Nathan

Season: 2, Episodes: 1, Faction: Tail Section

Overview

Nathan was a tail section survivor of Oceanic Flight 815. He was suspected by Ana Lucia of being one of the Others, due to his secretive behavior (which was probably simply due to his personality), and was killed when his neck was broken by Goodwin.

War

Sun (Fire)

Space (Stars)

Darkness (Night)

Fertility (Water)

Before the crash

2×07 – The Other 48 Days

Nathan claimed he was in the tail section of the airplane at the time of the crash and was in the bathroom for most of the flight. Little is known about his life before boarding the plane, except that he stated he was on a company retreat in Australia and stayed behind to ‘sight-see’, and claimed to be from Canada, like Ethan. (“The Other 48 Days”)

On the Island

Nathan was not seen after the crash until nightfall (Day 1) after Eko was attacked by the Others. Nathan was one of the tail section survivors who, along with Cindy, wanted to stay on the beach, for he believed it was safer than venturing into the jungle.

Ana Lucia began to grow suspicious of Nathan and came to believe that he might have been on the Island before the crash, because of (among other things) his lengthy trips into the jungle, supposedly to take a bathroom break.

He also had several disagreements with Ana Lucia such as where they should seek shelter. Since Ana had all but named herself leader of the Tailies Nathan was the only one who opposed her. While originally none of the other survivors were suspicious of Nathan, that did not last long as people began to grow suspicous after the second raid. Ana Lucia’s suspicion that Nathan was “one of them” led her to throw him into the pit.

Nathan spent four days in the pit continuing to maintain his innocence. While in the pit he survived due to Mr. Eko giving him food. After Ana Lucia promised to begin cutting Nathan’s fingers off the next day, Goodwin freed Nathan, then killed him by breaking his neck and hid the body in the jungle. Goodwin later defended his actions by claiming Nathan was “not a good person”. He also suggested that, if she tortured Nathan and he still didn’t confess, Ana Lucia might finally start to believe he was telling the truth, and look for other suspects, putting Goodwin at risk of being discovered. (“The Other 48 Days”)

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Related Character Images

Associated DHARMA Station

Decoded Season 2 Characters

Goodwin Stanhope	Donald	Man on Beach	Nancy	Ana Lucia Cortez	Mr. Eko	Libby Smith
Emma	Zach	Olivia Goodspeed

Key Episode(s) to Decoding the Character

2x07 "The Other 48 Days"

Wiki Info

Orion was a giant huntsman in Greek mythology whom Zeus placed among the stars as the constellation of Orion.

Ancient sources tell several different stories about Orion. There are two major versions of his birth and several versions of his death. The most important recorded episodes are his birth somewhere in Boeotia, his visit to Chios where he met Merope and was blinded by her father, Oenopion, the recovery of his sight at Lemnos, his hunting with Artemis on Crete, his death by the bow of Artemis or the sting of the giant scorpion which became Scorpio, and his elevation to the heavens. Most ancient sources omit some of these episodes and several tell only one. These various incidents may originally have been independent, unrelated stories and it is impossible to tell whether omissions are simple brevity or represent a real disagreement.

In Greek literature he first appears as a great hunter in Homer’s epic the Odyssey, where Odysseus sees his shade in the underworld. The bare bones of his story are told by the Hellenistic and Roman collectors of myths, but there is no extant literary version of his adventures comparable, for example, to that of Jason in Apollonius of Rhodes’ Argonautica or Euripides’ Medea; the entry in Ovid’s Fasti for May 11 is a poem on the birth of Orion, but that is one version of a single story. The surviving fragments of legend have provided a fertile field for speculation about Greek prehistory and myth.

Orion served several roles in ancient Greek culture. The story of the adventures of Orion, the hunter, is the one on which we have the most evidence (and even on that not very much); he is also the personification of the constellation of the same name; he was venerated as a hero, in the Greek sense, in the region of Boeotia; and there is one etiological passage which says that Orion was responsible for the present shape of the Straits of Sicily.

Legends

Homer and Hesiod

Orion is mentioned in the oldest surviving works of Greek literature, which probably date back to the 7th or 8th century BC, but which are the products of an oral tradition with origins several centuries earlier. In Homer’s Iliad Orion is described as a constellation, and the star Sirius is mentioned as his dog. In the Odyssey, Odysseus sees him hunting in the underworld with a bronze club, a great slayer of animals; he is also mentioned as a constellation, as the lover of the Goddess Dawn, as slain by Artemis, and as the most handsome of the earthborn. In the Works and Days of Hesiod, Orion is also a constellation, one whose rising and setting with the sun is used to reckon the year.

