Land of the Lost Essay

Land of the Lost

Introduction

Are you familiar with the term ”mid-life crisis”? If you’re unfamiliar with it, then allow me to explain: A mid-life crisis is a phenomenon when someone (usually middle-aged) enters a psychological crisis due to realising their growing age, inevitable mortality and possible lack of accomplishments in life. This can result in them travelling more, changing their lifestyle or “things they would never imagine”. The story “Land of the Lost” written by Steven O’nan features a main character that fully showcases, what I would like to dub “an extreme mid-life crisis”.

The main character and her life

The protagonist of the story is nameless throughout the entirety of the story. We learn that she is living alone at the moment, with her only company being her dog Ollie. She used to have two sons. However, they flew the nest not long ago. From these bits of information, we can deduce, that she is most likely around 45-65 years old. This fits well with the description of a mid-life crisis. Just after we are introduced to the protagonist, we learn that she has been obsessing over a case in the news. It has even gotten to the point, where her manager had to ask her to stop talking about it at work. Since the protagonist isn’t too keen on working as a cashier in a supermarket, she decides to start investigating the case and try to find the victim’s body. She then starts digging around for the carcass, begins to treat the website (her source for information) as a Bible, rearranges her shifts, takes on night shifts. While complaining to her son about the FBI one day, she confesses why she’s searching for the victim:

“She could admit that at least part of the reason she was searching for a stranger’s daughter was that no one else needed her. Just Ollie.”

Now that her sons have moved out, she realises that there isn’t anyone left who needs her around. This way she can project herself onto the little victim girl, in the sense that the FBI has stopped looking for her body.

The point of view

The novel is being told chronologically in past tense through a third person narrator. This way the author leaves all of the interpretings up to the readers since she can hide the thoughts going through the protagonist’s head. This means she shields the answer to the most significant question in the story: Why is she so obsessed with the case? Leaving the readers to form their solutions.