>If I were Stone, I would have given up pretty quickly. Fuck
>it. I've had enough. Then, I would think of my daughter. Even
>if she were dead, I would ponder the fact that I will be (or
>would be, as it were) raising her to treasure the value of her
>own life and to protect it fiercely. I will raise her to never
>give up, to never give in, to fight tooth and nail for her
>life. That, of course, is after instilling the value of her
>life as well as her fellow human beings.

Because when Stone realizes Saint Kowalski isn't real, she tells him roughly "Say hi to my daughter in the afterlife." But there's really nothing, up until that point, which shows that Stone is a believer in such things. And at that point, she is re-affirming her desire to keep fighting, against impossible odds, to make it safely home. She had just made peace with death and now she's coming to. A devout person might meet such a moment and embrace it as affirmation of the spiritual, but Stone embraces it as inspiration to keep fighting.

Either way ... I think the film really invites that sort of questioning and that's what I was drawn to in it. I think it's cool, even if you're not a skeptic, that exploring Stone's motivation in the film can interest you, too. If anything, I'd definitely say that's the central question of the film...