While having a discussion about Lost the other day an old topic came up. Who exactly was using the cabin at what point in the series. My personal analysis brought me to the conclusion that it was first used by Jacob, and later used by MIB. Here is the reasoning as to how I reached this conclusion(including all the relevant information I can currently recall).
1) We see that the cabin is surrounded by ash. We have no idea what this is even for yet, so why draw our attention to it if it's already serving no purpose? From a writing point of view it makes no sense to do this. If we knew what it did before Locke examines it, that would be another story.
2) We see an eye for a split second. Hurley sees this same eye when he stumbles upon the cabin, which the writers later confirmed belonged to Jacob.
3) Roughly 3 years after we see Ben and Locke visit the cabin for the first time Ilana finds it. She sees the circle of ash is broken. She mentions that "He" has not been using it for some time(which is not the same as he's never used it). She goes in and finds a piece of Jacob's tapestry which she interprets to be a message instructing her to go to the Statue.
4) Going back to the previous point, let's deduce when the circle became broken. To do that, let's look at the sequence of events.
a) Ben and Locke visit the cabin where some crazy *beep* happened. We see a person in the chair for a split second followed by a close up of an eye.
b) Hurley stumbles upon the cabin, sees Christian sitting in a chair with a black suit and white tennis shoes on. The same eye appears in the window(which the writers confirm belongs to Jacob). The same eye we saw when Locke and Ben first visit.
c) Ben and Locke return to the cabin, this time with Hurley. Only Locke enters. He proceeds to have a conversation with Christian Sheppard, he's wearing much more casual clothing than he was when Hurley finds the cabin. We also see Claire in the cabin with him. We see no closeup of an eye.
Now, we know that it's MIB speaking to Locke during this third visit. We know this because MIB had previously used Christian's form to pick Claire up in the jungle(we know this was MIB and not Christian's ghost because Miles sees him and Miles can only "hear" the dead, not see them). When did this happen? Between Hurley seeing the cabin(and the eye within) and the third trip to the cabin.
Why would MIB need Claire? Well, we find out later that the ash is meant to keep MIB out. If it keeps him out, it stands to reason he wouldn't be able to remove it by himself. So essentially he uses Christian's form to con Claire into allowing him into the cabin, where he does exactly what the circle of ash was meant to prevent; Stop MIB from passing off his own messages as a message from Jacob.
I suggest one needs to be special to see Jacob. The writers confirm this in an audio commentary for The Man Behind the Curtain.
Cuse: Ben really wants to find out, "ls Locke special? ls he actually communing with the island in a significant way, in a way that actually threatens his primacy?" Ben decides, "Yes, I will take him out to the cabin where Jacob is, and if Locke can see Jacob, I will know there is something special about Locke. And if he can't, then I can utterly dismiss him."
Further, Cuse: Now, in this scene, one of the things that I think we kind of take as a matter of fact is that people watch this show, they tape the show, they DVR the show. And so when people watched the show, they were like, "That was all crazy. I didn't see anything." But in fact, yes, there are several pieces of Jacob. You can see them. But you can't really see them unless you stop and tape the thing, and look at it slowly. So it was interesting for us to see how the audience reacted to this scene. When it played, a lot of people were like, "l didn't get it. What was going on there?" There was nobody there. Other people very clearly stopped, taped it, looked, saw that there were images of Jacob. And we tried to actually add one other image that would be visible clearly for the audience, this close-up of an eye, which kind of goes back to... ...kind of thematically was unified with this image of eyes that started really from the very beginning of the pilot. But I'm not sure people really understood that that was Jacob's eye. And it's kind of interesting that this was a scene that required sort of a... ...active participation on the part of the audience to really get its full... To get its full impact or to have a full understanding of what you've seen in this scene.
Questions? Comments?
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