Moroni is alone. He might be in a land where there are others who speak the same language and come from the same cultural background, but he cannot communicate with them his true feelings or understandings. He may be among a large population, but he is still alone. When Moroni began writing in his father’s record, his solitary state was one of the first things he mentioned: “Behold, my father hath made this record, and he hath written the intent thereof. And behold, I would write it also if I had room upon the plates, but I have not; and ore I have none, for I am alone. My father hath been slain in battle, and all my kinsfolk, and I have not friends nor whither to go; and how long the Lord will suffer that I may live I know not” (Morm. 8:5). Moroni’s definition of “alone” is not that there was no one around, but that his kin were dead and “I have not friends.”
Moroni finished his father’s record, which completed the work as Mormon had envisioned it. Mormon had promised the addition of Ether, so Moroni abridged that record as well. We do not know how long this task took, but Moroni may have understood that he would be preserved at least to that point, since he “supposed not to have written more.” As a parallel, Mormon apparently understood that he would live through the final battle. (See commentary accompanying Mormon 6:1.) Moroni therefore sounds almost surprised that he has “not as yet perished.”
There was nothing left to say, according to Mormon’s outline. Nevertheless, Moroni is alive and lonely. He needs someone to talk to, and I suggest he was “talking” to Joseph Smith. Ether 5 is Moroni’s instructions to Joseph Smith, so we know that Moroni knew of Joseph and his mission. The liturgical content of Moroni 2–6 suggests that Moroni also decided to provide Joseph with information that would be useful in the establishment of a church organization.
Redaction: Daniel H. Ludlow quotes E. Cecil McGavin’s comment about an important stylistic difference between Moroni’s work on Ether and his own writings in Moroni:
Another interesting difference between the actual writings of Moroni and his abridgments was pointed out by E. Cecil McGavin in a series of radio talks over KSL radio in 1941. According to Brother McGavin, the term “and it came to pass” is used by Moroni 117 times in forty pages of his abridgment of the records of the Jaredites. Yet in thirteen pages of his own writing, consisting of over 7,000 words, he does not use the expression a single time.
The explanation, in my view, is the difference in the type of documents in Ether and Moroni. Ether tells a history, and the phrases “and it came to pass” along with “and now” have a specific function in historical narrative. (See commentary accompanying 1 Nephi 1:19–20.) Moroni has no historical narrative as such. Therefore, he does not need these narrative markers. Nevertheless, Moroni is stylistically distant from his father. (See commentary accompanying Mormon 9:16–19 and Moroni 8:1.)