The moral is… if you get television signal (and a way to power it), you are likely not that far away from land.

Sometimes the author doesn’t supply a moral, but that doesn’t mean the reader can’t come up with one of their own.

So this castaway is probably fucked. But hey, they were fortunate enough to have a TV. That TV gets access to the news, which manufactures dread for the castaway. Is their raft one of the ones affected by the recalls? Is it losing air right now? Will the castaway be dead in a matter of days?

Now what’ll bake your noodle: is the castaway better off with this knowledge? For the rest of their trip they’ll be worried about losing air and their raft sinking, sure. But if you’re stranded on the open sea you’ve probably only got a couple days left anyway, and it’s not like there’s anything they can do about it anyway. They’re in a sinking (heh) situation with no way out.

So the news was able to inform the castaway of their supposed fate, but the castaway is powerless to do anything about it. Is it better to be informed, or to be blissfully ignorant? Is this a story about people who know their fate and are powerless to stop it, like Cassandra of Greek myth? Or is it perhaps a larger moral about the state of television news fearmongering for a captive audience that can do little to help itself?

But I dunno. This guy’s probably fucked.