Section 5 Page 49-60 q 6

The father's flashback involves a conversation between the man and his wife after the boy has been born. At this point, the family has struggled to survive, like "the walking dead in a horror film" (47), for some time. They are survivors, and the man entreats his wife not to commit suicide. She wishes to die by her own hand, however, in order to escape what she believes is her inevitable rape and her family’s inevitable murder. She wishes that their pistol had three bullets, not only two, so that she could spare her entire family from their gruesome fate. Throughout the conversation, the man continues to beg her to reconsider her decision, or at least to wait until the morning to say goodbye to their son. She refuses and leaves. The man knows that she commits suicide by sharpening a flake of obsidian, "[s]harper than steel. The edge an atom thick" (49). In the morning after her death, the man and the boy pack up their camp, and the boy only says, "She's gone isn't she?" (50).