"Lord of Lost" #1

"'I climbed a rock,' said Ralph slowly, 'and I think this is an island.'
'They're all dead,' said Piggy, 'an this is an island. Nobody don't know we're here. Your dad don't know, nobody don't know --'
...'We may stay here till we die.'
With that word the heat seemed to increase till is became a threatening weight and the lagoon attacked them with a blinding effulgence."

This passage from Lord of the Flies by William Golding depicts a scene similar to the first conflicts faced with the characters on the television show "Lost". On "Lost," an airplane crashes somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, stranding the few surviving passengers on a mysterious island. After escaping the violent and dangerous wreckage of their plane, the passengers convene together, much like the children do at the call of the conch, and discuss the possibility of getting rescued. The characters on "Lost" come to the same conclusion that Piggy does in the book: no one knows where they are and the chances of being found are slim. Like the young boys, the adults on "Lost" are frightened by that prospect. The "heat" described in the passage is a metaphor for the boys' anxiety aroused at the thought of not being rescued. On "Lost," the characters are constantly sweating in the blistering and humid heat of the island. The intrusive and unyielding nature of the heat symbolizes the anxiety they feel, which is the same as the boys' from the book; they all fear not being rescued, and that fear weighs on them and suffocates them like insufferable heat. The heat is "threatening" because the characters want to be rescued, but must come to terms with the fact that they may not be.