Yeah, agree. In season 1 he clearly wanted to leave the island because he was on the raft and at the end of the series he wanted to leave because the island was going down (or so he thought). In the middle he seemed very content to stay on the island, especially during the 70's Dharma years. Since Sawyer killed the shrimp shop owner in Australia, you have to believe he was worried that the law would catch up to him if he left the island, much like Kate was worried about killing her biological dad. If you believe the island was alive and/or controlling them, then most of the characters had an attraction to the island and in their hearts never felt right about leaving.....even though they acted like they wanted to leave. Locke and Rose clearly felt that if they left that their medical issues would return, ones the island had cured.
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Interesting enough, Michael was the only character that seemed dead set on leaving the island...and since most of his decisions seemed to be wrong and not work out, he seemed to be the most flawed character and incapable of change and was thus destine to spend a long time on the island...or at least his soul was trapped there for a long time....long after the series ended.....it seems your time on the island was directly related to how flawed you were and how quickly you recognized your flaws and did something to fix them....Boone got over his issues with Shannon, he was fixed-he died...Shannon finally got someone to love her for who she is (Sayid), she was fixed-she died.....Eko came to terms with his issues with his brother and stood on his principles when the Black Smoke tried to get him to come back to evil like the bandits in his youth when he shot the priest, he was fixed-he died.....
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Of course, this leads to an interesting question. Did the people on the plane that left in the end really leave, or did they come back later when they knew the island was not going to destroy itself? Did Hurley bring them back later?   See 6 other replies

Old topic but still needs to be clarified. Sawyer did want to leave the island for several seasons but in Season 4 it is fact he did not want to leave. Sawyer questions Kate in The Economist about why she wants to leave at all because all that awaits her is jail outside the island (which or course does not end up happening, but I digress..) and he says he does not want to leave the island because he had nothing to go back to. Of course if you want to get into the end of the series well hey, things change.   See 6 other replies