Mythical character archetypes on Lost

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Many characters seem to fit in to mythical character archetypes of the sort outlined by Joseph Campbell's The Power of Myth and the Hero with a Thousand Faces.

Major

• Claire: Virgin Mary, Vestal Virgin, Demeter/Ceres, mother figure. Claire easily fits into the model of a pristine, sinless woman who gives birth to a messiah figure of sorts. She is venerated and universally respected, and violation of her would be a violation of all that is holy in the story.

• Desmond: Odysseus, the Wanderer

• Jack: King.
  • He organized the tribe, sought shelter for them, and has become a natural leader--a role which puts him in friction with Locke, whose emphasis on the Island and not the survivors echos the occasional tension between the 1st and 2nd functions of Western Mythology with regard to Order vs. Chaotic, self-serving knowledge, or even may echo a tension between Odin (Locke) and Tyr (Jack). Secondly, Jack was also attempting to form an army to do battle with the Others, thus fulfilling the king's role as primary warrior.
  • That his last name is Shephard is likely not a coincidence, a shepherd guiding his people. Jack has been associated with Moses on several occasions as well, as the leader who frees his people from slavery and leads them out of Egypt into the Promised Land of freedom.

• Juliet: Princess in a tower, held prisoner by an evil king; damsel in distress

• Locke: shaman-turned-magician. Early in the show--and thus in the culture of the survivors--Locke acted as a shaman for the people. He understood the island, communicated with it, and would use various hallucinagenic substances in order to produce visions in others (and possibly himself). The scar on Locke's face, which passes through his right eye, may be a reference to Odin, the Norse magician/shaman god who had only one eye. Like Merlin, he may be more connected to the "other side" and to the land itself, than to the mortal people on it.

• Sawyer:
  • In the first three seasons, Sawyer is clearly the Strife-bringer, or Trickster character. Like Loki, the Irish Bricriu or Bugs Bunny, Sawyer's main motive seems to be sowing discord amongst the survivors, cracking wise and generally frustrating authority figures. However, unlike Loki, Sawyer seems unlikely to make a deal with the Others, as Loki does with the giants. Also, his name obviously invokes that of one of American literature's best known tricksters, Tom Sawyer.
  • Sawyer also calls to mind merchant-princes who use capitalism as a means to power.
  • Later in the show, Sawyer evolves into a more pure warrior figure, a samurai of sorts, performing essential acts of violence that others are ill-equipped to perform. He may also be linked to the Arthurian character Lancelot, who was the king's greatest warrior and was the third party in a love triangle involving the King and the Queen. In this aspect, Sawyer seems perhaps animalistic, reminiscent of a growling wolf, or, at times, a roaring lion.
  • Except for the chasity part, Sawyer is in some ways a scholarly, learned monk, devoted first to his books. His verbal fluency and wide reading making him a veritable encyclopedia of culture and something of a humanistic philosopher.

• Sayid: the smith, the engineer, the technician...Though lacking a physical deformity like the typical Western mythical smith (Volcan, Wayland/Volund), Sayid has other elements that link him to the Smith. First, his character is the resource for building and rebuilding machines (mostly radio transmitters, computers, etc.). Secondly, like the Norse Volund, he is capable of incredible violence when he attempts revenge (such as his torturing of Sawyer or "Henry"). Thirdly, his Iraqi nationality, and status as former soldier of the Republican Guard, could be counted as a 'deformity', since it is hardly going to endear him to the largely American main cast (particularly Sawyer in the earliest episodes). In the Gilligan's Island school of Lost analysis, he is the Professor.

• Walt: the Abducted. Like Persephone, Mabon, Pryderi, and other abducted children of mythology, Walt was taken by the Others, who know what possible powers he has. Naturally, the survivors want him back.

Misc

• Ana Lucia: War Goddess. Her history as an LA cop, her ruthlessness, and her guns mark her as a war goddess, a figure mostly popular with the Celts, but also found in Norse figures like Freya, or Greek figures like Athena. Her name is an unintentional echo for one of the names of the Morrigan, namely Ana, one of the triplets of Irish battle goddesses. Her black hair is also evocative of the ravens associated with the Morrigan. Also associated with Boudicea. Boadicea's tribe, the Iceni, lived peacefully as a client tribe under Roman rule. After her husband's death corrupt Roman officials reneged on the agreement that left the Iceni in peace. When Boadicea, still the leader of her tribe, went to protest this, she was flogged and her daughters were raped before her eyes. She returned to her tribe and raised a rebellion against the Romans that was short lived, brutal, and ended in her death.

• Shannon and Boone: The Twins, the Gemini...

• The Others: Demons. The Others are a mirror of many adversarial and elder figures in Indo-European mythology: like the Titans, Giants, and Fomorians, the Others were there before the Survivors, and they are antagonistic to these Survivors. They dwell underground, and abduct or kill various survivors, and sometimes infiltrate the survivors as spies.