[QUOTE=Frylock]
I still think Sawyer can’t read.
[/QUOTE]
When did you say it before?
Anyway:
*1. He was looking at “Are You There God, It’s Me, Margaret” once, and I just couldn’t believe he’d let himself be caught dead reading this book if he knew what book it was. *
Reading is a great way to semaphore “I don’t want to socialize.” And in this case, “I’d rather read a book aimed at 12-year-old girls than associate with any of you lot.”
*2. He wouldn’t read his letter out loud, but made someone else read it instead. *
Come on. Dramatic impact. Seeing how the content of the letter touched Kate’s fuzzy ol’ heart was more powerful than having Sawyer recite it, and his making her read it was further evidence of his unwillingness to let his guard down. (It was Kate, right? I lent the DVDs to someone.)
3. The look on his face when he’s “reading” is not really a “reading” face but more of a “I’m trying to figure out what the hell these little scribbles could signify” face. Well, that’s a total judgment call, I know.
Sawyer has two facial expressions. Brooding scowl, and disarming grin.
4. I’ve never seen Sawyer in a situation where I would have to explain something he did or said by reference to him having read something. This is not true of most of the characters.
He was clearly reading the notes in the bottle, when he, Michael and Jin were on the raft. I think he also scanned Jin’s Korean-to-English cheat sheet. And before they set sail, he read the name on the passport that Kate was trying to forge.
Furthermore, I think that in order to pull the cons we’ve seen him pull, he would have to have been able to produce contracts and point out the relevant bits. Again, theoretically something that could be faked, but as SBS points out, illiterate people are vulnerable to being conned themselves, and Sawyer’s not about to let any ducks sneak up on him.
Although, he did seem to draw a blank when Hurley observed that he looked “like somebody ran over Harry Potter.”
So there’s a teeny bit of wiggle room for your theory that the island cured his dyslexia. But I think we would have heard about it by now.