Three quotes that I wanted to mention in this part.

When I was reading the first 50 pages of this book like many others, I had a lot of problems with understanding it. So I thought that the next 50 pages would not be so easy either. As I expected, it was still little bit difficult for me to understand every detail part. However, it took less time than when I read the first 50 pages because there were much more things happening this time. I would like to talk about three quotes I found in the book that made me to think about it carefully.

The first quote comes from the last paragraph on page 58, which is pretty beginning of the part I read.
“In the morning the boy said nothing at all ….. and he said: She’s gone isn’t she? And he said: Yes, she is.”
When I was reading the previous part, I thought the boy would not be very old because he seemed to need a lot of care from his father. However, by reading this part, I noticed that the boy would be older than I expected. It’s not easy to ask such a question that asking whether his mother was gone. If I were him, I would be shocked and sad to know that my mom has gone. How did the boy know that his mother had left him even though nobody told him? Maybe the boy had known and felt like his mother was going to leave even before it actually happened. We can see that from the quote saying ‘the boy said nothing at all’. There might have been some quarrels or miscommunication between the woman and the man that the boy had listened to so that he already knew his mother was going to leave him sometime. I felt very sad to see the boy pretending not to be sad in that situation.

The second quote can be found on page 70.
“Take me with you, the boy said. He looked as if he was going to cry.
No. I want you to wait here.
Please, Papa.
Stop it. I want you to do what I say. Take the gun.
I don’t want the gun
I didn’t ask you if you wanted it. Take it.”
This conversation comes after the man killed a stranger to protect his son from him. It seems that the boy is really frightened and doesn’t want to be left alone. I was little bit surprised to see the weak aspect of the boy because I though he was very brave. He always said ‘I’m okay’ when his father took care of him. It refreshed my memory that the boy was still young. Besides, I also found that the man is trying to be stricter to the boy than before. Of course all that is for the boy too. After the man encountered a danger with the stranger, he became colder and maybe he felt like the boy had to be stronger not to mention himself. But it’s still very sad that the man should give a gun to his little boy.

The last quote is on the page 82.
“ A dog?
Yes.
Where did it come from?
I don’t know.
We’re not going to kill it, are we Papa?
No. We’re not going to kill it. ……
We won’t hurt the dog, he said. I promise. “

I think this part is pretty similar to the second quote that I mentioned above. But we can notice that the boy started to have doubt on his father. After seeing his father killing a person right in front of him, the boy became more worried about whether his father is going to kill anybody again. This part also made me feel very sorry about the boy because it seems that it’s becoming harder and harder for the boy to withstand all the situation and fear.

By reviewing my journal, I realized that I focused a lot on the boy. I just tent to get into the boy’s situation very much. Maybe it’s because I care about the boy like the man does. Anyways, I think I should try to think more about the man and the overall situations happening in this book next time.