • Shannon’s last name
    • The SUV driver from that died in the operating room (season 2, episode 1). NOTE: turns out that they share the name since it was her father that Jack was operating on (and which he had to decide to let die in order to save the woman that later became his wife)
  • Sam
    • Sam Toomey
    • Kate’s “other” father (NOTE: this is from a visitor submission– unconfirmed & somewhat unclear).
  • Sarah
    • Analucia’s alias while in Sydney protecting Christian Shepherd,
    • name of Jack’s wife.
  • Historical Scientists/Philosophers/Etc.
    • (now noted under their own category here)

The Dharma Initiative

Dharma Initiative

  • History
    • In the “Sri Lanka video” (as part of “The LOST Experience” game), Alvar Hanso reveals that “DHARMA” stands for “Deparment of Hueristics And Research on Material Applications” and “also stands for the one, true way”
    • In that same video, Hanso said that the purpose of the DHARMA Initiative was to save humanity from extinquishing itself (through war, overpopulation, changing environment, etc.)
    • In the “Swan Complex Orientation Film,” Dr. Marvin Candle provides a short introduction to the DHARMA Initiative as such: “The DHARMA Initiative was created in 1970, and is the brainchild of Gerald and Karen DeGroot” and was “imagined as a large-scale communal research compound where scientists and free-thinkers from around the globe could pursue research in meteorology, psychology, parapsychology, zoology, electromagnetism, and utopian social–“
  • Symbology:
    • The Shark with the Dharma Logo on its sideLogo on many items around the island (food in the storage area, all the computers, and even the shark that nearly attacks Jin & Sawyer)
    • Logo’s outer lines match the Bagua: “a fundamental philosophical concept in ancient China. It is an octagonal diagram with eight trigrams on each side. The concept of bagua is applied not only to Chinese Taoist thought and the I Ching, but is also used in other domains of Chinese culture, such as fengshui, martial arts , navigation, etc.
    • Possibly related: In mythology, Apollo has the six attributes of: swans, wolves, dolphins, bows and arrows, a laurel crown, the cithara (or lyre) and plectrum. (from Wikipedia.org)
    • Each Dharma Initiative complex on the island has it’s own symbol.
    • The known complexes are:
      • The Swan (pictured above)
        The main complex inhabited by the survivors of Flight #815 and home to the infamous 108 Machine. This complex dealt with experiments in electro/bio-magnetical fields and was, apparently, destroyed by Desmond in an attempt to save humanity from the effects of the complex’s system overloading.
      • The Arrow
        The complex in which the tail-section survivors of Flight 815 originally took shelter. Inside, a glass eye & a bible containing portions of the Swan Complex’s orientation film were found.
        Logo for the Dharma Initiative's Arrow Complex
      • The Staff
        Known primarily for its medical facility, “The Staff” complex uses a “caduceus” in its symbol. This is the complex where Claire was taken during her stay with The Others. By the time other survivors of Flight #815 visited the complex, it has been vacated (except for a box of theatrical make-up).
      • The Pearl (the area marked with a “?” on the blacklight map) — the center of all the complexes; The Pearl contains monitors for viewing the “psychological experiments” going on in the other facilities. Although, it seems that these observations were also another experiment as the many notes gathered by the inhabitants were simply ejected to an area outside The Pearl complex.
        The Pearl Complex on ABC's LOST
      • The Hydra — a complex containing a large glass aquarium (for sharks & dolphins), with the observation rooms apparently being underwater. The empty glass aquarium now houses a metal table and is being used to hold a human subject for observation
        Hydra Complex Dharma Initiative
    • Notes for the potential of the “Caduceus” complex: Apollo gave to Mercury “a magic wand called the caduceus. Mercury used this to guide the souls of the dead to the Lower World. He also could control the living and the dead with it, or turn anything to gold.” (link)
  • Media:
    • The Dharma Initiative created this orientation film for individuals operating the “Swan” complex
    • Click to View the Full MapA “map” was revealed on a blast door when exposed to a black light. (click the image for a full-size, rather large version). More details being tracked on the map’s own page.

The Diary

ABC’s official LOST site includes an occasionally updated “diary” that was, apparently, started by one of the survivor’s of flight 815 (Janelle Granger). A visitor commented that Janelled disappeared after Night 43 and that someone else took over writing in the diary. The new author refers to Henry Gale as his/her brother.

Read the diary here.

Tools, Technology & Such on the Island

  • Dynamite in the hold of the “Black Rock”
  • “The Others” Boat (which they, seemingly, have gas for somewhere)
  • “The Others” guns (at least one that they used to shoot Sawyer during the kidnapping of Walt)
  • The makings for a Molotov Cocktail (used to burn the “Ark II”)
  • The broadcasting tower that originally broadcast “the numbers” then Rousseau’s distress call
  • Rousseau’s batteries
  • The Radar on the “Ark II” (the bamboo boat the survivors built) — may have been destroyed in the fire.
  • Washing machine & dryer in “The Hatch” appear to be from circa 2000; whereas all other items seem to be circa 1970
  • A complete medical center/birthing room in the complex under “The Others” control (currently referred to as the “Medical” complex)

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Original Material: Copyright 2005 © Mike Hanttula & Spark3   All other material is the property of its respective copyright holder.