POOR JOHN

 Poor-john and apple pies are all our fare. --Sir J. Harrington.

A "poor-john" is a small European fish, similar to the cod, but of inferior quality.

In LOST, Poor John meant poor John Locke. His character did not live his life or died well. 

John was a loner from day one. Abandoned by his crazy mother, he bounced from foster home to foster home. He never made any true friends. He never assimilated into his foster homes. He was academically sound, but his fantasy-dreams of being a popular jock got into his way.  As a result of his stubborn self-imagine of himself, he left a professional career track to one of being a low wage semi-skilled worker from odd job to odd job.

Along the way, there was an inner desire to create a family. He wanted to care, comfort and support that was missing in his life. He did not find it in his various jobs with his co-workers. He was socially inept in dating circles, fumbling around even with phone sex workers. He even tried to join a commune as a means of trying to get accepted into a large group. But that was a failure. 

From an average, objective standard, John Locke lived an unhappy life. Sociologists would classify him as one of the underclass; an underachiever who failed to reach his potential. He was a reactionary to the negative events around him, and rarely ever met the challenge to change his state in life.

One can be poor economically, socially and spiritually.

Locke was poor in all three of those categories.

Because of those deficiencies, Locke grasped at his chance to be something different on the island. But no matter how he acted, how other people viewed him would return to his off-island loneliness.

Did he have any true friends on the island? No.
Did he make any lasting impacts, or change someone's life for the better? No.

Did anyone on the island mourn him when his body was found in the crate? No.

Only Jack had a drug induced reaction to Locke's death on the mainland - - - but that was not mourning Locke as a friend, but Jack realizing his own personal mistakes and failure as the castaways leader. Locke's death sparked Jack to return to the island, for no apparent reason except to finish what he had started: rescuing his fellow passengers.  But at the time, he did not know if anyone was left to rescue.

So Locke lived and died a poor life. Which is ironic since he was a popular character on the show.