I just rewatched this episode (cabin fever). Maybe this goes better in theroies area Im not sure.

What if:

Smokie is John's manifestation. A theme the show hints at is the island acts like an antena on peoples imaginations. They think of something and it manifests its self.

Some examples of this are:

Ben needs a spinal doctor and one falls from the sky
Desmond is lonely and people come to his rescue in the hatch
Hurley is hungry and a plane drops food
Charlie is having heroine cravings and he finds a plane full of it
Walt reads comic books about Polar bears and they are running around the island

Locke may hay have unconsiously created smokie. We are assuming that smokie was on the island before he arrived, but we dont know that to be a fact. Smokie may have appeared when Locke arrived.

Time loops are also a theme in this story as well. One example of that is when John meets Horace, the guy in his dream that is chopping down that same tree again and again. Richard may know about smokie in the flashback because he has already lived in the future and he looped back to john's past to influence the futures events.

Another theme going on in the show is the idea about the numbers being an equation that dictates mankinds destiny. Suppposedly one of the Dharma initives goals is to change those numbers and rewrite our destiny. Time loops could be a form of that idea. If we could go back in time to change our past that in theroy should change our future. That could be a technique employed to attempt to change the numbers in that equation.

I think maybe John's drawing of smokie was the writers giving us a hint at these ideas.


Another thing about Richard's visit with young John. If we look at the items John choose in symbolic terms I think it leads to some intresting speculations.

1. sand = island
2. compass = leader
3. knife = anger

One might conclude that John revealed his destiny to Richard with those selections. Island leader that is guided by emotion rather then discipline. The book of laws seems to be what Richard would of preferred Locke to pick.

Later on, when Locke is a teenager, Richard reaches out to him again. This time he does it through Locke's science teacher and an invitation to a very special science camp. Its intresting to me that very similiar results are achieved. Locke once again chooses emotional paths rather then rational disciplines. He becomes full of anger and says he prefers music and sports and such as his destiny, and he will not be forced to be a science geek. To me that is more of the same of his earlier choices.

And yet again in that same episode we revisit that same theme when Locke is in the hospital. He is crippled and is told it is 98% likely that he will never have feelings in his legs let alone walk.  Yet he continues to push on through rehab, and really trying to will his way into beating the odds and walking again. Again the centric emotion seems to be his anger.

John on the island has the same theme going, anger. Anyone who disagrees with him, he fights.

In conclusion what I am trying to illustrate is that John Locke is motivated by anger.

I have given this subject some more thought and I think I got more to build on.

Lets say John is driven by anger often of the time. Who else seems to posess this similiar tendency? Wasnt it anger that motivated Ben to execute the purge on the Dharma initive people? John is Bens prodesser and they both are fueled from anger. We now have a possible link between them. Furthermore could smokie be a manifestation of their anger and might there be two smokies? One that belongs to John and one that is Ben's?