Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Horace, Our Bloody Nosed Friend




Horace is one of the many, many characters that is still pretty much unknown to us viewers. We first met him in The Man Behind The Curtain when he and his wife, Olivia, “stumbled” (more on that later) upon baby Ben and his father and dying mother while driving 32 miles from Portland. Horace was the man responsible for bringing Ben and his father onto the island. Other than the fact that we saw him wearing a DHARMA Arrow patch with the words mathematician under it, we don’t know a thing about Horace. This is why I am writing this. I did a little research to see if any clues could be uncovered. By no means are these confirmed, they are just observations, suggestions and really crazy theories.

Horace has a few possible people that he is named for. The first is British applied mathematician Horace Lamb. Dictionary.com defines applied mathematics as “the branches of mathematics that are involved in the study of the physical or biological or sociological world”. The second I read this definition I thought that DHARMA would need people with this kind of skill and since it did say mathematician on Horace’s uniform it wouldn’t be a stretch for him to be specialized in this particular kind of mathematics. The physical world could apply to anything on the island but I thought of the time issue first (did they have DHARMA physicist?), biological could easily refer to the exotic animals they brought in, and sociological reminds me of the people who lived in the hatch.

Horace could also be named after the Egyptian God Horus who was the God of the sky and sun. The God Horus also had a man’s body with a falcon head. I swear we’ve seen the hieroglyphic for it (it’s the one that looks like a bird) written on the wall that Ben went into. In this God’s youth he was called Neferhor which means “the Good Horus”. Could Ben have thought of Horace as one of the good ones but had to kill him anyways in order to rule the island? He did close the eye’s of Horace’s corpse, something that he didn’t do for the others. Here’s an out there idea: Annie was the daughter of Olivia and Horace Goodspeed and that’s why he had respect for the man, just not enough to let him live.

The station that Horace worked in is also a mystery. The arrow was uninhabited and seemed to be more for storage rather than for mathematical work. They found a glass eye in the Arrow. The God Horus was known for the eye of Horus which was the symbol of renewal. Connection, maybe, but I think I am stretching it :). I don’t think we will get to see much more of the station but there is a possibility that the part of the Arrow we saw wasn’t all of the station.

What do you think of the fact he built Jacob’s cabin. I wonder about the possibility of Horace being Jacob. Why did Jacob take over the cabin Horace built for himself and his wife? Was it just there after the purge and Jacob figured it would be a perfect place for his headquarters? Something is up with this. Horace, our nose bleeding friend, has a roll in the Jacob shenanigans but the question is how?

5 comments:

Capcom said...

Nice detective work!

Well, Horace Lamb might be a good guy to have on a team running a self-made Utopian society, when you think about it.

I have always thought (hoped) that there is more to the Arrow than what we saw, unless they just didn't finish that station yet. Could they have only started excavating for it? It doesn't seem likely to me, if they already made up patches for it. Unless...the Arrow was a pseudo-station like the Orchid greenhouse was for the FDW-encasing station below. And, the "Door" station at the top of the cliff where they held Mike. Hmm.

Well I haven't a clue why Horace was building that crazy shack, for his wife or otherwise. I hope there's more to that coming up soon in S-5.

Great post! :-)

Capcom said...

Oh yeah, I like what you said about Ben's respect for Horace...he respects people, but in very limited and restricted amounts. :-)

Ezra James Sharkington said...

I think there has to be a huge reason why Ben showed Horace that respect after he died. As you know, Ben doesn't respect just anyone :).

I like your idea about the Arrow being a pseudo station. Perhaps we will see more of it in some flashbacks in season 5?

Capcom said...

I sure hope so!

And BTW, Horace Lamb also fits in with Hanso's ideals of mathematically solving the worlds problems in the various categories of the Valenzetti Equation, as he stated in the Sri Lanka vid from TLE! Good thinking on that one. :-)

Anonymous said...

I believe that Horace is Jacob, they look very similar and Horace has appeared in two of the most important Jacob episodes. I don't think that's a coincidence.
- Izi