The Wizard of Oz
To understand Jacob, let’s take a look at the evolution of Ben. We first saw Ben when he was trapped in one of Rousseau‘s nets. He claimed he was Henry Gale from Minnesota and that he and his wife had crashed on the island in their hot air balloon (Ep: 2×14, One of Them).
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (a children’s book by L. Frank Baum from the early 1900s that was later made into a film) also has a character named Henry Gale. He was Dorothy’s uncle. In Lost, the real Henry Gale was later found in a grave, proving that Ben was a fraud.
Parallels between The Wizard of Oz and Lost:
- The name Henry Gale
- The hot air balloon
- Sawyer’s nickname for Tom, Zeke, which in the book is one of Henry Gale’s ranch hands
- In Desmond’s flashback, he remembers a man in red shoes crushed by scaffolding (just as the Wicked Witch of the East was crushed by Dorothy’s house)
- “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain,” the wizard says after Dorothy’s dog, Toto, pulls a curtain to reveal a man working a contraption to make the wizard talk. The 5/9/07 Lost episode is titled “The Man Behind the Curtain”.
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