Ideas and Meanings!

I was contemplating as I moved through this vast; beautiful environment about the REAL meaning (If there is any in the first place) and came up with this! NOTE: I have played this game through only once and any inaccuracies are purely just honest mistakes!

Theory 1 - Let us assume that YOU (the character) is the narrator... seems logical, yes? If we also assume that this man had a wife named Esther and that they were involved in a crash, a crash that killed Esther but somehow this man survived. I am going to jump straight to something here; you may not keep up: The Narrator's name is Paul Donnelly...okay that was a little bit sudden, just hear my reasoning: the pictures about the island show braking systems and Neural patterns, candles stay alight and never burn down, and props that tell this man's story are conveniently scattered in the right places... I am going to say, for now, that this island does not exist; this island is the creation of a mind that was broken by the death of his wife, who is later referred to as "Esther Donnelly", if that is Esther's true name and this Narrator IS in fact her husband, that makes his last name Donnelly. So where did Paul come from? Paul is apparently the person driving the car, he owns a pharmaceuticals company...this explains the Medical diagrams. This may be a bit confusing for people now so let's imagine the scene of the crash....

Paul Donnelly and his wife, Esther Donnelly are travelling along the 19th southbound junction of the M5 - a motorway in the UK (I live quite close to the M5.) The time is unknown, quite possibly though, the conditions are wet or very dark; placing us at night time. There is something in the road, most likely another car that was seen too late, Paul pushes the brakes but the brakes fail and they hit the car, Killing Esther.

There is a bit more, though; the number twenty one (21) is repeated throughout the story, I quote:

"It took twenty one minutes for them to arrive, Paul timed it to the second."

That is not all, oh no! It goes on...


"He left his body to the medical school and was duly opened out for a crowd of
students twenty-one days after his passing. The report is included in my edition of his
book. The syphilis had torn through his guts like a drunk driver, scrambling his
organs like eggs on a plate."

21 seems to be a recurring number and now that I think of it my first theory seems a little odd after playing the game again, so I have a reason for the "Decorations" painted around the island...

Twenty one is irrelevant, twenty one steps. Twenty one minutes. Twenty one times... It's a pattern of course but it's not a pattern to point us in a direction, it's a pattern that is subconscious, this man, the narrator, uses the number 21 to put reason to a catastrophe that has no reason. it was an accident that he tries to explain through science.

Now that I go and read more lines of this game, the more confused I get... I don't think this narrator is a man at all, I don't think that this narrator is even human! Look at what I mean!


"The moon over the Sandford junction, headlights in your retinas. Donnelly drove a
grey hatchback without a bottom, all the creatures of the tarmac rose to sing to him.
All manner of symbols crudely scrawled across the cliff face of my unrest. My life
reduced to an electrical diagram. All my gulls have taken flight; they will no longer
roost on these outcrops. The lure of the moon over the Sandford junction is too
strong.
I wish I could have know Donnelly in this place – we would have had so much to
debate. Did he paint these stones, or did I? Who left the pots in the hut by the jetty?
Who formed the museum under the sea? Who fell silently to his death, into the frozenwaters? Who erected this godforsaken aerial in the first place?  Did this whole island
rise to the surface of my stomach, forcing the gulls to take flight?"

The personification of things here makes me think the island is a being in itself... then again, that's ridiculous, right? So maybe this is it...

Theory 2 - Everything is irrelevant this time. Donnelly and Jacobson are just points in this island's past and this island is a special place to the narrator who we assume is you, the player. I realise that syphilis killed Paul now, so how could he be you? I am naming this my basis theory, the theory I am going to live with for now... A man had a wife named Esther and she passed away in a car crash but he survived. He couldn't handle his loss, he started to flip! He tried to deny the cruelness of reality and tried to work out the most basic question with science, the question : "Why?". He found two answers, Syphilis made Paul a "Drunk Driver", the brakes failed on the grey hatchback but neither satisfied him. He wrote letters to his love though he knows she wont ever read them and one final letter is being written as he tours the place closest to him, Half imaginary, half real. He no longer has anything to live for..He kills himself because of his frustration with life and the cruel realness that nobody expects until it happens, he releases his mind free of worry and anger to join his love...his Dear Esther.

Welcome

I have been playing the game (if it can be called that) "Dear Esther". For those that don't know is a first-person interactive story...the thing about it is; we don't know what the story is supposed to tell! That's what this Blog is here for - I am going to unravel this game if it fucking well kills me! That aside, I have been playing it a lot recently, got some screenshots and recorded some dialogue that I personally thought would be useful.


So...are we sitting comfortably? Good. Then let's begin to to find the secret of Dear Esther.