CHARACTER OF ROSE

There was only one true "adult" in LOST and that person was Rose.

She was clearly a secondary main character (if one defines main characters as those who wind up inside the after life church). She stayed in the background, but when she made her presence felt in asserting questions to the other cast members or had a calming influence when times of stress. She was one of the few people brought to the island who immediately felt at peace.

Rose Nadler is a 50 year old woman, married to a dentist, Bernard. Rose was diagnosed with terminal cancer; no chance of recovery. Bernard arranges for an Australian honeymoon, but he has the alternative motive to take Rose to a special "healer." Bernard appears to be "lost" without Rose in his life. So he is desperate to save her so they can live a long life together.

But Rose is pragmatic and stoic. She is aware of her condition and she accepts her fate. She just wants to live the remaining days of her life in peace.

Immediately after the 815 plane crash, Jack finds Boone standing over Rose. Her heart had stopped beating, and Jack takes over administering CPR because he says Boone was doing it incorrectly. Boone suggested they make a hole in Rose's trachea and insert a pen to help her breathe to which Jack agreed only to get Boone would be out of his way. Jack managed to revive Rose but ran off to help other survivors while Rose struggled to breathe.

She is later seen by a campfire kissing Bernard's ring. That night, Rose was present when the survivors heard the sound of the "Monster" in the jungle for the first time. The next morning Rose notably mentioned, it sounded "awfully familiar."

Sometime later, Jack invited Rose to the memorial service taking place that night, expressing his belief that everyone who was in the tail section was killed. Rose told Jack her husband was in fact alive, saying "they're probably thinking the same thing about us." Her statement that Bernard and other tail section passengers were still alive turned out to be correct. Some may consider Rose's "faith" in the outcome of reuniting with her husband to be natural, or a mere hope. But one must consider that if Rose was aware of her own demise (the only way to eliminate the pain of her cancer was to die) then she possessed special knowledge of everyone's existence that everyone else had failed to recognize.

Rose was quickly aware that her cancer is gone. In her back story, the outback healer tells Bernard that the special "energy" in Australia could not cure Rose, but maybe a different kind somewhere else could help her. There is no medical basis for electromagnetic energy in curing terminal cancer.  So when Rose becomes aware of her cancer free state, she does not rejoice or proclaim it a miracle. Her subdued perspective is a key clue to one main theory: that Rose was the first 815 "survivor" to realize that she died in the plane crash and that the island was part of the after life.

When she sits alone staring out into the ocean, Jack tries to comfort her but she actually comforts him. She "knows" that her husband is "alive" and they will meet again. She knows this because she believes Bernard is also dead. Whether the island was heaven, purgatory or hell, it did not matter to Rose. Her one focus was to be reunited with Bernard. She considered the rest of camp drama as a nuisance. She does not concern herself with rescue, getting off the island or even fitting in to a faction within the larger group.

Rose's acceptance of the logical conclusion about her cancer being extinguished is the mirror opposite of John Locke's illogical conclusion that a plane crash "healed" his paralysis. If there were any wishful thinking, it was with Locke. Rose continued to have an independent and distant view of the island world. And once reunited with her husband after 50 days, she had no real use for anyone else. So it was natural that Rose and Bernard would head off and make their own jungle cottage when the island characters flashed to 1974.

When the 815 Dharma people stumbled upon them in the jungle in 1977,  Rose and Bernard showed them the small cabin in which they had been living with Vincent for the past three years. They expressed that they were happy living peacefully on their own, away from the violence and drama that the other survivors had always been involved with. Rose showed no signs of concern about a nuclear weapon on the island, and promptly directed the group towards the Barracks, saying farewell. Again, this was another clue that Rose realized that a weapon of mass destruction was irrelevant to their safety because she knew they were already dead. She had settled down into her little patch of heaven in a hellish conflict between self-absorbed lost souls.

There is one bothersome aspect to the Rose and Bernard story line. They were happiest being away from the other 815 survivors. So why did they wind up in the church with them?  Would they have been more content to stay on the island forever?

Rose was symbolic of the common sense attitude that was severely lacking in most of the characters and story arcs of the series. She had more motherly instincts than actual mothers on the island. She had more influence in her quiet resolve than the boisterous leaders trying to convince people to follow them.

If one is trying to find answers to the mysteries, one must look to the background for answers. Rose, as a key background character, gave us more clues to the premise of the series than the more active main characters.