Meaning of Tattoos on Jack Shepard (Matthew Fox) 's Left Arm in ABC Show "LOST"

A view of the tattoo

A view of the tattoo, in the ABC talk show Kimmel live.

A rear view of the tattoo during one Lost promo

A artistic render of the four chinese characters by Gareth

A word by word explanation of the 4 Chinese characters on the tattoo.

The first character means "Eagle". The second character means "Strike" as a verb. The third one means "Long" and the final one means "Void".

This four characters are part of a couplet taken from a famous poem written in 1925 by the Chinese revolutionary leader Chairman Mao Tse-tung (MAO Zedong). The couplet can be translated into "Eagles high up, cleaving the space" (transl. A. W. T.). But the poem itself has a much deeper meaning. In the end of the first stanza, the poet asks, " who masters fate's rise and descent?" (transl. A. W. T.).

Like most tattoos featuring Chinese characters, the characters are not rendered 100% correctly in Fox's tattoo. The second character "Strike" is a simplified Chinese character while the first and third characters are traditional Chinese characters. The last character, "Void", can be considered as of either form. The reason for this mismatch could be that the form of "Strike" in its current Simplified Chinese form is very similar to the triangular shape above the characters.

If you want to see the Simplified Chinese characters rendered by your own web browser, you can try the following link . A traditional Chinese rendering is link

This is the original handwriting (calligraphy) of this poem.

The left 4 characters

English Translationof the Poem

Ch'ang-sha 1925

Standing alone in the autumn cold:
The Hsiang flowing northward,
Orange Island, the cape.
I see thousands of hills in crimsoned view,
The woods piling up in deep-dye;
The mighty stream, in its gleam of jade,
One hundred barques racing by.
Eagles high up, cleaving the space,
Fish gliding above shallow ground;
Ten thousand creatures, under frosty a sky,
all fighting for freedom.

In the waste's dreariness brooding,
I ask the blue space without bonds:
Who masters fate's rise and descent?

Once I came here with a hundred companions,
Vivid the months and years yet, filled with pride.
Schoolmates we were, and young altogether,
Upright and honest, in the bloom of our lives;
Impetuous students, full of enthusiasm,
We cast all restraints boldly aside.
Pointing to China, its mountains and rivers,
Setting the people afire with our words,
And counted for muck all those ranking high.
Do you still can remember:
How, venturing midstream, the oars lashed the waters
And the waves yet staying the flight of our boats?

(Transl. A.W.T.)

This poem is one of the most popular poems by Mao. It is widely used as an exemplary poem in the Chinese high school textbook. Most Chinese high school graduates should be able to recite this poem, or at least part of it.

It is reported that Fox is an avid fan of the Philadelphia Eagles NFL team.

Fox is not the first celebrity having Mao's words on his arm, Former boxing champion Mike Tyson has a Mao's portrait (poorly done though, a la Andy Warhol style) on his right upper arm. "Standing in front of Chairman Mao's remains, I felt really insignificant," Tyson told reporters while standing near the Chairman's preserved body during a visit to Mao's Mausoleum in Beijing. Tyson also has a Che Guevara portrait tattoo on his left abdomen.

The Mao tattoo before Tyson's bite

On the shape above the chinese characters, it seems like a Lebanese Phalange party symbol (Phalanges Libanaises). The Spanish phalangists also have a similar symbol. You can have a glimpse of the symbol at wiki page of the Lebanese party. The shape looks like a Lebanon cedar tree and similar symbol also appear in the national flag of Lebanon. Also, the Maronite Cross has similar shape. Phalange also means the bones of the hand and foot. In human beings, there are 5 fingers or toes on each limb. That may be the reason there are a number 5 under the phalange symbol and 5 arrows pointing out from the phalange symbol. Matthew Fox got his big break playing the older brother and patriarch Charlie Salinger on Party of Five in the 1990s, co-starring with both Scott Wolf and Neve Campbell. The 5 watch-like arrows also alludes to the "5 second rule" mentioned in the pilot.

The Falange (Phalange) movement is generally considered a righ-wing political movement inspired by the Italian Fascism. In Spain, the Falange was an authoritarian political organization founded by José Antonio Primo de Rivera in 1933 in opposition to the Second Spanish Republic. In Lebanon, The Phalanges Libanaises was founded in 1936 by Pierre Gemayel after seeing the discipline and authoritarianism of Nazi Germany. Its initial aim was to protect the Maronite position in Lebanon; in 1958 it entered the political arena to oppose growing Arab nationalism. The Sabra and Shatila massacre was carried out in September 1982 by a Christian Lebanese Forces militia unit, led by Phalangist commander Elie Hobeika, who would later become a longtime Lebanese parliament member and in the 1990s also a cabinet minister. Hobeika was assasinated in 2002. The Israeli Army Chief of Staff. Defense Minister Ariel Sharon resigned for allowing the Phalangists to enter Sabra and Shatila.

Finally, the "BC" characters on the far right of the arm seems to mean "Bad Character". A more sinister/unlikely interpretation is that the triangular shape looks like an "A" and the entire thing then looks like "ABC", which is the network that produces "Lost".

The Lebanese Phalange Symbol

The Maronite Cross

The Spanish Phalange Symbol

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