But it does make me sad that we've forgotten our names. Out of everything, this seems to me the most tragic. I miss my own and I mourn for everyone else's, because I'd like to love them, but I don't know who they are.
-R
(Excerpted from Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion)
I could talk about just about every paragraph in this book but y'all this one right here. There are things in it that are relevant the further into the story you go.
R never reclaims his name, not even as he finally learns to reclaim his memories. He says that he misses it and once he gets the chance to get it back he refuses it. His chosen name, the one given to him by someone he loves, means so much more to him than whatever name was assigned to him at birth. After all, the name from his first life, like everything else, failed him.
The empathy in these short few sentences... it's everything. Human's were made to love, despite everything. We were designed to care for one another. Isaac Marion is so good at expressing what the human experience is supposed to be. There is beauty in being alive, and it took a zombie to help me remember this.