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Prophetic Dreams
The story of LOST itself is very surreal and dreamlike (though the writers have said that that is not the explanation in itself). Also, many of the characters have dreams, some of which appear to predict future events. See also Memory and Going Crazy / Losing One's Mind / What is "Real"
In "Walkabout," the brochure for the walkabout reads "Experience the dream journeys of the fabled Australian Outback."
In "Raised by Another," Claire (pregnant at the time) has a nightmare that starts out when she wakes up no longer pregnant. She hears the baby crying, and goes through the jungle to find him. She stumbles on Locke, reading Tarot cards, who says: "He was your responsibility but you gave him away, Claire. Everyone pays the price now." Locke looks up and has one black eye and one white eye. Claire finds a crib with an Oceanic plane mobile over it (the same one as seen later in "Maternity Leave" in the nursery). The planes spin faster, and one is broken, and there are the same sounds as when 815 crashed. She starts digging through the blankets to find her baby, and only finds a pool of blood. She wakes up with blood on her hands. Charlie tells her she was sleepwalking, and Jack tells her that she dug her fingernails so deep into her palms that she bled. (see Christianity and Eyes for more on this symbolism)
There are later indications that Aaron really is in danger.
In "Hearts and Minds," Boone has been jealous that his stepsister, Shannon, is spending time with Sayid. She threatens to tell her about the hatch, and Locke knocks him over the head without warning. He then ties him up and Locke slathers something on his head wound. After he wakes up, he hears Shannon screaming, saying she has also been tied up. He struggles, and finally reaches the knife that's been left for him, and cuts himself free. When he finally gets to Shannon to cut her free, they find themselves pursued by the Monster. They hide in the middle of some trees and vines, and Boone tells her the secret of the hatch. As they are chased from their hiding place, trees are ripped up in the background. Shannon is pulled up by the monster as she is running. Boone screams, and later a trail of blood, that leads him to a stream. There, he finds her dead body, bloody and torn from multiple injuries. There is no shot of him waking up, he just goes to angrily find Locke (it is unclear if this can be considered a "dream," because he was drugged, and does not recall waking). Locke tells him that his sister is fine, and points to her safely with Sayid. Locke says "I gave you an experience that I believe was vital to your survival on this island... It was only as real as you made it." When Boone admited he felt relieved at seeing Shannon dead, Locke tells him "Yes. Time to let go."
In "Special," after Claire is kidnapped, Charlie finds and reads her diary: "I had that weird dream again, the one with the black rock I can't get away from. I try to leave it but it won't let me." No one has been to The Black Rock at this point, and there's no indications that Sayid had mentioned The Black Rock from Danielle's map to Claire. Charlie believes that this is where the Others have taken her, and that predicted this in her dream.
In "Outlaws," Sawyer has a dream of being a boy again, of the scene where his father shoots himself, except from under the bed, he can see the legs of a boar instead of cowboy boots. There are whispers of "It'll come back around" before he wakes up abruptly.
In "...In Translation," Mr. Paik asks Jin why he should give his daughter to a man who sells his dreams so easily. Jin replies that she is his dream.
In "Deus ex Machina," Locke has a dream which starts out normally, with Boone reconstructing the trebuchet. When Boone doubts Locke saying "the island will send us a sign," they look up to see a smoking plane that crashes in the jungle out of sight. He sees a vision of his mother in a fur coat and pointing in the distance. It is intercut with brief scenes of Boone very bloody, chanting "Theresa falls up the stairs, Theresa falls down the stairs" three times. Locke finds himself reconfined to a wheelchair and starts panicking, "No, no, don't take it back." When he wakes up, he checks his legs, which are fine. He later tells Boone, who confides he had a nanny named Theresa who fell down the stairs and broke her neck, a fact neither of them recall Boone having mentioned to Locke. When they go to the area where Locke believes his dream was set, they found the Beechcraft plane perched on a cliff. Later on, Locke temporarily has problems with leg paralysis again, and Boone climbs up into the plane and the fatal accident of it falling is what kills him.
In "Abandoned," Shannon is waiting in the tent for Sayid to return, and the candle goes out. She sees an image of Walt, all wet, who says "They're coming and they're close." backwards. She screams. Sayid later tries to convince her that it was just a dream and that she fell asleep temporarily, but Shannon is convinced it is not (we never do know if it was or wasn't). At this point in the story, no one at the beach site knows Walt has been kidnapped or that the raft was destroyed for sure yet. Also, no one knows that the tail section group is coming to join them. Walt is seen later when she is wide awake, putting his finger to his lips. She follows him, and ends up getting shot and killed by Ana-Lucia in the confusion.
In "Fire + Water," Charlie has a dream which starts out presumably as a real childhood memory. First, there's a focus on a painting of The Baptism of Christ by Verroccio. It's Christmas morning, and Liam has found his presents, but Charlie hasn't found his. His mother surprises him with a piano, and young Charlie is overjoyed. His mother says, "You're special, love. Someday you're going to get us out of here, all of us. Now, go on, play us a tune." Suddenly, adult Charlie is sitting at the piano, and Liam is grown up as well. Both his mother and grown Liam are now pressuring him to play, "You can't save us if you don't play." In the background, his father is dressed as a butcher and chopping meat, saying "He ain't saving no one, he ain't. Music. Music will never get you anywhere, Charlie boy." His faceless father then puts a doll on chopping block and points the cleaver at Charlie, saying "You need a trade." before he chops its head off. His grown brother and mother are still chanting, "Save us Charlie, save us." He starts playing, and finds himself on a beach. A baby is crying, and the sounds are coming from within the piano, but Charlie can't pry open the lid. He is shouting for Aaron when he wakes up; he checks for Aaron, and is relieved to find he is ok.
