“The words ‘We’re going to die’ have been uttered too many times. If that is to be, if this is indeed my end, then I am writing to you in the pages of this notebook, Annabelle, in hopes you might somehow read them after I am gone. I need to tell you something, and I need to tell the world as well.”

Benji’s voiced relation to Annabelle will change over the course of the story, but at the outset it sounds like she is alive and well, and that he hopes perhaps a record of his will survive to let her know what happened to him. As it stands, Benji’s narration tells the reader that he hopes others will come to know his story, and that he is uncertain about their prospects of survival.

“What happened with my mother. What happened with you. Too much disappointment. Not enough comfort. Still, I never considered what I would do if I called for the Lord and He actually appeared before me.”

For the first time Benji’s writing seems to hint at some tragedy that occurred in his past, especially regarding Annabelle. The implication is that there has been suffering and grief associated with both her and his mother, and now he apparently has the chance that everyone always speaks fancifully of: looking God in the eye and asking him for help.

“The man put his hands over his nose and mouth and closed his eyes. Suddenly, the wind stopped. The air went dead. All sounds disappeared.”

Up to this point the stranger had merely voiced his claimed identity, but now he acts in a way that might begin to prove more than words alone could. Lost in the storm, the stranger seems to act in a way that hints at a connection between his actions and the activity of the storm; covering up his mouth, the source of his breath, might be a symbol for stopping the source of the wind (the breath of the sea).

“‘You have explained away the stars I put in the firmament. You have explained away all the creatures, large and small, with which I populated the Earth. You have even explained my greatest creation.’ ‘What’s that?’ I asked. ‘You.’”

The stranger confronts the boat with an accusation. Humanity is always so busy seeking answers and explanations that they have simultaneously removed all mystery from the universe but have tricked themselves into thinking they have solved the mystery of the human person.

“But this orange raft and its hidden notebook? They were a jolt to that misery. He wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was the idea that something—even a few pages of something—had endured a tragedy and crossed an ocean to find him. It had survived. And witnessing survival can make us believe in our own.”

After countless days at sea with the threat of death hanging over them at every moment, the diary and the lifeboat made their way to LeFleur. The idea that these items survived something so unfathomable provides LeFleur with a shred of hope for his own situation; if they could survive, why couldn’t he as well?

“Most of us were crying, too, not just for Bernadette but for ourselves. An invisible shield had been shattered. Death had paid its first visit.”

The survivors, after the death of Bernadette, experience death in a wholly new way. They of course were part of the shipwreck that already killed most of the others with whom they were sailing, but to see someone die in front of you, in your own personal space, is a different thing altogether. Death was now something intimate, and the possibility that it could come for them next weighs heavily on them all.

“It didn’t seem right, laughing, but it felt better than weeping. Maybe laughter after someone dies is the way we tell ourselves that they are still alive in some way. Or that we are.”

Emotions are often difficult to parse in the midst of trauma and tragedy. The temptation to laugh in the face of death is not anomalous, and is in fact a psychological tactic, often subconscious, of trying to fend off the reality of mortality. It is also, as Benji notes, a way to remind oneself that they are still alive.

“‘Worry is something you create.’ ‘Why would we create worry?’ ‘To fill a void.’ ‘A void of what?’ ‘Faith.’”

The stranger confronts the castaways with the true source of anxiety: fear and doubt. In the light of faith, there would be no room for worry since there would be confidence in the ultimate goodness of things, but in its absence the mind creates anxiety to fill its space.

“‘Keep it going!’ I screamed. ‘So you believe I created that storm?’ he asked. It caught me off guard. I looked at the empty tub, then said: ‘If you did, it wasn’t enough.’ ‘Wasn’t one raindrop enough to prove who I am?’”

The stranger points out a tension in Benji’s understanding of what had just happened. If he asks for more rain then he would presumably believe that the stranger really was who he claimed to be. But if he claims that there wasn’t enough of the rain, then he is missing the point. Either he is not the Lord, and thus there is no reason complaining and being angry, or he actually is, and then the questions need to become much larger.

“We all know we are going to die, but deep down, we don’t believe it. We secretly think there will be a late reprieve, a medical advance, a new drug that staves off our mortality. It’s an illusion, of course, something to shield us from our fear of the unknown.”

Death is a monster that humanity continues to keep at bay. The condition of the human person is such that death is an undeniable reality in the abstract, and for others, but is almost impossible to conceive of as something that would actually touch one’s own person.

“‘Perhaps I can help.’ I actually laughed. ‘Why? If I were God, I would have given up on me long ago.’ ‘But you are not,’ he said, ‘and I never will.’”

This exchange demonstrates the division between the way that a human being would view their own situation and the way that God (presumably) would view it. There is a great chance that human beings are far too harsh with themselves, far harsher than God would be, and that the Lord would be far more patient and merciful.

“Tears were streaming down my cheeks. I looked at the dead creature. I looked at Yannis. I looked at the rest of them, including the man who calls himself the Lord, and all I could blurt out was ‘Why?’”

