The Stranger in the Lifeboat

“When we pulled him from the water, he didn’t have a scratch on him. That’s the first thing I noticed. The rest of us were all gashes and bruises, but he was unmarked […].”

From the very start, Benji immediately intuits that there is something different and strange about this young man they rescued. The obvious assumption, to which Benji seems to jump, is that he had not been involved in the shipwreck at all; several of the survivors die from injuries sustained in the accident, but here the man is simply wet from the sea.

“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.