Hi, and first let me say I would like to become a mythology hunter, please!
I've studied a lot of the subjects involved at one time or another. It's been about 15 years since I read Augustine, but I wouldn't mind brushing up on Manicheism.
RE 3P, read that about 15 years ago as well, think it's an amazing work, and I was thrilled the LOST team used it. So I read it again. The problem with figuring out what they're going for isn't finding something that could be relevant, more that so much could be relevant, how to know what element?
Of the themes posted here, most occurred to me as I read it, so good, it looks like a lot of us see the same stuff. I enjoyed this thread a lot, lots of stuff to make me think, now I'll throw out some bits and pieces I've been mulling over:
1) not sure if someone mentioned this:
The Two Policeman, with their serious attention to the "readings" in their underground Eternity, and their constant monitoring, can't help but remind me of Desmond and the Losties monitoring the computer and responding to the alarm.
The two Sergeant's give the impression that the world might come to an end if they don't make it a priority to keep the readings within range, as does Desmond re not pushing the button. They are diverted from the hanging over such an alarm.
Then at the end you find out that "Fox" is basically yanking their chain by making the readings fluctuate with his "omnium" from the black box. In retrospect, the very serious tour the 3P narrator was given of the Eternity underground turns out to be not what he thought was going on, nor did his guides know the truth. Point being that the hatch and button set-up may be serious to Desmond and the Losties but a manipulation by a third party ... which has always been a possibility, as Desmond and Jack discussed.
Quote of possible interest:
"he had been sitting in this room presiding at four ounces of this unutterable substance, calmly making ribbons of the natural order, inventing intricate and unheard of machinery to delude the other policemen, interfering drastically with time to make them think they had been leading their magical lives for years, bewildering, horrifying, and enchanting the whole countryside."
2) Re "answers" and "easter eggs"
The narrator (as with our Losties, we sympathize with him even though a murderer, as has been noted, and that seems important)--spends most of the story trying to figure out WTF is going on. He has crashed and now all the rules have changed, and he keeps getting weird information and bizarre explanations that he keeps assimilating into his view of reality. No matter how weird it is, he eventually accepts it.
The answers come like nested boxes,.. each time he gets an answer his former understanding is called into question so he throws out one set of "assumptions" and embraces another, which is then shattered--and finally, when it seems it gets the ultimate explanation from Policeman Fox and is off to his home to find his omnium, the essence of everything ... he learns he is dead (yes I know the writers have confirmed the "dead" part is not what they are going for): this has the interesting effect of making every single thing he learned in the course of his search for answers rather pointless.
Which in turn, completely tweaks the reader of 3P who has been collecting answers, or trying to. One ends up with as much "useful" information as someone who spends his whole life trying to track down the life and work of deSelby (the fake commentators impersonating each other are the best). In the end, the value of the story is in the entertainment value of the journey and not about conclusion, or answers.
3) Re Guilt and "karma":
there is one lesson the narrator does seem to learn. He has spent the whole story trying to avoid the consequences of his crime and hoping that he's getting away with it. He keeps thinking he is caught (first by Mathers) and then he thinks he's OK. Then he is to be hung for a crime he didn't do and he feels righteous about trying to avoid that, although he deserves to be hung for the original crime ... then he thinks he finally escapes and what's more will be lord of the universe with his omnium. In the end he finds out he never got away with it for a second and never will. So that too could apply to the Losties.
4) Eccentric physicists:
This has been noted but I want to agree that there's an analogy between the deGroots and deSelby-what exactly if anything that means for Lost I don't know, but their experiments on the film have a somewhat absurd quality and we hear that deSelby was a great experimenter and was even arrested, sued, and hoarded water, etc.. lots of trouble as a result of his bizarre activities.
5) Is this how we'll feel when we solve the mystery of the island?
"Like everything that is hard to believe and difficult to comprehend ... it is very simple ...
"It did not look simple--what I saw."
"You thought there was magic in it, not to mention monkey-work of no mean order?
"I did"
"But it can all be explained, it was very simple and the way it was all worked will astonish you when I tell you."
_________________
6) Re 23 and 3P: did someone list the occurences? You know that lists of "23" that preceded LOST already mentioned it was an important number in 3P, right? Well, the ones I found:
On the 23rd of June Fox looked in MacKruiskeen's box and saw a color that doesn't exist. He also talked to Sgt MacKruiskeen on that day and supposedly went mad.
Nov 23: Sgt. Pluck had a nightmare and dreamed of a "slow puncture."
O'Feersa is 23% bicycle and his bicycle is 23% O'Feersa.
The most important day in the narrator's life comes when he is 16, and is on the 7th. 16 + 7 =23.
A symbolic 23? For most of the book you see 2 Policemen. The 3rd is a rumor. Then you meet the Third Policeman. So 2 becomes 3.
23 is a juxtaposition of duality (2) with trinity (3), Matter and Spirit. The third element of the Trinity is the Holy Ghost, which may be analogous to the elusive Third Policeman in a comic sort of way.
I suggest this because Joyce played with the 2/3 symbolism in Ulysses so it's not farfetched for another Irish writer to be playing around with the dualism/trinity theme.
And I think that's much more than twice enough for one post.
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