While the capture of the seagull is radically different than the suffering that the survivors have dealt with thus far, it is just one more instance of seemingly needless death. Under the circumstances, choosing to kill the bird is a bridge too far for Benji, who is tired of being confronted with death.

“‘Did you know about Jean Philippe?’ I whispered. ‘I know all things.’ ‘How could you let him take his life? Why didn’t you talk him out of it?’ He looked me straight in the eyes. ‘Why didn’t you?’”

Something that human beings often do is blame God for their circumstances. In turning the question back on Benji, the stranger shows him that often the question is not a bad one, but one that completely misses the real point of things and removes any agency from human beings.

“Come to you? Why? To do…nothing? Anyone can do nothing! Look! We ALL can do nothing! You don’t exist! You are useless! You do nothing!”

Lambert, in the midst of his fit, lets the mask drop and screams at the stranger as though he really and truly believes that he is screaming at God. In this exchange, Lambert proves to be the polar opposite of Jean Philippe, for instance—who had exhibited real faith and hope—and shows himself to be a man completely devoid of faith, to the point of telling a man to his face that he does not exist.

“‘They’re all gone, Alice! Even the Lord.’ Which is when the little girl finally spoke. ‘I am the Lord,’ she said. ‘And I will never leave you.’”

As the last of the survivors, Benji is distraught at how lonely he is now. Not only is he left to himself, but it even appears that the Lord has abandoned the boat as well. Now, however, where he least expected to find it, a new source of faith and help has appeared in the little girl Alice.

“The isolation they’d endured since Lilly’s death had settled like a shadow inside their house. Any new visitor was a light.”

Bringing Dobby back to the house for dinner may have been a tactical ploy in order to find out more about the truth of things, but it ends up highlighting the sorrow LeFleur and his wife had been living with. Even though they lived together, presumably available to one another on a daily basis, the death of their daughter had created a genuine sense of loneliness even in each other’s presence.

“Deep down, he’d also resented that his wife had seemingly made peace with Lilly’s death while he was still at war with it. She believed it was God’s will. Part of his plan.”

The faith of his wife had become a source of anger and resentment for LeFleur because it was something that he didn’t have. Patrice’s faith acts as a sign of contradiction for his own lack of faith; since they both were handling it in opposite ways, the natural tendency is to view one of them as correct, and if Patrice had faith and he did not, then it represented a threat to his own way of living.

“A small stuffed animal: Lilly’s brown-and-white kangaroo. He’d put it there the night Patrice was gathering Lilly’s things in boxes. He hid it because he didn’t want every piece of his child to be packed away.”

Keeping the stuffed animal is a paradoxical bit of mental gymnastics for LeFleur and his desire to heal. On the one hand it is a way of recognizing that his daughter still has a place in his life. On the other hand, he is hanging on to her in a way that is not healthy, and he will need to find a way for this way of remembering to evolve into something more joyful.

“The lectern itself was inside a round enclosure, waist high, with a railing all around. One way in, one way out.”

Manipulating Dobby into the particular space of the church is a bit of poetic irony. While it serves as a very practical situation in which to conduct an interrogation, as there is no escape and thus nowhere to avoid answering the questions, it is also ironic since the pulpit is the place in a church where the sermon is preached and, presumably, the highest truths are spoken. In addition, it serves as a metaphor for life—ashes to ashes.

“In that moment, it was possible to believe that the world was nothing more than water and sky, that land was not even a concept, and all that man had built upon it was inconsequential. I realized this is what it means to forgo everything and be alone with God.”

Often one’s experience of God and the transcendent occur when everything else in the world is silent and stripped away. The Christian tradition, for instance, developed a way of life in a monastery or convent in order to let the things of the world go by the wayside so as to live more in tune with God and spiritual realities.

“When someone passes, Benjamin, people always ask, ‘Why did God take them?’ A better question would be ‘Why did God give them to us?’”

Speaking with Benji, Alice shows him that his question is not a bad one, but that it is asked from the wrong perspective. Wondering about the mystery of love and friendship is good, but one should be wondering about the joy and miracle of having them in the first place, rather than only wondering in the wake of their absence. Life is actually meant to be an experience of wonder at the gift, rather than of sorrow at any loss.

“Through heaving breath, he whispered, ‘Lilly’s all right. She’s all right. She’s safe.’ And Patrice began crying, too. ‘I know, sweetheart. I know she is.’”

In reaching the end of the diary, LeFleur comes to understand that he, too, is able to hope in something beyond this life thanks to the firsthand witness of Benji’s life. In coming to terms with Lilly’s death and his life without her, he demonstrates the reality that one person’s suffering can be a soothing balm and solace to another; misery loves company, but the opposite is true as well: Those in pain can be comforted by those who have been through the same pain before.

“These will be the last words I write, my love. I realize now that you are always with me. I can share my thoughts just by picturing you.”

While previously Benji had needed to write down all his thoughts, he now realizes that Annabelle is still real somewhere, somehow, and that all he needs to do is converse with her in his heart. Using the notebook is now seen to be a kind of crutch to help him arrive at this point of genuine interior peace, and now that he has come to what he believes is his end, he is able to give it up, as he has been able to let go of everything else as well.