lost is about desmond hume

by rob on May 26, 2006

I think I just thought something crazy about the show LOST. I may be way off, but what if I’m right?

What if the entire show is really about Desmond Hume? What if the word “lost” really referred to him?

A couple of points about that:

  • Dez was an army guy who was dishonorably discharged.
  • Dez is in love with a woman whom he can’t have.
  • Dez feels he has to get his honor back.
  • Dez literally has been lost on an island for 3 years.
  • It was a consequence of Dez’s accidental murder of Kelvin that caused the plane to crash.
  • At the end the Season 2 finale, we find his girlfriend is still looking for him.

If that doesn’t describe a man who is lost I don’t know what does. What if it’s really all about him? What if the show is now shifting to explain that this is really a story of a hard-luck guy who has done some bad things, but is tormented that he can’t have the love of his life, meanwhile she continues to search for him unbeknownst to her un-approving father? Everything else on the island is just part of their story?

Oh, by the way, Desmond’s girlfriend is named Penelope, the same name of the woman who waited and longed for her husband, Ulysses, to return from the Trojan Wars.

Weird, huh?

UPDATE: Whoa! I just read an article from Entertainment Weekly that published today (Saturday) saying the same thing! Maybe I really am onto something!

[tags]lost, desmond, penelope, lost theories[/tags]

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  • DBC
    desmond is just the best (i think the song "make your own kind of muscic" shoud be changed to "Desmond Theme" lol
  • I think you're very right, brotha! :D I think with TPTB saying that S3 is going to have more romance (Des + Penny), I think there are many hints that point to Desmond being the catalyst for the show. And hey, he wasn't brought on to regular cast status for S3 for nothing I'm sure!
  • rob
    kbg, I have no idea. Like I said, it's a thought I had and wonder if it'll become a central and over-arching theme. It doens't explain everything else, but I just wonder if that's going to turn out to be the big theme with everything else below it. Maybe there's two themes: money can help you find the one you love, and we're all more connected to each other than we ever realized. I dunno. I'm grasping at straws and thinking outside the island.
  • kbg
    okay - I can see the Desmond/Penelope plot. I still don't understand, if this is the case, why they went to such great lenghths to link everyone else on the show together through flash backs and chance encounters. Could Boone have also been a philosopher? Thomas Carlyle...?
  • rob
    Sound familiar? Check this from Entertainment Weekly (link in the Update of this post):

    "...you can forget Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Locke, and the dozen other characters that we've come to know intimately well over the past two years. When Lost is all said and done, it will stand exposed as the story of Desmond and Penelope, two people we barely know, and the lengths these crazy kids will go to in order to be together again — and the lengths to which Daddy Big Bucks will go to keep them apart.

    In my view, Desmond/Penelope has suddenly become the defining narrative thread of Lost. Everything else is a subplot within that larger context. "
  • rob
    Scott, check this. I use a plugin for Wordpress, but Technorati will tell you how.
  • Question for you: how do you put technorati tags into your posts?
  • rob
    Okay, now I'm embarassed. Catbird tells me I'm bright, but I read J A Greer's comment from Wikipedia and I feel like a dunce. Barring the conjunctions, I'm not sure that Wikipedia comment has one word with less than a dozen letters in it!
  • Rob, I just sometimes forgot how stinkin' bright you are! Brilliant!
  • J A Greer
    Well, brother, let's look at this. His name is Desmond David Hume, after the Scottish philosopher, making him the third philosopher of the show with John Locke and Danielle Rousseau.

    Wikipedia says this about Hume:
    Historians most famously see Humean philosophy as a thoroughgoing form of skepticism, but many commentators have argued that the element of naturalism has no less importance in Hume's philosophy. Hume scholarship has tended to oscillate over time between those who emphasize the skeptical side of Hume (such as the logical positivists), and those who emphasize the naturalist side (such as Don Garrett, Norman Kemp Smith, Kerri Skinner, Barry Stroud, and Galen Strawson).

    Hume was heavily influenced by empiricists John Locke and George Berkeley, along with various Francophone writers such as Pierre Bayle, and various figures on the Anglophone intellectual landscape such as Isaac Newton, Samuel Clarke, Francis Hutcheson, and Joseph Butler.
  • rob
    That is if he's not dead, brother.
  • Good thoughts, man. It definitely looks like ole Desi will be playing a more central role in season 3.
  • Well done.
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