Here's my take on the story: the island is a giant metaphor for how people deal with the issues in their life - how they cope with their "baggage"

first what we know and then what my interpretation is...
"What we know"

• Ben's dad joined the Darma initiative which seemed to be a 70s peace, love and brotherhood group that thought that left the world behind so they could create a Utopia
  
• Unfortunately their island paradise comes under attack from a mysterious group of people ("hostiles") who inhabit the island - one of whom seems to be Ben's mom...
  
• They create a barrier to all of this and everything seems great (for the Darma group) until Ben crosses the barrier and into the forest and starts up a dialogue with the hostiles...
  
• Ben leads the hostiles in a take over bid and becomes the new leader of the group. Some more people from the mainland are brought in to the community.
  
• Ben says there's a "box" on the island that can make things/people known to the inhabitants appear - we've seen Jack's dad, Kate's horse, Hurley's imaginary(?) friend, Ben's mom....
  
• Finally there is also a dude named Jacob in a shack out in the woods and he seems to be incredibly powerful and mysterious
  

My interpretation

We have our hippies who decide that if we just "got away from it all" (all of the external negatives) we would all get along and live in paradise....unfortunately everyone in this initiative has internal "issues" arising from events in their past they aren't dealing with: people who hurt them, people who betrayed them, things they did.

The island then acts a metaphor for their minds/souls/internal state - their issues are constantly conjured up and "attack them" (stop them from living the ideal life they want). Thus, the 'hostiles" are all people that were conjured up by the initiative members.

To maintain their paradise they set up barriers (suppress the bad memories, not deal with them).

Ben's bad memory is his mother's loss - but instead of blocking her out he seeks her out and delves into the "forest" of his subconscious. However, once there, he doesn't deal with the issues (forgive, forget?) but indulges all of the negative emotions, goes mad, and becomes a sociopath (which leads him to kill his father and the Darma group). He then lives contentedly with all of these negative thoughts and his own anger - becoming someone who wallows in his misery and the dark side of his personality (rather than someone who denies the darker side of themselves like the Darma members).

Jacob is some even deeper form of the human subconscious - inhabiting a dark place in the inner reaches of a person's mind. He is made visible as the "monster" (he animates the ash trail Locke steps over (when he and Ben go to see him) and makes it become the smoke). Jacob stalks the island and judges and kills people (as in Echo's case). Everyone is afraid of him except for Locke.

I think Jacob is the moral compass that exists in our minds - he makes you face the things you've done (the images in the smoke). Locke is one of the few individuals in the castaway group (Jack is one of the others) who has led a moral life - we've seen he can't kill his own father despite what has happened to him and he seems to be always decent in the flashbacks...this is why he can face the monster without fear - the producers describe him as a 'man of faith'.

If my theory is right, it is interesting that the monster doesn't plague Ben - who is the least moral of anyone on the island. It does seem that Ben can't speak to Jacob (he's completely lost contact with his moral compass) and is furious that Locke can.

Any thoughts?

good points,

but im not sure if jacob even exists! that ash could be from the volcano on the island and the tremor [jacob shaking the house] could have been a small erouption just coincidence!!!!

Locke is so despret to learn the secret of the island he himself could be just imagining/wishin jacob to be real hence the old man in the chair..

Dude, I like LOST theories as much as the next person but i think people like yew and other LOST OBSESSORS need to understand that yes, the writers have a theory on the whole thing, but at the same time just trying to make good TV. Some peoples ideas are tooo confusing.

__________________
ALEXX.

Bring on the theories! The minute we cease to question and to think, we as a civilization are entirely f***ed!

__________________
"The Naked Gun!"

Frank Drebin remembers a lost love.

Frank: It's the same old story. Boy finds girl, boy loses girl, girl finds boy, boy forgets girl, boy remembers girl, girls dies in a tragic blimp accident over the Orange Bowl on New Year's Day.

Jane: Goodyear?

Frank: No, the worst.

the soul mind is great


I agree


MAYBE its me BUT I see Dharma as more sinsister at the top MAYBE the line workers were of a noble cause but Dharma was doing some weird stuff including paranormal research which covers alot of very controversial topics think Nazi experiments in WW II
including on the occult , channeling ,foo fighters ,UFO's...ect...

Quarantee signs have been in many epi's

I dig your psychoanalytical approach to Lost the most. My modernism professor would have actually shivvered with delight to hear "forest of the subconscious" tossed out in a conversation about an American TV show, and I think the Locke stuff is dead on. 2 comments to your post:

(1.) You say that Jacob is the moral compass of the island: a deeper form of human subconsciousness concerned with behavior? Is that right? He sifts the "good" people from the "bad." My only probem is Eko is a "man of faith," just as Locke is. In fact, Eko is so much a man of faith that, unlike Locke, his faith never wavers. Not once, and he's killed by the smoke monster. Yes, it's easy to write Eko off as immoral, because of all of the bad things he's done, but that's too easy. He's a compelling character to us because we know the extremely noble reasons why he started down that dark path in the first place: to save his brother Yemi from the same fate. To me, this might make him the most moral character on the island. And the smoke monster KILLED him. So what's that all about? To me, it means that the smoke monster is not only not as sophisticated as I previously thought (he only judges behaviour, rather than the intent behind it: John Stuart Mill versus...uh...Emmanual Kant--I think), likely it has been "programmed" by a human being with a very simplistic notion of good and bad, maybe even by someone who has an axe to grind because he/she feels unjustly wronged in some major way. Now who could that be? Ben Linus, possibly? Something that hadn't occurred to me earlier...

Secondly, if the hippies of the Dharma Initiative are able to construct physical walls to avoid dealing with psychological baggage ("pretend the negatives don't exist," as you say), and Ben inhabits the opposite extreme (fully WALLOWING in the negatives), is there anyone in happy medium between these 2 extremes? Where do the Losties lie in this spectrum? Does it depend on the particular Lostie?

WhiteRabbit, you have me really intrigued. Let's keep it going. What do you think? Anyone else?

--CPPAH

Aha! Ash from a volcano wouldn't fall in a straight line like that. It would scatter more like rain and wind would disperse it over an even wider area. I agree that the ask doesn't have to be Jacob or the smoke monster, but it is definitely there in that shape for a very specific and intentional reason.

--CPPAH