Lost Character Personalities – Part 14 of 24 – Shannon Rutherford May 27, 2007
Posted by Kelsey Martineau in Lost Character Analysis.Tags: Lost, Lost Character Analysis
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Shannon Rutherford. Shannon would be a half decent character if she didn’t complain so much! Not trying to start this analysis off in a negative way, but it’s the truth. She has a major problem with authority, and people telling her what to do. To be honest though, it’s what is expected from a girl like her. She is your stereotypical blonde, expecting things from people, and using them as she sees fit. If you remember the episode where she thought she saw Walt, you’ll remember how upset she got when Sayid didn’t believe what she told him. This reinforces that type attitude. She, like many other people on the island, has a desire to demonstrate to people that she is capable of doing something. In example, Walt’s dog Vincent. She told Sayid that she wanted to find the dog when he got lost, because it’s the only thing that anyone had asked her to do, and she didn’t want to disappoint Walt if he returned.
She had as much of an attachment to Boone as he did to her, getting highly upset when she felt that she lost control. We see from her past, that she was in at least one abusive relationship. Perhaps this desire was caused by getting every single thing she wanted as she was raised? Who knows, but she wrongfully used Boone, talking her boyfriends into forcing him to bribe them out of the relationship with her. Definitely a sick mind that we’re dealing with here. If you remember the flashback of Boone and Shannon in the airport, Sayid asks her to watch his bag. Moments later, to show her authority, she claims that an “Arab guy” had left his bag lying beside her. I think if I had to pick a single adjective to describe Shannon, it would be “impatient.” You also see at one point during season one, Shannon using Charlie to catch fish, when Boone had claimed to her that there was no way that she could survive on the island alone. Definitely following the exact same behavior pattern we’ve seen every other time.
She begins to “see” for lack of a better word, Sayid. Boone warned Sayid that it wasn’t a relationship that he wanted to get into, but Sayid ignored the warning. Numerous times we see Shannon lose patience with Sayid, as well as claiming that he didn’t believe her about the Walt sightings.
What can we learn from Shannon? That we shouldn’t use people to through life. You can see Shannon’s twisted logic many times, from turning Sayid in to show she had authority, all the way to using Charlie to catch fish for her. Unfortunately, there are hundreds of girls that are identical to Shannon in this world, and will skim by based on nothing more than their looks in life. Shannon, just as Boone, is deceased.
I don’t know which analysis is worst – this one or the one on Ana-Lucia. If you can’t make an observation about these characters objectively, you really don’t have any business writing character analysis in the first place.
yours not seeing her true situation this is a very skindeep analysis you shoulod really look at her character in depth god didnt you see the episode where she dies its the reason why she is a bitch it was her circumstance that lead to her actions she was only doing what she could do to survive JUST like eko or are you goging to make a skin deep article about him too. I really dont think you see the depth of LOSt and its characters they each have a common struggle and none of tehm are shallow
This article isn’t “skin” deep in my opinion. She’s a simple character. Sure, she got screwed over with the whole money thing, but that’s life. There’s nothing complex about her not getting the fortune that she thought she was going to inherit, or her cheating Boone out of $25,00 or $50,000 at a time.
She didn’t take it well because she’s been spoon-fed her whole life. Shannon isn’t a complicated character, and that’s why she got killed off. There are tons of better characters with much more complex lives. She was the most normal of the whole bunch. And yes, she is quite shallow. You may think she’s hot or something, and give her the benefit of the doubt, which is what happens with most blondes like this. However, when it comes down to it, Shannon was a simple minded girl with the stereotypical problems of girls her age. Hence the reason she’s dead.
I think that at the beginning of Season 1, shannon was the jerk, but when everyone thought she was useless, you really see that she was just abandoned by Boone, her father, and her step-mother. You really see that there was something sad. then when Boone died, she had no one else in the world except for maybe Sayid. I really felt sorry for her after Boone died and from there her character got interesting with the whole Walt thing. Just like every other character on the island, her character evolved into a the not-so stereotypical blonde girl. I like every character on Lost, because all their lives were crappy in one way or the other. They are all flawed and then develop. I felt that Shannon’s story was not over when she was killed and could have been a big contribution to Lost history.