My Serious, Logical Thoughts on Across the Sea

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Refers to the place which the brother of Jacob comes from and longs to be. His Other Mother told him there was nothing across the sea. She said this so that they would want to stay on the island.

THE MAN IN BLACK
In this episode we find that the man in black or the Locke-ness monster is actually the brother of Jacob. Since we do not learn his name in this episode either I will refer to him as Esau from the biblical brother team. In the original biblical story Esau sold his birthright to Jacob for a single meal so he wasted his inheritance. In this episode we see Esau abandon Jacob and his Other Mother and Jacob ends up being the chosen one to guard the mysterious light in the cave. So this story vaguely mirrors the biblical one. In the biblical story the mother of Jacob also favored him over Esau and she even disguised Jacob like Esau so that his ailing father would bless him instead of Esau. It worked.

NO, A BUD LIGHT!
What is the mysterious light we see in the cave? We don’t know but the clues point to this being the “light of the world”. If this light goes out then it goes out everywhere the Other Mother said. Is this light the source of all goodness in the world? If so then that would make this island extremely important.

I think this episode raises more questions than it answers, but I will try.

Q: How was Jacob able to kill Esau when the Other Mother said she arranged it so they could not harm each other?
A: Jacob really did not harm his brother but only succeeded in transforming him. What the Other Mother did worked. When Jacob did try to harm his brother he only succeeded in killing his body but not his soul. His soul still survives and can appear as a dead person or as a smoke monster.

Q: Why did Esau turn into a smoke monster when Jacob through him into the cave? Somehow there was a rule that Jacob and Esau could not kill each other even if they wanted to. Esau turning into the smoke monster was the way the island handled the attempt of Jacob to break the rule and kill his brother. The island ensured that the rule was not broken. Esau still exists. Though how this rule was implemented nobody knows.

Q: How was Other Mother able to kill all those people and burn their village all by herself? Was she the mother of all smoke monsters or she set fire to their village while they were asleep. The latter would not require supernatural powers if she set their huts on fire and blocked the exits. The people would have died by smoke inhilation. Still, you have to wonder exactly how she pulled that off.

Q: Where did the bad people come from who brought with them the real mother of Jacob and Esau? There is no unique answer to this question. Since the island can move we have no way of knowing exactly where the island was at this time. Nor do we know the exact year. However we do know that the Other Mother and the people who crashed on the island spoke Latin. Latin is a dead language and has not been spoken as a national language in centuries. Latin was the official language of the Roman Empire. Could these people have been part of the Roman Empire? The name of the real mother of Jacob and Esau was Claudia which was definitely a Roman name. The clothes that the people wear resemble clothes worn in the Roman Empire and also into the Dark Ages (See the TV series ROME from HBO). It should also be noted that the Others who followed Jacob also spoke Latin. In this episode we see the connection of Jacob to Latin. Jacob spoke Latin as a boy. That was his original language.
But we do not see any Roman Soldiers among the crash survivors or any Roman insignia. Also where were these people traveling to when they crashed on the island? And did the Other Mother bring their boat to the island to crash as Jacob in later years also brought people to the island? It could be. Jacob and Esau were candidates as Jack, Hurley and Sawyer are also candidates to replace Jacob. It could be that the Other Mother made the boat crash and then found the pregnant woman and somehow she knew that her two sons were candidates to replace her, but she did not which one. She believed it was Esau, but later it turned out she was wrong and it had been Jacob all along. You can see the jealously that Jacob feels in this episode.

Q: Who built the statue that the Black Rock smashed into? Don’t know for sure but since Jacob has said there were many people before Ricardo to come to the island we can guess that it was built by previous followers of Jacob that he brought to the island long ago who are now dead. Though there is also the possibility that the statue was built pre-Jacob as we are never told if the statue exists at the time that the mother of Jacob crashed on the island. I only assume that it did not exist at that time because if it did then the Other Mother and the boys could have lived in the shoe instead of a cave, and the shoe would have been a nicer place to live.

BAD, BAD, LEROY OTHERS
Since season one they have been talking about the “bad people”. But who is “bad” and what makes them bad? In this episode the Other Mother calls the people who crashed bad except for Jacob and Esau. Esau who lives with these people says that they are bad. He calls them manipulative. So bad people then are people who have bad traits?
The Other Mother seems to believe that murder is ok if it serves the greater good. That is, it is so important that someone replace her for the good of humanity that she cannot take the chance of Claudia taking the candidates away that she feels it is ok to murder Claudia. But did she have a choice? If the light in the cave ever goes out then the light goes out for all of humanity whatever that means. But I do believe that it is something bad. So Other Mother kills Claudia to save all of humanity.

UNANSWERED QUESTIONS
Q: How did the Other Mother of Jacob and Esau come to the island? How did she know to protect the light and how to make the drink that she gave to Jacob to drink that made him like her?
A: The Other Mother came to the island by accident which we can assume was in another boat crash though we do not know the year that happened. She probably learned what she knows from the previous caretaker of the island. Since Jacob became like the Other Mother after drinking the potion we can assume that the Other Mother had longevity and did not age.

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