The legend of Orion was first told in full in a lost work by Hesiod, probably the Astronomy; simple references to Hesiod will refer to this, unless otherwise stated. This version is known through the work of a Hellenistic author on the constellations; he gives a fairly long summary of Hesiod’s discourse on Orion. According to this version, Orion was the son of the sea-god Poseidon and Euryale, daughter of Minos, King of Crete. Orion could walk on the waves because of his father; he walked to the island of Chios where he got drunk and attacked Merope, daughter of Oenopion, the ruler there. In vengeance, Oenopion blinded Orion and drove him away. Orion stumbled to Lemnos where Hephaestus — the lame smith-god — had his forge. Hephaestus told his servant, Cedalion, to guide Orion to the uttermost East where Helios, the Sun, healed him; Orion carried Cedalion around on his shoulders. Orion returned to Chios to punish Oenopion, but the king hid away underground and escaped Orion’s wrath. Orion’s next journey took him to Crete where he hunted with the goddess Artemis and her mother Leto, and in the course of the hunt, threatened to kill every beast on Earth. Mother Earth objected and sent a giant scorpion to kill Orion. The creature succeeded, and after his death, the goddesses asked Zeus to place Orion among the constellations. Zeus consented and, as a memorial to the hero’s death, added the Scorpion to the heavens as well.

Other Sources

Although Orion has a few lines in both Homeric poems and in the Works and Days, most of the stories about him are recorded in incidental allusions and in fairly obscure later writings. No great poet standardized the legend. The ancient sources for Orion’s legend are mostly notes in the margins of ancient poets (scholia) or compilations by later scholars, the equivalent of modern reference works or encyclopedias; even the legend from Hesiod’s Astronomy survives only in one such compilation. In several cases, including the summary of the Astronomy, although the surviving work bears the name of a famous scholar, such as Apollodorus of Athens, Eratosthenes, or Gaius Julius Hyginus, what survives is either an ancient forgery or an abridgement of the original compilation by a later writer of dubious competence; editors of these texts suggest that they may have borne the names of great scholars because they were abridgments, or even pupil’s notes, based on the works of the scholars.

The margin of the Empress Eudocia’s copy of the Iliad has a note summarizing a Hellenistic poet who tells a different story of Orion’s birth. Here the gods Zeus, Hermes and Poseidon come to visit Hyrieus of Tanagra, who roasts a whole bull for them. When they offer him a favor, he asks for the birth of sons. The gods take the bull’s hide and ejaculate or urinate into it and bury it in the earth, then tell him to dig it up ten months later. When he does, he finds Orion; this explains why Orion is earthborn.

A second full telling (even shorter than the summary of Hesiod) is in a Roman-era collection of myths; the account of Orion is based largely on the mythologist and poet Pherecydes of Leros. Here Orion is described as earthborn and enormous in stature. This version also mentions Poseidon and Euryale as his parents. It adds a first marriage to Side before his marriage to Merope. All that is known about Side is that Hera threw her into Hades for rivalling her in beauty. It also gives a different version of Orion’s death than the Iliad: Eos, the Dawn, fell in love with Orion and took him to Delos where Artemis killed him.

Another narrative on the constellations, three paragraphs long, is from a Latin writer whose brief notes have come down to us under the name of Hyginus. It begins with the oxhide story of Orion’s birth, which this source ascribes to Callimachus and Aristomachus, and sets the location at Thebes or Chios. Hyginus has two versions. In one of them he omits Poseidon; a modern critic suggests this is the original version.

The same source tells two stories of the death of Orion. The first says that because of his “living joined in too great a friendship” with Oenopion, he boasted to Artemis and Leto that he could kill anything which came from Earth. Earth objected and created the Scorpion. In the second story, Apollo objected to his sister Artemis’s love for Orion, and, seeing Orion swimming with just his head visible, challenged her to shoot at that mark, which she hit, killing him. He connects Orion with several constellations, not just Scorpio. Orion chased Pleione, the mother of the Pleiades, for seven years, until Zeus intervened and raised all of them to the stars. In Works and Days, Orion chases the Pleiades themselves. Canis Minor and Canis Major are his dogs, the one in front is called Procyon. They chase Lepus, the hare, although Hyginus says some critics thought this too base a prey for the noble Orion and have him pursuing Taurus, the bull, instead. A Renaissance mythographer adds other names for Orion’s dogs: Leucomelaena, Maera, Dromis, Cisseta, Lampuris, Lycoctonus, Ptoophagus, Arctophonus.

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