Later on in the same episode, he has another dream, where Aaron is crying, and his cradle is being pulled out to sea. Charlie swims in to rescue him, and Claire and his mother are sitting on the beach, dressed like the angels in the painting by Verroccio from his childhood home. A flash of light, and then a dove flies out from the skies. Hurley comes out of the jungle, dressed like John the Baptist, to ask what he is doing. He then wakes up to the real Hurley, and realizes he has been sleepwalking, and kidnapped the baby in the middle of the night, standing half in the water with him. People look at him accusationally, and Claire takes back Aaron and slaps him. Later, however, Claire decides that despite her doubts, she will get Aaron baptized, just in case.
In "Everybody Hates Hugo," Hurley dreams he is in the newly found hatch storage room, pigging out on food. He is holding a milk carton with Walt as a missing child printed on the side (no one knows on the beach site knows he is missing yet), when Jin appears and starts speaking English. Hurley points this out, and Jin tells him that, no, in fact Hurley is speaking Korean (and then Hurley says "I am?" and "What's going on here?" in Korean). There's a man in a chicken suit (who later turns out to be the cashier at the gas station who sold him his winning lottery ticket). A regular blip sound of the timer is heard, and the chicken man starts blinking in unison with it. Jin says "Everything is going to change now." twice (still in English), and then "Have a cluckety-cluck-cluck day, Hugo." The chicken man says "Hurley" in Kate's voice, and suddenly Hurley awakens to the real Kate, and the timer running down. We learn in this episode that Hurley has been stressed about his new job, in charge of food distribution, and is concerned that everyone will hate him for not splitting things fairly and giving them what they want. We get an inkling that something like this has happened before, when winning hundreds of millions of dollars changed his once simple, but happy life.
In "?," Mr. Eko has a dream in which he Ana-Lucia comes up to him and tells him that he must help Locke find "the question mark". She then appears to have dried blood around her mouth, and the appearance of a corpse. At this point, Mr. Eko does not yet know she has just recently been murdered by Michael, or that Locke had seen a map on the blast door which had a question mark on it. Next, Mr. Eko sees quick flashes of his past, including events on the island, and then encounters Yemi, who is seated in front of the computer in the Swan Station. Yemi tells Mr. Eko that the work they do in the hatch is of great importance, and that he must find Locke and help him find the question mark. The walls begin to shake violently, the flipping countdown clock has all "?" symbols on it instead of numbers, and Yemi types on a keyboard that has only "?" on the keys. He tells Mr. Eko that he should bring an axe.
Later on in the same episode, Mr. Eko and Locke are looking for the ? of the map in the jungle, and come across the burnt remains of the Beechcraft. They sleep there and "await further instructions." Locke later has a dream in which he is Mr. Eko (but with a limp), and he meets Yemi. Yemi tells him that he must scale the wall of the cliff. He climbs up, and at the top, is surprised by Yemi, who is sitting in a wheelchair, and falls off the cliff. After he wakes up, he tells Mr. Eko his dream, and Mr. Eko climbs to the top of the cliff; he sees nothing on top, but realizes from that view that the ? of the map is a mark made in the earth by salting, so that no grass will grow in that area. They find that the Beechcraft plane is actually concealing the entrance to a new hatch, to the Pearl Station.
Locke appears to send himself on a "vision quest" by sheltering himself in a "sweat lodge" and taking a hallucinogenic paste in "Further Instructions". In this vision, he is guided by now-deceased Boone (who he once sent on a similar vision quest). He sees himself back in a wheelchair, being pushed around the airport. Boone tells him that somewhere in that airport, someone is in trouble; he sees visions of Claire, Charlie, Desmond, Jin, Sun, Sayid, Hurley, Kate, Sawyer and Jack (the latter three being security 'wanded' by Ben), but is told that none of them are the ones he should be concerned about. He leaves him at the foot of escalators he can't climb, and Locke awakens to a flash of a carnivorous animal rushing at him. He then knows that he must save Eko, and ends up pulling him out of a polar bear cave and battling the bear that lives in it.
A number of other characters introduced on the show appear to have clear clairvoyant abilities, such as Walt (who mentions things that will happen, such as predicting the possibility of sharks attacking the raft in "Exodus", which his father laughs off), and the psychic Claire goes to see. There is also a hint that Desmond may have clairvoyant abilities after the EMP goes off.
Vivid and prophetic dreams are also mentioned in literary references seen on the show. In Watership Down and Lord of the Flies, extended vivid dreams foreshadow the future for certain clairvoyant characters (Fiver and Simon, respectively). A decorative screen in the background of the Sun/Jin Kwon household has an inscription on it, which is translated to a Chinese poem called "Travel in Dreams," which is about a very surreal dream which the poet does not want to awaken from, but which by contrast, gives him insight and perpsective of real life drudgery.
Item Last Updated: April 23, 2006, 01:19:55 PM by Pandora
