Heartwarming / Dear Esther

• Whenever the narrator talks about Esther and what she was like, he always talks about how chatty and bright she was, and how she could always fill the empty vacuum in a room. He clearly loved her very much. No wonder he's so depressed when she died.
  "When you were born, your mother told me, a hush fell over the delivery room. A great red birthmark covered the left side of your face. No one knew what to say, so you cried to fill the vacuum. I always admired you for that; that you cried to fill whatever vacuum you found. I began to manufacture vacuums, just to enable you to deploy your talent. The birthmark faded by the time you were six, and had gone completely by the time we met, but your fascination with the empty, and its cure, remained."
• You have to admit, for a man very desperate to die, the narrator is a very determined, stubborn man. When he gets injured, he gets up and keeps moving. When he gets lost in the caverns, he keeps moving.
  "...Besides, I have always considered that if one is to fall, it is critical to keep one's eyes firmly open."
• Some of the variations imply that the narrator feels bad for Paul, and doesn't blame him for Esther's death.
  • He also seems sympathetic to, or at least pities, both Donnelly and Jakobson, seeing himself within each of them.
• Every version of the ending. Each is a Tear Jerker of the highest caliber as well.
  "You are all the world like a nest to me, in which eggs unbroken form like fossils, come together, shatter and send small black flowers to the very air. From this infection, hope. From this island, flight. From this grief, love."
  "We have always been drawn here: one day the gulls will return and nest in our bones and our history. I will look to my left and see Esther Donnelly, flying beside me. I will look to my right and see Paul Jakobson, flying beside me. They will leave white lines carved into the air to reach the mainland, where help will be sent."

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