As a Fridge page, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
Fridge Brilliance:
- The script was originally inspired by an unfinished short story by Edgar Allan Poe titled The Light-House, in which the lone Lighthouse Keeper seems to believe something is inside the walls, or underneath the building itself. This is typical of Poe's popular work, some of which is based on living creatures emerging from beneath architecture (The Fall of the House of Usher, The Black Cat), or being buried there (The Casque of Amontillado, The Tell-Tale Heart). It also has an obvious influence on elements of the film such as Winslow's burying Wake, or discovering the severed head.
- A decent portion of dialogue and characterisation is accredited to the works of Sarah Orne Jewett
, a 19th Century Maine writer who came into contact with similar characters in her own life. This casts a wry extra dimension to the 'No-Brainer' homoerotic energy between the two main characters. - The name 'Thomas Wake' implies two meanings:
- The waves left by an object that is moving through water. While the lighthouse is situated on a stationary rock, its' keepers are constantly in motion - and if the story is taking place in an infinite time loop, as can be partly inferred, then certain elements of the story are like the 'wake' left by the events happening over and over. For example, the possibility that the severed head is Winslow's own, from a previous loop.
- The act of waking someone from a dream. Especially appropriate considering the number of times Wake seems to correct Winslow's interpretation of events - which is all the audience has to go off - creating uncertainty. Winslow seems to see Wake smashing the lifeboat with an axe; a moment later, Wake calmly tells Winslow that 'he' did this, and will have his wages deducted for destroying government property.
- Word of God states that Winslow is an allegory for Prometheus attempting to steal fire from the Gods. This is foreshadowed by his former profession - a 'timberman' - whose work might have involved cutting down logs that would be chopped up for firewood.
- Eggers' choice of "Doodle Let Me Go" as a shanty and motif is apt considering the lyrics also play around with time and continuity. In the opening stanzas, the narrator recalls meeting a young woman who invited him home ("Oh, all around the sofa, lads, and wasn't it a show"), only to be interrupted by her husband ("And round the hour o' midnight, well her Old Man he come home") - but we never find out what happened next.
- The following stanzas describe the narrator seeing a woman swimming in the river by moonlight, with eerily shining eyes, similar to Winslow's nightmares.
- Winslow remarks that "if I had a steak...I'd fuck it", causing Wake to grow agitated over Winslow's opinion of his cooking, specifically lobster; when Winslow refuses to confirm he likes it, Wake spends a few minutes cursing him in detail. Funny and horrible as this scene is, it takes on a sad meaning when you remember that lobsters, unlike cows, are famously long-lived to the point of near-immortality. Wake's fixation on the quality of his cooking is a mask for his fear that, should they ever leave the island, Winslow will drop him for someone younger.
Fridge Horror:
- Some time after Wake tells Winslow that seagulls contain the souls of dead sailors, Winslow encounters both a seagull with one eye...and the head (or hallucination thereof) of a one-eyed man.
- Winslow's Maine accent only seems to become pronounced when he's especially stressed and/or angry. It's all too possible he's been deliberately suppressing it, because it reminds him too much of unpleasant memories...
- Considering the ambiguity of the events presented, along with Winslow in particular being frequently sexually excited throughout, there is always the uncomfortable possibility that both men engaged each other in sexual acts, perhaps while intoxicated, and later forgot about it. Or just refused to discuss it...
