Master of Arts (MA)
Primary Subject Area
LOST, Mystic Journey, Television, Televison, Turner, Underhill
Mitchell, Lacey, "Found: The Etiology of Character Realization, within Rhetorical Analysis of the Series LOST, through the Application of Underhill's and Turner's Classic Concepts of the Mystic Journey" (2010). Masters Theses. Paper 156.
This study rhetorically and visually analyzed the presence of the spiritual journey represented through the journeys of selected characters traced over several episodes of the television series LOST. Popular literature asserts the classic concept of the spiritual journey can be and has been found across the spectrum of various media. Episodes were analyzed to trace the journey of two characters, Jack Shephard and Juliet Burke. Evelyn Underhill's three-fold path and Victor Turner's concepts of liminality and communitas were implemented as a way to organize and analyze the contextual elements displayed in the episodes. The sampling used forty-seven episodes across the series' six seasons. These episodes were chosen for character inclusion and plot development. When the tools for analysis were applied to the individual journeys, deeper understanding of the characters and the series was revealed. Instances of varying levels of liminality and communitas were found to be present as well as different experiences of the three-fold path.